There'll be a fair amount of disruption here starting next week. My old, worn-out bathroom is being ripped out and I'm having a new one fitted. It's well past time it happened; my old acrylic bath has cracked, and it leaks if I take a bath in it. The water never made it to the floor, which is why I didn't immediately notice the problem (and that's a good thing as far as I'm concerned) but as I mentioned last month, when I took the bath's side panel off to see what was going on, I found out that the sheet of MDF that the bath rests on had rotted away in the middle and it had broken in two.

Yikes. No wonder the bath flexes if I stand in it to take a shower.

So there will be building work going on upstairs for a fortnight or so. Jake tells me that he'll take everything in the bathroom out down to the bare wooden joists if necessary, so it's going to be quite a project. Fortunately for me I have a downstairs toilet with a small sink, so I'll still have access to limited, basic sanitation facilities. But it's unlikely that I'll feel like getting anything done in the studio while all the work is happening, so I'm going to take the opportunity to have a holiday at home and focus on catching up on my reading. I have a pile of books a foot high sitting next to my armchair waiting for me to read and they aren't going to read themselves.

I do a lot of reading, although as I normally do so in the bath (where I will happily soak while reading a book until the water goes cold) the number of books I've read over the past five or six months has tailed off considerably. Despite this, I've already passed my target of reading sixty books by the end of the year.

Mademoiselle Caroline and Julie Dachez's graphic novel Invisible Differences is the latest book I've read, and as you'll see from the review I wrote on my books page, I really enjoyed it.

I can't wait to resume my bath time reading habit, though.

I'm having a terrible time getting to sleep at the moment. Last night was particularly bad because I'd done an hour or so of gardening in the afternoon. Although we haven't had a frost yet this autumn, the leaves on the Boston ivy have all fallen off and the drive was covered in them. Sweeping them up wasn't particularly strenuous but afterwards I was in a lot of pain. When I went to bed, I just couldn't get comfortable enough to drift off and I was still awake at 3 am this morning.

Six months without being able to soak in the bathtub for an hour or so every night have really shown me how important baths are to my physical and mental wellbeing. Before this, I honestly wouldn't have thought that going without a bath and taking showers instead was going to make that much difference to my comfort levels. Maybe it's an Autism thing; the sensation of lying in a hot bath full of bubbles has always been a source of comfort for me, leaving me feeling relaxed and refreshed afterwards. It's how I have always de-stressed.

So I'm really looking forward to trying out my new bathroom.

After going to bed at around eleven o'clock last night and managing to fall asleep relatively easily (for me, anyway), I woke up at about 1:30 in the morning with indigestion and what felt like a panic attack. And that was it for the next four hours: no sleep, a racing heartbeat and a racing mind, and a stomach that was clearly not happy about something. This morning I feel shattered, but my digestion seems to have returned to normal. I'm pretty sure the culprit was what I'd eaten for dinner last night: some Tesco Paprika and Red Pepper Pork Hot Dogs. The only other things I ate were some boiled potatoes which I carefully scrubbed beforehand and a salad with a vinaigrette dressing that I'd made myself. Now that I've gone back and checked the label on the pack I can see that the hot dogs were full of acidity regulators like calcium lactate and sodium bicarbonate, stabilisers such as tetrapotassium diphosphate and disodium diphosphate, and an appetising-sounding preservative called sodium metabisulphite, which has the dubious distinction of being named allergen of the year last year. It's listed in bold type in the ingredients list which identifies it as being problematic, and after looking it up online I discovered that side effects include chest tightness, a fast heartbeat and an upset stomach, so I think I'm safe in assuming that that's what had got me. I'll be avoiding anything containing it in the future, that's for sure. Evidence-based practice, that's what it's all about, kids.

To make things worse, once I was awake my mind switched to its default setting of "demented hamster wheel" once again. Overwhelming thoughts of self-loathing, inadequacy, and loneliness don't make for a relaxing night's sleep and when they start, I find it very difficult to stop them. Eventually in desperation I grabbed my headphones, switched on my mp3 player and listened to some music for an hour in an attempt to drown out my thoughts. Once I'd done that, I'd calmed down a little and eventually I managed to drift back off to sleep.

