I was hoping for a chance to meet

Much has happened since I last picked up the pace here so I have much to relate.
Firstly my trip hiking Scotland is now definitely on. I leave on the sleeper on Sunday night. I have much packing etc to do but this is good. I am thinking of it as a sort of walkabout.  I haven't done all these elements together before and it is a little daunting.
However I am determined to give it a try even if I drop out after 1 day.
My depression and anxiety have been up and down like a whore's drawers this last week. Some days dreadfully bad. Others just tolerable.  As long as I can keep focused on something I am ok. But that power comes and goes.
I have had days where I could not tolerate people at all. Other days where it was meh. I have made much jam.
Yesterday was good. I managed to book a cbt test on a one day jobby. I had never been on a motorbike before in my life, not even as a pillion pussy. So everything was weird.  For those who haven't the left foot is the gear lever, down for first, up for second, sequential box. The clutch is what would be your left brake on a pushbike. The throttle is the right grip. Front brake is right brake handle. Back brake is right foot.
If that sounds complex it is, especially if you are used to cars. It is closer to how you drive a massey ferguson tractor.
Add to that the fact that you do not really use the throttle to control speed. You slip the clutch all the time. This is disconcerting to say the least.
The back brakes are drum brakes, a part of prehistory for car drivers. The front ones are perforated disc brakes. So all the braking power is up front. Back brake just about stops it rolling.
The front brake snatches like a bastard. It has a hair trigger on it.
The bike I was riding was a cbr 125. Built for dwarves. The gap between the seat and the pedals was so small my knees had to stick out sideways like I was riding it piledriver style. I was in a class with instructors and 3 young people. These younglings had never driven anything else, and had no inherent sense of danger, so they took to it like ducks to expensive duck houses. I was struggling on the off road maneuvers and was kept behind a bit. Part of this, to be honest, was the instructor not recognising that he needed to explain things a little better for someone with no proprioception.
Anyway we went out and did our 2 hrs on the road, with a radio link. When I was leading I was hesitant. This is because I can only do one thing at once.  I can either drive, or listen to instructions. Not both. But I did better than I thought. My low speed maneuvers need work, as does my road placement skills. But it was ok.
When we got back the instructor dealt with the younglings first, telling me to wait behind. My heart was in my boots, but it turned out he was happy enough to give me the cbt but wanted to talk about the direct access because he thought I needed practice. I told him I was going to say the same thing.
So upshot is I have my cbt which let's me ride on l plates on a 125. So now I need a bike that actually fits, and some practice.
So yay.  Left me feeling good, even if Mrs inky was pissed off that foal knew and she didn't.
Oops

The road goes ever, ever on

Much has happened since I last filled in one of these.  And in fact my last post abut chutney should have given a clue about my emotional state. When I am upset I cook.
So I suppose I should fill in a bit more background not just dangle that in front of you.  But since we last spoke I have made not just the runner bean chutney

but also plum jam

greengage and cherry jam

and another chutney that we decided to call roger.  Roger is a red tomato and ginger chutney that is so popular it disappears almost instantly.  I may post the recipe for Roger at some point but as with all Inky cooking its a bit  chuck it in and see.

The holiday with Foal was a massive strain.  I hope she enjoyed it, but it really was tough to get through.  After I came back...well stress stress stress.

A lot of this is caused by my Apsergers tendencies.  I still haven't had a full diagnosis yet but the more I read about it and the more Aspies I talk to, the more it fits. So I am almost certainly on the spectrum somewhere , though it may be PDD NOS.  Which means Murmur was right.  Murmur is a sometime commenter on here who comes from another e-place.  I always think of him as a badger in an old fashioned nurses uniform.  For some reason this upsets him.

Mrsinky and I had argued before I went because I chose the wrong time to have a conversation.  To my Aspie brain it went: this is a conversation we must have, this is the last time we can have it before holidays so we should have it.

The fact it was her first day in a new job, she had toothache and whiplash and a bunch of other stuff going on didn't enter my brain as relevant because that was just emotional stuff. This blog post says quite well how my brain works.  I automatically suppress emotions, and regard any emotional decision as suspect if not de facto wrong.  I respond to people in distress by trying to help them rather than comfort them. See here for why.  This isn't a choice, I genuinely do not know what people want if not help.

It is worse than that of course.  I find expressions of emotions in other people at best troubling.  I literally do not speak that language.  So when  friend tells me that they love me (platonic) I have no idea what to do.  I have the same problem with my parents and siblings.  Their expressions of affection have puzzled and bothered me for a long time.  I have just about worked out what to do when being hugged ( I have a strong dislike of invasions of personal space of any kind, and hate anyone touching me unless we are shagging.  I am hypersensitive to some touches and textures.  Get me to furnish a house and it would be chrome, marble, gloss paint and glass) but find the myriad verbal expressions of emotion...well what are you supposed to say?  How are you supposed to act?  You end up running down a horrible decision tree of responses trying to work out which one will not hurt their feelings or sound weird or whatever.  And that is positive emotion.

