How Yesterday’s Predictions Fared and Predictions For Today

How yesterday’s predictions fared, some predicitons for today’s Royal London Cup action and a couple of other features.

INTRODUCTION

Yesterday due to timing issues I posted predictions about the outcomes of that days Royal London Cup matches before they took place. This post shows how those predictions panned out and provides predictions for today’s two matches, with one at the half-way stage and the other heavily weather affected. There are also a few other things included.

HOW YESTERDAY’S PREDICTIONS FARED

Here match by match is what happened yesterday:

Somerset v Sussex – Somerset 282-8 from 50 overs, Sussex 62-4 from 16.3 overs, Somerset win by 69 runs on the Duckworth-Lewis method
The Duckworth-Lewis method, now administered by a man named Stern, its two progenitors having retired, is the best method for resolving rain spoiled fixtures yet devised – a predecessor led to England and South Africa retaking the field when the calculation reduced South Africa’s task to 22 off one ball! There is no doubt that having lost four early wickets Sussex were heading for defeat even had the rain not intervened. Coimpetition rules require each side to have batted for at least 10 overs for the game to be considered completed. For Somerset Hildreth scored 81, Azhar Ali had his first decent performance as overseas player with 68 and Lewis Gregory hit 50 off 28 balls near the end. Mir Hamza took three wickets for Sussex and Chris Jordan two. Sussex had lost the top four in their order when the rain came, with the wickets going to Overton, Davey, Groenewald and Gregory. A correct prediction for me.
Leicestershire v Derbyshire – Leicestershire 312-8 (50 overs), Derbyshire 266-3 off 39 overs, Derbyshire won by seven wickets off the last possible ball.
Again a bit of rain meant that the Duckowrth-Lewis formula came into play. In the end Derbyshire needed eight of the final over and nearly made a pig’s ear of it. Ackerman made 119 for Leicestershire, while the wickets were widely shared. Billy Godleman made 106 for Derbyshire, guiding them almost to victory, Du Plooy was 73 not out and Madsen made 60. This was an incorrect prediction.
Lancashire v Northamptonshire – Northamptonshire 269 all out from 50 overs, Lanashire 164-2 from 28.4 overs, Lancashire won by eight wickets under the Duckworth/Lewis method.
Lancashire were motoring ahead of the required rate when the rain intervened, and quite rightly the calculation showed as much, earning them the win and me a second correct prediction out of three. Jason Holder made 72 for Northamptonshire, Rob Keogh 66 and Vasconcelos 50, while all else in this innings was overshadowed by the bowling of Saqib Mohamed who took 6-37. For Lancashire Haseeb Hameed made 65 and Keaton Jennings 63.
Worcestershire v Durham – Durham 114-4 from 27.2 overs, Worcestershire 152-6 from 22.2 overs, Worcestershire won four wickets with 10 balls to spare under the Duckworth-Lewis Method.
The fact that Worcestershire knew from the start that their innings would be truncated and Durham did not explains why they were required to chase more than Durham had scored, and the fact that Durham had lost four wickets explains why the differential was not even greater. Alex Lees made 52 not out for Durham, while no Worcestershire bowler took more than one wicket. Four Worcestershire players scored over 25, although the top score was a mere 33 by Hamish Rutherford. For Durham Carse, Salisbury and Raine each took two wickets. I called this one correctly.

Thus I was right with three predictions and wrong with one, making a fifth Royal London Cup match day out of five on which I have got more right than wrong, and taking my overall record to 19 right out of 27, a strike rate of 70.03% (70.027…%, rounds up to 70.03).

TODAY’S PREDICTIONS

There are only two matches taking place:

Middlesex v Surrey – Middlesex 277 all out from 50 overs
The last two wickets boosted the Middlesex total, with Toby Roland-Jones finishing with 45, second top score to Ross Taylor’s 64. The bowling star was veteran off-spinner Gareth Batty with 4-29. Middlesex’s total is respectable but I am predicting that Surrey will chase them down.
Glamorgan v Kent – Glamorgan 68-2 from 15 overs, raining at present.
If the rain relents sufficiently to allow a result this match will go a long way to settling who gets the wooden spoon from the South Group, as both these teams currently have 100% losing records. Looking at Glamorgan’s current score my reckoning is that Kent are currently second favourites to the weather to emerge with the spoils. Wicketkeeper Chris Cooke is 29 not out and Labuschagne made 27, while Klaasen and Podmore each have a wicket.

