‘Wake Up, Shake Up‘ for the Woodstock Generation?

‘When the truth is found to be lies/ And all the joy within you dies/
Don’t you want somebody to love?’ Jefferson Airplane, ‘Somebody to Love’ at Woodstock, 1969

“How do I prepare when a girl asks to visit my bedroom for the first time?”

It was Spring 1975. I was sweet 17 and Roberta and I were on one of our regular long walks together. This question had been bugging me ever since our mutual friend, who we nicknamed ‘Grace’, said she wanted to have a look at my bedroom. Roberta and I had a ‘Platonic relationship’ where, according to her, we were ‘best friends and could explore each other’s minds, but that’s as far as it goes.’ This meant that we spent most weekends together; shopping, going to the cinema, hanging out with friends and invariably ending up in her bedroom, listening to records by The Grateful Dead, New Riders of the Purple Sage, Eagles, Van Morrison and John Martyn. If we hadn’t seen each other during the day, we would spend ages chatting on the phone in the evening. This involved mildly teasing each other (but not flirting).

Roberta was a self-proclaimed expert on ‘what men need to know about women in order to have exciting and long-lasting relationships’. She was always quick to give me detailed advice on how to behave towards girls I fancied. Strangely, this advice never seemed to yield any positive results.

Looking back on those heady days, Roberta was a bit like Emmylou Harris: hugely talented, prone to wearing midi skirts and flicking her hair back, but a bit on the self-conscious and serious side.

Emmylou

And what about ‘Grace’? Well, we chose this nickname because she was just like Grace Slick, the lead singer with legendary San Francisco psychedelic rock band Jefferson Airplane. Like Ms Slick, she was assertive and straight-talking, and was often to be found in other people’s rooms in the early hours of the morning, ingesting large quantities of illegal substances. (Grace Slick notoriously got invited, (by mistake as it happens) to a garden party at the White House, hosted by President Richard Nixon. She planned to drop a tab of LSD into the President’s tea, but was thwarted at the last minute by an FBI agent who had been at Woodstock and recognised her.)

Grace had decided that she and I were going to be an item, but wanted to check out my bedroom first. This really freaked me out, because girls I asked out usually wanted the first date to take place in a public space, like the Wimpy café down the High Street, where I bought the drinks and burgers and they decided if I could walk them home (which was usually never).

So I guess you can empathise with my panic, and understand why I should go to Roberta for advice. As usual, her ideas were detailed, so I took extensive notes, which I still have:

• Make sure you show her the pile of magazines you have under the bed. These should be in date order (Roberta lent me her entire collection of New Musical Express from 1972 to 75)

• Show her your album collection, which must include loads of obscure bands from the US West Coast, arranged not in alphabetical order, (that’s too obvious) but in the order of when you bought them. Give a blow-by-blow account of the personnel on each album, paying particular attention to any little production quirks and facts about the sound engineering

• (The above would prove to her that I had a ‘typical man’s brain’, which meant I was a ‘regular guy’. This would show Grace, apparently, that I was full of testosterone and capable of fixing her car and building a house single-handed)

• Put up a poster of Carly Simon, preferably from the cover of ‘No Secrets’, (where the photographer made sure that he snapped her on a particularly cold day).

Carly Simon: No Secrets

• Underneath the poster, set up a small table covered in candles, and tell her you like to sit there listening to Carly Simon and James Taylor albums

• These last two points would indicate that I was not just a man with an interest in facts and how things work, but would subtly point to my ‘soft feminine side’, that allowed me to empathise with other people, explore my feelings, and to be kind to animals (and the baby that we would have together)

Carly Simon and James Taylor

• Play an album by Little Feat, but keep interrupting ; to explain why Lowell George’s slide technique is way better than Ry Cooder’s, because Lowell uses a 13mm Sears and Roebuck socket wrench

Little Feat, Emmylou Harris and friends

To this day, I’m not entirely sure why me and Grace didn’t hit it off. She seemed very alarmed when, on entering my bedroom, I said, “Come and see the collection of mags I’ve got under my bed!”

Why did she shout, “What the hell is that?!” upon spying my ‘shrine to Carly Simon’?

Why did she look bored rigid by my album collection and me waxing lyrical about the amazing production values on The Doors’ eponymous first album?

And what possessed her, half-way through my detailed account of Lowell George’s slide technique, to phone her dad to ask him to come and collect her?

And why was her parting shot, flung at me as she slammed the front door, “You’re a typical man!”

