Remembering
Birth
Discovering
Geometry
Avril
Peaks At 5
Early
School Days
Brain
Reversal & Illnesses
Avril
Through The Looking Glass
Getting
“Stuck”
Alternative
Employment
Feeding
& Stroking Bees
Neurological
Quantum Leap
Obsessions
Classic
Autistic Mix-ups
A
Brush With Celebrities
Introduction
Writing about Avril is not an easy thing. She is as many as the facets of a
diamond. It is rather like trying
to put a finger on a spot of liquid mercury - just when you think you know her,
you realise you know nothing, the mercury has rushed off. Having lived with her now longer than
that of any other person, here is a selective thumbnail sketch throughout the
complexities and years, although certainly not exhaustive.
Remembering Birth
Avril’s entry into this world was not without
initial incident, as her Mother was hurriedly taken by rowing boat to higher
ground to give birth, during the famous 1947 flooding of the Lincoln Valley,
with water rising as high as the upstairs bedrooms of most terraced houses. Avril can even, beyond doubt, remember
her actual birth - the suction sounds and ‘twice booming sounds’, her ears
hurting. Within the first two weeks
it was discovered that she had perforated eardrums. She can further remember ‘pulsating’
whilst being in her pram on clinic visits, and clearly recalls a conversation at
six months as she sat on her mum’s knee as the doctor was on a visit, discussing
pneumonia. Much to her Mother’s
incredulity, the dialogue was recalled verbatim at a much later date - there had
been none other present in the room and the subject had not been spoken of
afterward. The start of many
parental shocks and head shakes!
Avril tries to explain that she lives her life as if she is already ahead
of it, somehow has gone ahead of it, a part of her ahead of it, a kind of
knowing in advance, or a continual déjà vu. From being a toddler, Avril had the skin
condition Vitiligo (or Leucoderma) giving off a dark, Mediterranean
complexion. Although this paled as
she entered her teens, her skin can still darken at times of illness. It was so prominent when young that she
chose a black doll as her first doll, to be like her. Her parents would scrub her hands,
elbows and knees with a scouring powder thinking it to be
dirt.
Discovering Geometry
Between
the ages of 3-5, Avril began in the privacy of her dad’s garden shed, to
construct ‘towers’ using bike wheels and frames, long pieces of wood or anything
considered that would produce a ‘unravelled ball of wool effect’, for her to
contain herself in. “It is like
being back inside your seed case, your atom”. Avril would, with some strange knowing,
attempt specific geometric shapes, and in some sense knew what she was
doing. When inside these
constructs/shapes (a ‘time machine’ later thought) she felt she couldn’t be
seen, but could still see her parents who would be frantic looking for her. With an acumen, she would leave a
deliberate focal object nearby as a decoy, and sure enough, her parents wouldn’t
be able to locate her whereabouts.
During formative years, Avril felt comfortable communicating if she could
stay hid under a table, this way she felt she could cope with human bodies
better if she didn’t have to see them, and vice versa. This was her preferred ‘redesigned
containment’ that she didn’t want to vacate. When Avril discovered geometry in her
own precocious fashion, she wanted “to run the length of it and climb the height
of it”. Soon she found she had a
relationship with right angles “which precipitated going for long nature walks,
mentally mapping out the routes as if already familiar with them”. She would ‘know’ where a place was via
her geometric alliances and would survey landscape with ‘aerial mind views’, as
if watching from above. Some refer
to this ability today as ‘remote viewing’.
Avril would never physically tire if she hasten to go anywhere, for she
always knew where it was to go - “it was like staying on the spot, and seeing
the scenery”. By now, young Avril
had developed an interest in ‘movements’ - anatomical robotics of the human
species (very Leonardo Da Vinci !).
Avril Peaks At 5
“I
reached my peak at 5”, she says, “having achieved Man’s lifetime achievement -
discovering geometry and traversed it.
Life is a printed (geometric) circuit, it has a pattern and I mimicked
the pattern”. Between the ages of 4-5 Avril liked to “feed off the earth, not
mum’s cupboard” with an advanced awareness that allowed her to utilise several
ways of eating berries, as an ability to survive in the outside world, “with
Nature as a protective cover, childhood like a kind of
nakedness”.
Avril
speaks of being ‘old’ when young, as if being born old, which decided upon her
seeking out a preferred company of older people, who soon recognised her asking
of questions beyond her young age.
More than often she would shock with her intelligence, but her audience
would laugh it off, with an apparent uncomfortable confusion! “Older people would have strong patterns
and the uniformity that I required.
