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her hair, full of odd strands of information causing her to pause often in the middle of a sentence, as completely unrelated ideas drifted past. Not that we minded, not being overly concerned at five with how much syllabus is being covered and to be honest, school was even better than promised, overflowing with the delights of sand and water tables, plasticene, a Wendy House and creamily lukewarm milk at playtime.
For a long while it never entered my mind that everyone couldn’t hear and see as I did. Why would it? It was certainly muddling though, sifting through what people thought, what they said and what they actually meant – often and puzzlingly, those three being startlingly different.
“No trouble at all,” someone might murmur, meaning exactly the opposite. Or, “Lovely to see you . ” when nothing could have been further from the truth. It was indeed confusing, especially with all the other stuff going on. Tunes or phrases repeatedly circling, interwoven with sub-texts – hot/cold/tired/hungry/thirsty, headache? aspirin? umbrella or hat? All of this backgrounded by different emotions. Just one person is noisily discordant. Several create a dreadful din and the output from a crowd is a mind-aching mix. Opening up to that unprepared can make you physically sick as I found, embarrassingly, more than once.
Obviously, I learned early to automatically tune out and barrier-building keeps volume down but in the early puzzling days when I had no idea I was different, things were tricky. Startled by something I’d heard, I couldn’t fathom why nobody else jumped or even looked round to locate the source. I compensated as best I could, mimicking other people’s behaviour as I worked my way through situations. Unending input though made it hard to sort out what I should be hearing and understanding as opposed to what I shouldn’t and seeking much-needed guidance often thrust me even further into trouble. It turned out there were some questions which were perfectly normal to ask and to which I received satisfactory answers. There were others which generated the uncomfortable reaction which, I came to recognise, meant I’d crossed an invisible and constantly moving line. It was really all very puzzling and I hit a fair old bit of turbulence along the way.
At school, for example, my reaction to Alan Sdimes caused problems, although I really couldn’t see quite why. He once took a handful of sand, called my name to ensure my attention and threw it in my eyes. It hurt, I cried, he laughed. So I shoved him. His feet promptly shot from under and he landed with a very satisfying thwack on a nearby pile of wooden bricks which made him howl as loudly as me.
“Didn’t touch him!” I was able to protest with complete honesty if not total innocence. And that was the truth, I hadn’t laid a finger on him.
After that incident I reasoned if I could move Alan with no hands, I could probably move other things too. I experimented and found that indeed I could push things around easily – cups, plates, spoons. After a while, I was also able to lift and deposit them some distance away with no real effort, although experience had taught me the shifting of bigger objects (such as Alan) was apt to bring on an unpleasant headache and sickness. I also, even at that age, had the wit to realise practising on classmates might possibly not be the best route to winning friends. What I could do didn’t strike me as particularly odd, just part of so much else you discover at that age. All new and exciting and whilst I did my best to steer clear of anything I’d learned might cause consternation, events sometimes just overtook me.

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We used to have P.E. in the school hall, nothing so sophisticated as a separate gym, just bars around the wall for us to climb up and then down again – a pretty pointless exercise as far as I could see, but then so was the hurling to one another of a bag filled with beans. We were divided into teams,