The 09/01/2021, the UK is in lockdown. The idea of being able to get out in the New year and create is becoming a distant memory. The few hours I got back at the beginning of December 2020 seems like a lifetime ago.

We are probably not alone in these feelings! This is hard enough for people who can live normal lives at home, so many people can’t – so many trapped by lockdown and all the extra stress it brings with it. That’s something we know a lot about!

We are parents of a disabled child, our youngest on the Autistic spectrum. He also has developmental delay and severe learning difficulties and anxiety. Anyone who knows or lives with anyone with a disability like this understands when I say lockdown has not been easy. In fact it has been one of the toughest times we have had to face.

People on the spectrum don’t like change, they thrive on routine. They function in a way that a change can unbalance their lives completely. Normally it has to be introduced gradually, integrating whatever is changing and making it normal over time. Adults and children on the spectrum who are not as severe learn coping strategies to deal with things neurotypicals just see as mundane, run of the mill, easy life situations.

Big change, constant change, total change – that is something that needs time to work into life. That is something we haven’t had over the past 12 months. Change has been a daily thing and not just little things. The change has been giant, massive, all-encompassing. Life has changed as we know it.

Try to explain that to a child who is nearly ten, but has the understanding of a 3-4 year old. A child who can’t express their emotions, so the sort of massive change triggers violence or massive anxiety.

This is what we have lived with for 9 years, the last 12 months being the hardest we have known. We are attacked for saying the wrong thing, sitting in the wrong place, moving in the wrong direction, we have to watch as the rage subsides and turn into anxiety and sometimes worse.

We are not alone, millions of others will go through what we go through. Whether it is as a career or with their own mental health.

On Saturday, after a week were we had built him up to go to school, only to be told it was closed, to be told no-one could have seen this coming. To have to tell him his world was changing again and again. To say to school anyone could see this coming, to demand that school must be reopened for him and his fellow students, all on the spectrum.

We needed escape, we needed change. For our own mental health, so not to have to sit and be abused by a boy who can’t help himself. We got in the car and drove, drove and carried on driving.

He is relatively calm in the car. The noise, the world passing by his window. He still tells us if we say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing, we are not attacked for it, we are not sat in the same four walls facing the same situation. So we drove for 4 and a half hours. 150 mile round trip, stopping only to let him put his feet in the deepest snow he had ever seen and to fly the drone for 10 mins.

The reason I started this channel was to create, was to get out and make something. To do something more than working and be a full-time career. We have had one day off this year. One day when we could sleep in bed together for more than 2 or 3 hours, sit on the same sofa together. One day to just be normal husband and wife, just do nothing or anything, whatever takes our fancy.

This channel is not about Autism or raising a disabled child, it is about creating something that is just for me, to show I can still have a normal life.

Hopefully one day soon that will be true.

Here is the short video I managed to create in the 10 mins we had.

Hope you give it a like and subscribe.

We had the most amazing sunset I have seen in a long time, no chance of capturing that. I hope some of you had your cameras out.

Till next time, stay safe, take care and Thanks for watching

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