Where is all this heading? Well, you may have come across the very popular idea that men’s brains and women’s brains are fundamentally different. This ‘fact’ has been used to explain why women can’t park a car, why men are fascinated by how things work and by finding out obscure facts, and why women are into friendships and feelings and caring for children. Men on the other hand, have a biological imperative, inherited from the Stone Age, to go around killing things (and each other) and collecting obscure objects (originally roots and berries, but now stamps and rare Bob Dylan recordings).

Professor Simon Baron-Cohen (yes, he is related to Sacha Baron-Cohen of Ali G and Bhorat fame), has apparently confirmed the truth about male and female differences. Professor Simon wrote a seminal paper on this subject where he introduced the concept that most women’s brains are hard-wired for empathy with other people, while most men are neurologically driven to collect facts and understand systems. In his words, men are ‘Systemisers’ while women are not. They are ‘Empathisers’. Of course, not all men are good at understanding systems, and not all women are good at being in touch with their feelings and sharing concern for others. 17% of each sex will differ from the norm in these respects, so that some women will have typically ‘male brains’ and some guys will be ‘typically female’.

Simon Baron-Cohen is an expert in autism, and was originally trying to explain why most children with autism are male and, from his data at least, many fathers of autistic children are engineers or have a male engineer relative. Many autistic children have a predisposition to be fascinated by how things work (or at least, in my experience, taking them apart, sometimes screw by screw), amassing facts and lacking empathy with other people. Part of Baron-Cohen’s research involved a questionnaire, which showed conclusively that male respondents preferred facts and understanding systems, rather than spending time finding out about other people’s feelings. Women respondents were interested in what makes other people tick, rather than wasting time finding out how a clock works.

Therefore, because children with autism are essentially ‘systemisers’, and so are a lot of men (and particularly engineers), we could draw the conclusion that autism is caused by some children being born with neurology that makes them more like men than others.

You can read about the Extreme Male Brain Theory of Autism here . If you do, or know the research in detail, you will know that I have been grossly unkind to these researchers into autism. They are prepared to ask difficult questions and come up with thought-provoking theories that attempt to answer them, which we can agree with or reject, as we choose.

However, as is often the case, some journalists got hold of the research and completely twisted its intentions and findings, in order to make copy. The BBC does this frequently on its news website. The Guardian and other ‘serious papers’ do the same, but use longer words and sentences. But really and truly, the apparently learned magazine Scientific American should have known better than to publish an article headed ‘Are Geeky Couples More Likely to have Kids with Autism?’

Some men are systemisers, some women are too. That doesn’t mean that those men who are not that way inclined are ‘THAT way inclined’ or that women who are strong systemisers must in some way be ‘manly’. Systemising is a way of thinking, a way of seeing the world, and for some people it allows them to have a really good job. In some extreme cases, it’s an obsessive way of functioning, and would lead to a diagnosis of autism. But this does not mean that engineers are autistic, or at risk of having children with autism; merely that some men and women have chosen to allow their systemising to dominate their lives. Their lifestyles reflect this, including not bothering to focus on social relationships and how they bring up their children.

You can’t go round saying, that because some men are very strong on systems, then all male and female brains are different. In the same way you can’t suggest that all women are designed to be strong on empathy and socialising in order to look after children. However, some researchers are using these concepts to look into what type of thinking best suits someone (either male or female) to be attracted to study and work in STEM careers (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mechanics).

From my memory of things, Roberta was a tremendous ‘systemiser’, but also highly tuned into other people’s feelings- and how to manipulate them as well!!

So finally, here’s the link to swearing in sign language, which explains my thoughts on Scientific American’s take on ‘extreme male brains’

Swearing in Sign language. (Warning: This clip features swearing in sign language.)

And finally finally, after having criticised the BBC for being outrageously rubbish at describing research, here’s a brand new piece from them about whether or not empathy can be taught!

Take extreme care out there!

Michael

An hour later she was sitting in a hospital bed singing nursery rhymes with a paediatrician.

I’ll never forget this awful experience, but I’ll never forget the doctor either. She held my wife’s hand and said, “You’ve had a very shocking and frightening experience, but your little girl is fine now. We’ll keep her in for observation, just to be on the safe side.” Wow: A doctor who holds your hand and who sings to your daughter!

