Hello, this is Anna Kennedy and we’re talking all things autism and it’s so cold today, it’s been cold all weekend and we’ve had celebrations with Angelo’s 30th birthday. I cannot believe he’s 30. Where has that time gone? He really enjoyed his day, a little bit overwhelmed at the beginning but then he soon settled down.

We did our usual routine going for a walk, going for a cheese toastie, his usual drink and then we had pizza. We always have pizza every birthday so that’s whether it’s for Angelo or whether it’s for Patrick and yes and he had a little get together at college as well when he took in a cake and they said they all really enjoyed the experience, played a few games so all good. So yeah, so January is always a busy month for us where birthdays are concerned.

So my mum was 80, my mum has been married 64 years, my mum and dad 64 years, can you think of that? It’s such a long time and then it was Patrick’s birthday earlier on so now we’re all birthdays out this month. So just to go through a few bits and bobs to remind you about Autism’s Got Talent, the closing day is the end of May so if you want to show us your talent whether you’re a singer or a dancer or a musician, whether you’re a poet, whether you’re an online.com. Also we have the date now for our Autism Expo which will be happening in June so all the information will be going on the charity website very very soon with reference to the expo at Brunel University so if you want to pop along it’s for the whole day. We have guest speakers, so far we’ve got Carrie Grant and we’ve got Brian Bird and we have got Ben Pearson that was on the actual BBC, oh it’s gone out my head, BBC show that was on the television and Dragon’s Day and that’s it and then we have clinics where you can get advice on legal advice or it could be behaviour management or it could be speech and language or you just want to have a chat.

So come along, lots of stands as well and so very interesting day and a good place for networking and the last thing that I just wanted to share is about the Autism Mirror Awards so if you want to nominate someone that goes the extra mile we have 12 different categories please send in your entries we’ve had quite a few already so that again the entries closing date will be end of May and that will be happening sometime in November. We’re looking at venues as we speak. Just wanted to highlight a couple of books just a reminder one of our charity champions Dawn Avery from a tier to here where she’s written a family’s journey about autism so this book was written originally as a form of therapy and struggling as Aston was growing I found myself being lost in my poetry.

I decided to note down my feelings and thus the book evolved. Our family had a journey many now experience. Back then autism was not so understood and I often felt alone and confused at the differences we had faced.

I decided to piece the book together so if you’re interested it’s on the charity website it’s called from a tier to here and Aston is one of my ambassadors as I say and we also are on all things autism and ethics on Gateway Radio which is 97.8 once a month on a Thursday and the last book I just wanted to highlight I was asked about this Asperger’s Syndrome and Long-Term Relationships written by Ashley Stanford. So during her 14 years of marriage to a man with Asperger’s Syndrome as in this book she has explored many of the intricacies of how the AS condition affects a couple’s relationship. She examines how AS behaviours may be misinterpreted without a solid awareness of the condition.

Stanford’s book provides a wealth of solution and offers comforting understanding to the increasing number of similar couples. So if you’re interested it’s on the Jessica Kingsley Publishers website lots of useful books and resources on the Jessica Kingsley Publishers website and it’s www.jkp.com quite easy to remember www.jkp.com. So my guest today is the lovely Stella Waterhouse who I met on social media and it’s so many people on social media and she is going to talk to me about something that I’m interested in at the minute. It’s a website called Colloco an accessible travel for sensory travellers and so we’re going to be talking about that a little bit further on in the program but first of all I just wanted to welcome Stella.

Welcome Stella. Thank you very much indeed Anna it’s a delight to be here and to talk to you. I didn’t hear a crash in the background just now my cat is diabetic and he doesn’t much like his food so he’s just going around the kitchen to see what else he can find.

I wonder what it was like you’re on the gym. No afraid not. So tell me a little bit about Stella before we talk about autism before we talk about the work that you do talk to me about who you are where were you born you know family school anything you’d like to share that you feel comfortable with.

