This is what I say about Asperger Syndrome. Hans Asperger was not somebody who could have been considered a scrupulous practitioner and he was no pimpernel of autistic kids, BUT, had the Americans, British and French said, "Okay, even if Hans Asperger had little hesitation in sending disabled children to concentration camps and the gas chambers, the ONE good things he did was identify other autistic kids and his work could be used (without attaching his name to it) to broaden the definition and description of autism."

Hans Asperger died in 1981, and his work was later discovered and translated by Professor Lorna Wing, an English paediatrician. 1981 was a pivotal year for me. It was the year that tragedy struck with the passing of my maternal grandmother, but it was also a year when, earlier on, my teacher, a woman who was possibly in her early 30s, called my mother up to school and expressed concerns about my development and suggested I be assessed. It was the year I was wrongly diagnosed with muscular dystrophy. I remember, during ball games the previous year, a teacher calling me "butterfingers" and one afternoon, she was getting us to do an activity that required us to skip (step and hop, not jump over a rope) and I struggled and she slapped me and yelled at me to skip. The next year the PE teacher was frustrated with me. And I had issues with swimming, as well.

I, also remember, in 1981, I had episodes of diarrhoea and my mother took me to the GP, a man who was more of an example of what not to do than to do. He used to smoke (okay, he didn't sit in his consultation room and chain smoke, but he used to go out the back and smoke, and if he knew you and knew you were a smoker, he'd say, "Thank God, it's you," when you closed the door, and light a cigarette. He'd then ask what was wrong, do any exam he had to do, wash his hands, smoke his cigarette, if he felt like it, he'd have another and talk to you for a few minutes. Then, at the end of the consultation, he'd empty the ashtray out the back, spray air freshener around the room, wait a few minutes and call the next patient) and was like Becker but not so caustic. That doctor suggested stool samples and I remember, the Friday after that, my mother came to school early and we were in the withdrawal room watching TV. The teacher called me out and my mother told me to go and get my port. I did, and my brother (age 3) walked me back to the classroom and asked what we were doing (I told him we were watching a program about Ancient Egyptians, which we were) and I asked my mother what was happening. She told me that the GP had spoken to another doctor who wanted me to have a blood test. It could have been to diagnose coeliac disease.

I read some stuff about autism and found, "OMG, this is me!" I have some external validation, but my sister-in-law, who is a mental health nurse, sat down with my mother and said, "Look, Peter is as classic a case of what used to be called Asperger's Syndrome as you'll meet, right down to the quirks. And anybody who knows anything about autism will be able to tell you that." She even checked with a neurodiverse colleague of hers.