There are times when I wish I had a normal mind that knows when it's bedtime and switches itself off. Mine doesn't do that unless I've knocked it out with something like Mirtazipine, but the side effects of that medication stop me being me and turn me into a numb, spaced-out zombie. Much though I'd like to wake each morning feeling rested and refreshed, I love having the abilities I do, and the hyperfocus side of Autism is something that gives me a noticeable edge when I'm mixing and mastering, as you'll see below. Most of the time, I can accept the trade-off. Just not at four o'clock in the morning.

The fragile state of my mental health over the last five years or so has meant that I've spent most of that time at home, isolated and alone. It has not been easy, even without things like COVID making life even more complicated. As you may have seen in earlier blog entries, I discovered a few months ago that I'm not the person I've been pretending to be for the last sixty-five years at all. I'm actually someone else; someone who experiences and navigates their way through the world in a way that is completely different to most of the people I know. In fact, it's even more complicated than that: as a result of my unusual neurological wiring, you and I probably live on very different planets. That discovery also led me to realise that the habit of pretending otherwise was almost certainly at the root of my struggles with depression, so I've started to drop the mask I've always worn.

Casting that mask aside has not been easy. I still experience an almost overwhelming urge to just hide away at home when anyone suggests that I would enjoy attending an event somewhere or other. At home, I don't need to mask at all because there's nobody I need to wear it for. But over the last couple of months or so I've been pushing myself hard to get past that and go out and simply enjoy myself. As if that was a thing that I could actually do; convincing myself that it really was possible has been surprisingly difficult.

I realised recently that I need to get out there and explore what my life might be like without having to carry all the emotional baggage of the last six and a half decades with me, everywhere I go. As a result, I've driven nearly a thousand miles in my car over the past fortnight. In my last job, I would have covered that in a week, but since I retired I've barely driven that distance in an entire year.

Going back out into the world and opening myself up to new experiences has meant tearing down the walls which I've built up around myself over the last thirty years. Quite frankly, it's been scary making myself vulnerable like that. But in letting go of my expectations of what I want to get out of anything and being assertive about my personal needs and boundaries (rather than—as I'd always done in the past, as my mother always did—not wanting to upset anyone and just going with the flow even though it made me uncomfortable) somehow I have ended up getting more out of each experience than I could ever have hoped for. And wonder of wonders, I have been enjoying myself. Chatting to Helen yesterday I told her that I'd realised that since I stopped caring about what other people think about what I do or how I'm perceived, they somehow seem to respond much more positively to me.

On Wednesday I took my mobile recording setup out for its first excursion since the beginning of last year. I recorded a fourteen-piece children's choir at the Longwell Green Community Centreand the kids were awesome. I really enjoyed the challenge of recording a large (and loud!) choir for the first time, but I had all of the gear that I needed, I knew what I was doing, and I am at the point in my audio engineering journey where I knew how to make sure that the things that needed to happen happened. More or less, anyway.

Yesterday I stitched all the recordings I'd made into a draft of the final product, and it sounded really good—at least as far as I was concerned, anyway. I spent most of Saturday afternoon in a blissful state of hyperfocus working in Ableton and I completely lost track of the passing time. The results sound very promising, at least to my ears. But we'll see what the client thinks...

On Friday I attended a rather special event at the Tring Book Festival where Robin Ince was reading poetry from his latest book, Ice Cream For A Broken Tooth accompanied by King Crimson vocalist and guitar hero Jakko Jakszyk, who talked about his memoir, Who's The Boy With The Lovely Hair? They were both clearly enjoying themselves.

It was an entertaining and unexpectedly moving evening. Jakko created some fantastic soundscapes on his PRS guitar and a Line 6 Helix stomp box which he used to great effect as Robin recited some of his poems. Jakko read several passages from his book. Robin talked about feelings of guilt, abandonment, and the personal growth that has resulted from his recent diagnosis of ADHD. You won't be the slightest bit surprised to learn that there was an awful lot of stuff which I related to very strongly.