Yeah sure um I was born in Warwickshire and lived for the first few years of my life in Alton which is just a small little place outside Surley Hull or at least it was then I haven’t been back for a long time so it’s probably twice the size it was. My mother was widowed at an early age so she taught in various schools to make a living and that meant that I sort of followed her around with the schools so I went to several schools during my childhood and I was thinking about it after you’d mentioned this bit and looking back it was quite interesting because my first or my earliest memories of school one was actually having to stand in a corridor with the other slow learners because I couldn’t learn to read and once yeah once I actually did learn to read I was a voracious reader and the other was that I used to very often look at the blackboard in class and it would make my eyes water and I just thought that was part of me and I actually thought that for when we got to when my mother remarried when I was eight we moved to Gloucestershire and we lived in a small hamlet with one pub, three farms and about six houses so it was a real countryside area and I went had to catch a bus to school and yeah my school days weren’t the happiest or I don’t remember them as such although the two things I really liked were English and history but when I was about 16 I moved into the sixth form and there were sort of three groups of children there or teens one were the people who were very studious and wanted to learn and the other group were like me they wanted to learn but they would easily distracted and then the people who sat at the back were very distracting and my mother at the time was working in a camp hill school doing speech and drama mainly drama with the kids there it was sorry what’s a camp hill school what does that mean um it’s it’s part of it was developed by a German chap called Karl Koenig and he set them up specifically for children with learning disabilities okay but it was based on sort of Rudolf Steiner lines oh yes yes yes yeah and she sort of introduced me there at a weekend um and I got to know a couple of the people there and they said if you ever get bored with school we’ll offer you a job um and I’d only been in the sixth form about two weeks um went back in and I think the final straw was probably a paper airplane flying across me while I was trying to do something and at that point I took up their offer and went to work in camp hill I was actually working with the staff children um but I very quickly came to realize that the other children were much more intriguing and so I sort of went on from there and I really have bumbled through my career things have just cropped up usually autism things and it’s pushed me in that direction throughout most of my life okay sometimes things that crop up um I just sort of meant to be I think um oh definitely yeah instinct so did you like obviously at such a young age did you find it quite daunting thinking you’re going into the world of work it’s sort of jumping from one step of your life to like a huge step into adulthood um because it was jumping out of school I think it was actually very pleasant it was a good way to start and it was a very relaxed atmosphere the only thing I didn’t find easy was the fact that you were you were paid pocket money but you had to ask for everything else you wanted um so if you needed any clothes you had to ask and get a they didn’t give you the actual money they sent you to the shop and that’s actually very seductive when you don’t have to worry about anything like that and a bit unreal I think okay so I’d gone there because um the camp hill schools are all over the world and that was the real attraction um so I did go with them to Germany again working with staff kids but then I then I heard about a school in um Bristol called St Christopher’s which was sort of based roughly on camp hill lines but not quite the same um so I went to I asked them if I could just go and visit when I was back in England and they said oh yes and at the end of the visit they said right we’ve got a training course we’ll offer you a place if you want one so sounds good yeah so how did you get interested in autism well it was when I was in the camp hill school there were three children there who were all very different and they all had the same diagnosis okay and I was really brought up on the diet of Enid Blyton and Agatha Christie so I like books and I think they’ve probably been banned by now in some places probably yeah but um yeah I like mysteries and puzzles so I tried thinking about it a bit um and trying to understand how three very different kids could be all have the same diagnosis and I’ve just sort of gone on from there okay what sort of age range were they um they were um probably seven eight nine ten okay and all diagnosed um on the spectrum yeah okay so um I find that once you start working and that it’s it’s not only me I’ve spoken to many teachers that said the same things to me that once you start working with children that are on the autism spectrum there’s something about working with them that suck you in oh yes and celebrate the the achievements however small they may be like to somebody else looking from the outside look oh that’s not very much but to a child and to a family it’s huge yeah and we celebrate all together whether it’s in the classroom or whether it’s with the family um yeah so I don’t know there’s just something special about children that are on the spectrum fascinating and definitely suck you in if you want to do more very much so and anybody who can’t communicate with you you have to or in a communicate through speech you have to make a real effort to communicate with them and just trying to get that right is a real challenge it is I can say that’s so exciting if you succeed definitely especially you know whether they’ve got minimal verbal skills and um almost it’s like they have to build their trust with you as well which can take quite some time oh yes yeah so um so what happened after that after working with the three the