A SCOPE EVENT

Scope had a get together at the West Norfolk Deaf Centre on Railway Road, and I was one of three members of the NAS West Norfolk Committee in attendance. It was a thoroughly enjoyable session, and we raised the issue of Scope helping us to get music sessions running again. With the help of Scope it will be a possibility. We also took part in some of the activities that were made available for us on the day. I have a few photographs to share…

P1230246 — Three pictures from around the room.

P1230256 — I did not find out who had created this, but it is good quality.

P1230259 — A ‘Sudbury Town’ type building with a wind turbine to meet ir’s power needs.

ANNUAL HEALTH CHECKS FOR AUTISTIC PEOPLE

This is an idea being pushed by NAS at a national level. As someone who is autistic and who has had a very difficult time recently due a health issue not being picked up until far too late I want to be involved with this, and to turn my experience to good use. There is information in earlier blog posts that NAS are welcome to use, and I am considering further options for working with NAS on this.

PHOTOGRAPHS

My usual sign off…

An Autism Awareness Event At King’s Lynn Library

A brief account of today’s Autism Awarenss event at King’s Lynn Library, with some photographs.

INTRODUCTION

Today at 1PM there was a gathering at King’s Lynn Library for World Autism Awareness Day, in which we talked to the library about things they could do to make themselves more accessible to autistic people and in which we got details of an autism friendly youth group that they are starting. As well as ourselves and library staff a young woman from SCIOPE was also present.

AWARENESS IS BARELY THE BEGINNING

Obviously awareness is necessary, but it should not be thought of as a goal or an endpoint – to borrow from a famous quote it is at most the end of the beginning. To be of real value it needs to proceed to acceptance, understanding of our needs and appreciation of our strengths. The library staff seem genuinely committed to helping autistic people, and they listened to all our comments. There was talk of autism friendly hours in the evening, which I think would be an excellent idea.

A CONSTRUCTIVE DAY

I feel that this event was very constructive and potentially valuable. I await practical developments with interest – as an autistic person who is a great supporter of the library I hope to be able remember today as an occasion when things moved in the right direction. I was very glad to be able to attend – as an advocate of “nothing about us without us” I always feel that I should be involved with this sort of thing, and there had been a possibility that my health would prevent that. Fortunately it did not. Now for…

PICTURES

I start with an infographic posted on the NAS Norwich facebook page by Johanna Corbyn which I consider to be excellent:

To set the scene for my own photographs that relate to this event here is the official King’s Library picture, originally posted on their facebook page:

Now we finish with some of my pictures:

P1220305 — My cards – one of the library staff accepted one.

P1220306 — I was able to photograph various pictures on the wall.

P1220312 — Details of the Autism Friendly Youth Group

P1220315 — The autism related diksplay in the entrance foyer.

P1220317 — A shot showing the war memorial and the library.

An Important Petition and The 2018 NGS Launch

An account of the 2018 Launch of the National Garden Scheme prefaced by the Autistic Bill of Rights and a petition to save Morley House Respite Unit.

INTRODUCTION

This post in entirely autism focussed, so the text is in #RedInstead. I will build up to the account of the 2018 Launch o the National Garden Scheme, which will occupy most of the post. First, to set the scene for all the follows, stimtheline’s Autistic Bill of Rights:

SAVE MORLEY HOUSE RESPITE UNIT

Morley House Respite Unit plays a vital role in the lives of many autistic people and their families in the West Norfolk area. It is now facing closure. Jessica Kibble, a volunteer with NAS West Norfolk, has created a petition on 38 Degrees against this planned closure. At the moment, less than two full days after launch there are just short of 600 signatures, which is a respectable start, but we need more. Below is a screenshot of the petition homepage, and by clicking it you can sign and share the petition:

THE 2018 LAUNCH OF THE
NATIONAL GARDEN SCHEME

NAS West Norfolk have an allotment/ sensory garden in West Lynn for which we received a grant from the NGS. As beneficiaries we were invited to be present at their 2018 Launch Eventm which took place today at Houghton Hall.

