Strike Factory

Well on Saturday I made the journey to Manchester staying there until Monday to sample the music scene (esp growing up with a fondness for Madchester pop music and the legend of the Hacienda nightclub) explore city sights and meeting with the odd friend up there. I booked a nice bargain hostel in the trendy and quirky Northern Quarter area of Manchester, with loads of retro/ vintage clothing shops, DJ/ Vinyl stores and a cafe that charges 50p a minute and can eat and drink anything you want.

So I got familiar with my roommates who were all female (one from Norway, the other from France were friendly and looked out for me along with the kind staff). After getting used to surroundings in Northern Quarter, I was invited along to a club night at a lovely bar called Hold Fast, close to my hostel, Inside Hold Fast it had board games, comic books and retro Sega Mega Drive. The DJ's performing at Hold Fast were called Meat Free, who performed a nice house/ disco mix that sounded like a cross between Hacienda and good night's at my old haunt Audio in Brighton. The ravers were a mix of hostel guests and locals who were very warm and friendly towards me and happily danced with me, one of the DJs came out and covered our faces in glitter, reminding me of a girl who was a bit enthusiastic about decorating my face and others with eyeliner at the bar Pressure Point in Brighton back in 2006. It was one of the best clubbing/ raving nights I have ever had at Hold Fast, ticking off that I have done an ace club night in Manchester at least once in my lifetime.

The rest of my time involved travelling around Manchester taking in the sights from Old Trafford, Mediacity, to museums and historic buildings in the City Centre like Manchester Cathedral. Plus meeting old and new friends. Overall a fun few days up there.

This weekend I will be off to Horsham to take in my first live cricket match watching Sussex take on Lancashire, and awaiting the football season, plus looking at doing some volunteering at local museums in Crawley and Horsham area to offer my vast local history knowledge.

Last week I watched the first episode of Autistic Gardener on Channel 4. The show hosted by an award winning garden designer who is autistic, called Alan Gardner. Basically Gardner assembles a team of garden designers which might seem easy for an expert, but they are also autistic and are new to the gardening industry.

In addition they have to work to a budget and a deadline date, as a team. These sort of things can be a bit difficult and stressful for some of us autistic folk. But the team consisting of five young people suffering from autism – Charles, Victoria, James, Philip and Thomas, manage to design their first garden with success.

What I also love is the contestants or new garden designers have varying degrees of autism/ aspergers with them either living independently but finding it difficult to find work (like me), or vice versa unlikely to live independently, as there is a misconception that we are all like Raymond from the 1988 movie Rainman, when no 2 people with autism/ aspergers are exactly the same. Plus showing we are exactly individuals that are not stupid or crazy, just we see and understand things in a different way as are brains are wired differently.  We just seek to be better understood in the world. All in all, it was great to watch, and I recommend tuning in at 8pm on Channel 4 Wednesdays.

Very sad to hear the death of a popular teacher at my old school Mr Grahame Jenkins aka Rhino. He was a teacher at the school for many years until it closed in 2007, and was my tutor at one time. I encountered him on my first day at the school in 1993 when having issues about shoelaces. My greatest memory was as a 10 year old I went into class sure about the days date, not reliasing I was wrong. When people could not agree with me being at times a stubborn autis tic lad I went to the room next door to have a word with Mr Jenkins about the issue that people around me were wrong about the date. After 5 minutes of debating and showing me newspapers as I thought it was one of his trademark jokes and pranks he played on pupils, I finally came to conclusion I was wrong,and years later we talked and laughed about the incident the last time I saw him at Abbotsford School reunion event a few years ago. As mentioned he was fun prankster, very informative friendly and helpful teacher, that loved his rugby. RIP Mr Jenkins. :(

Well before the sad news the blog entry was mostly going to be about The Autistic Gardner on Channel 4, a show I have enjoyed watching recently, with autistic award winning garden designer Alan Gardner but will discuss it in next blog entry. 

Recently been enjoying the tennis at Wimbledon (even the unusual switch of Jon Inverdale from presenter to commentator.) England's great start in the Ashes. Will be spending next weekend in Manchester meeting the odd friend up there exploring music scene there and watching Davis Cup tennis somewhere, if you see me say hi.