Tait Andy's Nature

Asperger's, Obesity and the Supernatural
1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-1-80381-708-8
Verlag: Grosvenor House Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 371 Seiten

Why is Andy scared of stepping stones? Why can't Andy concentrate at school? Why doesn't Andy join in with the other children? Why does Andy keep making involuntary promises to perform mundane actions? Why is Andy fat? Do photographs show, between unrelated people, genetic links independent of matter? Here is a book about unorthodox persuasions, unexpected inhibitions, and the idea that matter may transcend physical limitations.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Tait, Andrew

Leseproben

1991

One’s Plenty

On two years’ acquaintance with it, I’d cultivated a zest for solid food. Having wolfed down my own, I eyed Johnny’s uneaten Yorkshire pudding and sausages. Of my enthusiasm to ensure they weren’t wasted, Mam grew wary.

Whereas Mam and Johnny could hardly ever bring themselves to finish a meal, I, on finishing mine, always remained hungry. A dull, expectant sinking in my stomach and a residual dragging sensation in my throat stoked an impassioned desire for reunion with taste and texture.

At a speed similar to that of Granda Tait, I ate with fervour. I needed food’s regenerative nurture immediately and thoroughly.

At mid-morning, Mam, whose willowy thinness now held a post-natal paunch, often enjoyed a small snack, termed a “ten o’clock.” This typically entailed a bag of crisps, poured onto the table and shared with Nana Widdrington.

James, Johnny and I might each have a bag of Wotsits. While no one else seemed to desire a second bag, I saw little point in having only one. While the flavoured corn fingers supposedly weren’t very fattening, Mam eventually forbade sequels.

“One’s plenty,” she said.

My insatiable desire for extra food was starting to take noticeable effect.

“That laddie,” Granda Widdrington warned Mam, “is ganna fall off his legs.”

Splash

Sometimes, an excitingly long car ride brought us to Cramlington Swimming Baths, a cavern of sleek, bright tiles, in which lay a vast body of warm water.

While Dad and James were off having a swim, I stood in the shallow end with Mam, who held onto Johnny. Across the pool, children yelled, jumped and splashed.

With wanton raucousness, these unknown people cavorted before me. Had they no decorum, no sense of personal space?

“Boys and girls,” I called sternly, “don’t you dare splash!”

Mam nervously soothed my ire.

A boy slightly older than me happened to pass through our vicinity.

“Who are you?” I sternly acknowledged the newcomer.

Back home, I proudly told Nana of the encounter.

“‘What’s your name,’” she corrected gently.

“What a Load of Crap”

Dad bought a Sky Box. This black plastic device supplied the telly with satellite-aired channels. With Dad’s guidance, I learned to use the Sky Box’s small remote control, or the Gadget, as such devices were termed in our house. Following my usual breakfast of Oxo sandwiches in a blue plastic bowl, I adjourned to the living room.

“Press ‘five’ on the telly and ‘three’ and ‘two’ on the Gadget,” Dad reminded me, before heading off to Barrowburn.

Joined eventually by Johnny, I watched the Children’s Channel. One of my favourite of its offerings was The Little Green Man. In bright, gentle animation, with the narrating voice of Jon Pertwee, it wove a tale of interstellar friendship. Having arrived in a flashing conical spaceship, the Little Green Man and sentient miniature sun Zoom Zoom befriend young Skeets, with whom they explore the planet Earth.

For some reason, when James echoed their names, or the lyrics of the catchy theme tune, I would feel embarrassed. In their medium of expressive colour and emotive sound, these figures were a conspicuous addition to the room – an extravagance, in whom my indulgence felt decadent.

On some mornings, when John and I sat on the living room floor, engrossed in the telly, we’d hear the heavy crash of the front door, followed shortly by the click of the living room door and its slow slide across the carpet. Granda Widdrington drifted into the room and regarded us with amused delight.

“Here’s Granda come to see y’,” he announced.

He noted the sounds and images which streamed from the television screen and speakers. A playful smirk lit his face.

“What a load o’ crap,” he said.

I felt some indignation.

One day, either John or I expressed discomfort at his authoritative inspection.

“You mustn’t like Granda anymore,” he said with a gentle hint of sorrowful reproach.

One or both of us hastened to assure him otherwise, but he was already drifting towards the door.

“Granda knows where he’s not wanted… Granda’ll go…”

Granda Widdrington learned of my fear of sitting on toilets. These eccentrically fashioned chairs, with a hole leading to goodness knew where, were scarily mysterious. Might I not fall down the hole and into the irretrievable unknown?

