Yesterday, Darling Wifey had a lovely day out in Edinburgh visiting a dear friend and her gorgeous new baby. She came home with a couple of new books and? several experimental photographs on her new camera.

And I had agreed to collect her from the railway station at 6:47. But her train was late. So I had to spend half an hour waiting, with Little Nutter and Tiny Flirt, at the station. Thankfully we were in the car, although there is no designated disability space in the station drop-off zone.

Although the station porter had different ideas.? He knocked on my window and announced, without any courtesy whatsover, that if I didn’t move my car (which was in the designated waiting area!) then the British Transport Police would prosecute me.

I explained that I was waiting for someone whose train was late. He replied by pointing to the CCTV camera and telling me that I had better move or else. I asked him where I could wait in the car, and he directed me to the car parkround the corner. I tried? to explain that this would mean having to handle a train-obsessed? Autistic six-year-old on a railway platform – probably the single most dangerous thing imaginable – but he wasn’t interested, and walked off.

So I put the Disabled Parking Permit on the dashboard and refused to budge. When he returned, I countered his threat of a parking ticket with a threat of a private prosecution, with a press release, for disability discrimination. Then the cheeky bastard actually had the nerve to accuse me of misusing? someone else’s? Blue Badge.

Thankfully, Little Nutter’s photo is on the back, and he could clearly see on the tax disc that the car was a registered “Disability” vehicle. One short conversation about the legal principle of “reasonable allowance” later and I was given permission to park on the end of the platform, next to the Transport Police cars.

I console myself with this thought; miserable little Hitlers with their hats and radios are best kept in car parks and security cabins, where they can’t do any real damage and their thirst for power is ably quenched by the occasional opportunity to piss people off. Heaven help us if they ever achieved real power.

Darling Wifey’s mother took her shopping yesterday. It was one of those mother-daughter quality moments that lasted four hours longer than planned and nearly ended in a brutal accident involving sharp implements.

However,? my Mother-in-Law is occasionally sympathetic to Darling Wifey’s cause, and on this occasion converted that sympathy into a new pair of shoes.

Now, I don’t do shopping speak, but bear with me while I try to describe them. When Darling Wifey showed me the shoes her eyes lit up and she used words like “strappy” and “frivolous” and “nights out” and “taxis home.” (I didn’t know that there is a difference between walking home shoes and taxi shoes, but since a taxi from the centre of York to our house is £3.50 I’m not complaining.)

She was so thrilled with them she wore them to go on the Internet last night. Then she left them by the front door when we went to bed.

This morning, as usual, I was woken? at about 5:30? by the Autistic Alarm Clock (it doesn’t know what time it is but it wakes you anyway) and went downstairs for coffee and a spot of headbanging. I didn’t notice Holly helping herself to a shoe and sneaking under Little Madam’s bed with it for a good chew.

By the end of today we had searched every shoe shop in York and Geordieland, but couldn’t find a replacement pair. So now I am looking for a Korean recipe book.

I read those Government publications about “work-life balance” and laugh. Not an “Oh, that’s funny” laugh, but one of those strange laughs that you get from the victims of slapstick humour that isn’t funny. A “Game For A Laugh” laugh.

Our Government loves those welfare initiatives that look after ordinary people in the workplace… unless the ordinary person in question works for the Government. Which is why teaching is one of the few jobs in the UK where you? are not legally entitled to regular breaks. And the fact that there is no upper limit on our workload is touted as an “advantage” of our professional status.

So a quick survey of? a staffroom during the end of term drinkies:

• teachers on antidepressants: 4 – which is sixteen times the national average, but typical of schools
• receiving medical treatment for other stress related disorders: 3 – about ten times the national average
• showing visible symptoms of sleep deprivation: 75%
• mentally, emotionally or otherwise incapable of staying at the end of term party for more than 30 minutes: 50%
• looking forward to being able to fit social activities into their lives for a few weeks: 75%

For some reason, it has become a “truth universally acknowledged” that teachers are simultaneously workshy and incompetent (hence the need to monitor, assess and evaluate them constantly, under ever-increasing pressure to improve their standards) and prepared to work themselves into a state of serious physical illness by the end of every term.

No wonder there are problems training, recruiting and retaining teachers.

So this morning, my back was worse than ever.

And for some reason I forgot that I was a man and tried to tough the pain out. Silly me. I made it to work and managed a whole hour before remembering that I have a Y Chromosome and nearly passing out from the pain.

They sent me home.

At home I arranged all the remote controls, the house phone and my mobile, my laptop? and two cups of coffee on the floor, and then lay down on the boards. I couldn’t move for about three hours. In the middle of that time Darling Wifey ‘phoned me from work to take the piss.

And then I went to see the doctor, who also took the piss. For twelve days I have been suffering this back pain. Within an hour of taking the drugs the quack offered, it had gone.

