Roger, could you implement a "withdrawn by poster" option?

Tue 1 Jul 2008, 16:59

Because I'm being a dyslexic nitwit (I'm dyslexic but would probably take issue with the accusation of nitwit as a full time appellation but I do lapse...) and I meant RICHARD. Doh! I am always getting names mixed up, left and right mixed up, general speech aphasia (use wrong words in speaking) all the symptoms of the particular "brand" of dyslexia I suffer (there are very many different types and varieties). Took until I was 38 and doing a thesis at Uni that my tutor suggested I might be dyslexic and also ADHD given the disparity between my spoken verbal fireworks abilities in seminars and able to give fill-in lectures on occassion (having had a lot of practical experience in the area I was formally qualifying myself with a bit of paper in) and my inability to write it down when confronted by a blank piece of paper! Went to the Dyslexia research centre then in Oxford in '93 or so and did a series of tests and I was waaaaay dyslexic, but high IQ had covered it up. Much more common than people think to be missed like this, particularly for working class kids my generation who were at school in 50s and 60s. Then we were just meant to be factory and ditch digging farm fodder and bright boys like me were seen as a nuisance with all my sarcastic questioning of what limited rubbish I was being told when I bothered being in school at all - basically they couldn't teach me as no one on the staff could keep up! Fortunately saved from a life of misdeamenour by having to feed and house a disabled mother and siblings, was head of house from an early age in effect, so no time for messing around, work work work from before I was a teenager, but I did consume libraries during my spare time as no money to waste down the bar/pub (and obviously looked too young to be allowed in until I was about 15/16 when I could get away with it!). Quite a few kids of my "class" growing up in a country with no health service or social security worth a darn like me, responsible from an early age and did little school attending as a result, not uncommon at all for the 50s into the 70s in the steel towns etc. and quite a lot of us carers were the top IQ lot so able to hold things down and together and not drift into "bad company" which was the other more usual route... I'm at the youngest end of the spectrum age-wise in my mid 50s, this would not be unusual to any working class person in their 60s or 70s, as one could still "disappear" off the school and welfare radar in those days that big brother welfare state probably doesn't allow to happen last 20 or 30 years in Britain. Sorry, bit doped up on afternoon (and first dose of the day) opiates kicking in in readiness for kids to be dropped off (tuesdays is day off when they are back late so took dose late today) and mind and fast typing fingers are meandering. Were you of working class origins? If so and I suspect you are a decade or more older than me, you'd know the type - my nickname on building sites was "The Scholar" as I was always reading something heavy, but I noticed everyone would turn to me to help them out with complex paperwork and financial difficulties or getting loans and if they'd got into trouble with the bosses, to be their stand by representative if there was a grievance or anything... rest of time got my leg pulled for reading heavy tomes of science and economics and history in a very eclectic mix!