Their matrix of pattern was proven and successful from experience. I would collect their matrices like
brittle toffee, veins running through like stain glass windows. I would see them, slot them into myself,
and see the success or failure of them.
They were like slides or film, to learn about mistakes. I had already by then noticed success
and failure/disappointment - success was sunshine and failure dismal, grey
days. I judged things by the sun
(moods) and consequently had a strong love of the colour yellow, and silver,
rays that came out from clouds from the sun”.
Early School Days
School. Day One. For Avril, the phrase “you’re going
to...” meant only one of two possibilities, meaning bed or a discipline was on
its way. She used her geometry on
her way to school and connected to it - sticking - any stick or pole, or
grabbing at the rectangular window sills in a defiance not to budge. Inevitably, she was carried in, but soon
calmed by eyeing up the fresh room geometry, pacified by the smell of the wood,
and new shapes in there providing an intrigue and interest.. Avril tried to make the other children
there react, regarding them “like puppets” as they ran about all over without a
rule or reasoning. She required an
explanation for these unannounced behaviours - what were they doing and
why. Avril viewed all this playing
and survived by mimicking the running and climbing. She soon discovered that rules require
two sides, you obey them or don’t - and didn’t like the option of either
side. (She still is this way today
and does not like games). As time passed by, Avril aspired
to top of the class in writing - the geometry, the shapes of words and numbers
too, the construct of geometry, they are all comprised of circles or
angles. She loved school, the
opportunity of learning, but objected to absenteeism and human illness, “it
interferes with the flow”. Avril
had a problem again ‘wearing’ a physical body - it would interrupt the ‘flow’ of
playing, with its toilet visits!
Brain Reversal & Illnesses
Soon
came the arrival of a problem with ‘reversals’ of right and left brain
lobe. “In your world, you put words
below the picture. In mine, the
words hover over the pictures”.
(She is at greater ease reading the likes of Egyptian and other languages
that function from right-left). In
school Avril’s behaviour was inevitably misinterpreted as ‘naughty’ and ‘cheeky’
(her precocity) and she was deemed as not paying attention or listening. She would actually be in her own world,
autistic absence. (Her valid
complaint is that when non-autistic adults do this it is called a reverie,
simple daydreaming, and not frowned upon).
Avril by now had also developed a fear of strangers, ambulances,
illnesses and red blankets. She
would not dare breathe in the same room as an illness or ill person, and would
wear improvised surgical face masks.
Even today her hygiene is impeccable bordering on obsessional alá Howard
Hughes, proportions. Another
‘thing’ would be to dress up as other people, male included, who were in
employment, mimicking voices and personalities. A lot of her time would be spent
endearingly with members of an Irish community, one of whom would be so tickled
at her talent, he’d pay her an old two shillings to mimic his own Irish
accent.
She was
a favourite comical entertainer amongst adults. At this stage, Avril had undergone
elocution lessons and speech therapy, as she wasn’t able to speak properly
during early childhood. She had “no
sense of touch coming in, except injury”.
At 2, Avril had starting biting, this owing to her lack of physical
sensitivity, it being a singular replacement outward expression. At 5, her lifelong ‘mystery illnesses’
had also started, the first after a session horseriding, and a discovery that
she had a curvature of the spine.
At a much later date in life during a gynaecological investigation, the
surgeons had a surprise when they discovered that the anatomical part they were
looking for was not where it should be - it was an inch and a half misplaced
! In 1998, one of her daughters
created actual medical history when in similar circumstances it was found as
late as the age of 32 that she has one lung the shape of a crescent moon laying
across the chest area, left to right, beneath it a lung on the left hand side,
rounded like a ball. To this day
Avril will resort to the eating of bananas to effect a cure when she is feeling
unwell, and the activity of feeding swans.
“Bananas were first exported to this country in 1947 when I was
born. From the word ‘bananas’ is
the word ‘bane’, meaning to harm.
The banana is an antithesis for me”. The swans feeding, a breath of fresh
air, clear airways in lung sacs, their benign glacial swimming reflections,
their sounds indicative of wheezing chests and blocked nasal cavities; again an
antithesis.
Avril Through The Looking Glass
Avril
was at this time “living on the ceiling”.
Fascinated by imagining a complete spatial room reversal, floor becoming
ceiling. Her life long fascination
with mirror image and the mirror was by now also firmly established. “I would love to get into the mirror
like hopping into the hatch of a submarine”. She would look at her ‘Self’, but looked
straight through and beyond into the mystery of the mirror, never interested in
her protoplasmic image, any more than she is interested in an attachment to her
own name. She would also get into
cupboards at any opportunity, for ‘protection’, though once, ironically, almost
lost her life through suffocation.
