In London, we made our way south to Clapham Junction, for my catchup section of aspergers coaching with Bill both as nervous as hell. I think I was nervous, not because I’m not used to and comfortable with Bill as a coach but because I was also taking Em along with me. And Emma was nervous because she was meeting someone new and didn’t really know what to expect.

We settled our nerves with a hot chocolate and and double chocolate chip cookie in Cafe Nero, before wandering up the road to our appointment.

Bill was as just the same as ever, and remembered me immediately – then again apparently I’m quite hard to forget! The format of the session was based around helping me regain confidence in myself and my work situation (with reference to certain ‘killer’ questions of: how do you deal with difficult situations/people; what are your strengths/weaknesses). He has this way, a very coaching way of asking a question that leads out the perfect answer that made me realise that I do actually have alot going for myself and I am good at what I do. I think the intervening time of being on short-term contracts and that insecurity hand led to me thinking negalively about what happened at Blackwell over the short-lived Production Editor job and the subsequent being-replaced-by-a-machine redundancy.

The other focus of the meeting was to allow Emma to see a bit more how my mind works, and to help her deal with my little peculialities. She was also able, by observing Bill’s coaching style, to see how ask me questions to get the most out of me.

After fearing the day (last night before bed, my head was buzzing with uncertainess) we both had a really enjoyable time and learnt such a lot, it was well worth the time and the money.

• awareness of mine and other’s time presures
• switching off conversation…
• state management (adjusting the state of my mind for pre-meeting to meeting to post-meeting in the broadest sense of the word ‘meaning’)
• object orientation
• listening (and understanding/realising other people’s object orientation)

The overall perception was that over the course of these three or four months (yes, it has actually been that long), my awareness and confidence have grown considerably. Duncan himself, said that he had noticed huge differences in me, which makes me happy, as it does validate the investment in training that he has put into me. We looked at Helen’s original email – a curious beast in that it only exists in the form of a typed bullet list in an email because she was leaving for maternity leave and so wouldn’t be around for all the discussions – and we all decided that were that to be written now, it would be a different list. Somethings probably wouldn’t be on it; some would have less weight behind them. Changes have been made. Maybe I am on the cusp of reaching unconcious competence in these things.

Of course it’s not all over. Bill will be offering an after sales service of phone and email contact, and will check back in with both Louise and myself come the end of September and October. We haven’t even really touched yet on organising myself for the big meetings with external clients, and so it is likely that come the end of October I will have another coaching session to address this specific topic, leaving me free to end the hallowed society doors of Burlington House in London’s Picadilly and face the might of distinguished professors et al…

I don’t think I’ve cracked this thing by any means, but I do feel like I do now have a rule book that is printed in English for me, and that I am slowly understanding; becoming more confident in my ways; and self-aware of myself and aware others.

It’s been an intense few months, which possibly explains why my novel is still not much over the 60,000 word stage. I have ideas running through my head only this evening, and yet no time to write them down. I must make time. I have so many goals that i want to conquer…

Hot on the heels of last week’s additional session, yesterday I was back to London Town for more coaching. So what had changed since my last coaching session? Well, of course there was last Thursday’s curious discovery for one, plus one on the nature of friends that I discovered at the weekend. My weekend in Derbyshire was brilliant; it was great; I had a fantastic time. It was good to see Rachel and Joe, and their family again. Dalehead, and the Edale valley is magic. There’s nothing better than standing in a stream with your rock bar shifting rocks and damming the landscape in the name of conversation. And despite seering temperatures, the ten mile walk on Sunday up and round to Mam Tor was good fun, and I’m glad I did it. All this said though…

…boy the rest of the group are a weird bunch. It’s not even that I don’t know them, I’ve been out with them on Sunday’s before, and I’ve been on a couple of weekends too I think. This weekend though was the first time – and I’m sure this is Project Nelly related – that I realised what an odd bunch they are, and how much I don’t have in common. I’m not going to go into it, but some of it the things that people said and did bugged me somewhat: a bit of intolerance, a bit of inflexibility, and a touch of plain dullness – these are not the kind of people that I can really be ‘friends’ with. But you know what? It doesn’t matter. I quietly fumed a little, but I didn’t get angry – just underwent quiet realisation. The process allowed me to look objectively at some of my other relationships in my life. Particularly the work one’s.

I don’t have many friends. My closest friends – those who I am honest with about my most inner secrets – tend to be either people from school, college, conservation holidays, and who are now geographically separated from me, or here, online. If you asked me to name someone who I could call up on the phone at the moments notice, and go for a drink there and then … I don’t think I could.

This said, amongst my peers at wind band, and at work (the two places where I do interact weekly/daily with people) I think I can now identify those people who:

• i consider to be friends
• are people with who I friendly too, but who are are just colleagues
• who are and always will be colleagues

Yesterday, Bill took me through some techniques about how to recognise friends v. relationships, and more importantly some techniques for establishing whether the people who I consider to be possible friends, also consider Me in the same way. As part of this, he brought out his video camera to help illustrate to me, how my body language works on other people.

In the second half of the session – which yesterday sprialled out of the original three hours up to 4 o’clock – we looked at controlling the State of my mind. What state do I need to be in to prepare for a meeting. What State do I need to switch into for having the meeting. And of course the techniques for switching from nervous and panicky to organised and methodical. All very interesting, and all very useful.

Now alll I have to do is put the plan into action…