three children how long did you work with them for I didn’t actually work with them because I was working with the staff children at the time but once I’d been to um St Christopher’s I did their training course okay um and then I went on and worked in a small private school um with a variety of children with a variety of different needs okay um and I was yeah at one point I was very horrified because um it wasn’t in relation to um autism but one of the children there had a different disability which was quite incapacitating and she’s she became a weekly boarder okay and I was actually living in the school as well as working there and I was absolutely horrified to hear her doctor saying we were saying how distressed she was and was there anything we could do about it and how should we and um it was I think it was a doctor or I’m not sure if if he did conventional medicine probably not um but he actually said oh she hasn’t got feelings and I yeah and I thought that was just horrifying and that’s sort of I’ve always it’s stuck in my memory ever since really because it was so appalling can you remember the first child or a teenager or adult that you worked with um was autistic and how did it how how was it um yes she was a lovely lady but with very limited speech very repetitive speech and um I built up a from my point of view a relationship with her simply by walking alongside her and copying what she said um but yeah uh I just found her enchanting if that’s the right term okay and I really enjoyed working with her it was mostly sort of helping with personal care and things at that time but also learning about teaching from a from the point of view of Steiner which is slightly different um but yeah it was real I really enjoyed it yeah I know my son Angelo likes you to mimic some of the sounds that you make and two other people everything and what are they doing but it’s just like he loves it and he does it a lot when we’re in the car when I’m driving so so I might be driving and then I can spot him in the mirror and he might just say a couple of words um and then I’ll just repeat them back and you’ll just get straight eye contact straight through to the to the mirrors you’re driving and you can see he’s enjoying that interaction even though to me it’s like not quite sure what he’s saying but if he’s enjoying it and I just thought well you know it’s about interaction you know with my son and it’s you just take it as and when you can get it if you like um and as I’ve shared before sometimes he comes out with these sayings um that you just think oh where did that come from you know I want more and there’s one that they always um I think I’ve shared it before when I was fastening helping him fasten his shoelace as he finds things like that a little bit difficult as I was fastening his shoelace he tapped me on the head with his hand very lightly he just said keep up the great work and it’s just like he comes out with some things that are relevant at the time and then just think oh we could get more of that you know interaction going uh and even like driving into work this morning and just dropping off to college and it’s just around the corner from where I work and um you know and it’s just really it’s really quiet or you might be just making a little now and then all of a sudden you’ll just say it’s cold and obviously it has been cold you know we’ve had experience you know minus six and minus seven uh but it just says sometimes things these little nuggets just at the right time yeah so I just wish that we could have more of it but I’ll take it as and when it comes yeah that’s that’s the way to do it really isn’t it so when did you begin writing books and what sort of books do you write and have you got any titles that you can share with us that the listeners might be listening in that might be able to purchase or find in a library yes certainly I started writing in about 1989 because the time I was working in a community for adults right um all of whom were somewhere on the spectrum and I initially started off on the care side because that was the part I enjoyed but I became deputy um principal there and uh after I lost my job no I I got um the principal and I decided we wanted to get married and the community didn’t want to both of us working there um so eventually I had to leave which was fine because it it pushed me towards writing which is something I’ve always enjoyed and done as a hobby anyway and I’d had the idea every person on site who I worked with was tremendously anxious it didn’t necessarily show as anxiety but once you got to know them you could almost feel it um so I there was nothing at the time in the literature that I’d come across um so I decided I would start writing something about anxiety and autism and then of course once I got into it I was just going to write a little leaflet which I thought would suffice um but once I got into it it was incredible really because I started investigating a bit more and I got to know Donna Williams who the late Donna Williams yeah and she actually came and visited the place I was working in and I learnt an awful lot from her but the thing that stuck out in a couple of accounts was the idea of fear um but also that the senses were distorted in some way and that intrigued me as well and when I looked into it further I yeah I found that Donna was really hypersensitive to noises of various kinds and I suddenly realized that I had that problem too and at that point I came across Annabelle Stelly’s book um which I think is the sound of a miracle okay um and her daughter had had auditory differences and had undergone some treatment several years before she actually wrote the book which was done by a um a French ENT specialist yes and after the treatment she improved dramatically so but her mum at the time I think didn’t want to actually write about it because she her daughter had got a diagnosis of autism and she was moving her into a the next school app sort of thing and she didn’t want them to know that she’d got the diagnosis um but the change was incredible and at that time I