For various reasons the only person able to be present on behalf of NAS West Norfolk was me. Being represented by one person is not ideal, but with that one person being me it did ensure that there was some genuine autistic presence at the event.

The arrangement was that I would catch a bus from King’s Lynn to the point at which the road from Harpley joins the A148, where I would be collected by car and driven up to the hall (many thanks Julia for making the arrangement and Gus for collecting me). I had initially being thinking in terms of the 8:45, arriving at the Harpley turn at approx 9:10 if it runs to time, but last night following a suggestion that this was too early I changed plans to aiming for the 9:45 bus, about which I had certain misgivings (through long experience I have developed Diogenes-esque levels of cynicism as regards British public transport running to time).

I was at the bus station with everything I needed in good time, and, mirabile dictu, the bus arrived when it was supposed to. That unfortunately ended the good news. At Gaywood, rounding the curve near the clock tower, an impatiently driven lorry got too close to the bus and damaged one of the external mirrors. The driver had to inspect the damage to see how serious it was, and that was over ten minutes gone with no prospect of any it being made up in the rest of the journey. Fortunately, my delayed arrival at the Harpley turn was not sufficient to actually make me late for the start of the event (10:30), but it was a closer thing than it should have been.

There was a table for me to set up the NAS West Norfolk display board, leaflets and some of my own personal cards, and refreshments were laid on for free (I consumed some of the sausage rolls, which were excellent, and some ginger cake, and also, having been invited to do so, took some more cake away with me).

Marie Curie Cancer Care were present as major beneficiaries of the NGS, and there was a display showcasing a sensory garden in the Dereham area. Julia, gracious host of our 10th birthday Garden Party, introduced the speeches. There were four speeches by people from Marie Curie Cancer Care, and at the end Lord Cholmondeley (pronounced as ‘chumly’), owner of Houghton Hall, said a few words.

ceiling section — These pictures were all taken in the room where the stall was.

Lord Cholmondleigh II — Lord Cholmondeley speaking

In her role introducing the speeches Julia had very kindly mentioned the NAS West Norfolk presence, and many people came to the stall to find out more. Of course this was delightful, but it was also challenging (though I am fairly confident that the only person present who knew just how challenging I was finding it was me). Our branch chair Karan had hoped to be present for the last stages of the event, which would enable her to give me a lift back and to collect the display board for Friday, when a visitng speaker will be giving talks on autism and puberty at a venue near the Hardwick Industrial Estate (unless something else intervenes I will be present for the evening talk). She arrived at about quarter to twelve, which gave me an opportunity to look at the gardens.

Water Feature — This water feature put me in mind of some books by Rachel Caine that I have recently been reading, but unlike in her books these are just statues, not automata!

tree temple — This building looks very like a small temple (perhaps given the materials used in its construction, a temple to Artemis!)

The journey home had a delayed start, because the field in which visitors cars were parked proved to be too muddy for most of said vehicles to handle. Karan’s car was one of those that needed a tractor-assisted start (I will endeavour to remember this next time I find myself travelling behind a slow-moving farm vehicle!). One underway however, our return journey passed without incident.

The SCOPE Christmas Meal And Some Autism Related Links

A brief account of the SCOPE Christmas meal to which I was invited as NAS West Norfolk branch secretary and some autism related links.

INTRODUCTION

I am including autism related links because it was in my capacity as NAS West Norfolk branch secretary that I was invited to attend the SCOPE christmas meal (our organisations are looking to work more closely on various things).

THE MEAL

The meal was arranged for The Gatehouse, a Hungry Horse pub located near the South Gate, at the edge of King’s Lynn (hence the name) with food booked for 3PM. The plan was for a few things to be discussed as well. I arrived at the pub not long after 2PM, purchased a pint to drink slowly while I waited for others to arrive (SCOPE were paying for the food, so I reckoned I could allow myself a couple of drinks) and settled down to wait.

