As much as I joke about being slightly Asperger’s I know that I am not. It’s like saying you’re slightly pregnant or slightly dead. I just have certain way about me that might make people think that I have difficulties in certain situations that people take for granted.

Here’s a frexample: personal space. I am not happy having any social interaction when somebody is within one arm’s length of me. Any closer than that equals a) FUCKING WEIRDO ALERT, or b) this is getting a bit whatsit, brace yourself!

This does not mean that I have Asperger’s syndrome, it means that I am normal. Unfortunately, my reaction to people invading my personal space might not adhere to standard operating procedures: whereas some people can deal with it, knowing it’s only a temporary discomfort, I find myself backing away, even reclining in my stance or undertaking evasive circular movements to avoid any further breaches of those very important twenty or so inches. In extreme circumstances, I’ve had to hold out my arm and tell the perpetrator that “this” is my limit “back the fuck away from me!”. It doesn’t go down too well on a first date, but it worked quite effectively with a Celtic colleague who was just simply very affectionate and at ease with everybody he met (until he met me).

But why do people invade others’ personal space anyway? Surely those who were brought up in the same society have the same sorts of tolerance limits to what’s acceptable. Any encroachment on this indicates that they were brought up by elves or that they’re just not quite right in the head. Why don’t they realise that people are backing away from them? This indicates a total lack of social awareness that might be attributed to somebody with Asperger’s, but somebody with Asperger’s would never get that close to somebody – they’d be in a different room, texting their way through a conversation so as to avoid any sort of personal contact, just like I do.

I’m going to reintroduce my “Experimentals” series, whereby I test stuff out.

I shall take a statistically, proper group of weirdos participants and measure how close they are when they talk to people in stood-up conversations. This shall be measured against a number of other factors:

It is hypothesised that there will be a high correlation between distance from victim and other stupidly annoying habits. I will publish my findings in Nature Gossip, You Magazine and Take a Break. I think a meeting with the PM is in order too because let’s face it, celebrities who are stupid enough not to change their voicemail PIN then complain when they get hacked by the newspapers who give them the publicity they crave can get a meeting in Number 10 and they’re just whinging fuckwits. Millions of people are affected by personal space invasion on a daily basis, yet our plight remains ignored. It’s a huge, huge problem.

The Killing
It’s over. I can’t believe it. One of the best crime dramas ever to have graced our screens and it’s all over.

In tribute to Sarah Lund and her magnificent jumpers, here’s one that I have my eye on in the Scandinavian jumper store in Keswick.

She never got close to anyone either,