lets go back 36 - poverty

Here in the village the couple were anti-church, one of their family and one of them had had hell from the Church of England and they were disgusted with the church, this startled me, because despite my own bad experiences I was still very much pro-church. But I had tremendous respect for this couple, they had both lost their spouses from cancer at the same hospital at the same time, had comforted each other and had married, between them they had six children, and what I admire most was that the woman's four children were adopted siblings, all badly abused, she and her first husband had adopted all four in order to keep them together, had worked with them through their problems and disabilities and raised four children who despite having problems, all went on to lead lives of their own, I have profound respect for her for this.

So the lady almost understood problems, and was inordinately patient with me as I had grown more disturbed from my continued problems, and her husband was also extremely patient with me, they were patient with my lack of money as well, the college hardship fund started subsidising my rent, but between petrol and creditors, my money tended to be gone before I got it, but I managed to keep up the rent payments.

I had trouble eating sometimes, they were puzzled by this, but learned that I could not usually eat a big meal and kept to simple food, the great thing about their house was that there was limitless cups of tea, and I could make a pot, I loved to hurtle home from college, make a big pot of tea, and put my favourite programme on TV ‘My parents are aliens’ on, and if you ever want a deep insight into what it is like to be high functioning autistic, then watch that programme, it also gives you an insight into some of my humour. After watching TV for a bit, I would head back to college for library study and planning to travel the world.

I liked the couple I lived with, but had almost nothing in common with them, they loved animals though, and being busy with volunteer work, which helped, they had a dog and a cat when I arrived, and got a mad puppy when I was there, they religiously took the dogs to kennel club training, and the cat would come and curl up with me as I watched telly, and I loved that.

I loved college as well, it was far too stressful, but I loved it, I was not one of the most able students, but I got some very good grades, I was the quietest student and found the social side of college very hard, and was glad that it was a very small college compared to the one in Hampshire, that helped, sometimes I made the effort to go with the other students and hang out in the hostels but I wasn’t really interested, they just sat around and talked about drunken binges and computer games and TV shows, when if I was on my own at break I would have been walking by the beautiful lake and getting a hot drink and a snack, I would have been in the library or on the farm, try as I did, I could not bring purpose to hanging out with the other students.

 And that is how it has been and is in my life, the more I try to be a social person, the more tired and hopeless and lost I feel, alone I am efficient, I carry out necessary routines, I sit alone and read, I listen to music and I escape the hopeless tennis games of conversation, but I made a big concerted effort at college, I didn’t want to repeat my life at the old college, so I went out for a few drinks with the others, didn’t enjoy it, went bowling with one of my fellow students and spent time with her and enjoyed that, went to the pub and played pool with landlady's daughter and her spouse several times, and enjoyed that but panicked a lot each time.
 
Back to the grim Lihou and finance issues, Jill and George decided they would come and see me, and I wondered if I really wanted that, but I agreed, they were coming for the whole of my day off, despite the problems we were having.

Just to mention, my toy Lion, Joj, was not named after George, not sure why that is written here but I may as well include it.