The Adventures of Dysfunctional Dan

In which I break the law... This is the story of the crime I committed that haunted me for many years. I think an important thing to note before I tell this story is that I was a stupid child. I may have been pretty successful when it came to the academic stuff but in every way that really mattered I was just naïve and stupid. When I was about eleven the family were driving somewhere and were involved in a very minor accident. Someone rear-ended our car at a pretty slow speed. I burst into tears and my parents thought that I'd been hurt but I was just worried that we were now stuck some fifteen miles from home with no way of returning. I couldn't work out that a car can still drive with minor damage and never considered that there were actually multiple ways we could have got home anyway, from buses to taxis to phoning someone up. As I say, I was stupid.  This tale takes place a few years earlier even than that. I was maybe eight years old and was a member of the local Beavers ...

In which I dissect a joke... You've probably heard the recent controversy over comedian Jimmy Carr. In his recent Netflix special His Dark Material, Carr made the following joke:  "When people talk about the Holocaust, they talk about the tragedy and horror of 6 million Jewish lives being lost to the Nazi war machine. But they never mention the thousands of Gypsies that were killed by the Nazis. No one ever wants to talk about that, because no one ever wants to talk about the positives". There has been a lot of reaction to this joke with groups like the Holocaust Memorial Trust and the Gypsy, Romany and Traveller Community condemning it. But there have also been a portion of people who have defended it and point out that it's a joke. I find myself struggling to decide my position on this issue.  Some context- whilst I wouldn't name Jimmy Carr as one of my favourite comedians I have been to a live show of his and enjoyed much of his television work over the years. ...

In which I start something new... I've been keeping this pretty quiet until now because I wanted to quietly get on with it: late last year I applied to do my teacher training. This week I had an interview and despite it not going particularly well I have been accepted. That's typical me in critiquing my performance in an interview despite very quickly being told I'd been accepted. I'll start the course in September and by this time next year will hopefully be within weeks of completing it. It's taken a long time to get here. For those that don't know, I studied primary education at university and was making good progress. Then I had a horrific final placement which was the most awful period in my life and it took me a good few years to deal with the trauma of that time. In hindsight, I was set up to fail. I'd never taught children that young before, it was an inner city school where ninety-five percent of the children had English as an additional language (E...

In which I discuss a hatred of Physical Education... I hated PE at school. I suppose there was a time at primary school that it probably was quite enjoyable but I found over time it became less and less fun until the point I reached secondary school and actively hated it. There's lots of dyspraxic reasons for this which I'll go into but I come from a family of sport lovers and have always spent huge amounts of time outside so it feels to me that actually I could really have grown to love PE.  First of all, you'd have to get changed. When I was very young I was very slow at getting changed as I attempted to put things the right way round and struggled with various fastenings. Often you'd have to wear some sort of footwear with shoelaces and that immediately led to a problem for someone who couldn't tie their shoelaces until I was about seventeen. Most of the time I'd get my Dad to tie them at home and then just slip them on and off at school without touching the ...

In which I get annoyed at lockdown parties... The other day I was walking past my local corner shop and I watched a man pull up. He parked three quarters on the footpath, a quarter on the road with double yellow lines and then proceeded to walk into the shop without wearing a mask. He managed to break three laws in about ten seconds.  I've recently concluded that there are two types of people in the world- law-breakers and law-abiders. That man was clearly a law-breaker. He didn't give a shit about the rules. Sure, his offences were relatively minor but if one is willing to break lesser rules than I can't help but wonder just how serious a law has to be for him to follow it. I use laws in a general sense here. There are laws set out by the government, then there's rules set out by an organisation and there's also ethics, unwritten rules if you like, which include things which are technically allowed but are frowned upon like having an affair or putting pineapple on ...

In which I try to explain my brain... I've talked here before about the idea of co-occurrence when it comes to neurodiverse conditions. I know I have dyspraxia but I have some traits of other related conditions like autism and ADHD. It doesn't mean that I have those conditions but neurodiversity is a huge spectrum which still isn't really that understood.  For many years people with autism have been fighting to get researchers to understand that whilst they might face challenges with interacting with other people, actually it's sensory overload that is their issue that most affects their everyday lives. A similar thing can be said of dyspraxia. Research on dyspraxia is still pretty limited, especially in adults, but nearly all of it focuses on motor control. Yes, being clumsy is annoying but it's actually a pretty minor thing compared to other ways dyspraxia affects my life.  If you look at the symptoms listed by the Dyspraxia Foundation , the motor control stuff is...

2021 is finally drawing to a close so it's time for my now traditional end of year post where I round up some of my favourtie bits of media from the last twelve months. TV I've been finding that I am actually watching less TV than ever now I am have complete control of what's on the box. The BBC have given us some great dramas this year- Line of Duty was as thrilling as ever and I felt the ending was apt and Vigil was a brilliantly tense if somewhat absurd submarine murder mystery. There was also Doctor Who: Flux , by far the best series of the show for some years with it's tense series-long story.  It was Disney though who really captured my attention on the small screen with Marvel Studios branching into TV for the first time with exclusive shows for Disney+. There was The Falcon and the Winter Soldier which was a bit hit and miss but had some breath-taking moments, animated multiverse show What If? , and the superb WandaVision , Loki and Hawkeye. All three of the lat...