At 4-5
Avril had started to read the business sections of newspapers. She considered herself a stranger to her
family and felt she didn’t belong to them, even seeking out assumed adoption
papers. Her two elder sisters
didn’t help matters, either ostracising her or furthering the belief that she
didn’t belong to them. A past-time
would be to chase after animals in the wild in order to experience the
encapsulation of the briefest moment of ‘raw wildness’. At 6-7 Avril began to build herself
‘wings’ from bamboo canes and bedsheets, in an attempt to fly off from 6ft
walls, such was her feeling of being grounded, and the pursuit of total
freedom. Fairies and magic
carpets. Avril sensed that she
‘could go away from where she was (physically)’. Other items of interest to her were a
humming top - and a subsequent interest in the workings of the unyet perfected
gyroscope - (which she feels given the tools she could construct) and a
kaleidoscope (“The Tibetan mandala”).
School milk that had “tasted like onions, and was blue”, signalled the
first of many lifelong food allergies.
Avril is so sensitive that she has an aversion to anything that is
livestock - she can actually trace its source back to the anima of the animal
and can “taste its energy. Yuk
!”. The same remarkable difficulty
can be said of having to wear clothes worn previously by any other, her
sensitivity can contract any illness experienced by the earlier wearer. Avril at this stage of her life thought
that everything was communal, no ownership.
Getting “Stuck”
A
request for a chemistry set and the privacy of the garden shed having been
promptly refused, Avril persisted on mixing concoctions and constructing in her
hallowed room space away from the eyes of others, still apparently pursuing ‘a
something’. “I liked the
possibilities of one thing leading to another to another”. Needless to add, she is preoccupied with
the eternal mathematical figure of pi.
After a brief truancy from school when a new teacher insisted on calling
her ‘Ay-vril’ long term mystery illnesses would come, stay and vanish as
mysteriously as having arrived, leaving the medical profession dumbfounded. Avril was now showing an interest in
electricity, go-karts (self constructed, of course) and regular visits to the
local joke shop, much to the detriment of her often joked father ! Through adolescence Avril got by simply
by mimicking her chosen and best female friend, left to her own devices she
would often have no idea what to do in sundry situations. Somewhat predictably, when her long term
friend abruptly left the area, Avril was left high and dry, and ‘stuck’. (She can get stuck in a bath for hours,
failing to make the connection to get out when; the water is cold, her hands can
get ‘stuck’ like crabs’ nippers and will need strong assistance to prise them
open). She was still having a great
difficulty getting over the fact that at school she had been refused to join the
class in a trip to Switzerland, an autistic rejection she still feels that she
still has never recovered from. The
teachers, rather unfairly, had declared her ‘too wild’. Once, after a ride on the Big Wheel at a
local fair Avril encountered a bout of amnesia, recovering consciousness
wandering down by a river. Nothing
is known about the cause. At 15,
she had many male admirers, which didn’t really mean much to Avril, and one such
obsessed person planned to abduct her and take her to Ireland to be
married. His ploy was, fortunately,
thwarted although well underway, and because of her vulnerability it was
thereupon decided that she be put into a Remand Home (amongst recidivists) for
her own protection. Psychological
tests had denounced Avril incorrectly as below average intelligence - “I was
teasing. I thought .he wanted to
play a ‘game’ and so I played”. It
was at this point Avril, under better circumstances should have had her autism
detected, rather than sent to a wholly inappropriate home. After her regular chores in the home,
Avril would skillfully hide undiscovered under the stairs. When she was first asked to embroider
she discovered a wonderful talent - she hadn’t ever done it before or even knew
how - but amazed staff with her finished product and
output.
Alternative Employment
Much of
the following twenty years is “not recorded”. Avril was chosen unsuitable and
incompatible partners in a vain attempt to have her looked after and taken off
her parents’ hands, a modern day interpretation would be that of ‘arranged
marriages’. Because of Avrils
unknown autism and her debility whereby she could get ‘stuck’ and become unable
to speak (she went mute for almost one year at 15) she fell into a constant
series of situations gotten into by others incapable of understanding or even
caring for her needs, and from which she could not escape. These are the dark, violent and abusive
years of entrapment. In 1979, Avril
lived briefly in America nearby an English grandmother who had married into the
Red Indian Penobscot tribe of Maine.
(Democratic Senator Ed Muskey is a relative).