Later that night, I was sitting quietly watching my daughter sleeping when two young doctors approached a little girl with cerebral palsy, fast asleep in a bed nearby. I’d seen this child earlier, with her parents, who had just gone home. The conversation between the doctors went something like this:

Male doctor: Watch this. This patient has severe spasticity but is now asleep. If I move her legs like this (does something I can’t see) you won’t see any sign of spasticity. It’s amazing!

Female doctor: Don’t do that. The child is sleeping and she might wake up…

Male doctor: But it’s something you must experience. It’s fascinating!

Female doctor: I can read about it in a textbook. Please leave her alone.

I was shocked: for a number of reasons. How could a doctor infringe a child’s sleep like that? What gave him the right to treat her like a curiosity? How do people become so heartless?

The Piano Guys: Rockelbel’s Canon: for no apparent reason other than it’s groovy

There’s more. A few weeks later I was working as a speech and language therapist and one of my clients was a little boy with a hearing loss, and who had a very rare syndrome. Part of his condition was that he had a typical set of facial features and bone structure. Let’s call him Adam. Adam’s mum, who was a nurse, asked me to accompany her and Adam to an appointment at a leading Ear Nose and Throat hospital. When I asked Mum why she wanted me to go with her, she said, “To make sure I don’t get emotional.” I wasn’t sure what being ‘emotional’ entailed, but I agreed to go along with them, and soon found out why she wanted me there. The consultation went something like this:

Consultant (female): Goodness! I’ve never seen a case like this before! (To another doctor sitting in the corner) Come here and look at this bone structure. It’s not every day you see a case like this.

(They proceed to examine Adam)

Consultant (to Adam’s mother): When we’ve finished, can you take him down to our medical photographer, so we can share his photo with other doctors and students?

Adam’s Mum: OK.

The consultation ended and we left the room. I was fuming, but trying not to show it. Adam’s Mum said, very calmly, “Let’s take Adam to get an ice cream. They can stuff their photos.” While little Adam was tucking into his raspberry sorbet, Mum let rip (in a very controlled whisper): “The heartless bleeping bleep. I get this all the time. The more senior the doctor, the more arrogant and emotionless they seem to become.” Being a professional working in the NHS, I wasn’t sure how to react, so didn’t say anything, (though I was sorely tempted to hold Mum’s hand and tell her she’d just had a very nasty shock). Mum beat me to it: “It’s OK Michael. You don’t have to say anything, but you being there stopped me from giving that consultant a piece of my mind, which wouldn’t have done Adam any good.”

Were these doctors ‘heartless’? Maybe I was just too ‘sensitive’ and should have let these nasty experiences with other people’s children go? Luckily I worked as part of a team with a consultant, to whom I described both incidents. “Oh yes,” my colleague replied, ”Unfortunately we do find doctors like this. It’s an occupational hazard. They are intellectually top-heavy and lose touch with their feelings, as well as the clients’. They don’t do the profession any favours by behaving like that.” This doctor, I might add, was regularly to be seen putting toddlers on her knee and was renowned for her affectionate and reassuring two-handed handshake that she reserved for parents. Needless to say, parents loved her back.

A few weeks ago I was driving through Lincolnshire, listening to a Radio 4 programme called Ramblings.

Every episode revolves around Clare Balding going on a walk through the countryside with a group of walkers, and this week she was rambling with a group of retired doctors. What the medics had in common was that they had all had a heart attack at some point and were walking to keep fit. There was a lot of discussion about things medical, as you would expect. Then Clare Balding said something that instantly took me right back to the ‘heartless’ doctors of thirty years ago. She’s talking about the emotional component of recovery and says,“All of you being scientific and unemotional….” To which one of the doctors interjects, “My wife would agree with that.”

This was, I shouted at the radio, “A load of…..” but then I heard the so-called ‘unemotional scientist’ express his very warm feelings very clearly when he talked about how he felt towards the other men in the group, who had included him and become his friends.

So here’s my question: If you are a scientist, or a child or teenager who is showing a clear fascination with science, does that mean that you have to lose touch with your emotions? Or will you become ‘intellectually top-heavy’ or even be described as being ‘on the spectrum’? It’s an important question, because many so-called ‘eminent’ scientists give the impression of indeed taking no interest in their own emotions, or the feelings of those around them (including their own family). Is this just a stereotype?

Enter Professor Sarah-Jayne Blackmore. She is an’ eminent scientist’ specialising in cognitive neuropsychology and the neuroscience of teenagers in particular. Listen to her on Radio 4’s The Life Scientific and you will get the impression that this scientist is very much in touch with her emotions. She loves psychology, but you also have the feeling that she loves her ‘subjects’ as much as her ‘subject’.

Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore: I wanna hold your hand?

I think, by now, you will be getting my drift, but I’m going to spell it out anyway. I don’t believe for one minute that scientists, including doctors, have no emotions. It’s just that some of them believe that they shouldn’t show emotion. They are all very intelligent people (especially the ‘eminent’ ones). But the problems start when they allow their intellect to completely dominate their emotional life, so that the pursuit of facts and explanations and discovery becomes more important than paying attention to their emotional life and the emotional lives of those around them. Their brains come to rule everything in their lives and these individuals become slaves to their intellects. This is not the same as having a diagnosis of Autism, or Asperger’s syndrome, or truly being somewhere ‘on the spectrum’.

People with Asperger’s are very much aware of their emotions and other people’s. It’s just that they can’t make sense of them. Teenagers are the same too, but they learn to understand their feeling and other people’s as they become adults. (And they might become scientists too.)

I felt that the badly-behaved doctors should have been made to feel shame at their behaviour, as they allowed their intellectual fascination to take control of their feelings. Clare Balding ought to be ashamed too, for promoting the falsehood that ‘scientists are unemotional’. Here’s a clip from the wonderful film, Pride, starring Paddy Considine. In real life, Paddy Considine has recently been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome. But that doesn’t seem to stop him from connecting with other people’s emotions and portraying them in a convincing way. By the way, in this scene he is not the one who is proudly dancing in a shamelessly glorious way!! And also by the way, it’s not true that Welshmen don’t dance. It’s just that in the 1980s many were a bit inhibited about sharing their emotions in this way. It’s not like that now, by all accounts!

Shame, shame, shame….shame on you, if you can’t get through!

And finally, here’s George and Queen, filling Wembley with emotion!

Take care out there.

Michael

It was 1978 and I was a student speech therapist at the Central School of Speech and Drama, North London. It was not uncommon to see actors on the drama course walking around the building or local street dressed and acting in role, (I’ll never forget the time we were sitting an exam and looked up to see a student leaping across the rooftop with a cutlass between his teeth.) So it didn’t strike me in the least bit odd to see a man dressed as an ancient Briton riding his horse up the Finchley Road. I just assumed it was a local method actor limbering up for a part in Arthur of the Britons.

But it turned out that this guy was not in role, but was convinced he was the real thing. Every morning our hero, known locally as ‘Arthur’ or ‘Arthur Daily’ would do a tour of the local greengrocers, filling up a large wooden hand cart with leftover greens for his horse. Arthur was an imposing figure, and one day I found myself standing behind him in the queue for my fruit and veg. His clothes looked (and smelled) authentic. I tried to engage him in conversation. “I like your horse,” was my opening gambit, to which Arthur responded with a menacing look, as he flung an early Anglo-Saxon oath in my general direction. After our friend had stormed out with his spare veg, the shopkeeper took me to one side. “Don’t try and talk to him. The poor bloke lives in West Hampstead and actually thinks he’s an ancient Briton. I hope he and his missus never have kids.” The incident didn’t have a profound effect on me: I just saw it as being part of the general weirdness that I expected to find while living in London.

In my first year after qualifying, I was working in a local community clinic. One of the health visitors asked me to come on a home visit to a family where mum was suffering from agoraphobia, and both the thee-year old daughter and toddler son were showing signs of language delay.

The father had recently begun following the teachings of an Indian guru. One of the rituals, mum explained to me, was that the whole family should, at least once a day, dress all in white and sit around a large bowl of water, bathing their feet. Mum was quite open about what she felt about the situation: “I don’t mind washing our feet together. The children think it‘s fun. But I can’t handle all the other things that my husband imposes on us. I think he’s ill. I’ve become depressed, to the point that I can’t enjoy my children.”

Now this did have a profound effect on me. Here was a father who had undergone a transformative experience that had made him change his outlook on life, and his behaviour. That was fine for him as an individual, but it was not OK for the rest of family, and was making everyone so unhappy that it was influencing the children’s development. It made me think of Arthur.

