Except for the thing about the potatoes.

You know you are off to a bad start when you end up quoting Neitchze, but here goes!

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”

A friend for mine laughs when she tells me of things about me that remind her of my mother. My dad died long before she could have met him and I wish they’d had a chance to meet, so she could share the same insights about him; he was much nicer and much kinder. Kids would gravitate towards him and he’d end up dragging a whole bunch of children up and down the shore in an inflatable dingy while autistic Chris sat far away and made sandcastles on his own, away from the noise. Kids like me too, and animals and old dears, basically anyone who isn’t doing a bunch of nasty stuff I can’t ignore. My dad had a bit of that too, He was a big man, and if he saw a parent mistreating a child he would often tell them he was an off duty copper and he was watching them. He was a heating engineer actually but a rare poor one as he would often fit an expensive part in an old lady’s boiler and charge her for a tap washer.

My mother was spiteful and had the most evil and quick tongue on her and she had chronic and crippling anxiety and was a valium addict for many years. She was a mess really and she was utterly vile to me growing up and much of that was down to extreme, unchecked, honesty. (and probably autism too)

Because my Hastings friends only knew my mother and only in a very brief period of her later years, they recognised two similarities; the filthy looks and the tongue. These are both fare points but as they, sadly didn’t get to meet my dad, and they can’t see the full picture.

While trying to be as objective as I possibly can when observing myself (i.e not very) I would like to think that I’ve got my mother’s harshness with words with my father’s kindness and sense of justice. Perhaps I am totally wrong but it seems to make sense. Particularly with what I do and the way I go about it. I have my mother’s anger too but it’s finely channeled into the injustices I see as opposed to my mum’s scattergun cruelty. She was critical of everything and had very narrow-minded views although she mellowed with age and was very fond of a few on my gay friends and would visit them for tea without me. I can imagine my mother’s face if she saw me buying a pink Moomins T- shirt but I was as stubborn as she was so she wouldn’t have dared let that tongue loose on me, but a. Moomins! and b. I liked the phrase printed on the edge.

I had a friend once that absolutely despised their father, by their accounts he was a bit of a wide boy who was all charm and generosity in public but behind closed doors he was a two faced, cruel bully to whom you would have to lie and placate to prevent the toxicity turning into violence. There is a reason why we are no longer friends and while the violence is thankfully missing, the rest is there threefold.

We make choices in life and we often set out to fight for good and end up doing even more bad. Just look at Keir Starmer for example; he bought his mum a donkey field and went about the world trying to stop the death penalty… and now his stance on Gazza…. shudder! Was he ever really a socialist? Doubtful! but I’m always willing to give someone that likes donkeys the benefit of the doubt.

I have a woollen blanket from a weaver in Japan, it cost more than I could afford but the design sings to me. It’s a little house in the middle of the woods, far away from people; and that is where I want to be. With knowing about the autism, I have realised that the further I am from most people, the happier I am. I do not like to engage with humanity unless I really have to. Sadly, I feel what I am doing right now is important enough to take off my shoes and socks and roll up my trouser legs and dip my toes in; and the waters around here are both actually and metaphorically full of shit.

Engaging with others changes me, not in the autistic, losing too many spoons way (look up spoon theory is you don’t know what I mean) but in that I end up knowing more than I should. There is a lot of pointless, virtue seeking nonsense around here and its sole point is to impress the other few people who do exactly the same; precisely no one else cares. I do get angry seeing and reading about it though as I, sadly, know every sordid detail. It’s a question of just how much I have to engage and the level of psychic damage it causes me. I can’t change any of these people or their nonsense, so I just have to step over them and get on with my life journey.

It’s very draining though, this people malarkey, and I just hope to be away from it all in my own little world as soon as possible. When it comes to the intentionally visible people around here, ignorance definitely is bliss.