No nose is bad news

At last. I got to see my autistic musicians again this week.

Last week didn’t really count. I managed to get there after sliding up and down hills with Mysweet driving me in his car because my own is too silly for country ice (heavy, rear wheel drive, and automatic- a very old Mercedes which would not be worth repairing, no matter how slight the damage!) We then turned round and came straight back home again because the school was in chaos, having just re-opened and most of the students not being there.

So I looked forward to this Thursday with mixed feelings.

I have lost the boy with the red hair for an indefinite period. His behaviour is out of control and violent now, and he is in hospital. I am told that this is a phenomenon which is often seen here at his age. Adolescence and the surging of hormones are difficult enough to deal with no matter where you are on the autistic spectrum. The effects here seem to be more dramatic.

But still awaiting me was the boy who makes a sound like a chainsaw. He has become the boy who eats everything. And I mean everything. You cannot turn your back on him. He has tried the paint on a car parked unwisely outside the music room. Anything that is small enough to get in his mouth or soft enough to be bitten into chunks is fair game. He does swallow some of it and it passes through without incident, as I was informed by one of the helpers as I expressed my anxieties. I worry more about the toxic aspect of all this, remembering toddlers and poisonous newspapers, (I did catch him with half a magazine in his hand, chewing purposefully). So we all try to watch him carefully.

We now share the music room with two psychologists who use it as a marionette theatre to act out the preoccupations of the students. They have a selection of handmade beautifully sculpted puppets. The marionettes are about 2 foot tall and their faces are made of painted pink sponge. They are rather delicate, and the psychologists hide them away behind a curtain, under a sheet. I had just finished plugging in the keyboard. When I looked round, the chainsaw boy was standing by the curtain, chewing very contentedly. The large head of a puppet was sticking out of the curtain, looking like a pink sponge cake…but it had no nose.

Don’t tell anyone. Maybe they won’t notice.