I’d briefly seen the next-door toilet. Its seat was an eerie shade of black.

On a visit to next door with Mam, my need of the toilet became apparent. While the toilet back home daunted me, the one here was downright frightening.

Granda Widdrington held me aloft against his chest and tried to force me out of the room. In panicked desperation, I wailed and struggled. After a fearsome minute or so, he relented.

Slime

The Sky Box’s provision of the Movie Channel allowed a repeat viewing of Ghostbusters II.

The film was announced with a black screen’s display of the British Board of Film Classification’s yellow PG certificate.

Re-encounter with the River of Slime renewed my fearful fascination. Did the experimental subway track usually have a river of water, which had been replaced by the slime? Did all roads, then, have rivers flowing beneath them?

In the recreation room of the Ghostbusters’ headquarters, Ray (Dan Aykroyd) and Egon (Harold Ramis) show Peter (Billy Murray) and Winston (Ernie Hudson) the psycho-reactive properties of the pink Mood Slime: on shouted insults, a dish of the stuff froths and grows. When ladled into a toaster, and introduced to Jackie Wilson’s “Higher and Higher,” the slime rouses the toaster to dance across the Ghostbusters’ pool table.

The scene offered a glimpse into the mystery of adulthood – the recreation room, with its domestic furnishings and heavy equipment, recalled Uncle Ross’s bedroom next door. The Ghostbusters’ intense discussion of Mood Slime presented the burdens of manhood in a context of intrigue.

The scene where the slime comes out of the bath tap and amasses into a growling blob which reaches for baby Oscar (respectively played by Will and Hank Deutschendorf) was intensely scary, yet fascinating, the fun kind of scary. The idea that a tap could suddenly spout pink goo was mind-blowing.

By ghost-summoning pink slime, parental concern and a score rich in fear and care, Ghostbusters II staged the Ghostbusters with an edge of tenderness and vulnerability.

Rothbury County First School

I proudly anticipated starting school. Going to school was what James did – to do so myself would be to share in his mysterious career. I recalled attending playschool last year, and the fright and loneliness of being taken away from my family and left in a roomful of strangers. In my youthful zest, I now trusted that this time might somehow be different.

On the first day of my five years at Rothbury County First School, Mam led me along pavements, across the road, past the Queen’s Head pub and up a steep bank.

A broad, single-storey greystone building with high windows and a bluish grey roof, Rothbury County First School, beneath the Bilberry hills, from across a concrete yard, overlooked the village.

As with the rest of the inside, the long bare walls of the Reception classroom were a bracing shade of yellow. Around the wood-tiled floor were plastic-topped tables, with small plastic chairs. The room was crowded with people my age. Within a minute of our arrival in this lurid scene, Mam reminded me that she’d have to leave me here until noon.

Realisation that I was to be forcibly parted from my mother and confined to a place alien to everything I knew overwhelmed me with despairing sorrow. I sobbed and beseeched her not to leave me. Reluctantly, and with much reassurance, she eventually did.

At a central table, small, dark-haired, County-Durham-accented Mrs Hunter supplied reassurance to a tearful few. Enfolded in the dutiful arms of a stranger, I eventually managed to contain my distress.

Over the next week, Mam and I parted similarly.

“Pete Venkman doesn’t cry when he has to leave his Proton Pack,” she coaxed.

My time here gradually became more tolerable. Between occasional handwriting tasks, I hovered indecisively around the classroom. Some tables held such recreational items as crayons, plasticine and Lego.

I felt little, if any, inclination to interact with other students. At first, I was too busy being sad. At having been torn away from home, no one else seemed quite as bothered.

By this point, my torso had swollen to a cumbersome bulk of loose flesh.

“You’re fat,” a classmate told me.

Mrs Hunter shared charge of the Reception class with Mrs Tendall, a stout, towering woman with short dark curly hair. Her deep, Standard-English-accented voice was mild but strict.

To the far end of the classroom, I was frequently summoned to glue a colourful array of paper shapes onto a blank sheet. The intended arrangement was called a Sticky Picture.

I wasn’t very good at making Sticky Pictures. On Mrs Tendall’s instruction, I, to one of the paper shapes, applied a plastic glue spreader. I couldn’t seem to grasp that one and only one side of the shape should be smeared with glue.

“An-drew!” said Mrs Tendall sharply, when I tried to obey her in this task. Her loud, urgent voice issued a lamentation which I uncomprehendingly recalled as something along the lines of “a...