Others began arriving at around 2:45, and Chloe Yianni from SCOPE, who was running the event, arrived just before 3PM.

Most of the ‘meeting’ element of the day took place between the main course and dessert, accompanied by a very impressive sunset (yes folks it gets dark early in these parts in December).

I enjoyed the occasion and look forward to working closely with the people from SCOPE in 2018 and beyond.

Moorhen — The first 14 pictures you will see were taken while walking to the pub

Calendars — My last three calendars set out in the pub.

book like wall — The first of five decor shots

SOME AUTISM RELATED LINKS

A majority of the links in this section are to posts on USian (acknowledgement to New Zealander Heather Hastie for this term) blogs/ sites, and most of the rest are British, although a few other countries also feature. As an internationalist I am proud that people from many countries visit this blog (108 in the last year, 123 all time).

ON TERMINOLOGY

This section relates to a wonderful post put up by Autism Mom a couple of days ago under the title “I WANT TO BE CALLED AUTISTIC” I offer you my own comment in immediate response to that post, which I stand by:

Well done to both you and your son. Although my own strong preference is to describe myself as an autistic person I am quite happy for those who choose to do so to describe themselves as people with autism – what I will not accept is a well meaning neurotypical person seeking to make the decision on our behalf – it is our decision and we should make it ourselves.

Also, here is a quote from the end of the post:

Person first versus identify first: He cocked his head and asked me to explain more.

“I want to be called autistic,” he announced after I had finished. “Saying “person with autism” sounds like I have a disease. I don’t have a disease, this is just how I am.”

And then he added: “Actually, I want to be called by my name, but if you need to describe my autism I want to be called autistic.”

Make it so.

If you are reading this and have an autistic spectrum condition please feel free to add a comment about how you would prefer to be described.

I finish this section with a link to post mentioned in the Autism Mom piece linked to above which appears on Autistic Not Weird under the title “A plea to the autism community from one of your own“

THE “TO SIRI” ISSUE

Many splendid pieces have been produced about this subject since I last provided links relating to it, and I append a bulleted list of the best links:

Tales By The Unexpected has produced “book analysis: To Siri with love by Judith Newman“
Kaelan Rhywiol who I mentioned the last time I provided links on this subject has posted a piece on bustle.com titled “Why I Believe ‘To Siri With Love’ By Judith Newman Is A Book That Does Incredible Damage To The Autistic Community“
Ryan Boren of boren.blog has produced a detailed chapter by chapter take down of the book titled “An Actually Autistic Review of “To Siri with Love”“
Eve Reiland of American Badass Activists, as well as signposting most of the pieces to which I refer in this section has produced one of her own titled “Judith Newman, How Do You Like Me Now?“
Aspie Under Your Radar has produced a piece titled “Re: #ToSiriWithLove I actually blame the publisher“
Eve features again with this piece titled “Steve Silberman, author of “Neurotribes,” Doesn’t Get Judith Newman Either” – and if you have not yet read Neurotribes I suggest that you rectify that omission asap.
Finally, from The Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism comes this piece titled “Why To Siri With Love Is a Wrecking Ball of a Book“, written by Maxfield Sparrow, who blogs at Unstrange Mind.

A FINAL LINK

I conclude this post by linking to a story from the excellent John Pring of Disability News Service. As a strong supporter of “Nothing About Us Without Us” I hardly need to tell you why I was delighted to read “Autistic-led taskforce will address ‘hypocrisy and injustice’“

Downham Market Community Fair

An account of running the NAS West Norfolk stall at the Downham Market Community Fair on Saturday.

INTRODUCTION

NAS West Norfolk were invited to run a stall at the Downham Market Community Fair, which took place on Saturday, with stalls setting up from 9AM and the event itself running from 10AM to 2PM. This post is my account from my perspective running the NASWN stall on the day. There will be plenty of photographs. I have stated elsewhere that while it is not ideal to have a stall covered by only one person if NAS West Norfolk are going to have only one person running the stall that person should be me.