sort of followed up about this auditory treatment and learned a bit more about it and did a training course on it um and I tried it on myself that was the nice thing because I had that problem but to a much milder extent but it had impinged on my life in that I got stressed around lots of noise and if I ever went to a concert um everybody else was sitting there listening and I was sitting there listening but with my finger in my ear um so that that was really interesting and sort of eye-opening and a bit later on when I met Donna a second time she and her then husband came and visited us and they were both wearing tinted lenses oh yes um and she started telling me about the lenses and she said that when she had um been tested to see if they would help her um as she put them on she uh her husband was in the room but he was sitting on the chair at one side and she said suddenly he wasn’t part of the wall anymore oh okay did she have erlin syndrome as well yeah it comes it’s called a variety of names nowadays not everybody likes the term erlin syndrome some people call it visual stress or visual dyslexia okay um but that suddenly explained my visual problems too but mine again were much milder yeah um and I got some tinted lenses for myself and it stopped having migraines when I went shopping which had always been a lifelong thing I get plagued with migraines so does my mom and my sister um my sister’s dyslexia but um yeah yeah we get we’re just a family plagued with headaches and migraines yeah I think sometimes it does pass down in families because my mom had that sort of thing and my uncle suffers migraines and okay um but yeah the tinted lenses work to treat for me uh and obviously for donna too and it was just eye-opening to see how much difference that could make yeah so people are interested in getting the tinted lenses they can go to their opticians can’t they and that’s not necessarily because a lot of opticians I think it might have something possibly to do with erlin um her treat the treatment the erlin institute do um the lenses are quite expensive yeah because my husband had some with blue lenses I’m sure he went to the opticians yeah you can and certainly there are several opticians now that have what they call a colour emitter all right used for testing for dyslexia and there are other opticians around as well who do it but not all of them so it I have got some information on my website that people can look at if they want to okay so what’s the link to your website what is it autismdecoded.com that’s right so um you’re also an international board of sensory accessibility as well um so it’s www.autismdecoded.com so if you’re interested in finding out a little bit more about the tinted lenses that um Stella’s talking about so um can you give us any titles of the books that you’ve written and are these books on the autism decoded website as well yes they are but the first few books the book I started writing as a leaflet developed into a larger book but then I also wrote a series for parents that were sort of um relatively short and concise um because a lot of parents are very time poor obviously um so it seemed sensible to give them tips as to what they what the main problems were how you sort of spotted them and what you could do about them yeah I must admit I’m a person I like bullet points and so does my husband yeah just like the more text there is it’s just like I tend to because I get so tired and I I’m so busy sometimes all the words can sort of go into one or I can switch off so for me bullet points works best it just just use what works best for you and you can retain the information better oh yes yeah um yeah so there’s a why does he do that and some books that follow it up and they’re on amazon although they probably need new covers by now but I’ve also in 2000 I also went back to the first book and which was called a positive approach to autism no sorry that was the second one the first one was the other side of autism but that’s out of print anyway um Jessica Kingsley published a positive approach to autism and um it was a longer book but it was sort of looking at the first book the first big book and um taking it a bit further yeah because information had changed so much when I first did when I did the first one I couldn’t get anybody interested in publishing it at all and one publisher actually said well they’d already got a book on autism they didn’t need any more nobody would be interested and then of course everything exploded so it reminds me when I approached the mental I shouldn’t say it now but when I approached a foundation let me say it and many many years ago when I was trying to set up the school I was saying I was trying to get funding I needed some support to try and set up um a school for kids on the spectrum it was in 1998 at the time and I remember the person that picked up the phone said oh sorry autism is not sexy I went sorry autism is not sexy I thought right I just couldn’t believe that that person said that but hey that’s just front to mind from what you just said yeah there are some strange things strange views around even now yeah but yeah the book I wrote in 2000 I revamped or went back to in 2010 because things were changing so much and I thought I would revise it but the book got rather large so I’ve now divided it into four and the first one is published it’s on amazon it’s called the cracks in the code and it actually looks at the some of the history as well as things um which I found quite fascinating because in relation to the sensory differences there was um a research paper done in 1949 so it wasn’t that long after canna hood actually diagnosed autism and it was talking about the sensory differences and querying whether they played a part in the development of autism which I found fascinating so is that why your books different from others and other authors because you go into the history no some other people have gone into the history too but what I’m trying to do more is I’m not a researcher but I’m trying to piece other people’s research together to see if it