Mind you, there is a price to pay. As well as removing the pain, the swelling goes away.

I still have sciatica, and the drugs, the physiotherapy and the stretching exercises haven’t stopped the back pain.

Even the chiropractic torture didn’t ease the pain.

Although I do have to say, at this point, that Little Madam has picked up the spine-stretching exercises with aplomb, and does a fab job as Assistant Torturer.

But today the hospital surprised me. After half an hour of clinical manipulation, before I was discharged they wanted to deliver one more treatment: Acupuncture. I agreed because they said it would involve 20 minutes of lying down in peace and quiet. Knowing my children, such an opportunity should not lightly be missed.

20 minutes later I left the hospital with no pain.

…of course, it came back within four hours…

If you really must buy underwear from Ebay shops, please? don’t use my account, and please ask them to post them to you, not me.

And yes, I know I could ask you in private, but? I? want the whole world to know that they aren’t for me.

Little Nutter has been asking for respite since Monday – I think the Chatterboxes (the nickname for Little Madam and Tiny Flirt whenever they are in cahoots) have been annoying him. He has a point.

This afternoon, the time for Respite finally arrived and Little Nutter & I spent a happy (and quiet) hour together packing his bag with freshly ironed clothes, a selection of model railway engines, a new A4 sketch book and his freshly sharpened pencils.

Darling Wifey was marking exam scripts and the Chatterboxes were somewhere else in the house, making the windows rattle.

The time came? to leave the house – and, because Darling Wifey has so much work to do,? Little Nutter & I? had to take the Chatterboxes with us.

It’s a long, long trip. Little Nutter sat in the front, next to me, with his fingers jammed in his ears and a scowl on his face. I don’t think I looked any happier. Meanwhile, Little Madam and Tiny Flirt argued happily about anything and everything. Loudly.

Little Nutter refused to kiss his brother and sister goodbye, and ran into Respite gleefully, leaving them to cry, loudly, all the way home because their brother didn’t love them. I didn’t think that telling them that their father didn’t love them? either would have made them any quieter, so I sulked quietly.

On the way home we stopped at the market for some veg & trout for supper. Tiny Flirt’s only saving grace on this occasion was his very loud comment to a trendy young woman, “I can see your knickers. They’re orange. I like orange.” But Little Madam wouldn’t let me enjoy? the woman’s embarrassment? – she was too busy pestering me for absolutely everything on sale.

So now we are Autism-free for another 24 hours. Tiny Flirt and Little Madam have opened their throttles to the stops and engaged afterburners. Even the dog is hiding under? our bed.

It’s going to be a long summer.

Aspirin – you might as well sacrifice a goat to the goddess Oestre. In fact, I would recommend that instead of taking aspirin, because at least you get a meal and a naked orgy on a moonlit hillside as part of the ritual (not that you can dance or do the other when your back is buggered, but at least you’ll have something interesting to look at.)

Paracetamol – aka “Half a Hangover-Cure.” This stuff is brilliant for stopping the pains associated with excessive drink-mixing, and when washed down with the greasy fry-up (see the separate entry on “Full English Breakfasts”) kill-or-cure remedy for dizziness, nausea and general morning-after stupidity, it is worth its weight in gold. But when your? compressed sciatic nerve is being released by every last ounce of brutal strength that a 6’4″ prop forward can apply to a two square inch section of your back, it just doesn’t cut it.

Dihydrocodeine – the tactical nuclear weapon of over-the-counter analgesics. This stuff can stop an hallucinogenic migraine in its tracks, let you finish a 10k run with a? sprained ligament, and even persuade your wife that she is “in the mood.” But when it comes to back pain, it is one? Champage Cocktail? too many: it is the painkilling equivalent of Seducer’s Droop. You succumb to the promise, only to discover that the elixir is most effective when used against your own weapons and defenses. It is merciless and unforgiving in its removal of distractions.

Pinot Grigio – NOW we’re talking!

This is? the sort of thing that? you have to put up with when you are married? to an English teacher.

The treatment for my sciatica? is continuing, and making some progress. The compression of the nerve is already reduced, but my back pain is horrible and slightly embarrassing (people seem to feel the need to talk about it with reference to my bald patch.)

However, to help the treatment, the physio has given me some daily stretching exercises. The main one involves lying on my stomach (it’s most comfortable to do this on the chenille rug in the front room) and then lifting up my upper body with my arms and pressing my pelvis on the floor, like one of those lazy press-ups that the girls did in school PE because they were “too cool” to break out in a sweat.

Obviously, this? requires a considerable amount of effort. So it is accompanied by? certain noises and facial expressions that Darling Wifey finds strangely familiar. Every day I stretch and strain on the chenille rug next to her study desk, and I think she is getting suspicious.