And we ended up in the pub round the corner afterwards, because that's how my life works these days. Jakko talked about his band 64 Spoons (I saw them back in the 1970s, and he confirmed that I wasn't imagining my memory of them all swapping instruments during their set, a stunt that completely floored me at the time) and how as a teenager he met the legendary guitarist Allan Holdsworth, who was kind and supportive to an aspiring guitarist whom he'd only just met. He told an outrageous story about Lemmy, too. Robin told me that he planned to work with Dr Camilla Pang and Professor Gina Rippon again; I got a lot out of the YouTube video of the session on Autism which they did at Latitude in the summer, so I was delighted to hear that. We talked about how important it is to focus on being creative when your mental health is damaged; we shared our experiences of insomnia and the resulting dread (perhaps—very occasionally—it becomes a celebration) of hearing the dawn chorus as it starts up; and about all sorts of other ideas and experiences and concepts that are part and parcel of being neurodivergent.

These guys are very much part of my tribe and it was a delight and a rare treat to be able to hang out with them. This week promises to be every bit as interesting, but more on that later...

Most unusually for here, my Internet connection has been intermittent all day. Fortunately I haven't needed it for the stuff I've been up to so far, but I hope things don't continue in this vein for much longer. I need my Internet!

I got an email this week from BT Openreach and was pleasantly surprised when I got to the paragraph that read, "Great news, our engineers are upgrading the broadband network to this property and Full Fibre will be available to order soon." The download speed which they suggest that I'll get once I'm up and running with Fibre To The Premises (FTTP) tops out at 1.6 GBps. At the moment I have Fibre To The Cabinet (FTTC) and I get download speeds around 70 MBps and I can't really complain at that, as it allows me to watch streaming movies in 4K with Dolby Atmos immersive audio (at least, it does when I have a working Internet connection).

It's all rather overwhelming, considering I had a US Robotics dial-up modem to get me online when I first moved here. I was still using one when I started this blog back in 2003, although my connection had become a little faster (remember the US Robotics Sportster, anyone?) Downloading anything off the Internet back then was still a challenge, though. It was something that you only did as a last resort. And if the connection dropped before the download had completed, the only solution was simply to start again from the beginning. I don't miss those days at all.

Yesterday I scheduled another listening party on Bandcamp for the ambient album I recently made with Ingrid and Henry (hence the name of our group: ICH) which you can see at the top of the page. This party is timed for the convenience of listeners in the US, but wherever you are, you'll be most welcome to join us.

It'll start at 8 pm Eastern Time on Thursday 20th November (that's 1 am Greenwich Mean Time on Friday 21st November for people in the UK) so I am going to be up late!

The blog went quiet for the tail end of October because, for the first time since COVID, I have actually been away somewhere that wasn't Real World Studios and stayed there for more than one night. I spent a lovely few days in Otley with Helen and then drove on to York to see Ruth and her partner Alex. They all looked after me very well indeed. When I weighed myself this morning I was amazed to see that I'd only put on a couple of pounds, because I've definitely been living the high life with some very memorable meals out. There was plenty of red wine on hand and more than one Negroni was involved. Much tea and coffee was consumed, too. But in the process I got plenty of steps in, so when I weighed myself this morning I was relieved to discover that I'd only put on a couple of pounds.

I'd not been to Otley before. I felt instantly at home with the place (the red kite that flew over the car as I drove down from the top of the Chevin into town definitely helped that mood) and I said to Helen how nice it was to hear northern voices again. I've lived down South for a long time, but I still miss the accents.

It was lovely to spend an extended amount of time with one of my dearest friends. I'm the eldest of my siblings, and I had a tough time of it; Helen is the big sister I never had but always wished for, and it's always a delight to see her. Quite frankly, I adore her. We tend to end up having some very deep conversations about life, the Universe, and everything and this week was no exception; it felt very therapeutic and goodness knows, I need as much of that as I can get right now. We're both charity shop junkies so Monday afternoon was spent visiting a collection of those in town and drinking copious amounts of tea.