GETTING THERE

I travelled to Downham Market by train (£3 return when making the journey at the weekend), selecting the 7:54AM, which would see me arrive at the station at about 8:10AM. I saw sufficiently much to take the eye as I walked through the town that I shall be putting up a separate post about that. I arrived outside the Town Hall at 8:35AM, giving me plenty of time to take some photographs of the outside of the building.

THE NASWN STALL

As arranged the person bringing the stall and some new leaflets arrived at 9AM, and the setup was swiftly accomplished. This was the first occasion in which the aspi.blog calendars for 2018 were on public display.

AROUND THE HALL

Obviously, being in sole charge of the stall I did not have much opportunity for moving about once the event was underway, but I did get sufficient pictures from a combination of the occasions on which I did move about and those taken from the stall to give a feel for the event. We start with some general pictures of the inside of the building.

Whole Hall — Two shots showing views of the hall

Parapet — This parapet is presumably the front of an upstairs seating area.

Artwork 2 — The last two shots in this selection feature artwork on the walls just outside the hall.

Moving on to inidviudal stalls, I got pictures of the Downham Market Horticultural Society stall, the RBL stall, and various others. The most impressive stall of the day was that being run by the King’s Lynn and District Astronomy Society. They had a big screen displaying some very impressive slides as well their display board. The Cats Protection group had a stall, that like the NASWN stall was being run by a single person.

These are all the pictures of stalls other than the Astronomy Society one that I got, and it is to that group that I now turn:

Astronomy 1 — Two shots of the KLADAS stall

Astronomy 3 — The remainder are of slides that caught my attention.

THE NAS WEST NORFOLK STALL

The event was not massively attended, but I did see quite a few people at the NASWN stall, and the experience was overwhelmingly positive. My calendars impressed a few people but not sufficiently for any to sell. From an NASWN perspective, the main point of the day of course was to improve understanding of autism and to publicise the existence of our group. We succeeded as well as could have been hoped for in both regards, with a number of the new leaflets being taken, and quite a few people leaving the event better informed about autism than they had been before it started. I also got to explain about the rainbow coloured infinity symbol, and the fact that it is a symbol chosen by autistic people to represent the autistic spectrum. I consider that this event was a good use of a significant part of my Saturday. To finish, here is our stall for a second time:

Two shots showing views of the hall

This parapet is presumably the front of an upstairs seating area.

The last two shots in this selection feature artwork on the walls just outside the hall.

About Autism

Some important autism themed pieces and a few of my photographs.

INTRODUCTION

I have several important links relating to autism to share with you, and I urge you to continue that sharing process. Just to remind my readers I am #actuallyautistic, and also branch secretary of the National Autistic Society’s West Norfolk branch, and in that latter capacity I will conclude this introduction by reminding you of NAS’s catchline:

UNTIL EVERYONE UNDERSTANDS

A NOTE ON ATTRIBUTIONS

I found some of these pieces by way of people other than the original author. In such cases as well as crediting the actual author I also intend to mention the person who gave me the tip off. If you seen an underlining anywhere it is a link, and those links that are body text will be in a colour other than black to further highlight them.

INCLUSIVE AUTISTIC TRAITS – AUTISTICALITY

This piece was brought to my attention when the Neurodivergent Rebel reblogged it. It is a long piece, but very readable and absolutely bang on the money. The list itself is too long to quote here, but the screenshot below which explains the problems that the post goes on to address brilliantly is a good start:

THE LEFEVER BIKE RIDE

Paul and Jamie Lefever recently undertook a sponsored cycle ride from King’s Lynn to the National Autistic Society’s HQ in London, a distance of 118 miles. A full account, under the title “11-year-old Jamie cycles 118 miles for our charity (4 September 2017)” is available on the NAS website.

ABA THERAPISTS BUSTED

This piece, written by Amy Sequenzia, a well known autistic person and advocate for autism, was originally posted on the autismwomensnetwork under the self explanatory title “ABA Providers Making Fun of Autistic People“. I include a graphic from this post below:

Image is a photo of a group of human figure-shaped wooden pegs clustered to the left and a single wooden peg standing off to the right. Text says, “It is about how ABA “therapists” REALLY see Autistics. It is about them making fun of us because they see us as broken and hopeless. -Amy Sequenzia, autismwomensnetwork.org”

PREPARING AN AUTISM FRIENDLY SECONDARY CLASSROOM

With the new school year just getting underway, Lynn McCann of Reachout ASC has published a very informative and constructive piece under the title “Preparing an autism friendly secondary classroom“.

