Remember those bibs you put on babies that are made of moulded plastic that have like a cup at the bottom to catch the food instead of it just falling everywhere? My first thought I can remember is picking up food with a blue plastic spoon and just putting it directly in the food catcher. Why can I remember this so clearly, I have no idea. Did you do this too?

I actually remember making the decision to put the food in the catcher. It inevitably ended up there anyway, so I thought why waste time putting it in my mouth only for it to fall out - just chuck it straight in the plastic thing and be done with it.

At this point, my Mum should have done what The McCanns did and taken the family to Portugal, eaten tapas in a restaurant and left me alone in apartment 5a but she decided to brave the adventure. My decision making doesn’t really improve much from here, I just get more capable of executing mad ideas.

Something that would later seemingly become the norm: Adam wrecking holidays. This clearly started when I was 3 years old. My parents, my brother Mark and myself, along with my Mum’s twin sister, her husband and their 3 kids all go down to the South of France for a week in the summer.

I’m 3 years old, I can’t remember this myself so it’s recounted but one day they took us to the beach and while trying to find a place to park, I was looking out the window (as I did) and noticed these rock pools.

There’s nowhere to park so we drive about 3km down the beach and set up shop. While the parents are unpacking, I have for some reason decided that I want to play in these rock pools. I want rock pools, I’m getting rock pools. That’s how this day is going.

So I do what any normal 3 year old would do. I walked.

And I walked and I walked.

Several hours later, I have walked the entire length of the beach back to where I saw these rock pools out the window earlier.

If you saw what I found you would be so confused. Essentially all I’m playing with is a rock where there’s a little cove in the top and some water in it.

I essentially made my poor parents feel like the McCanns after losing Maddy because I wanted to play with what amounted to a sink made of stone.

I wanted rock pools and I was going to get them. I’m as happy as anything with my little fishing net.

Eventually a French couple find me, obviously a bit confused as to why a 3 year old is chilling by himself with no sign of any adult supervision. They talk to me and because I can’t understand them, this upsets me a little bit. Fairly obvious that I’ve wandered off and with it starting to rain, they take me to the police station and I’m playing away with whatever toys or magazines they had kicking around.

My parents at this point were completely beside themselves. My Mum knows I haven’t gone in the sea and drowned because I know not to go in the sea with my clothes on.

They’ve called every available place they can, not finding anyone who can speak a word of English. I’d walked so far that the nearest police station they’d called had no idea but the next furthest one had a missing little boy. Initially dismissing it because I couldn’t have walked that far, they decide to head to the police station to check it out. Who’s sitting in the waiting room playing with a little fishing net and some other stuff I’d found in a basket? Me.

I’m not sure what it says about me that I wasn’t crying or particularly worried. I was only really a little upset because some people took me away from the rock pools and spoke to me in French.

To think I could have been the original Madeleine McCann.

In hindsight, I suppose I came across like a bit of a selfish dickhead for a large portion of my life. Essentially whatever I wanted, I would just analyse the quickest and most efficient way of getting that thing and just do it.

Take going to the park for instance. Pretty standard stuff from a parenting perspective - just sit on the bench, talk to other parents, point out your kid playing with others and hope and pray they don’t do anything stupid. As a moderately functional adult I can only imagine this being the stuff of nightmares for my folks.

Busy Saturday morning and we’re in the park across from my house, I’m about 5 years old and I queue up with 5 or 6 other kids, wait my turn and go down the slide. Now, that was fun, I want to do that again and this is where my brain did this: Now, be honest with yourself, if you wanted to go down that slide again, what would be the quickest and most efficient method of doing it? Exactly.

To me, I was being smart and intelligent and getting what I wanted quickly. In my mind if the other kids wanted to go down the slide more often they should copy my good idea.

I’m more than aware that if everyone had done that it would be like a human centipede on that slide so not entirely practical but it made sense to me at the age of 5.

Being literal got me in trouble as a kid because it would always come across as taking the piss which adults don’t take very kindly to. It was simply how I understood the world. Facts, being literal, telling things how I see them - all traits that make a child a nightmare.

Do you know what else adults don’t like? Being woken up at 3am with their kid talking nonsense at them.

One night I woke up early and went to the kitchen to get milkshake probably, I was 4 years old and when I got to the dining room just before the kitchen, there was water pissing out the ceiling. The place was flooded.