In the
employment arena, of the lesser known jobs Avril has had, Malcolm once
chronicled some 35 ! Avril enjoyed
such a variety simply from wanting to know about everything. In a day and age where stigma would be
attached to job changing and a proven stability a preference, Avril would move
on happily from a job once she had thoroughly learnt and digested it. Some of her jobs would raise many an
eyebrow ! As a 6st sixteen year old
youngster she once worked amongst an entirely male work force, moulding from
industrial furnaces alongside shop engineers. Another time, working at a factory upon
a conveyor belt at a food processing firm, with her ambidextrous ability, she
“took in the pattern of the job, listened to the machine and became the
automaton as an extension of the machine”.
Her speed at work caused an uproar.
On no end of occasions, Avril (unknown as autistic) has demonstrated in
no uncertain terms an ability to learn a job the equal of anyone but “I had no
interest in furthering a position offered me in the companies”. Her successful business acumen noticed
by many, if Avril were to be praised for her work, as often she was, then she
would resort to jeopardising it.
Although often not a good timekeeper, (“I can’t recognise Time, its
illusory. How can you restrict
illusion ?”) prone to dalliance on her way to work through her interest in the
natural world, Avril would often go to the other extreme and confound everybody
by turning up early and loitering about.
Her one possible regret is not being able to have had a successful
business enterprise owning heavy duty plant equipment; caterpillars,
earth-moving equipment, diggers etc.
She explains, “It is to do with Ergo, the first principles of energy in
the dense physical”.
Feeding & Stroking Bees
Avril
never ceases to amaze Malcolm. “ on
one occasion she woke me from sleep asking me to stop my arm from buzzing. I didn’t know what she meant until I
suddenly realised that I had ‘pins and needles’ in an arm that I had laid asleep
on. She was, effectively, ‘hearing’
a vibration from the cramping effect of the blood circulation cutting off. Owing to her complexities with her brain
lobes, I have witnessed one side of her ‘sober’ and the other side ‘tipsy’
during one (rare) occasion of intoxication. Imagine a screen seperating one half of
her body from the other - one eye is having trouble staying open (‘drunk’)
whilst the other is wide awake !
I’ve actually passed her the ‘phone from one side of her head to the
other, and watched how she’d be slurred in speech if approached from one side,
and fully coherent from the other !
When I had a serious phobia about bees, she help me overcome it by
teaching me, calmly, how to approach and stroke them on bushes. I’ve seen her feed a bee an ice cream as
he perched on her shoulder - you could see his tongue - or suction tube, or
whatever, come out an ‘lick’ at it!
Neurological Quantum Leap
Although
Avril considers the reality of her body growing older, she has “never aged from
the viewpoint of never identifying as getting older from being a child. I have never connected with my birthdate
(which she celebrates the day before) since knowing my conscious Self at six
months.” At the age of 33 she
underwent an unexpected “neurological circuit quantum leap” - an awakening. “I moved into a new form of
investigation. Previous, I had
considered universal structures designed by nature, now I moved into human
structures, discovering that man-made geometric structures can make you ill, and
identifying strains of illnesses from their constructs, or foundations and
building blocks.” (Once both Avril
and Malcolm worked with a wealthy surveyor who in his private capacity was
attempting to create/discover a geometric shape to the concept of Time). “The implication here is that Man can be
guilty of designing his own social diseases” Avril announces.
Obsessions
Avril’s
‘obsessions’ (“non-autists call them hobbies”) include sliding down banister
rails, a fascination with turbines and turbine engines, the theremin (forerunner
to the musical synthesizer), antiques, period clothes, collecting ladies’ hats,
making shoes, and collecting wooden boxes that are miniature chests with locks,
also old leather books with locks.
Literally off the beaten track, she collects broken pieces of blue
pottery on walks along bridle paths etc hoping to one day complete a full willow
pattern picture. Avril’s major
‘obsession’ is “finding out”. As
early as 3, she scoured the home looking for assumed adoption papers in a
frantic attempt to find out who she was.
“Beyond this I felt as if I had dropped in from another world, desperate
to know who I am and where I am from.
I always feel I can get back into my own (autistic) world by getting
‘into’ the mirror. It is ‘me’ in
the mirror”.
