Just Mooching About at the Cricket

Yesterday was a difficult day, as the news of a Covid spike in the town set me on edge and made me suddenly get very angsty about all the maskless car sharing going on in the car park and an insanely daft finger buffet another team decided to have.

A fine idea at times like this.

So it was a relief to get home.

Today I wasn't playing, but I did take myself down the cricket ground for a few hours to watch our first team to play Gotham. Sadly Batman wasn't playing, but they were a decent team as it was without any Dark Knights in the ranks.

It certainly looked hard for our batsman to score, as we were 87 for 5 when I arrived with about 12 overs of our innings to go. But the skipper played a great knock to see us reach 150. Hopefully he'll be thrilled to see that he's mentioned here, as well as the guy batting with him who must have found it rather more difficult to hit the ball than he does when I'm bowling at him in the nets.

Both lads scored 35 or so.

I then watched the first 15 overs of the Gotham replied, which was marked by some extremely tidy bowling from our openers who took a wicket each before I left after having lapped the ground god knows how many times.

Apparently, it turned into a sensational game where Gotham made it home by just two wickets in the last over. Foolish man was I to leave.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 09.08.20

Well, my Tourette's Really got to Someone at Work

Last week, someone made a complaint about my behaviour at work.

What could it have been? My stressed obscenity yelling and flailing gotten too much for the management? Have I wasted too much time making sure my hands are germ free in the bathroom? Is my clumsiness meaning I do my job too slowly?

Apparently not.

It seems, I was...sort of...scaring someone. Immediately behind me, sits a chap who gets around by motability scooter a lot of the time, although he can walk ok over short distances. I don't know the cause of his disability, but I know he has been mugged twice. He told me this.

He told me this when he asked me not to basically tic behind him, or move too close behind him. He said his reaction to people who come up behind him and startle him thus is to hit them. Now one of the things I do at work sometimes is to automatically jump up from my desk, and take a few paces back sometimes, sometimes a bit of a trot up and down, a bit of a wave, a bit of a cricket bowl at imaginary things.

A lot of the time I'm barely aware I'm starting to do it. I just DO. I apologised and said there was no intent to it, this happened twice. The third time, he went to my immediate supervisor, who took me out back for a quiet chat.

He was totally understanding, said he knew I did things without realising, but could I please try and realise and not do stuff too near this other fellow. I said of course I would, if I did realise, and I would move away from him. He then said if he did hit me, as he'd obviously told my supervisor might happen, it might lead to very unpleasant disciplinary procedures for him.

I told him I wouldn't "press charges" as it were if it did happen, but I was told company policy would have over-ruled me. So basically, if you are going to tic, go and tic somewhere else if at all possible.

Like I said, I said I would if I could, but sometimes it's such an automated action it just happens. I myself hate being touched unexpectedly, and in fact am probably even jumpier than he is. I don't criticise him. But I get mighty puzzled when I see him standing talking to a manager with his back to a busy doorway, where people were walking through rather closer than I was.

An office re-arrangement at work has now had the good fortune of separating us. But I am very curious as to how on earth this situation would have played out. Because I wouldn't have been able to stop myself for long, and ergo the promised punch would have arrived at some point.

I think I forget how intimidating Tourette's can perhaps be. It isn't cute. It can't be cured by swimming with dolphins or going on a once in a lifetime rip to Disneyland. I can imagine a 6'1 85 kilo man in a frenzy can be quite scary, especially when the attractive snarls and yells are thrown in. I can be lungey, and disrespectful of personal space, which is a copper bottomed irony.

But, it is me, and without it I wouldn't be me any more. Was he being oversensitive? Was I?

Si

A History of Tourette's

This post was actually written as one of the header pages for the blog, but I felt it could do with a wider reading, so here it is.

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"What is going on with my body?" I'd never ask myself as a child, as a parental scolding voice, or gorping child, would point out my flailing arms and legs or frantically rubbing hands.

"Talking to yourself again?" the stepfather would ask, as I continued a two hour session of playing imaginary cricket with a tree with live commentary thrown in.

I would shrug dfensively, say as always that I couldn't help it, and get on with the (part sub-conscious) job of developing an eccentric personality as a cover for all these strange behaviours.

So my life continued, being bright but always struggling in exams due to inability to write fast enough, enjoying chemistry theory but hating the lab classes as I was too slow and clumsy to set up my apparatus, and too obsessive about the results, often too restless to settle down to homework.

But I made it through school with good A Levels, although they should have been better, and went to Exeter University where the nightmare of chemistry practicals caused me to give up the subject and become a Classicist at the end of my first year instead.

Round about then, things started getting difficult...hardcore obsessions, contamination compulsions, sleeping problems, inability to concentrate. Again I didn't know what was going on, but it was causing a great deal of distress.

Luckily I read "An Anthropologist on Mars" by Oliver Sacks in the University bookshop, and it was his piece on a surgeon with Tourette's Syndrome that unlocked all the doors, and enabled me to get the diagnosis.

Things seemed better straightaway...it wasn't my fault anymore.

Obviously, it's never that straightforward. But my interest in nature, running and cycling has helped enormously. One of the main things I like to do with this blog is try and impress upon people how benficial even a slight interest in their local environment can be to their physical and mental wellbeing.

Tourettes and Nature

So, the weather outside is good, but I'm stuck inside, a twelve hour shift with no natural light.

I've had a few tics, been a little bit jumpy. Too much energy to burn, and no way of burning it. Tourette's is a condition exarcebated by stress, and in my case, an un-occupied brain can start obsessing, leading to an increase in symptoms. Sometimes picking up envelopes just isn't stimulating enough.

It made me reflect on how good I think Nature is for my Tourete's specifically, and my mental health in general. When I walk, cycle, or run, there is a rhythym, and purpose, to my motion that smooths out to a large degree the jerkiness and twitchiness of my normal motion.I may twitch or speed up if I get excited, but nowhere near as violently as can happen normally.

In addition to the physical motion, I like to employ Radio 4 as a means to impart informational noise to the brain to drown out any obessive or rage-y thoughts that may be lurking there. I always like to believe my exercise is also an aid to learning, although Radio 4 goes straight off if "Any Questions" starts any ominous looming in my eardrums.

There is also the challenge of nature that keeps my brain busy and so on an even keel. "What is that flower? Was is there a week ago?" "Is that a goosander on the lake again?" "What bird could that be singing?" - I also like to look up, and about, all the time, always hoping to see something. Thus I keep mentally active...and also trip up on chain fences and strain my ribs in the process. But at least I'm happier while I'm doing it.

The main thing is just an overall feeling of wellbeing from being able to exercise in the open air. And I'm not talking in a masochistic, bodybuilding "no pain no gain" or (ugh) "feel the burn" sense. It's almost more in the sense of exercising your right to be outside in the - free - open air, to do what you want with no-one out there telling you when you have to go inside again.

The freedom is wonderful, and I'm always gratified to see folk doing similar things to me. And I'll keep doing it, easing my Tourette's, settling my mind, forever I hope.