Negative emotion is worse.  I had a primary school headmaster whose facial expression, to me, looked like a smile when he was angry.  This led to me being slippered at least once because I misread it.  When someone shouts at me I sit there and take it silently, unless I really need to defend a position.  I respond that way to challenge. I do not enter into competition...in planning meetings or research I give my opinion.  If someone disagrees with it I leave it up to them.  When they find out they are wrong they will be back.  But I won't fight for it.  It is there, take it or leave it.

On the whole I dislike many TV dramas etc. because they insist on focussing on peoples relationships and feelings rather than the plot.  Once you fast forward past these the program becomes quite short.  It is easier if it is well written or funny, so I could watch Buffy in full, as the writing was good.  Except for the bits where she was moping or Angel was brooding, because who cares.  Similarly I think Lois and Clark ruined superman because it became about them having a relationship rather than anything interesting.  But brooding drama...it has to be really really good before I can stand it.

Musicals used to frighten me as a child.  You would have people talking and acting normal then all of a sudden they would start singing and dancing.  It was like they had caught a disease or something.

I could never watch Eastender's or many other soaps.  To me they are all about shouting and anger, and they make me uncomfortable and anxious.  Anger and sadness in others is the worst.  this actually hurts.  It is a mental pain that will not stop until the source of distress is dealt with.  And it is not just one hammer blow it is a constant mounting pain.  The longer I spend with someone showing negative emotion without being able to help them, the more it hurts.  This is why my response to a crying MrsInky is always an offer to help sort out the problem.  What she actually wants tends to be sympathy, but as in the link above I don't know how to do that.  She finds me trying to sort out the problem irritating.  But the thing then is that I have a person in front of me who seems to want to torture me.  They are causing me real distress by radiating negative emotion, and refusing to let me help it stop, which is the only relief from pain I can get.  To my brain telling someone abut a problem without letting them help is cruel.  You are making them miserable as well.

Aspies are known for meltdowns, and yes I show this too.  Negative emotional stimuli like the above are cumulative.  So stress builds.  You can relieve it by doing something, work or a workout or whatever.  But it builds up.  If you then go into an argument or an emotional situation this can overspill.  You meltdown.  This can take many forms.  With me the first thing is a desire to run.  I have to get out of the situation, away from the stimulus.  I go into a room and shut the door away from whoever it is I am talking to,  Of course this sometimes makes them want to follow you to continue the conversation/argument/interaction.  I have been known to end up sitting in a room with my back against the door with other people shouting through it. Sometimes all they are trying to do s see if I am OK but my brain cannot process this and just needs them to stop emoting at me.

Seriously people your emotions are deafening.  Please turn down the volume.

If the stimulus keeps up I will end up self harming in a non premeditated way.  This might be trying to break my hand bones by punching a wall, hitting myself on the head with a rock, trying to stab myself.  Whatever. It is always, always directed inwards at me.  I want the pain, or indeed death to make the emotions stop.

If you know an aspie of course you may want to help them in a meltdown, but seriously what they almost certainly need is an absence of human stimulus.  person dependent, of course.  Ask them.  But I am betting that's what they need.

Now at the moment I have got so much stress on my plate that a meltdown is always about a minute away.  And because I am depressed that takes a different form, like hysterical weeping or suicidal ideation so loud I have to turn  up the ipod to max to drown it out.  The only thing that helps is getting Spock to find something to do.  Do jobs.  Focus focus focus.  Repress.  That is fine until someone asks me how I am, for example.  Or there is a trigger like the final scene in When Harry Met Sally (one of my favourite films.  I think I can never watch it again).  

Anyhoo, am still taking Bupropion.  Annoying Psych doubled the dose because no effect.  I am not sure now what it is doing.  the dose is split morning and evening and frankly I think it is stopping me from sleeping.  I certainly need chemical assistance to do so.  As for effect I am having crisis after crisis.  I am arranging jobs.

On Tuesday I attempt my CBT for motorbike which I am hoping I will pass.  Brrrm.

I am also planning an attempt on the Cape Wrath Trail.  I decided on this pretty recently, and I have therefore imposed on MrsInky by leaving the childcare etc. to her for 3 weeks.  I feel bad about this.

I do not know if I will be able to do it all.  I am in remission at the moment but my joints are susceptible to damage.  And I am wrong in the head.  And that trail is ROUGH.

But it has things I need.  A challenge to make me feel like a man (horse) again.  I have had all the trappings of manhood stripped from me.  It has space and mountains, which I miss very much.  It has a lack of people, which I feel I need right now.  And it has mortification of the flesh, which might sort out my head.  And given the vagaries of my EDS carpe diem, it may be my last shot.