makes sense so it’s more like detecting if you like um so what what have you learned along the way so it’s so from when you first started uh working with children and adults uh on the spectrum and today what have you learned along the way and have your views changed as you’ve gone along to a certain extent they’ve changed but I do still think that anxiety and the sensory differences are major factors um I’ve learned an awful lot along the way and I probably can’t put it in in that shell because at the beginning I knew very little um but I’ve learned not to not to ignore people’s research just because you don’t like the person themselves or their personal life because even the worst of theories there’s a little nuggets there very often yeah like Betelheim was had a horrendous effect yeah as I’m sure you know on called parents because he blamed blamed the parents yeah but the thing he did come up with was that anxiety was a major factor um so I’ve tried yeah I’m still trying to piece things together and I don’t by any means claim to know everything there’s an awful lot I’ll never know so if you had to encapsulate why people on the spectrum have such significant anxiety difficulties why do you think that is what do you think is the trigger is it because the world’s constantly evolving is it because they like to um you know their routine and the structure of the day if you like because I know with my youngest and agile and to what your extent Patrick they like to know what’s happening every day and it’s just it lessens the anxiety when they know what’s happening and there’s nothing there to spring out and jump at them if you like I think that’s part of it I think the anxiety is a major factor which is actually internal so some kids are born much more anxious than others and there is some research into that and that leaves them vulnerable to environmental insults and that sort of thing okay um and I think having looked at OCD and a whole lot of related disorders um that the symptoms you find like obsessions and compulsions and withdrawal um are actually all part of the coping mechanism which is hence and the need for routine that helps you cope if the world if you the world around you is too noisy or you’re not seeing it correctly it’s just the world’s not full of routine though is it no unfortunately now yeah I think that’s going on on the news it’s just what is going on it’s just evolving and changing I thought the reporters must know if they’re coming or going now I’m always surprised that they don’t actually suffer from severe depression themselves because they repeat the same thing over and over again and so you evolved in any other projects that you can talk about or you feel comfortable sharing um colloquo is obviously the major one that we’ve I’ve done in the last couple of years um I’d actually sorry colloquo it’s about k-o-l-o-k-o and yeah a little bit about you know what it’s all about and where people can find it too yeah sure um it’s actually a holiday directory a travel directory as well um and it started several years ago as a hobby because I had a little dream that it would be nice to set up somewhere people could go to holiday and then I thought that’s actually silly because I haven’t got the money and I haven’t got the expertise so why don’t I just collate the information that’s out there and when I started there was very little um and then gradually more and more places have become more sensory friendly or autism friendly or whatever and there are people out there now training venues as well that’s good um so we developed a site which I did during covid and it actually really helped me through covid um because I was traveling the world from my armchair and looking at lovely places and contacting people to say are you interested in providing this sort of holiday or do you have what facilities do you have and it was actually um yeah made things a lot easier so what does colloquo stand for um nothing in particular oh where’s she got that from an acronym no I had some help initially I did go to a firm who were willing to fund projects and it was going to be a paying project which was fine and they helped develop the name we brainstormed it and things and probably because I like koala bears and kept coming up with names that related to koala bears it ended up as colloquo which wasn’t entirely my of my doing um but unfortunately they were on a completely different wavelength because um yeah they wanted it to make x amount of money win an x amount of years um but they also wanted me to confine it to the UK and only to autism which all of which were impossible particularly the last two so I found somebody who um Chris Richards who has now gone into it with me and we’ve developed it as a CIC so any any profits we make will go back into some community project um which is going to be autism related obviously okay so basically it’s a free sensory holiday directory so if you like planning can search and book it directly itself if you prefer someone to take the strain out of it which sometimes that’s what I like so please contact um your website for a friendly associate who will help plan the trip so talk to me about some of the trips that are on there and so how do people how does it work so obviously if you want to plan it yourself you just search but if um talking about taking the strain out how does that work um we’ve been lucky enough to find two lots of travel agents one is uh is a single person over here in the UK um whose name is Kendra um sorry I’ve lost her surname now it’s in my it’s in my head somewhere that’s okay that’s like me and she actually works for Hayes Travel but some time ago she she is an autism mum anyway and some time ago she did a training course specifically for travel agents and autism so she knows what she’s talking about and she is happy to design holidays for people okay and if the holiday is not on the actual site and they’ve spotted one somewhere else can she still help I would imagine so yeah okay I’m just thinking about that because of my son because we had a chat previously and um yeah