I walk causally up to Mum and Dad's bedroom and said “Mummy, it’s raining in the dining room”. Mum was keen to get another few hours kip assumes I was having some sort of bad dream so ignores me. I kept repeating it until my Dad decides that 30 seconds of checking what his mad kid is banging on about is worth the risk of losing a few minutes sleep.

I take him downstairs and sure enough, it’s literally raining in the dining room. I admit, I could have been a little more descriptive but at 4 years old how am I supposed to know a pipe has burst?

To me it was raining so that’s what I said.

A week later, you’d think they’d listen wouldn’t you?

“Mummy, the plane’s on fire, the plane’s on fire”

“Go to sleep Adam”

“Mummy, THE PLANE IS ON FIRE”

Dad decides that I wasn’t entirely wrong last time so takes me downstairs to check. In the hallway he turns the light on, except it doesn’t light anything up. The smoke is so thick he can’t see anything.

He shouts to Mum to get us all out the house and eventually battles through to get to the kitchen to see Mark standing on the kitchen side and what was a plastic plane on the hob on fire.

Dad grabs Mark, calls 999 and gets us all outside.

What had happened was Mark had some sweets which Mum had given him a few of, she'd then hidden them in a cupboard above the hob the day before. Mark who clearly woke up hungry decided he wanted them so climbed up on top of the hob in an effort to get the sweets.

In the process of doing this, he's turned the back hob on which had a plastic plane on it. Within seconds, it's melting and not long after is a raging inferno. At that point I ran up to my parent's room.

Apparently being literal isn’t that bad after all. For every moment you go up and down a slide the wrong way to suit no-one but yourself, there’s another moment when you save your entire family’s life.

Like every set of parents in the UK, you take your kids food shopping to Tesco on a Saturday afternoon and bribe them with McDonalds if they behave. I’m a good negotiator so we went to McDonalds first. I got one of those balloons with the stick on it. Between hiding between the coats in the clothing section, pulling stuff off the shelves and eating chocolate that hadn’t been paid for yet we eventually finished the food shopping.

So I’ll try and set the scene. You go in a sliding door on the right, do your shopping and everyone goes out the revolving door on the left. So my parents with me at the age of 7 my two brothers who would have been 5 and 3 are inside, I go outside through the revolving door and start sizing up the door.

Mum tells people now that she’d always know when I was plotting something because I’d be looking around at things like structures, openings and opportunities.

I don’t like the sound of balloons popping so if I didn’t have the stick I would never have done this, but as my Mum came through with the shopping and my two brothers were inside with my Dad, I shoved the balloon in the gap just as my Mum was in the left quadrant of the revolving door.

Expectation:
Put the balloon in the gap, it revolves, hits it, squashes it and pops. Freak a few people out and maybe make a few people laugh.

Reality:
Put the balloon in the gap, it revolves, hits it, squashes it and grinds the whole fucking door to a complete stop! Gears grind to a halt, it sounds like a mechanical disaster and it’s completely and utterly jammed. For about 20 seconds, this is funny. 8 minutes later there’s a full scale traffic jam in Tesco backing up across 38 checkouts and no-one can work out why. My mum is gesturing to me in a blind panic “Adam, pop the balloon”. “ADAM, POP THE BALLOON”

With what Mum? My Fisher Price Swiss Army Knife?

I can’t really describe any proactive activity on my side, I just basically stand there just sort of occasionally flicking my foot at the balloon. My greatest fear right now is the balloon popping and it somehow blowing me up with it. Irrational, maybe but I had a real fear of balloons popping for some reason. Still do now I think of it.

So I wait and wait. My Mum has lost her mind. I’m sort of feeling like the safest thing I can do is keep her in the door prison because if she gets out, I’m in so much shit it’s ridiculous. She never meant to hurt me but she had these fuck off long nails so when she’d grab me and pull me towards her to tell me off it felt like getting stabbed by a fork in the arm. I’m on a mission to avoid this.

By the way, you might be wondering what my Dad is up to. He took one look at this situation, saw my Mum was stuck in the door, grabbed my two brothers and just walked away completely disowning us. True hero.

Some guy comes past, pops the balloon with a box cutter and the door springs into action. It starts moving and two things have simultaneously happened:

1. A Black Friday style stampede has commenced with 80% of the supermarket piling into the revolving door desperate to get out.
2. My Mum and I have locked eyes and she's told me in a single look that I am getting 2 forks in my arm so I just turn and bolt.