As I say I may drop out early.  I know many people do and there is no shame.  But lets see.

The General Theory of Chutney

I am talking English chutney here.  Indian Chutney is normally either a spice paste or jam with vinegar in it.  In fact I made some great apricot chutney once by taking some apricot jam, adding vinegar, boiling and Jarring it up.
English chutney is the sort of thing you have with cheese or ham, not curry.  And it is made of three components.
1) Mucilage.  Things that turn into a paste when boiled,  This defaults to Bramley apple but can include swede, tomato, sweet potato etc.
2) Star ingredient. This is the headline taste.  Green tomato.  Runner bean. Courgette.  whatever.
3) Chunks and spices.  For flavour and bite.  Onion, mustard seed, coriander seed , cardamom pods...

Now How To..

First sterilise your clean jars and lids.  i normally rinse them and put in the oven at 120 C for 20 mins.

Then chop your mucilage material fine and add enough vinegar to just cover. I am using swede and apple.

Boil it until it softens, then smush up to a lumpy paste

Add your headline ingredients and chunks and spices.  Here you see runner bean, onion, mustard and coriander seeds.  Simmer until the chunks soften.  How soft depends on your taste but they will soften more in the jar.

Finally add sugar to taste.  When you add the sugar more liquid will magically appear and you will need to boil this off.  At this point you have to keep stirring because once the sugar is in it will burn on the bottom easily.  Once it has little to no liquid on the surface when boiling it is done.

Put it into jars using a jam funnel, wipe round the rim with clean kitchen paper being careful not to burn your hands, then PUT THE LIDS ON WHEN IT IS HOT.
Allow to cool and label it up.
That general procedure will chutney anything.

I prefer half pound (fuck off metric I cook in Imperial) jars for chutney as it is an easier size to use.

they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar

More boredom I suppose.
well not all dull.  I am following the Hunter crash with sorrow and interest.  I understand the ban on vintage aerobatics but it saddens me.  Some of those planes are simply lovely, and the Hunter was arguably one of the most beautiful of the lot.  Only the Lightning came close.
Similarly this caught my eye.  One of my main things has always been a trick memory.  This is suffering now due to mental illness and meds, but it grabs hold of things and holds on.  Amongst these things was the fact that Romans would commit suicide or even execute people by going into a sealed room with a charcoal stove.  It was well known.  Not any more.
One salmon of doubt though is the cool to the touch thing.
I don't want to doubt the dude but the C-->CO reaction is very exothermic, in fact drives blast furnaces.  So it must still have been smouldering, though perhaps in the middle of the coals so invisibly.  Heres a tip guys, put water on it.
Now on to me.
I have been on the couch.
Not as in psychiatrist, I mean I have been on the couch since Saturday evening.  Fear of people. Fear of me. Depression. Substance abuse.  My libido has turned off.  For me that is unheard of.
The nights have been drugged sleep (yay zopiclone) and not very restful.
Foal has been off with mrsinky.  Until this afternoon I hadn't seen a human at all.
This afternoon I was supposed to get a 24 hr ecg fitted.  I went to the appointment.  It was hell.
I sat in the waiting room, which had people in it.  I was in a corner and the noise of the people kept getting louder and louder and closer and closer.  and harsher.  It was mush harsher.  Like the noise made by gannets.
I curled down into my seat.  Normally I would do origami to distract myself but my hands were shaking too much.  I couldnt read my knidle because my hands were shaking too much.  So I sat there, curled into a small fetal pose, in the corner crying.  for 40 minutes of waiting time until the ecg fitting nurse called me.
I know what I looked like because I could see myself in the mirror.  White as a sheet, black circles round eyes, tears and snot running down face, stumbling, eyes down.
Nurse didn't comment and just asked cheerily if I could verify my name and was it an ecg.
I stammered out that I didn't think it was worth it, because the state I was in they wouldn't get a normal baseline.  I said I was a MH patient and was having a crisis.  I broke down into hysterical weeping.
She said did I want it or not.
Then she sid should she ask my GP?
I sort of nodded.
She left for 10 mins, then came back.  Said the GP had said reschedule.  And thanks, and goodbye.
That was it.
So, still in crisis, weeping uncontrollably, I shuffled out to my car.
I sent a text to mrsinky expressing my love for her and foal, then worked out that the seatbelt on my car could be extended through the top of the door enough to get a loop around my neck.  a simple loop, then just sit down.  Easy.
I was still waiting for a quiet time in the car park with nobody around when mrsinky called me.  I cried a bit at her.  She told me to go home, get food and reminded me that Sheldon needed cat crunchies.
So unable to let a cat go hungry because of self immolation I went to the convenience shop.
Moral....IAMS saves lives.  Temporarily.