AN AUTISM RELATED TWEET

While preparing this post I saw the following tweet, from Paul Isaacs, so here it is:

Autism, Asperger’s Syndrome, Aspinauts and Brain Localisations. Copyright D.Williams 1995/2005/2014, P.Isaacs 2017 #asautismdifferences pic.twitter.com/D7gWgEjffe

— Paul Isaacs (@PaulIsaacs22) September 6, 2017

WEB RESOURCES FROM THE NEURODIVERGENT REBEL

I end the post with something I have touched on before. Previously I only included the email address for those who wanted to add to the list. This time I include the list as well:

This is a growing list. Please send suggestions to NeurodivergentRebel@gmail.com

PHOTOGRAPHS

As always, I end this post with some of my own photographs:

wagtail in pigeon's shadow — The pigeon in the background helps to show how tiny this wagtail is.

climbing squirrel — No I have not rotated this shot – the squirrel really is on a vertical tree trunk.

Rathskellar and Hanse House — This shot shows Hanse House and the Rathskellar, the latter of which is hosting a charity beer festival this weekend.

I was due to steward at 11-13 King Street between 12 and 2PM on Heritage Open Day, but this has now been changed to 27 King Street, which is this fine building.

EIFCA boat 2 — The Eastern Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Auhtority.

Cockler and research boat — The cockling boat Baden Powell and a Fisheries Research vessel.

What is Autism?

Some thoughts about autism provoked in a good way by anonymouslyautistic and a bad way by the folk at magiquiz.

INTRODUCTION

I am not going to attempt a scientific answer to the question in my title, merely to lay out some of my own thoughts. The original inspiration for this post was a post produced by anonymouslyautistic, titled “WHAT IS AUTISM – FROM AN AUTISTIC’S PERSPECTIVE” and brought to my attention by americanbadassactivists. As readers of this blog will be aware I am branch secretary of the National Autistic Society’s West Norfolk branch as well as being autistic.

WHAT AUTISM IS NOT

Among the things that autism is sometimes supposed to be but is not are:

A form of mental illness (more on this at the end of this section as you will see).
A disorder
Something to be feared or worse still hated
Something that needs to be cured

I end this section with an example that absolutely shocked me when I saw it by way of twitter this weekend. I invite readers of this post to collectively identify everything they can find that is wrong with the formulation of the question below:

If you click on the image you can go to the quiz, take it yourself and then post a comment (if you choose to do this please follow me in highlighting the problems with this question).

AUTISM AND ME

My unsuitability for front-line customer service and the difficulties I have with communication are down to autism. On the other side of the ledger my eye for detail, reflected in my photography among other things, my mathematical skills, my aptitude for working with computers and several other of my strongest attributes are also due to autism.

I will finish this section by reminding people that different does not necessarily mean less, and that we are autistic people – note the emphasis given to the second part of that designation.

PUZZLES

In this section I provide the solution to one puzzle and offer another for your inspection. Both are mathematical in nature.

In ‘Midweek Mixture‘ I set the following puzzle:

The above table shows two putative sets of coin toss records, each for one coin tossed thirty times. Which is more like to be genuine based on what you can see?

a) series one
b) series two

To begin the solution, here is the table above with a column added:

You will see that the two sets of coin toss lists in the original problem were made up, but if you look at the results for the set of coin tosses I actually performed you will note that it looks much more like series two than series one – randomness is clumpier than we intuitively expect (the idea for this problem came from a book by Natalie Angier, in which she tells the story of a teacher who uses an experiment in which half of her class are assigned the task of inventing a series of coin tosses, and half of actually tossing coins and recording the result, while the teacher goes out of the room – and nearly always the teacher can tell the real from the fake).

