Last Saturday night I found out that my acoustic guitar parts that I had spent a whole day in the studio recording last August for my friend Warren's album were given a listen in December and found wanting as they were out of time. No one was going to tell me and they'd have been replaced without my knowledge but one of my friends got drunk and rather gloatingly told me the news. And that he was going to replace my parts. I knew going into this I might be "found out" as not having sufficient co-ordination to be a proper musician and lo, it has come to pass.
I normally spend Fridays rehearsing with a group of disabled musicians but found out late on Thursday the rehearsal was off as Brian, a drummer I support part-time for Key Housing, has had a lot of flatpack furniture delivered that day and needed it assembling. Putting together IKEA furniture is not my thing but I don't get paid if I don't do a shift so off I went to Brian's flat, not fully realising I would be required to assemble some of his new cupboards.
I protested to the support worker in charge that I wan't any good at this kind of thing but my words fell on deaf ears. "These things fly together", I was told. "They practically assemble themselves". Not for a dyspraxic they don't. Four hours later, at the end of my shift, I left Brian with a broken quarter-assembled cupboard unit, all broken dowling and bad joins. I had tried and I had failed. It was just assumed that because I was male i would be handy and able to do the DIY job. This, despite having been very open and forthright about my dyspraxia to Key Housing in my application and interview. None of this information seems to have been passed on to any of my supervisors, including those who governed my hellish stay at Garnethill which more or less culminated in my receiving and extremely personal dressing-down that highlighted, along with the distinctly untrue assertion that I had a personal hygiene problem, what was considered my unacceptably unkempt hair and badly chosen and scruffily worn clothes. It was an extremely hurtful episode which also served to underline that for all the assurances given at the interview that my dyspraxia would be taken into account, no consideration was taken regarding it.
On the way to soft play at Jungle In The City with my son I dropped into Sainsbury's to get some provisions. In the checkout queue two women behind me were talking. They'd not seen each other in a while and one was filling in the other about progress with her younger relatives: one was off to Camp America for three months, one was training to be a landscape gardener and the other had won a scholarship to become a dancer. It struck my that all three of these options were beyond the remit of a dyspraxic like me. Not that I'd be interested in landscape gardening or dancing. But even a three hour stint at Camp America would more than likely expose my differences and shortcomings.
One of the lifelong symptoms of my dyspraxia has been an acute intolerance to sudden sharp bangs, the most common of which is the bursting of balloons. On arrival with my son at soft play I was immediately greeted by the sight of a little girl playing with a balloon. In the past - in different circumstances - I've been able to request that balloons be (quietly) disposed of but I couldn't do this in an open public place such as Jungle In The City. I just couldn't bring myself to stay and cower for an hour and a half in case that balloon, or any others that happened to be present, burst so, much to my son's disappointment, I guided his buggy out the door once more and into the greying. misty Glasgow day.
