The appraisal went much as expected. A 10 minute trip down memory lane into what my objectives were (memo: ‘I already knew’), why they were picked (memo: see previous memo) and why they were not fully met (memo: ‘we knew they wouldn’t be’). Then we moved into patronising mode, where we discussed my strengths and weaknesses . This meaningless exchange lasted a good 25 minutes. And the outcome ……… nothing has changed since last time, but ‘I’m working on my weaknesses’. I have been doing so for the past 40 years or so. Then came my objectives (or jobs that I have to do because my line-manager can’t). These were basically to continue the ones before, plus one more. Now why on earth it took another 20 minutes to complete that part, I have no idea. That is it until the six monthly review, when we will go through the same thing again.

The situation with Mrs H and the eldest, is beginning to improve. She seemed a little happier this evening. They had all been to her sisters for my Mum-in-laws birthday, and S**** had come along too. He was not well yesterday.  Apparently, he had had a pizza on Tuesday night, and was ill after it. Now I remember being his age, and experiencing the very same type of illness on a regular basis. You go out, have 16 pints of beer, followed by a curry/kebab, and it is the food that always makes you ill !!!! I don’t think she slept too well last night worrying about him. I honestly believe she thought he had swine flu’.

Youngest has just had an ‘episode’. He has been great all day, then it comes to go to bed and he kicks off. All the Autism experts say there is a trigger, but quite often it is nothing that can be indentified. The droning starts, then the violence kicks in, and it is often 20 minutes before settles down. Tonight it seems to be taking a lot longer. The violence seems to increase when you try to stop it. It is as if he needs to hurt you, and his anger will not subside until he has. But the reason for the anger is not obvious. One of the annoying things is though, that the experts always look to you as if you are the cause. We spoke to one of the ‘experts’ some time ago, someone from the Disability Team, and when Mrs H said that often the anger is directed at me, the ‘expert’ turned to me and asked me ‘why did I think he directed it at me?’ Or in other words … it must be my fault.

Last day tomorrow. Hopefully we will have a reasonable week. I hope the weather picks up again. It will be quite a miserable week if we get the rain we had last time I was off. R*** has been quite amenable this week. Let’s hope it continues (apart from the bad parts of course).

Thought I had bagged a bargain tonight. I need to but some more RAM for my PC. It has 1.5gb, but I want to get it up to the maximum 2gb (it’s a 4 year old PC.) I bought the last lot from Play.com for about £16.00. When it worked, I though I would get 1gb, but the price had rocketed to £34.00. However, when I checked the site today, there was an offer, for the same RAM as before, at £17.00. Too good to be true ??? Well yes and no. They were out of stock, and there was no indication when the new stock would come in. So I left it, but I will keep checking, as that extra 1/2gb will make a lot of difference.

That’s it. Seem to have gone on a little tonight, but it has been an interesting (and I use the word lightly) day.