A few years later I attended a residential training course where, God knows why, as an ‘icebreaker’ we had to sit in a circle and share with the group what animal we most identified with. I was one of the few men on the course, and as a joke told everyone I often saw myself as a large stallion. At the coffee break I found myself sitting on my own. At lunch I was still getting the cold shoulder, until I was joined by a very nice young psychotherapist. ”Cheer up,” she counselled,” I often feel I have a lot in common with either a black widow spider or, on a good day, a praying mantis.” We got to know each other quite well but, for obvious reasons, I was very careful that our relationship didn’t go beyond being ‘Very Good Friends’.

A decade later I had retrained as a teacher and was on a course called ‘Towards Deputy Headship.’ The course was run by a local head teacher who described some of his staff as being ‘passive aggressive.’ Apparently he was a massive fan of Star Trek. He attended all the conventions, had all the merchandize and after a hard day’s headteaching would often hop into his Star Trek outfit and sit in front of the video watching classic Trek episodes. He wasn’t in a relationship, though was ‘getting to know’ a lady he’d met at a convention who referred to herself as ‘Lieutenant Uhura’. There’s no harm in that, you might think. But sometimes his enthusiasm for all things Star Trek had an impact on those around him. One World Book Day, for example, our intrepid Head, (Let’s call him ‘James Kirk’ or ‘Jim’ as he preferred to be known), decided that the Year Sixes were going to transform the hall into the USS Enterprise and all the staff were going to dress up as the cast of Star Trek. None of the staff wanted to play ball, apart from the caretaker, who spent the day being chased around the playground or terrifying the children in nursery, dressed in a Klingon outfit. There’s a fine line between enjoying role-play and allowing your fantasy to leak into real life, and ‘Jim’ had crossed that line.

Enter The Bronies, AKA ‘Bro of The Ponies’; i.e. men who like to dress up as their favourite My Little Pony character. What is it all about? Is it just youngsters having harmless fun (like the crowd of young women in Belfast I saw dressed up as fairies on a hen night). Or is there something slightly creepy about it? Watch this clip about the annual PonyCon convention and then make up your own mind.

Bronies: harmless fun or WTF?*

(*‘This is making me slightly uncomfortable’)

It’s fun to belong to a club, where you can get together with a group of like-minded people who share the same interest: vintage MGs , Harley Davidsons, even going round taking snaps of obscure parts of the UK so that every square inch of our fair isle has been photographed. But sometimes these ‘special interests’ can become obsessions and take over, and reality becomes distorted. Being a member of The Sealed Knot which involves re-enacting great battles from British history, does not automatically mean you are going to go for a swift half down The King’s Head dressed as a Roundhead (but it just might if your hold on reality is a bit wobbly.)

Sealed Knotters

But where do you stand on Cosplay? Is it just harmless fun where millions of Japanese youngsters, and increasing numbers of teens across the world, dress up as their favourite cartoon characters and get together to make friends, show off their costumes and have a laugh together?

Cosplay: now that’s what I call ‘stretching your skill set’

And have you come across AGSM (American Girl Stop Motion)? Is that just great fun, and a vehicle for teenage girls to hone their filmmaking and scriptwriting ‘skill set’? Or is it all about teens who haven’t grown up and who have developed a sophisticated outlet for what is, essentially, an urge to hide in their bedrooms playing with their dollies? Again, you decide.

And what about Furries? These are, in essence, people who like to dress up as large cuddly cartoon animals. They do it in their own homes, with costumes they have designed themselves, or bought at great expense. They might get together with a few other Furries and even attend conventions, where they have a lot of fun together, but remain anonymous (if a little hot and sweaty) inside their suits. For some Furries, it allows them to make contact with other humans who might otherwise feel uncomfortable about communicating. Unless, that is, you are ‘Sieris the Stalion’ (sic) from Brighton’ who wrote the following in response to an item on the BBC News website:

‘Personally I love being a fur as it allows me to express my personality in a way that is not possible in mainstream society. As such it is incredibly liberating and has taught me a lot about myself and others, as well as rekindling my interest in art. I would also like to add that I have also learnt from my character and incorporated some of his positive aspects into my own personality and thus make me a richer person overall. Although he may not be real he lives in me and I believe I’m a better person for it.’ I’m pretty sure that Sieris would have sat next to me after that disastrous icebreaker experience.

Ylvis: May the Furs be with you.

And finally there are the Otherkin. As far as I understand it, Otherkin see themselves as partially or wholly non-human. They might believe that they are in reality an animal, while many identify themselves as a mythical creature (angels, demons, dragons, elves, fairies, sprite and aliens are popular).

