What gets my goat!

I do feel annoyed & sometimes angry about the day-to-day political
goings-on in our society … the plight of pensioners, the majority
of whom who have to make do with paltry state pensions, for example,
(myself not included), set against the background of the rich
getting richer and flaunting it with stately homes and posh
life-styles … all this is here to stay of course, and an individual
like myself can do little to change things.

But it’s also the more minor / trivial things which also get my goat
… loud noises / bangs and intensely bright flashing lights, in
particular. The other night I was just “turning in” – getting into
bed to go off to sleep, when I heard one of our smoke alarms going
off … with a loud beep, about once a minute (the battery was low).
Now unusually for me, I’ve become fairly deaf in my right ear (I’m
blocked up with ear wax), but the sound of the smoke alarm was so
shrill, that I thought I’d have to get up and remove the battery
(and set it to re-charge overnight). This I did by getting up rather
gingerly on a not very strong fold-up chair.

Instant peace and quiet! Wonderful.

Other loud noises I can’t tolerate – sirens of passing emergency
vehicles and live gunshots on theatre stages … I’m well known in our
family for shouting out in horror, if there’s a surprise gunshot on
stage!

I can’t tolerate bright flashing lights on stage/TV also … the last
Eurovision Song Contest was appalling in this respect, and I find
the TV talent shows on ITV really bad also.

I have to cover my eyes up, but even then I get quite a bad headache
with what feels like eye strain.

Mrs C comes across a few individuals with Asperger’s Syndrome in her
counselling work, and has been on some top-notch training courses on
the subject (and has read several books on it too). To my surprise,
this intolerance of loud noise and bright flashing lights is one of
the known features of people with AS … and I have a few other
characteristics of the condition … though to my mind, I reckon mine
fit in more with introversion than with AS. I won’t elaborate more
on this, except to say that my using fancy words like “elaborate”,
rambling off the main subject of what I’m talking about onto other
things, and focussing on rather nerdish interests rather than
interacting with people, could all be regarded as part of AS.

There's lots more about AS in this Wikipedia article ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome


Well, so now you know … I’m a bit odd … but then you know that already. :)