I’m still having fun in the special school. And I’ve found a great friend in my line manager, who has exactly the same opinions as me:

• filthy sense of humour - check
• inflexible fundamentalist approach to tea breaks - check
• pity for people with neurotic attention to detail - check
• daily reference to basic principles of job - check
• ruthless adherence to belief that fun makes education easier - check.

But there is a price to pay.

First, there was our agreement that special school kids aren’t stupid - so why shouldn’t they get qualifications? The answer, I have discovered, is obvious: no-one wanted the workload. But my boss and I didn’t like that answer.

One of the hurdles was our lack of ‘Examination Entry Status’ as a school: “Do we have an Examinations Officer?” I asked, dimly aware of my colleagues taking two steps backwards as I spoke, volunteering me for the job. Note to self: keep gob shut, and buy more midnight oil.

The perk of this “development of responsibilities” (LEA code for an increase in workload? without a payrise) was? a new laptop. And because there is a policy of subsidiarity of responsibility (LEA code for making you order your own hardware so they don’t have to) I was given a checklist of options to choose from.

I chose a wireless-enabled laptop that was compatible with my home network.

The LEA decided to “optimise efficiency” and upgraded my choice…

…so my new laptop isn’t compatible with my home network…

?

***Edited to add***

A local fast food delivery firm has just arrived and tried? to deliver pizzas that we hadn’t ordered.

He saw the house number on the order form and didn’t bother reading the rest - he just headed for our house.

I think there’s a message in there somewhere…

Little Nutter’s recent development in speaking and listening is incredible - he is gaining language at a far faster rate than ever.

However, learning to speak at the age of six means that inaccurately formed words? are even more obvious than? they are when spoken by? his 3-year-old brother. Which is why the tourists, as they walked past our back garden this evening on their way back to their hotel,? were so shocked to see? a naked six year old? waving a stick and shouting “Big dick! Big dick!”

I took Darling Wifey to the fireplace, made sure that she was paying attention, and then ran my finger along the mantelpiece and showed her how much dust I had picked up.

Her response? “Why haven’t you cleaned it?”

My comment, that had I married a bimbo then the mantelshelf would have been clean, was answered with the predictable response: yes, but it wouldn’t have been a hand-carved mantel in a house just a short walk from the centre of York.

Enough said.

A mother and her son disappeared last week. Today, it was confirmed that a body found floating in the River Humber is that of her 12-year-old. He had Autism, and the mother, who is still missing, was suffering from depression.

Health services and social services are still failing to provide the support and assistance that families need when their children have Autism. Obviously it is too early to comment on the exact circumstances of this tragedy, but why should parents of children with Autism up and down the country have to demand, fight, go to legal appeal and beg for support?

It’s far too easy to dismiss Autism as a behavioural disorder, to ignore the needs of parents and families, to cut back budgets for social services. There is no other way of describing what is happening to children with Autism: they are the victims of abusive neglect by local governments throughout the country.

Some local authorities get it right. They try to deliver respite, social services support, OT assistance in the home, early years therapy and support. It might be slow in most of these areas, but at least it is there.

When we lived in Co. Durham, it was literally a case of, “Your son has Autism. But at least you can apply for free nappies. Now please leave my office.” When you consider what can be done, this is criminally irresponsible.

I am just too angry to even think clearly.

It’s a glorious day today but, as it’s the first long weekend of the tourist season, York is overcrowded. So rather than do battle with marauding hordes of camera and guide book wielding Americans, we decided to have a quiet day at home.

The Tribe were thrown into the back garden and occasionally food has been thrown at them. Darling Wifey has retreated to her desk to do “stuff” and I have pottered around the house generally tidying, cleaning and mending things.

Then, when I was washing some dog food cans for the recycling bin, I sliced through my thumb.

We are very well equipped for this sort of eventuality. I have a well-stocked First Aid kit: I have steristrips? and I know how to use them. I also have a stomach of iron - very? few things? can make me woozy and about to throw up. But an inch long slice out of my own thumb just happens to be one of them.

Meanwhile, Darling Wifey tends to feel slightly unwell if you remind her that there is usually blood inside a human body. When some of it escapes, she needs to lie down until the room stops spinning.

So as I was jumping up and down like a toddler shouting “It hurts! It hurts!” she was trying to wash away the gore and hold the cut closed for the steristrip to do its work.

I ended up flat out on the lawn as Darling Wifey retreated to the loo for a lengthy barf.

When I came round, Little Nutter was standing over me saying, “I want ice cream.“

You don’t need to be NeuroTypical to piss Dad off. Children with Autism can get under the Old Man’s skin just as effectively.

Here are a few handy hints for driving Dad to drink and/or an early grave.

• Empty the tumble drier after it has spent four hours drying a load of towels, neatly fold them, and then make a nest with them underneath a conifer tree in the garden.
• Take your shoes and socks off, stamp in all the dog turds on the back lawn, and then come into the house and put the offending foot onto daddy’s lap and say, “Daddy clean.“
• Find the chocolate body paint that was hidden in? Daddy’s bedroom, take it into the kitchen and (in front of a visitor) say, “I want chocolate toast.“
• Wind up your elastic-band powered aeroplane to the point that the band is about to snap, launch it over the fence, scream so loud that people on the other side of the river are thinking of calling social services and then, when Daddy has retrieved it, do it again!
• If Daddy confiscates and hides the aeroplane, scream even louder, climb on top of the climbing frame in full view of all the guests in the Youth Hostel and hotel, take off all your clothes and start banging your head against things.
• Always ask for forbidden things in public. When you are the centre of attention in the supermarket, ask in a loud, clear voice, “I want blue cake.“
• When in car parks, don’t forget to lick other people’s car windows. This is best done when people are inside their cars.
• Life can be a stressful journey, so when pushing your way through the bustling streets of? a busy? city centre, find a market display of flowers and eat something beautiful.
• Always share the rich pickings of your nose.
• And when you have pushed Daddy to the limits of endurance, when the blood vessels in his head are visibly throbbing and he is twitching uncontrollably, run to Mummy, say, “Hello Mummy!” with a bright smile and lots of eye contact, and give her a huge hug. You know she’s earned it.