Patrick loves to travel on his own and um but now he’s talking about traveling overseas so as I said I was getting a bit of a heebie-jeebies so I think um that that would be really great so that that’s a real real um nugget for me yeah well do talk to her because I’m sure she’d be delighted to help oh thank you there’s also a group in the states who are keys to the world vacations but they have a specific group of travel agents who are called keys to inclusion and they do trips for autism families um families who need that bit more help um maybe with ADHD whatever they’ve also undergone specific training so that they know what they’re talking about um and Teresa Perry is the person to contact there and then she’ll put you in touch with whichever member of her team is best suited to your sorting out what you want as a holiday but there are initially I did some research and I found that an awful lot of parents presumably because of the experiences they’ve had with places in the past they actually felt they would rather book direct so we’ve tried to include as much information on the site as possible um with contact details but also wherever I’ve come across them I’ve put in reviews from autism parents or parents of kids with um who’ve got other disabilities and disorders so there’s a whole range of things on there because obviously quite a few people also need accessible facilities so we’ve got that on there you can go on the search page and you can type in whether you want an autism specific place or an autism friendly place or an accessible place or a mixture or whatever but we’ve got water parks and all sorts of things farms hotels right you name it it’s on there it’s just a matter of picking the right one for you really okay that’s good I’ll definitely be I know when you first told me about it it was sort of in the very early stages so I need to have a look now to see you know how it’s evolved and how much more information and how many more holidays you’ve put on exits making me think obviously about my eldest son but also about Angela because obviously as I say we go to a farm it’s called Blackthorn Gate Farm it’s fantastic there’s like four uh cabins on there so one for a family of four and then one for a family of six and it’s in the north east great state and lovely lovely sight lovely lady that and I’ve been going there for years now because it’s quite near to where my mum and my sister live so we can go and have our own space we can go for walks we can go to up rows we’re topping which at first I’m not very good with heights but I remember when I got to the top I said to my sister when I turned around and looked down I thought I can’t do it and then she said well you’ve got to help me and now you’ve got to get back down I said I can’t I actually started panicking and then you know what started um it could seems getting anxious so my sister said to me get a grip woman so at first I said get me a helicopter but in the end I said you go first and I’ll I’ll make my way down and then I’ll and then I was fine I did I did start getting a little bit overwhelmed but I did it so I did it in my own way but we all sort of put down together and then after that I went back up second third time I was fine I just remember that sense of panic it was just oh my word but uh yeah it’s quite a scary thing it’s really horrible to feel like that isn’t it I’m not very good with heights but I am getting better I remember going under London eyes well with Antelope for the first time with them a couple of children from we were doing like a trip and then Angelo kept going to the edge because I was fine sitting in the middle of the actual port but he’s gone near the edge because he likes to jump on singing oh my word but I am building up my confidence more and more so I will get there so um you’ve talked to me about mirror me is that the right oh yes TV what’s that all about that’s something else that I’m sort of working on and it’s not it’s not quite ready yet but I came across what you call connected TV right and you can have a channel which shows on Roku and Amazon’s fire I think and I thought I would do a mental health and autism and anything else I could think of sort of sight um because I don’t think there’s much out there now and I’ve come across some amazing people yeah who do talks on all sorts of things and have given me permission to use their stuff so um when it’s up and running hopefully it will be far it will be um something that will interest families okay that’s good when you think that will be happening probably it should hopefully I will get it finished by about April May oh so not that long then no but everything always takes a little longer than I think so I’m yeah I’m keeping my fingers crossed so did you ever think all those years ago that you’d be writing books you know setting up colloquial travel you know television programs online with reference to mental health did you ever think you’d be doing such a thing what did you want to do when you were younger did you have like I remember I wanted to be at first I wanted to I love dance so I wanted to I wanted to tap dance with James Kelly that was a bit like yeah and then um I wanted to be to do um languages and you know travel all over the place they had a very strict dad that um Italian dad that basically that just wasn’t happening but my life obviously took a different path when I had my sons and I met my husband but what were your dreams and what did you want to do um initially I wanted to um be a stage manager because my mum wanted to go into the theater and she did she was an actress for a very short time but she got migraines so she had to move into speech and drama which always struck me as a shame um and I thought the theater would be fun but yes yes after I met those kids there was nowhere I was really going to do anything else so you’ve got no regrets none at all it’s been brilliant actually I have learned so much about myself and so much yeah I the one thing I’m really addicted to is research I suppose so it’s given me the opportunity to do that and I love sort