Aeolienne

So is this how the benefit system works - you decide where you want to live, the state picks up the costs?

I wanted to move to Bristol after I lost my last job but one (see my introduction thread), but there was evidently very little recruitment going on there between 2009 and 2010 - despite having bookmarked what seemed like every engineering/technical consultancy or relevant environment-related thing in the city I only managed to apply for two jobs there, both with the same firm (Garrad Hassan), and didn't get interviewed. When I got the job in Skipton, the first issue of Positive News I happened to receive after moving up north carried a feature about how wonderfully environmentally progressive and so ahead of the game Bristol is. Sod's law indeed. Oh well, maybe I should ask for 'Blue Lines' for Christmas as a belated compensation for having failed to achieve my Brizzle dream. Here's a little track from the album to get Special_talent123 into the mood:

The toast sandwich recipe is in the chapter titled "Invalid Cookery". As my mum said, poor invalids - what have they done to deserve this?!

Reminds me of a poem by Kit Wright, If You're No Good At Cooking: If you're no good at cooking, Can't fry or bake, Here's something you Can always make. Take Three very ordinary Slices of bread. Stack the second On the first one's head. Stack the third On top of that. There! Your three slices Lying pat. So what have you got? A BREAD SANDWICH. That's what! Why not?

Transvision Vamp, Baby I Don't Care http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHo5w2WGZWA The first record I ever bought!

Puccini, 'Nessun dorma' from Turandot, performed by José Carreras http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5hKG_leBRs

Check out a fascinating scene with a soap bubble at 15 min 40 sec into this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0175m9n/Will_It_Snow/

Tori Amos, Under the Pink

It's been said more than once that Young (formerly Junior) Apprentice is like The Apprentice meets Bugsy Malone. In which case I reckon Mahamad in his white suit reminds me of the boy who plays the piano at the end of the final spurge scene. Altogether now, "We could have been anything that we wanted to be..."

I prefer Rest and be thankful.

But that's in Scotland... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/3720848.stm

PlentyOfFish is free, PlentyMoreFish isn't. Simples.

So what hope is there for those of us who were diagnosed long after leaving university?

Haircut 100, Love Plus One

Heaven 17, Temptation

Amsterdam Loeki Stardust Quartet, A Concorde of Sweete Sounde: Recorder music from Renaissance England

William Alwyn (1905-85), String Quartet No. 2 "Spring Waters"

What's B's secret? When I was a teenager I would have counted myself lucky to have been part of a limo-share group of friends, let alone attracted someone of the opposite sex. Plus ça change.

I can't see that Donna Williams's books would help my case. Where in Somebody Somewhere or Like Colour to the Blind does she manage to hold down a proper job?

I've just started an internship in Cambridge. Having spent last week commuting daily from my parents' house in London, I'm moving into digs tomorrow evening. Apparently it will be a 15-min walk to work or 5-min cycle ride across Jesus Green. Hallelujah!

LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver

Ravel, Daphnis and Chloé

I don't know how my life would have panned out if I'd not been diagnosed. At the time I felt a sense of relief that there was an official label for my condition, and I (naïvely as it turned out) hoped that at last people would take my problems with not fitting in seriously and not just fob me off with the same old same old "just join clubs and societies". Less able. I feel that I have achieved so little - both professionally and personally. Yes, but it's been a bit as and when. I've never had social skills training, and even the workplace support I had wasn't enough to stop me losing my then job, and then when I moved to another part of the country tapping into local support services seemed like panning for gold. Certain members of my extended familiy were inclined to say "Why does Aeolienne need a label? She seems perfectly normal." A shrink wrote my letter of referral to CLASS and encouraged me to attend an Asperger's support group. No As far as I can recall, the diagnosis was a pretty straightforward experience. What counts as an issue? The only time I was seen by an occupational health advisor she said that she could see I had every reason to be depressed (what with my job being on the line and being lonely and all that) but nevertheless she couldn't diagnose me with depression because I didn't present a "barn door"(??) case. Prior to that my NT boss had been signed off sick for work-related stress.

Are you going to stick a pen-knife in it? [ducks]