Classic Autistic Mix-ups
Avril
undergoes seasonal changes well before the established calendar dates for the
Solstice changes. She will alter
the position of her bed continual in one night or over a period of days at these
times, to comply in sympathy with a magnetic flow from the Poles. Occasionally she undergoes a narcolepsy
during Autumn at a precise clock time - no clock or watch need be present -
which may only last a duration of moments, whilst curled into a ball position
that appears to simulate the shape of the brain. Mix-ups that have been brought about by
her autism has sometimes bordered on situation comedy, leaving us unsure whether
to laugh or cry. Whilst associating
with a boyfriend (who it seems had a known association with a bankrobber !)
during her early 20’s, Avril found herself in the unlikely position of being
asked by local police how she thought that certain heists had been carried
out. Perceiving this as something
of a game and being familiar with all patterns, therefore those of criminology,
she explained how she thought such things could be carried out. Because of her intellectual vocabulary
when interviewed, (incompatible with some she could find herself ‘stuck’ in the
company of) Avril was, farcically, and reminiscent of a scene from Peter
Sellars’ last ever film “Being There” (1979) in which a simple living gardener
is clumsily suspected of being a master spy, accused of being ringleader of an
exclusive Post Office and bankrobbers gang ! As in “Being There”, the more they
couldn’t find anything on her, the more they thought she must be super
undetectable! In 1974, continuing
aspects of farce, saw Avril in the British daily tabloid newspaper ‘The Daily
Mail’, accused of ‘stealing her own car’, a charge that the Judge threw out of
court as nonsense and impossible !
Twelve years later, this time accompanied by Malcolm, both received an
armed escort out of Paris and back to England when after an appearance from
Interpol, the British Embassy intervened - irregular and ‘suspect’ (autistic)
movement of their caravan and van in a sensitive area in the South of France
created suspicions that they must be Spanish Basque terrorists ! Avrils unconformist and irregular mode
of shopping in supermarkets has often unnecessarily troubled many a store
detective ! Another agency was
troubled too and paid Avril a visit during her 20’s after she’d filled in a
section of a Census form that had asked was there anything else they should be
told. Avril, simmering from being
told by her dad that they were being ‘nosey’, decided to inform them that her
grandmother was ‘a Red spy’.
A Brush With Celebrities
Avril
has also had a brush with celebrities, a paintbrush in the case of the ex-world
champion heavyweight British boxer Frank Bruno, whose heavily insured hands she
carefully painted over with poster paint, to secure the hand imprints on paper,
have the vowels of British Sign Language inserted at the appropriate finger
tips, and the final product framed and autographed then raffled for charity in
aid of a School for Deaf and Mute children in Northumberland,
England.
Prior
to this, in 1986, Malcolm had included her with him in a short comedy sketch on
the very last programme of a long-running and acclaimed British music show on
the national Channel 4 Network. She
did not enjoy the experience.
Again, in 1990, Avril unwittingly appeared on British national TV before
an audience of ten million on BBC 1 on a section of a popular Saturday night
programme whereby unsuspecting members of the public would be surprised and
treated to an appropriate gift.
Avril was chauffeur driven around London with Malcolm (who had perhaps
unwisely gotten her into this) and taken to the prestigious Savoy Hotel where a
fashion show was especially put on for her, the conclusion being her gifted with
select items of her choice.
Although her Asperger’s condition had been explained earlier to the
Producers, they will never know how close she came at the height of the filming
to running off, and earlier, off camera, had to be visibly held up from
fainting. The experience had been
very traumatic from an autistic’s point of view, not knowing what on earth was
going on or what was going to happen next, plus being the focus of
attention. The TV viewing audience
would not be aware either apart from visibly noticing Avril’s obvious
apprehension and extreme ‘timidity’.
Full autistic trauma delay followed.
A further four years on and an invite
was extended to both Malcolm and Avril to appear on another Channel 4 Programme,
a talk show with a reputation for levity, when researchers learned of Avril’s
autistic ability to recognise precise faces from the past that ‘cloned’ with
famous faces and personalities from present day, including the host of the
show. Although neither Malcolm or
Avril believe in reincarnation, this was the preferred perspective by the
producers the original offer of an appearance finally waived when Avril refused
to acknowledge that she considered her autistic abilities as a ‘gift’. In 1994, Avril, with Malcolm, met H.H.,
the Dalai Lama of Tibet whilst he visited Scotland The world famous feminist writer Dr
Germaine Greer has told Avril in private correspondence that she (Avril) is a
talented writer. Taking fear from
this recommendation, Avril has ripped the letter up. She can be difficult to encourage to
write as she has no faith in her writing - her mother struck her as a small
child and accused her of being a liar after Avril had won a prize at school for
her work, and this has left a bad imprint - and often prefers her husband to
write in her absence, or will employ him as a ‘blackboard’ or interpreter.to
assist. As for communication on the
‘Net’, she has no qualms; “I would like all to take a quantum leap to create a
free fall on the ‘Net’, to let go of what we know from the Dark Ages of the
1940’s, and acknowledge a new millennium concept of autism where an
understanding will be given”.
Avril
Jenson in her private capacity invites comments and can be contacted at the
following email address… [email protected]