Old ladies to the front: in praise of unglamorous bands

Ruth Miller with the Unglamorous LP.

Years ago, when Twitter was a place where you  could find community, I came across an account called Punk Girl Diaries.  The two women behind it were punk fans and musicians Ruth Miller aka Vim Renault and Polly Hancock aka Lene Cortina. 

It turned out they did a website (no longer active) and an excellent fanzine, which I immediately subscribed to. And merch, too: I now have a Punk Girl Diaries T-shirt with the word “Typical” on the front. 

Autism resources part 2: Recent books

My first autism reading list was given to me after I got my “diagnosis”.  My second reading list is books I found myself. These are some of the books that have come out since I found out I was autistic. And they are all by autistic writers. There’s much more now, and more being published all the time. 

As Joanne Limburg says in Letters to My Weird Sisters about learning from other lives, “I realised that other people had experienced the same kinds of painful moments and for the same reasons.”

There is so much I identify with when reading about other people’s experiences, especially women. Especially the older ones.

In  a world where so many "experts" and researchers still get it wrong (and where the "diagnostic manual" trades in deficits)  there's a notable amount of consistency in the way that #ActuallyAutistic people describe their own experiences among themselves. 

Autism resources part 1: My first reading list

It’s seven years since I found out I was autistic. I’ve written a blog post about it, because I wanted to think about how it felt then and how it feels now.

I’ve also written a list of books that I have found useful. Because they might be useful to other people, and because I like lists.

Actually, I’ve written two lists. This is the first one.

These books were on the reading list I was given after my diagnosis in 2018. Here’s what I learnt, and what I recommend.

Being #ActuallyAutistic: seven years on

It is seven years since I found out officially I am autistic. I thought it would be a good time to pause and think about it all. 

I’ve learnt a lot and I wish I’d learnt some of it sooner.

Men of a Certain Age - book review

In Men of a Certain Age, music journalist Kate Mossman has compiled a selection of interviews with ageing male rock stars, and uses them to analyse her own obsession with ageing male rock stars.

Does the world need another book about middle-aged male rock stars? Kate Mossman asks the question herself: the answer being that she needed to write it. “The older male rock star,” she writes, “isn’t just my specialist subject – it’s my obsession.”