My new problem comes from the mathematical website brilliant:

PHOTOGRAPHS

As usual I end this post with some photographs, in this case featuring a family of swans I saw swimming along the Gaywood River yesterdary morning:

A Couple of Announcements

An announcement, a warning and some photographs.

INTRODUCTION

I am planning a major blog post for tomorrow morning, but there are a couple of things I wish to share now.

HERITAGE OPEN DAY

Heritage Open Day 2017 is on Sunday September 10, and as usual many King’s Lynn buildings will be opening their doors for the occasion. This year I will be among the volunteers. I will be stewarding at 11-13 King Street between 12 and 2PM. Here are a few pictures of the place taken today:

11-13 King Street, where I will be stewarding from 12 to 2PM on Heritage Open Day.

A WARNING FROM AMERICA

There is an online magazine called Autism Parenting Magazine. Amy Sequenzia, a very well known autistic person and autism advocate has had a very bad experience with them recently, as has one of her friends. I found out about this from americanbadassactivists, who put up a post linking to Amy’s original, which appears on the Autism Women’s Network. As someone who is both autistic and heavily involved witha charity that helps autistic people I am shocked by the attitudes and behaviour of the people who run this online magazine. Below, in screenshot form, is some of the detail from Amy’s piece:

A POSITIVE ENDING AND PHOTOGRAPHS

I always like to end my posts with pictures, but before I do here is a link to something much more positive than the last piece I linked to. This piece, from Science Whys is titled “We Are Family” and it ends with a wonderful quote from Maya Angelou: “We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.”

Now for those photographs:

CV entire — The Vancouver statue (3 images)

Baden Powell 1 — A double ended cockling boat, the Baden Powell, currently moored at the jetty near Marriott’s Warehouse (four images)

Swallows often fly over the Nar outfall, but capturing them is hard due to their sheer speed.

NAS West Norfolk 10th Anniversary Celebrations

A personal account of NAS West Norfolk’s 10th anniversary celebration garden party.

INTRODUCTION

Yesterday saw the celebration of NAS West Norfolk’s tenth anniversary. We had a garden party in a quite magnificent garden in Castle Acre which we had been very generously allowed to use for the occasion. Here as a reminder is the poster we used to advertise the event:

MY ROLE IN THE CELEBRATIONS

As branch secretary of NAS West Norfolk I was involved in running the event – I helped to set things up at the start and with the clear up at the end. As an autistic person I was also delighted to take part in the event in between times.

THE GARDENS

These gardens are truly amazing – this is where the original fortified village that adjoins the castle was located, and at one point there is a steeply sloped bank that leads down to a section of the old town moat. There are some amazing plants and grasses in these gardens, some excellent garden sculptures, a pond with ducks of various breeds and dragonflies around it, many fowl which run free and a swimming pool the excellence of which I can personally vouch for having spent an hour there. Near the pond is a summerhouse which was our designated Quiet Area (an absolute necessity at events for autistic people, or if you want autistic people being comfortable attending your event). There was also a house that was open to the public in which cakes (some baked by our wonderful hosts and some by members of our group), raffle prizes and such were set up.

The hosts had provided a few games for us, and one of our members brought along a swingball set as well.

THE DAY

Once the set up had been accomplished there was plenty of time to enjoy the day, and it went excellently. For me the magnificent setting was one half of a superb equation, the other being autistic people enjoying themselves without worrying what anyone else was thinking because everyone present had some sort of connection to autism, and therefore some degree of understanding. Everyone present was at least at the ‘Understanding’ stage of the Awareness-Understanding-Acceptance-Appreciation line. I was regularly taking photographs except for the hour I spent in the swimming pool and we had a photographer from Your Local Paper present as well. The raffle prizes were presented by the Mayor of King’s Lynn.

PHOTOGRAPHS

Here are my photographs from the day…

Moat — The bank leading down to a section of the old town moat – an entangled bank worthy of the closing words of On The Origin of Species.

Butterfly — The only one of many beautiful butterflies that I was able to capture.

decorative brickwork2 — Half of this brickwork Tudor Rose has disappeared.

Watering can — A watering can sculpture (it is huge – one could not actually use iut.

big bird2 — I saw this bird early on, but it kept itself to itself later in the day.