Just think something witty into this space.

I wish that I could write about more interesting things.
For instance a man died today in a Hawker Hunter, a plane my father flew, doing a stunt my dad used to do.  Tragically he also killed others in this appalling accident.  I wish I could write about that or how it made me feel.
I wish I could write of my pride in my friend Percy, who passed his CBT today.
I wish I could write of my indignation at Middle East conflict being held up as good for air pollution.
I wish I could write good interesting things like those.
But I cannot.  Because today has been a rollercoaster up and down.  But mainly down.  I am sitting here crying and wishing I would just die.  Literature is full of people who just pine away.  Why not me?
Mrsinky and foal are out tonight, at her boyfriends.  I shouldn't care.  Of course I do.
It has been rough going all day, but I have crashed spectacularly just recently.  I honestly do not know what to do with myself.

When I was younger so much younger than today

Tough one this.
I am in the town which was the closest to my house growing up. It is a tourist dive but it always was.  I am nursing a coffee and thinking.
My life here was an unmitigated nightmare. The sort of thing you write books about. I am still looking over my shoulder for the people who bullied me here.
But the place is familiar and is better than what awaits me at home.
I am depressed and anxious and really do not want to go back.
This holiday has exhausted me. Acting normal so much for so long is such a strain. I can cry in the shower but that's it.
Ah well. So it goes...

This space intentionally gloomy

I have not posted in a while because I have had a lot of distractions. It has been my time to take Foal on Holiday.  As ever this was a cobbled together thing from the start.  I have been too ill to contemplate booking something and so have ended up at my parents place in Somerset.
There are lots of things to do here.  We have visited Glastonbury, and Bath (the Roman baths), had a day on Lilstock beach and spent a night camping under the stars.

And indeed during this time I have had some lovely times with Foal. She has had her moments of grim, to be sure.  She is on the edge of adolescence and that's tricky for everyone.  But there have been some bits that are lovely.  So this impromptu holiday is working out ok.
So on the whole I should be relaxing and enjoying life.
But... you knew there was a but, right?
I have now been taking Bupropion for rather a longish time, nearly 4 weeks.  To be fair it hasn't had any noticeable side effects.  But it hasn't actually had any other effects either.  I have been depressed.
 Well that is a bit of an understatement.  Day 3 here was Lilstock.  Went with my brothers family, (SIL, Nephew, Niece, Nieces BF, brother), had beach BBQ.  Went exploring the old ruins at Lilstock.

Even sunbathed a bit. SIL being shocked at Oliver the Dragon Tattoo, and tactfully asking if it was a drunken bet. (means nothing by it.  raised by wolves)
My brother was there with his family.  His happy, normal family.  His complete, happy, normal family.
I wanted to die.
I am so convinced that this is the last time I will see foal in this way.  I am also not over the loss of my dream.  My dream was sitting by the fire in a family home, with my wife and children around me.  It was a small dream, but it was mine.  And it is dead.
And so am I.
Dead inside, just waiting for this to stop.
Day before yesterday my shoulder came out in a fairly decisive way.  I cannot support the weight of my arm on it for long.  I am walking around with a sling to rest it a bit. But of course this is putting  strain on my back.  The pain in various places is very strong.
Last night I slept in a tent with Foal, because she wanted to.  It was on her list for this holiday.  Of course that did my joints no good at all.  But actually it was the dreams.  I dreamt that I was losing my job.  I was in the bosses office pleading to keep it, arguing about what I did for him.  But then he sacked me.
It was a nightmare.  I woke drenched in sweat, panting.
But unlike most nightmares it didn't stop.  It was the truth of course.
Today I have been very depressed indeed.  Took Foal to Forbidden Planet, bought some comic books. All the way there I wanted to die.  Not kill myself just die.  The words "...and then he killed himself" kept coming into my head and they felt so welcome and right.  All day I have been walking around, and every time there was a pleasure trigger (muscly bloke, pert young lady, smiley barista) I got a mental voice telling me that no, I cannot have anything like that because I am going to die.
I am holding myself together with spit and sellotape to try and be normal for Foal and the parents.  Trying to get through to the end of this holiday.
Some of my friends have been trying to contact me, but I  cannot speak to them.  I feel hounded by them.  I have no strength to give them, and cannot accept strength from them.  I went for dinner at Cherie's place and that was nice, and chatty etc.  But that was Fake Inky.  I was playing my "I can socialise, look I am normal" role.  I am happy Cherie is in a stable relationship now.  I envy her bloke of course.  But I can see she gets a good deal there.  But in a way Cherie is a reminder of all the wrong turns I have taken in my life, to end up here.
I am planning  a backpacking trip.  Just me, what I can carry and the wilderness.  I will go into the desert.
Who knows, I may even come out.