of finding things that you can think ah now that might fit with that one or whatever so um yeah it’s great so have you got a diagnosis if you don’t but I did send my the first book the ciphers over to a professor in the United States who has a broad range of experience with autism and other disabilities and really knows his stuff and I was extremely amused because he said he sent me an email and at the bottom of it he put something like do you think you’ve got ADHD why would you think he thought that um because yeah I think the the book is quite detailed okay and to find all the bits and piece them together and put them in the right order is you have to hope from my point of view I have to hyper focus so I assume it’s something to do with that but I thought wow yes hadn’t thought of that before and it does it does fit I’ve joined a Facebook group for people with ADHD and they keep where people write various things and every so often I think wow yes I’ve done that all my life so if people are listening in um with reference to ADHD because there’s a lot more information out there at the moment and I actually posted an article um just recently that the BBC was sharing about I think I may you know have ADHD and people are always saying to me and the girls in the office because I can never seem to switch off and not even though Angela doesn’t sleep but my brain just never switches off I’m always thinking about things like I’m talking to you now but I can multitask and do other things as well so I’m thinking about other stuff um um so um yeah there’s an article that’s on the BBC website that women call ADHD women tell of their diagnosis struggles so um if you had to encapsulate what ADHD was how would you you encapsulate it what would be your view well for me it’s probably more what they used to call ADD so it is um attention deficit disorder which in in relation to me is basically I don’t focus on things that I’m not interested in yeah which is always a problem at school because there’s lots of things topics you’re not interested in but the ones you are you do if you can focus and stay focused you’ll go a long way um but the hyperactivity is something that also gets in the way a bit sometimes I know there’s a lot more to it than those two things anyway but but yes I’m my brain is busy okay I’ve got this I’ve got the article in front of me now actually I’ll just sort of read a little bit so it says social media has led to some women being diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder after recognising symptoms online according to some sufferers and specialists GPs in Wales said it can take over a year to get an assessment on the NHS singer Bronwyn Lewis from Neat paid £650 for a private assessment that has said others may not be able to afford to do the same I know there’s a lot more people now that are going down the private route especially for autism as well Bronwyn said I was seeing a lot of videos about ADHD I really connected with it they sounded like me and it looks like me but then I was sitting in the car listening to a phone in on radio too about women who have been diagnosed later in life every woman sounded like me had the same struggles as me had been misdiagnosed like me sorry yeah and I just sat in the car and cried it was a penny drop moment for me why women may wait decades for an ADHD diagnosis women mask ADHD symptoms but are now coming forward there’s also a website called the ADHD foundation and another founder on there and they do an awful lot of work but I yeah I think probably I have myself but I don’t feel the need to go for a diagnosis I just think I’m 63 so what’s the point I’ve got I’ve got through life this far and I think part of me thinks it’s to my advantage if that makes sense oh yeah definitely yeah it is it is to mine but I have I suppose trained myself to hyper focus even more than I would have done otherwise but I have always worked much harder at topics I liked and sort of not done well because I couldn’t be bothered with other things and the same rather applies to housework as well I’m afraid okay so yeah I’ve just they’ve also said them the Welsh government that’s Wales but said it was working with people in neurodevelopmental conditions including ADHD their families and professionals to make long-term improvements to neuro diversion services across Wales they’ve committed an additional 12 million pounds over three years to improve services while strengthening support for families and carers who are waiting for an assessment we are also developing a 10-year women’s health plan for the NHS don’t you think there’s more stuff now with reference to women you know menopause and all of that those conditions that are now been highlighted more where before it was like hidden you know it was like taboo to talk about them don’t you think sort of more awareness raising and acceptance now oh yes definitely yeah which is obviously a good thing yeah but I don’t think I think I’m lucky in that I’ve got thing the problems I’ve had I’ve had mildly so it gets in my way a bit I have great difficulty with my handwriting I’ve always been told that people can’t read it when they get letters it’s partly because my brain is on to the next word before I finish the first one all right so I’m much more comfortable on a computer handwriting suffered because more people as well I’ve read and I didn’t ask about this always a couple of years ago that because more people use computers now I’m there tend not to write much do you think that’s why people’s handwriting is not so good now it could well be but my writing has always been bad from yeah and and it is partly that I yeah I am thinking too fast so um the number of cards that I’ve torn up because it looks illegible it’s amazing so you’ve got a cat there I can hear your cat meowing what’s your cat’s name um Bagheera oh wow from the jungle book yeah he’s a black cat he’s the one who’s got diabetes I think he’s smashed a saucer or a plate in the kitchen just now so how long have you have you always been a cat person um yeah but I’ve only I haven’t always