The York Wheel, by night.

(Sorry about the fuzzy image, but when you take a very slow exposure picture with a digital camera you need to

1. remember to take your tripod
2. know that? when you? go out after dark in April, shorts and t-shirt do not constitute a suitable outfit
3. be aware that the zoom function on the camera magnifies your shivering as well as the image

Little Nutter was in respite yesterday, and we had a simple choice: either try to entertain the Chatterboxes whilst we finished redecorating the sitting room, or go out.

It was a nice day, and ever since we moved to York I have wanted to see Wharram Percy, so we bundled everyone into the Purple Wheelbarrow (the nickname for my dead sexy, pinky-purple little French car) and headed off into the hills.

When we got there it was snowing. Warm sunshine 20 miles away, snow in Wharram Percy. And the difference in elevation was less than 400 feet. This, as they say, is England in the spring.

So we decided that we would head on to Hull to visit The Deep.? Darling Wifey remembers it being recommended by Ali. However, we don’t know if it was a good recommendation or not because we never made it. The simple reason is this: Hull is crap.

The roadsigns are misleading. One city centre bridge was being repaired and we were stuck in the mile-long tailback for more than two hours. The cashpoints were all empty. For some strange reason you aren’t allowed to turn left onto the main street through the city centre. All the roads send you into warrens of towerblocks. And everywhere we looked there was a sex shop. (And we couldn’t go in because we had the children with us…)

By the time we found the place, it was on the other side of a roadworks barrier guarded by large men with offical looking safety jackets and menacing mugs of tea, right next to three roadsigns telling us that The Deep was in three different directions. So we gave up.

One week of male bonding with Little Nutter has finally drawn to a close. So let’s all think very carefully about what happened.

• The incident at the National Railway Museum was predictable, but no less embarrassing for it. You’d think that after two and a half years of regular visits the staff would recognise Little Nutter and clear the decks when they see him coming, but no.
• The Yummy Mummies at Little Madam’s school responded in a very gratifying manner when they saw “fresh meat” arriving to collect her on Monday afternoon. I would have thought that Little Nutter’s strange behaviour would have put them off, but I have to give them credit for trying. Not for persistence, though, as by Wednesday they would all cross the playground to avoid us.
• Little Nutter’s two favourite moments were when he was given some diet cola in the Tesco cafe and the bubbles tickled his nose (he looked like he was recreating the cafe scene from When Harry Met Sally) and when he was helping me to remove the coving and a 30-inch section of the plaster came down with it…
• When you have Autism, aeroplanes aren’t as sexy as trains.
• Don’t lose your socks in the Wacky Warehouse. The rules state that you aren’t allowed to play unless you have socks on, so you are left with the simple choice of either leaving or buying the special red Wacky Socks (with gold stars on them.) Not nearly as nice as the lost Thomas and Percy socks, but then don’t blame me because I didn’t take them off in the biggest ball-pool in North Yorkshire, did I?
• It’s simple, really. If you take your elastic band powered aeroplane apart and stick half of the bits up your nose and the other half into the slot labelled “Sky Viewing Card”,? the ‘plane? won’t fly any more and Thomas won’t appear on the telly.

This week was supposed to be a quiet week for me.

My school is in South Yorkshire, where all the schools are closed for Easter. York schools don’t close until this weekend. Of course, this means that I go back to work when Darling Wifey and the Tribe are still on holiday, but trust me - sometimes it isn’t difficult going to work when all three children are at home demanding entertainment. (Little Nutter is booked into respite for that week, and the Chatterboxes are spending the week with Grandma. Darling Wifey will have a quiet week - guaranteed.)

So I had planned to finish redecorating the house, spend at least one lunchtime binge drinking with a friend who teaches in a school not far from mine and whose wife works for Darling Wifey, and read, sleep and play computer games. The sort of thing all responsible men do when they aren’t being supervised.

York’s local education authority had other plans, though. Like all intellectually enfeebled local governments they have funded a new school building by PFI, and like all PFI projects this one is behind schedule and being mismanaged. In order to make the changeover, Little Nutter’s Autism unit is closed for three and a half weeks.

And no alternate child care provision has been offered by the authority.

So Little Nutter and I have been male-bonding. We’ve gone to the National Railway Museum, where the Flying Scotsman? has been stripped down to its smalls so we can peer at her most intimate parts and bounce and hum with delight.

Then we went to the Yorkshire Air Museum? where we shouted “No aeroplane! Norby aeroplane! Bye-bye aeroplane!” at all the displays, and then bought an elastic-powered toy ‘plane which we took to a park and terrorised people with.

Finally, we made a pop bottle rocket and spent an afternoon launching that? from the field? next to the River Ouse.

And what did Little Nutter find the funniest? Getting Coca-Cola up his nose in the Tesco café, and watching an enormous section of plaster fall off the wall and all over me when I took the coving down yesterday afternoon.