When I say “what a week”, I don’t really strictly mean this week [ed: week of 13th July, not really “this” week] and I probably don’t just mean a week.
So, specifically, what I am thinking about when I say “what a week” is Labour winning the General Elections, or maybe, more pertinently the Conservatives losing and losing bad, me going to not only Glastonbury but also Lord’s to see Jimmy Anderson bowl in his last ever Test Match and, most importantly of all, Ava-Jane turning fifteen. Yes, the big one five is upon her.
I also thought that I should get a blog post in before these weeks got even bigger, and they end up with England being crowned European champions, what a thing that would be, eh? But best that this blog post exists in the before times, before we know if England could pull off the big heist and after essentially stinking out the competition, could they beat the best and most exciting team in it? This blog post will never know. [ed: yes, it will and no they couldn’t]
So, Ava-Jane’s birthday, well I missed the trip to Gifford’s Circus due to the aforementioned Glastonbury jaunt. Did I regret this? Not massively to be honest, I love Gifford’s and Ava-Jane adores it but Glastonbury was a one-off opportunity and a lot of fun.
One of the many good things about Ava-Jane is that she is not going to hold it against you if you’re not there on a specific day or time. She will happily take multiple celebrations where she is the centre of attention and gets to open another present. I got her a Glasto t-shirt.
But that said any Ava-Jane milestone is not something to be taken lightly. Our little tough nut has made it to fifteen and we are increasingly looking towards the future. I was even looking into what the regulations were for someone like Ava-Jane to vote in an election. She was too young for this one, but she will be old enough to vote in the next one.
As it turns out, the regulations around voting don’t really add up, like a lot of the post-18 legalese for someone with severe learning difficulties.
The regulations state, “A lack of mental capacity is not a legal incapacity to vote.” but also, “the decision as to whether and how to vote at an election must be made by the elector themselves and not by any other person on their behalf.” Ava-Jane would not be able to vote for both physical reasons, as in she would not be able to make a cross in a box and for mental reasons – she wouldn’t know what she was voting for and has no concept of what politics is (lucky her, many might think). So she might have a legal right to vote but wouldn’t actually be able to do it.
Speaking of elections…
Sir Keir Starmer is Prime Minister, yeah!! I mean, yay!
Part 2
I wrote the above some two months ago and obviously the excitement about Keir Starmer becoming PM was so underwhelming that I went no further. (That’s interesting, both “Keir” and “Starmer” get the little squiggly red spellcheck underline, whereas neither “Rishi” nor “Sunak” do. How long, I wonder, do you have to have been PM for before your names get entered into the great lexicon of the internet?)
Even taking the riots into account, Starmer’s first couple of months have been predictably dull. He has, of course, enacted some crap stuff and some not so crap stuff but for the first time in a long time, the government isn’t involved in incessant psychobabble and is just governing, how well or badly, we shall see.
His speeches are what the Spanish would describe as intragables (unswallowable) and his caution will end up pushing him into corners that he won’t be able to extract himself from but here we are. For the first time in a long time, I have found myself becoming detached from politics, reading the newspaper less, opting to listen to yet another podcast about The Rings of Power rather than my usual left-leaning remainiac fare. It’s a bit of a detox and I think it would do the country a world of good to try to grab this opportunity of a change at the top for a bit of a national detox… the recent riots would seem to indicate that I, not for the first time, am being a pie-eyed optimist.
So, I haven’t been motivated to hit the keyboard because there’s a political car crash going on and likewise, the main reason I get blogging is because Ava-Jane is having some health crisis or another and I need to deal with it through the medium of online verbiage. But she’s just been so well, it is almost as dull as Keir Starmer (I have added “Keir” and “Starmer” to dictionary, so they don’t get the little squiggly red spellcheck underline.)
Yes, so, well, Ava-Jane has been on fine form over the summer. She’s had a few seizures but we haven’t been in hospital for an emergency for ages (I am of course aware that having typed this and will then post these words online that we’ll probably be dialling 999 shortly after I hit the Publish button.)
When Ava-Jane is well, she makes such great progress. Both the summer camp that she went to late in the summer and school, after her first day back, have commented on how well her communication is advancing. Just this evening, she started insisting on something with me and she was very clearly saying “floor” and “mat” as she wanted to have a bit of a roll around.
I have been spending lots of time with AJ of late. Fo’s mum, Trish, is very unwell, so Fo has had to be with her. Otto’s a great help and AJ loves nothing more than hanging out with him and his girlfriend Ashley – a top girl.
We all went on a holiday jaunt to a village near Great Yarmouth on the Norfolk coast where Fo had scouted the most excellent adapted house with all the requisite space, hoists and so on to make us comfortable. The beach also had the beach buggy wheelchairs that AJ needs, or more accurately, we need, to push her across the sand.
Ava-Jane went off to her Oundle Mencap holiday. These are absolutely fantastic for her and a great respite for us. The camps are run by pupils and ex-pupils of Oundle School. Some of the carers keep coming back to help out years after they have left the school and they all have a bonkers time of it. Ava-Jane invariably comes back with a hundredweight of glitter in her pockets and down her trousers and covered head-to-foot in stickers.
Ava-Jane is just back at school in what would theoretically be her GCSE year… she won’t be taking any GCSEs. Otto is off to Uni, he won’t be far away but she will miss him massively. Then we will soon be having to think about what next for AJ, as with the regulations around voting, once she turns 18, she is an adult and is granted as much agency as possible. But this means that, in theory, she is in control of all her own finances and decisions on what she wants to do after school. As she can’t decide these things for herself, they will be done by committee, not just by us, which while right on many levels, feels a bit odd. I don’t think it’s a complete drop off after she turns 18 but we will need to seriously start making plans. My own instinct is to keep her with us for as long as possible but we can’t coddle her for ever and she does need to go out into the world on her own at some point. Yikes!
Misliterature 