Let’s leave them with a quote from Wikipedia:

‘Outside viewers may have varying opinions about people who identify as Otherkin, ranging from considering them animal-human relationship pioneers, to psychologically dysfunctional. Reactions often range from disbelief to aggressive antagonism, especially online’

Otherkin: An ‘animal-human relationship pioneer?’ I’m not saying anything

Lulu, I’m a Tiger: an anthem for Otherkin?

Mud, 1974: Tiger Feet. Now I understand!

What am I trying to say? The Furries and the Cosplayers and the American Dollies are having fun, but may also attract certain vulnerable teens and adults (possible with social communication difficulties). But if everyone has fun and there’s no exploitation, then I guess it’s not so much different from spending your weekends pretending to kill Cavaliers with a pikestaff or dressing up as an engine driver and being a volunteer on the local steam railway. It’s a role that you play and it serves a social function. But if you believe that you are an Ancient Briton and live out your ancient lifestyle in modern-day London, then your family, and especially your children, are going to have a problem, because Daddy has crossed the line between fantasy and reality.

What about this lot? Otherkin? Furries? People who are losing their grip on reality? Or just typical British youngsters trying to recreate the worst excesses of their parents in the 1970s? You decide.

I really love your tiger light!

Take very great care out there!

Michael

I’ll never forget the first time I went to Jessica’s house. We were 16 and her parents weren’t at home. Jessica – “Don’t call me ‘Jessie’, I don’t like the sound of it” – and I first met at the local church ‘encounter group’ for teens. We hit it off immediately, and the next day she phoned me up and invited me round for a cup of tea and to inspect her jugs. That was certainly an offer I wasn’t going to refuse, but I was a little startled when I was immediately ushered into her bedroom. “What about my tea?” (It was a hot Summer’s day and I had dashed over on my bike.) “Oh, you can have that when we’ve finished” Jessica replied, without batting, or even fluttering, an eyelid.

So Jessica took me up to her bedroom and I was immediately involved in helping her get her jugs out. They were small, delicate–looking and exquisite and reminded me of porcelain. But she wouldn’t let me touch them: (“I can’t trust you just yet, and anyway your hands look very sweaty and are shaking a bit.”) Just then I heard the sound of the front door opening and someone calling from the hallway, “Jessie! Are you at home?” I froze. I’d seen the likes of Sid James getting into scrapes like these in the Carry On films, where the male interloper usually hides in the wardrobe. I was just about to dive into Jessica’s clothes cupboard when I heard footsteps on the stairs.

“It’s OK Sally! I have a friend here called Michael and he’s trying to touch my jugs!”

Enter 20-year old big sister Sally. “Oh yes, I see you are involved in the ‘I’ve made a new friend and am showing him every single jug I’ve been collecting since I was toddler’ routine. Michael, can I have a word? Now. In the kitchen.”

I followed big sister guiltily downstairs. Over a cup of tea, I learned that little sister was ‘a lovely girl’ but a bit ‘vulnerable’ because, amongst other things, she took things people said to her ‘a bit literally’ and said things that certain people (i.e. me) might take the wrong way. It had already begun to dawn on me that Jessica was, to say the least, an unusual person. Don’t get me wrong, I liked Chinese Willow Pattern, Crown Derby and even a bit of Minton as much as any other 16-year old boy, but I wasn’t quite expecting to see 70 tiny receptacles for holding liquid, all individually wrapped in newspaper, with a tiny label on each handle noting the date and place of purchase. And the contents of her wardrobe were a bit startling. All her clothes were white (“I love wearing white, but Mummy says it’s a bit impractical, so I wear other colours for climbing trees, though I guess, like me, you’re probably thinking that white is not a true colour.” Jessica was a tree expert too, and loved the way that the wind blew through the leaves in tall poplar trees, making them look like they were dancing and sound like they were laughing. (“They are a bugger to climb though.”)

Nice jugs

I liked Jessica. You never knew what she was going to say next. When she came downstairs to join us in the kitchen (she’d been arranging her jugs in date order, from the very first one she was given by Uncle Julian, to her latest acquisition) she announced, “ I like all things ‘jug’. Can you guess why I like Mungo Jerry and The Grateful Dead?” Amazingly, the connection leapt out at me straight away. “Elementary, my dear Jessica (This Sherlock Holmes reference had her in stitches), Mungo Jerry are what you would call a ‘jug band’. Mungo Jerry came to prominence in 1970 after their performance at the Hollywood Festival in Staffordshire.