Mum leaves the trolley full of shopping and full on sprints after me across a busy Tesco car park.

We’re ducking in and out of cars, she's got me circled round a red car with someone in it - they are confused. She’s one side, I’m the other. I step left, she steps right and gets closer. I step right, she steps left. I’m cornered. I escape by using another car as a block and run away.

At this point, I run into my Dad and he calms things down while playing dumb and asking what happened. In my defence, how can anyone think that a balloon from McDonalds would stop a huge mechanical revolving door and cause a mini riot.

It’s half term and with my Mum being a teacher she went round her friend’s house who had a few kids. I guess I was a similar age so she brought me. Bad idea. I was supposed to play with lego or whatever with their two kids in the living room. They also had one of these Flintstones style sports cars you sit in and peddal with your feet. I get told not to play with the car.

Well, that was about the dumbest thing you could have ever said to me. So they go outside in the garden and have a leisurely cup of tea and a sandwich. Next thing they know, the sound of multiple thuds ensues followed by the sound of broken plastic and a massive smash.

They both come running in to see me at the bottom of the stairs with a massive smile on my face sitting in what's left of the car.

The second they’d gone outside, I’d carried the car up the stairs and ridden this plastic Ferrari down the stairs like I was in the Jamaican Bobsled Team.

We were told to leave and not to come back.

So around the age of 9, bearing in mind I was the oldest, Christmas rolls around and I’ve just suddenly tried to make sense of the Santa thing. It’s bugged me for weeks leading up to it and I’m pretty on edge about it.

Some guy we don’t know just comes in the house through the fucking chimney, eats our food, leaves presents and we don’t know who he is? My bedroom was the one on the ground floor with the chimney in it.

This idea freaked me the fuck out so my parents told me he doesn’t always come down the chimney and can come in any door. What, the fucker's got a master key too now?! That’s far too vague for me. I decided to find out for sure.

In my bedroom, my bed was opposite the door with a shelf above my head and a little pulley thing which turned the light off. I had been playing with my Dad’s video camera which recorded onto a VHS tape and he let me keep hold of it, so I set the camera up on the shelf facing the door. Then changed the pulley so instead of the weight hitting the light switch, it hit the record button instead. I’m like Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone but without the future meth addiction.

I went to bed, tied the string to the door handle and slept like a baby.

My Dad comes in at some point to get my empty sack to fill it with presents, gets to the door, opens it slowly only to hear his video camera clicking into gear. I can only imagine his thought in this exact moment. He leaves to regroup, I wake up and go out to investigate, and see him standing there with Mum like a lemon with a raw carrot in one hand and a mince pie in the other.

I haven't fully clocked on to the fact that Dad standing there eating a raw carrot was a bit of a giveaway. I start to freak out because no fucker is coming in this house and I don’t care about presents anymore.

My parents bring me back to my room and the rather brief conversation goes like this:

Mum: “Adam, it’s us, we do the presents. There is no Santa”
Me: “And Dad eats the carrot?”
Dad: “Yeah”
Me: “Unlucky. Thanks for the presents. Love you”

Instantly asleep.

Seriously, what 9 year old tries to set up CCTV to catch Santa?

I can’t remember what I did on this particular occasion but once I got grounded for the entire weekend. No matter what way they tried to punish me, it completely failed.

My bedroom was what most conventional houses would have as the downstairs living room. So when I got locked in, I just climbed out the window.

When they locked the window I’d just play on the computer for hours on end.

When they realised I was playing FIFA and not exactly being punished, they took away the power cable from the computer.

Needing to get power back, I bribed my little brother, Rob to make Mum and Dad a cup of tea (so they wouldn’t need another anytime soon) and then give me the power cable from the kettle. It was the same power cable for my computer.

When my Dad caught on to my plan and took away the power cable again, I eventually got bored and copied a picture of a tiger which was on my wall.

Pretty sad day, we're at my Nan's funeral. There's a spread of food and drink. A kids table and an adults table.

So there’s this distant family member who’s a bit annoying and talks everyone’s ear off without being remotely entertaining, and he’s standing around like a lemon with a beer in his hand. He’s just, there.