had them I didn’t when I was like the dogs are both rescues and they’re an absolute delight did they get on our care together um yeah I’ve got one one cat who is a late comer and she’s smaller than the rest and very very feisty but she is getting more settled with them the trouble is the dogs don’t have any awareness of their own size so sometimes she’s sitting behind them and they suddenly back into her they think so but but yes she’s really um rules the roost if she sits in a doorway they won’t go past the dogs oh so just remind people if they’re listening in that the website that you have is called autism decoded so that’s www.autismdecoded.com yeah colloco what’s the website address for that colloco direct which is all one and then .com okay so it’s k-o-l-o-k-o direct.com and you’re also a board member of the international board of sensory accessibility what’s that um it was set up by a group of people who are neurodiverse um because they wanted to make sure that nothing was done without them sort of thing but actually I haven’t forgotten that was on there because I’ve been meaning to look at their website because they don’t seem to have done very much lately so because this is a program um about promoting women’s mental health and well-being what do you do to relax when you’re not writing when you’re not um doing whatever it is that you’re doing setting up your merrily tv what do you do to relax because I’m always promoting about take five and just to remind everyone we have our well-being ambassador juliana weater who’s amazing um she’s on the charity website and she’s always posting stuff about how to relax the power of touch um and we started with juliana during lockdown because people were really struggling and personally I think lockdown covid and everything that’s gone on in the past has really affected people’s friendships relationships um I was taught I went to the theater um and I was talking to one of the ladies who’s a volunteer and she just says there’s a lot less people come to the theater now this is at the back um they’re volunteers the older volunteers are not volunteering anymore because they’re worrying about picking up um covid or the blue or whatever it may be and she just said regular shows that they have every year that are really popular just not selling um I went to see um uh one of the strictly guys and the name of him I can see his face but I’ve got brain fog um oh what’s his name uh begins with a g Giovanni Panica he did made in Italy that was amazing and she said obviously that was sold out could be the popular person but she said there’s so many tickets that they’re not so leaving the pantor didn’t sell as well um so what do you like to relax um I walk the dogs I laugh a lot I don’t watch the news the dogs the dogs are really good at keeping me amused because one of them is a clown really and she’s just sorry what kind of dogs are there um they’re both mongrels really they both came from romania okay um and when I first got that one she she was the only dog I’d ever heard scream you couldn’t touch her um she just screamed if you tried but now she’s an absolute delight she tries to stand on her head and she acts like an adolescent so she runs and hides on the bed also she thinks when I want to put her lead on and rolls about um um but I also like browsing charity shops and that sort of thing um and my grandfather was into antiques so I think that’s probably where I got it from and so yeah but I think I also don’t watch the news very much now do you know what you’re not the only person to say that now I’ve spoken to so many people who say they just rather watch a comedy program in the morning and use because it’s just too depressing um and there’s just too much too much doom and gloom and people are worrying and obviously um yeah it’s just that even I was saying that to my husband just the other day my son never watches the news he sort of browses things maybe on um on the internet but uh you know I have noticed a lot more people is not watching the news because it’s just too upsetting oh yeah definitely definitely and I felt I stopped watching it when covid started really and I felt a lot better for it okay um it’s a lot easier to keep bound see if you don’t have that go there’s nothing we can do to change it no it’s going to happen anyway and then you can I catch up on the headlines on the internet um but yeah laugh laughter I think if you can find things that make you laugh yeah is really really helpful they say it’s the best medicine and I’m sure it’s true it is best I like a good drama as well on television so um this this um hour is just flown by a chat to you it’s been a real pleasure talking to you Stella obviously we um talk on um social media every now and again um on facebook but again just to remind people it’s www.autismdecoded.com just check out um the books that um Stella has written and also colloco which I’ll definitely check it out is the accessible travel the sensory travel is of whether you want to plan the holiday and just book it directly or if you prefer someone to help you because it can be quite daunting trying to find a you know a good holiday that’s going to work for you and your family so please check that out um we’ll also be on the charity website as well if you haven’t picked that up so so they’ll be writing an article which you’ll be able to pick up the various links that she’s spoken about but I just want to say thank you so much uh for chatting to me it’s been really really interesting talking to you and um yeah just um keep going that’s all we can do isn’t it keep walking those dogs and I hope your cat hasn’t done too much damage I’ll go and have a look in a minute very much indeed for having me it’s been a delight talking to you oh thank you so much and thank you everyone just keep going and hopefully it will get a little bit warmer soon won’t be so cold and yeah I’ll speak to you again very very soon and don’t forget to listen on Gateway radio as well while I speak to Aston every one of my pastors bye everyone thank you again Stella bye thank you bye bye