Dovecote — What used to be the dovecote – the brick nesting boxes are still in place.

summerhouse — The designated Quiet Area.

Dark den — Inside the summerhouse we assembled the Dark Den – the framework is a little like Quadro except with that the plastic tubes have a smaller diameter. Initially we had failed to notice that the tubes have to go through the tenting, so we took longer to get this assembled than we should.

Dark den interior1 — An interior shot – once I pulled the second door flap at the back into place and someone else had added a blanket to soften the base it was ready for use.

wire ducks2 — wire ducks – there were also wire sheep near the pool.

Monday Madness 3: Mainly Autism

Some autism related links, and some photos from Musical Keys.

INTRODUCTION

As NAS West Norfolk branch secretary and an #actuallyautistic person I always like to share good stuff about autism. I am including within this a piece that is not directly about autism but relates to many of the issues that autistic people highlight.

AN ERIN HUMAN INFOGRAPHIC

This piece from erinhuman.com titled “Disability 101: Medical Model vs Social Model” features a really excellent infographic, reproduced below:

AN OLD FAVOURITE AND A NEW FIND

Laina over at thesilentwaveblog has, as she so often does, hit the nail smack on the head with a piece titled “Depathologizing Asperger’s / autism ~ The strength vs ‘lacking’ edition” The feature graphic is below:

Laina is the old favourite of the title of this section, while the new find, brought to my attention by Eve Hinson of americanbadassadvocates, is Michelle Sutton of michellesuttonwrites whose recent piece titled “THE LANGUAGE OF IDENTITY, OR “I AM NOT AN AUTISM PARENT”” I heartily recommend.

PHOTOGRAPHS

These photographs were taken at Muscial Keys on Saturday, which I am involved in due to my association with NAS West Norfolk.

	Thomas on All Time XIs – England B…
	cindy knoke on All Time XIs – England B…
	All Time XIs –… on All Time XIs – Staffords…
	All Time XIs –… on All Time XIs – Surr…
	Karan Mckerrow on Changing the Politcal Lan…

INTRODUCTION

HOW YESTERDAY’S PREDICTIONS FARED

TODAY’S PREDICTIONS

A SCOPE EVENT

ANNUAL HEALTH CHECKS FOR AUTISTIC PEOPLE

PHOTOGRAPHS

INTRODUCTION

AWARENESS IS BARELY THE BEGINNING

A CONSTRUCTIVE DAY

PICTURES

INTRODUCTION

SAVE MORLEY HOUSE RESPITE UNIT

THE 2018 LAUNCH OF THE NATIONAL GARDEN SCHEME

INTRODUCTION

THE MEAL

SOME AUTISM RELATED LINKS

ON TERMINOLOGY

THE “TO SIRI” ISSUE

A FINAL LINK

INTRODUCTION

GETTING THERE

THE NASWN STALL

AROUND THE HALL

THE NAS WEST NORFOLK STALL

INTRODUCTION

UNTIL EVERYONE UNDERSTANDS

A NOTE ON ATTRIBUTIONS

INCLUSIVE AUTISTIC TRAITS – AUTISTICALITY

THE LEFEVER BIKE RIDE

ABA THERAPISTS BUSTED

PREPARING AN AUTISM FRIENDLY SECONDARY CLASSROOM

AN AUTISM RELATED TWEET

WEB RESOURCES FROM THE NEURODIVERGENT REBEL

PHOTOGRAPHS

INTRODUCTION

WHAT AUTISM IS NOT

AUTISM AND ME

PUZZLES

PHOTOGRAPHS

INTRODUCTION

HERITAGE OPEN DAY

A WARNING FROM AMERICA

A POSITIVE ENDING AND PHOTOGRAPHS

INTRODUCTION

MY ROLE IN THE CELEBRATIONS

THE GARDENS

THE DAY

PHOTOGRAPHS

INTRODUCTION

AN ERIN HUMAN INFOGRAPHIC

AN OLD FAVOURITE AND A NEW FIND

PHOTOGRAPHS

THE 2018 LAUNCH OF THE
NATIONAL GARDEN SCHEME