I’m about 7 years old and wander over to where the kids table where the food is laid out, pick up this little cake called a French Fancy. This is what they look like: My Mum is watching this from a distance knowing I don’t like them and wondering why I've picked it up. I walk around with this cake for a bit, occasionally looking at it. I slide up next to the annoying family member, he doesn’t notice me because he’s tall and I’m 7. I look at the cake, look at his beer, look back at the cake.

Plop.

Beer and Pink French Fancy Combo.

He looks down at me and his destroyed beer, looks over at my Mum and asks the question so many people have asked before him.

"Why?"

Sport was not my thing when I was in school, I just couldn’t get to grips with it. But because my two brothers (both younger) and my three cousins (all older) were super social and played a lot, I felt the need to try and do what they did and fit in.

Football at break time in school was one of those things. I couldn’t kick the ball for shit, made more difficult because we couldn’t use an actual ball so had to make do with a tennis ball. So at break we’d do this thing where the two most popular kids would be “team captains” then they’d take turns in picking the next best person to make up their team.

After the first few picks you’re basically left with the shittiest of children. Essentially the idea was to get the one who was going to get in the way the least. Myself and this guy Chris were always last picked no matter what.

Generally, whoever was last went in goal. No-one wanted to go in goal.

Until one defining moment that would change the course of my life forever.

There were two whistles to end break or lunch. The first one meant stop moving. The second one meant head back into the school. We always played to the second whistle.

The first whistle goes. We have 5 seconds left.

It’s 2-2 and my defence has gone AWOL. I’m one-on-one with Matt Hurley, without any doubt the best footballer in school and probably still the best footballer I know today by quite some distance. He’s through on goal. Me vs him.

He fakes left, he fakes right, places his shot low to my right. I’ve read him perfectly, I dive as far as I can to my right and with the tip of my finger clip it round the goalpost.

The second whistle goes.

I’m a fucking hero. I’m mobbed like I’ve just saved the winning penalty in the Champions League Final. At this point in my life, this is by far the greatest single moment. I actually felt like part of the team, part of something, anything, finally. It was epic. For the rest of the day I was a hero.

That night I told my Dad and he took me to a sports shop to buy me some goalie gloves. The next day I brought them into school and I didn’t just not get picked last, there were 2 more kids left after me.

I’m moving up in the rankings.

I strapped up my gloves and played the game of my life. Within 2 months, Dave is one captain and Matt Hurley the other. Matt’s first pick...

Me.

Holy shit.

Better yet, Dave’s reaction. “For fuck sakes!”

I’m actually in demand for once.

So by making myself valuable, my stock had risen within the playground at Manor Hall Middle School. It wasn’t that I was actually that good in goal - I wasn't. I just decided I wasn’t going to be picked last and worked out that they picked the best players in certain positions. I certainly wasn’t going to be pinging the ball around in midfield like Andres Iniesta so seeing as no-one wanted to be a goalkeeper, I just assumed the role and made it my own.

Flash forward 18 years and I was invited to play at Brighton and Hove Albion’s 32,000 seater stadium in an exhibition match.

In somewhat of a desperate attempt to be more popular at school, I would use my internet access to my advantage. I was one of only two kids who had internet access in the entire school so if someone needed something, I was your guy.

The latest Stone Cold Steve Austin theme music - no worries
Britney Spears' head superimposed onto a porn star - easy.

You have to understand, when I was in year 10 at the age of 15, it was the absolute height of the wrestling business. Stone Cold and The Rock were tearing it up every night and every kid was telling everyone to “Suck it” followed by a crotch chop.

Wanting to capitalise on this, I would download the most popular wrestler’s entrance music and record it onto tape. I’d then go into school and sell these for £3 each. Demand got so crazy I was spending from 4pm - 10pm copying these things from one to the other, so I saved up my profits from the tapes and bought a 2 speed CD writer.

The CD writer was absolutely shit but I owned it outright and it made CDs faster than recording in real time on tape. I was in business. Better yet, I could get £5 for the CDs whereas the tapes I could only sell for £3.

I’d go to a local computer fair with Dad, buy 100 blank CDs and get copying. Business was booming until one day, the school decided they didn't want me conducting business on school premises.

Me: “So I can’t sell the CDs IN SCHOOL anymore?”
School: “Correct”.

