I am busy. I have a supposedly part time job which takes up 35 hours most weeks. I am a post graduate student at Cambridge. This is also part time. I am resolving the future of a very small family farm in Northern Ireland with my cousin who is I think is getting more and more ill by the day. Add to this the normal responsibilities that go with family life and fatherhood and there is a recipe for an imminent burnout and breakdown. As it happens, I feel that I am getting used to the routine and now have time to start this blog.
I am a slow writer. Twenty years ago I studied psychology at a University where many of the country's experts on dyslexia were based. Nothing I have read about dyslexia ever connected with, or spoke to me about my personal atypical written and spoken language quirks. More recently (over the last four years, perhaps less) I have begun to understand a similar, but separate, communication disorder: Specific Language Impairment. (SLI). SLI is more than just difficulty with reading in class. There are a group of distinctive markers. Something not quite right with written, spoken, or heard language. There is tendency to interpret language literally and rigidly. There is an associated probability of poor theory of mind, which is usually associated with Asperger syndrome and autism. In short SLI is a group of communication characteristics which looks like a mixture of dyslexia and Asperger but is actually something else. About one thing I am absolutely sure: It is not a disability.
At the age of 10 I was considered too far behind my peers in character and at communication to be allowed to go on to the local, rather poor, comprehensive school. By the age of 18 I had a place at Sandhurst, the world leading military academy who's bread and butter criteria are character and communication. I later added to that with a good honours degree from a top level UK university, passing SAS selection and gaining a place at Cambridge. (There were some failures and scrape-throughs as well) In all of these places there were people who, in an orthodox way, were much better qualified than I. My trick was to find out a way of using different aptitudes to get to solutions that others could not see.
I am sure that academic and educational research centres do not understand the skills conferred by SLI. Why that should be so I will write about here.
I will also write about:
The evolution of language and social cognition.
1972 Series 3 Landrovers.
Renovating derelict farmhouses.
Left and right hands and brains.
Mindfulness.
Cheap B&Bs
I think that I will find myself writing about fulfillment, grace and death.