Helen is in the process of writing a book about her brother Phil, and she has been organising and scanning a collection of his photographs that date back to the 1970s and 1980s when he was the drummer in Motörhead. In the 80s Helen ran the Motörheadbangers fan club and I submitted lots and lots of cartoons and graphics for every newsletter. She's been using GIMP to edit all her brother's photos, and so while she acts as my personal therapist and confidant, I'm her graphics, imaging, and general IT consultant. I was astonished when she opened one folder of pictures on her Mac that was labelled "fans" and said to me, "There you are..." And she was right; there I was. I'd never seen the photo before and it brought all the memories flooding back. Happy days!

That photo was taken by Helen's dad at the "Heavy Metal Holocaust" show at Port Vale Football Ground, Stoke-on-Trent on August 1st 1981. Motörhead topped the bill supported by Ozzy Osbourne's Blizzard of Ozz, Frank Marino and Mahogany Rush, Triumph, Riot, and Vardis. That's Helen's mate Stan photobombing the two of us.

That was more than forty-four years ago. Where does the time go?

On Thursday I drove on from Otley to York to see Ruth and her partner Alex. It was the first time I'd visited their house, and I got stressed out when the satellite navigation system on my car refused to recognise the existence of their ten-year-old building or its postcode. In the end I found them without any trouble at all and there was even a parking space opposite their front door waiting for me!

Two thousand years ago, York was a Roman settlement that went by the name of Eboracum (it's the setting of what is for me the most famous—certainly the most compelling—true life ghost story ever told) but it continued to be a seat of power for the north east long after the Romans had left; the Minster which dominates any view of the city leaves you in no doubt whatsoever of that fact. York is steeped in history. And Ruth's brother Rob did his degree there.

Because it was half term, the place was absolutely heaving but Ruth had organised a fun set of things to do while I was there, which included a couple of very nice meals in the centre of the city, a visit to a shop selling specialist gins (of course), a walk around the battlements at the top of the city walls, multiple bookshops (of course) and tracking down a most impressive number of cat and ghost sculptures!

The plague doctor was part of Unconventional Design's Ghosts In The Gardens installation. They looked rather impressive at night, when they added a spooky flavour to the Echoes of Yorkshire Son et Lumiere installation which Ruth had booked us tickets for.

Sadly I had to bid Ruth and Alex goodbye on Friday and drive back home but I set off nice and early and I was back here by half-past one. I was very glad I wasn't travelling in the opposite direction because the M5 was nose to tail northbound from where I joined it from the M42 right back to the Stroud junction and I noticed several times that traffic going the other way was at a complete standstill.

Since I got home I've gradually been unwinding, although last night was Hallowe'en and I was visited by at least forty trick-or-treaters. One child was dressed in an absolutely note-perfect Bela Lugosi outfit but he couldn't have been more than ten years old, so kudos to his parents! I'm so unused to socialising for more than a couple of hours at a time these days—even with my closest friends—and judging by the fact that my resting heart rate each night was in the high 70s instead of its usual 60 bpm I must have found it quite challenging (well, it was either that, or the very tasty late-night espresso martinis). But these days I'm finally aware of the needs imposed on me by my Autism and Helen and Ruth and Alex all know about what I've gone through this summer. I was deeply touched by how considerate they all were, making sure that I could (for example) sit in the corner with my back against the wall when we went for a drink or a meal. And I was surprised by how effective just managing things like that proved to be in making me feel comfortable and relaxed (although the company I was keeping had a lot to do with that, too).

I'm not planning on doing very much this weekend at all. I've always needed to recharge after periods of intense socialising, even when I've been hanging out with people I love. Given who I am, I don't think that will ever change. But while this week has in some respects been just as intense as my stays at Real World, it hasn't left me feeling overwhelmed like those did, and so far I haven't noticed any hint of an incipient manic episode like the one that my first stay at the studio ended up triggering (and thank goodness for that). It's going to take me some time to get used to the solitude again, of course. It feels strange rattling around in this house by myself with nobody to talk to. In the past, I would probably be feeling very sad right now that all the fun I had this week has ended. But these days I know how to look after myself somewhat better than I used to, and I'm trying very hard to live in the moment rather than dwelling on the past. I also know that my friends will be happy to have me come to stay with them again, because they told me so.

And quite frankly, that's the best medicine I can think of.