Mungo Jerry ‘live’ on Italian TV!

“Their show was so well received that the organisers asked them to perform again on the following day. The band grabbed all the headlines in the UK music press as they stole the limelight from the festival headliners Black Sabbath, Traffic, Ginger Baker’s Airforce, Grateful Dead (their first performance in the UK) and even Jose Feliciano. Their first single, In The Summertime, entered the UK charts at No. 13 and the following week went straight to No. 1. Lead singer Ray Dorset had to ask his boss for time off to appear on Top of the Pops.”

The link to The Grateful Dead was proving to be more serpentine. “I’ll give you a clue,” teased Jessica, “It’s something to do with the band that their lead guitarist Jerry Garcia was originally involved with.“ Of course, why hadn’t I seen it? “Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions!” I shouted triumphantly, if a bit too loudly. Big sister rolled her eyes and muttered, “You two were made for each other.”

The Grateful Dead at Newcastle Under Lyme: The shots of some fans reading the newspaper might fill you with foreboding, but stay with it to hear some hot licks and witness some crazy dancing!

And in some senses we were. I was as fixated on rock and pop as Jessica was. I was ‘into’ Agatha Christie novels (I’d read 25) in the way that she was fascinated by Jane Eyre. I had all my back copies of New Musical Express and Disc under my bed in date order (is there any other way to store them?) while she had her jugs and white clothes. I had given up climbing trees on my 13^th birthday, but was prepared to resurrect my passion for it, if it meant being able to connect with Jessica. And she had such beautiful eyes, except that while I was always trying to gaze into hers, she didn’t seem so keen to look at mine. (Who was it who described his girlfriend’s eyes as being like ‘limpid pools’? D.H. Lawrence probably. Or could it have been A.E. Houseman, G.K. Chesterton, or E.M. Forster? Jessica would have known, as she had a ‘thing’ about British Edwardian writers with two initials in front of their surname.)

Trips to the cinema were not a success, however: “Stop trying to put your arm round me. I’m concentrating!” The visit to the pub on my 17^th birthday was a disaster, (To the barman: ”It’s Michael’s 17^th birthday today, so if you sell him a pint of beer then technically you will be breaking the law.”) This led us to have an argument on the pavement, outside The Swan, to where we had been rudely told to sling our hooks. “But I don’t understand why you are so cross, Michael. I just didn’t want you to break the law. Can we go for a walk instead?” We did, and somehow Jessica turned the conversation, as she always did, to her favourite subjects.

It became clear to me that the writing was on the wall. Then we had a disastrous experience and Jessica’s parents got VERY angry with me and I didn’t see her at all after that (to find out more you’ll need to wait for the post to appear on my other site 1970s Mind, 21st Century Body, though please bear in mind that this site is a bit NSFW).

It wasn’t until 1981 that Asperger’s Syndrome came to the attention of people across the world working in the field of special needs. Even then, it didn’t click with me that maybe this was Jessica’s issue. Only when I read Tony Attwood’s brilliant book The Complete Guide to Asperger’s Syndrome did I see the possible connection between Jessica’s special interests and behaviour and Asperger’s Syndrome.

But hang on a minute… who’s to say that anyone has a problem like Asperger’s, particularly if the person making the link has an encyclopaedic knowledge of 1970s rock music, Agatha Christie’s work and likes to keep his magazines in date order? Have a quick read of Tony Attwood’s website and you’ll get a ‘feel’ that he has some pretty strong ‘special interests’ himself. The question has to be whether children, teens and adults who may or may not have Asperger’s Syndrome are able to channel their fixations into a field that is judged to be useful. And whether or not they are able to engage in relationships that provide them with the sense of wholeness and fulfilment that they, their partners and their children need.

Tony Attwood’s book may only have 10 pages on how Asperger’s Syndrome has a particular way of manifesting itself in girls, but this section is illuminating, because it helps us understand how girls may be able to ‘mask’ the condition. He suggests that their ability to adapt to social situations by copying other girls sets them apart from boys with the condition, whose social awkwardness may be spotted earlier. I find this observation very helpful, especially when thinking about girls who display high anxiety about social interaction, but don’t seem to have the classic profile we associate with Asperger’s Syndrome.

I always wondered what happened to Jessica after we last met. (Does she ever think of me at all and is her hair still red?) But I have a fairly shrewd idea of what she would have called her son.

Vintage Grateful Dead: A Touch of Gray

Take care out there.

Michael