I head home, go to the local stationary shop and buy loads of sheets of card. I design myself some business cards, print them out and hand them out in school. It said:

Now I’m not breaking any rules. I did exactly what the school said. I sold 70 or 80 CDs, then the best thing ever happened. We were building up to WrestleMania 15 and Stone Cold got some new music. Now everyone’s CDs were out of date.

Another £5, another CD.

My history with milkshake is well documented. It used to send me fucking loopy as a kid. My folks would give me some strawberry Nesquik and within an hour I was bouncing off the walls like a ping pong ball. This meant as a kid, my milkshake allowance was heavily restricted so when I got older, I made every moment as special as I could.

Pint glasses:
The bullshit glasses of milkshake my parents gave me were frankly inadequate so I would use pint glasses. I’d guzzle that shit like I’d run a marathon without a drop of liquid.

With a spoon:
Sometimes, you want the good moments to last and that’s exactly what I wanted for one particular milkshake. So I made it in my traditional English pub pint glass and proceeded to eat it like soup by using a table spoon. The way you do this is by dipping the spoon into the glass and fill it up, then take your spoonful of milkshake. It was great. This would last me hours.

Did you know there’s over 200 spoonfuls in a pint?

Saucepan:
Sometimes I felt like a pint just wasn’t enough so I’d use a saucepan. I reckon this was a double pinter and I’d just sit there tipping the edge of the saucepan into my face like it was a glass. It was heavy so it needed two hands.

It was hard to explain when my brother Rob came over, walked in my flat and looked at me just sitting at my desk with a saucepan full to the brim of strawberry Nesquik. He didn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything.

So there you have it, three ways to consume milkshake.

I got myself in a lot of trouble in places like school and various jobs because I would take things completely literally without thinking about the spirit of what was being said.

For instance, in science class once I got sent to the head teacher because of this ridiculous scenario:

Mr Jones is bollocking everyone for being slack, being behind on work and all this. The guy couldn’t control a pot of boiling spaghetti, never mind a class of 15 year olds but we certainly weren’t helping the situation.

So at some point in all of this he says to pull our socks up. Without thinking, I just lent down, shuffled my chair back making a bit of noise with it squeaking along the floor and pulled my socks up. I come back above the desk and pull my chair back in ready to continue listening for the next instruction.

He’s in silence. Every one of the 31 kids in the class are staring at me.

I look around and curiously ask, “What?”. Genuinely confused. I was listening to him, I was paying attention and he was making good points so I did what he said. Now I’m getting sent out. I want to know why.

I get sent to the head teacher but I’m not leaving without an answer. Turns out, he thought I was taking the piss so I had to sit on the floor outside the head teacher’s office for 55 minutes. I asked the secretary how long the head teacher would be and she said he wasn’t in that afternoon.

So I went home, got myself a milkshake and played on the computer for a bit. I rode my bike back to school just in time to be sat back in the same spot Mr Jones left me. He came and sent me on my way having no idea I hadn’t even sat there for a total of 90 seconds.

I did something similar when I worked at Tesco. My job was working in the news and magazines section and in the evenings it was easy so I’d help in other departments while keeping an eye on my section. Working 6pm - 10pm was boring when it was literally 25 minutes work.

I get called into the manager’s office and he says the following. “Listen to me carefully. Turn up, clock in at 6pm. Do the news and magazines and clock out at 10pm. I don’t care what you do but don’t go into any other departments”.

Got it.

New plan: Turn up, clock in, blitz the mags in 20 minutes, go home and play on the computer, ride back to work at 9.45pm, clear up and clock out at 10pm. I did this for 8 months. When I’d go home I’d continue practicing web design by doing websites for local bands.

It was around this time I realised that corporate rules and structures aren’t there to help people do good work, they’re there to cover everyone’s asses. I eventually got fired for looking unprofessional by having bleached blonde hair and spiking it upwards to look like Gohan, a Dragonball Z character. Meanwhile a girl with 4ft of purple dreadlocks worked in the department right next to me. This is also the point I learned that “life ain't fair”.

I might have also supplemented Kerrang magazine with my brother’s band’s demo CD. These days, in our industry they call this growth hacking.

As a wrestling fan, all you fantasise about is being able to do wrestling moves on your enemies. Imagine delivering a Stone Cold Stunner to your worst teacher or boss. The class would erupt and the place would come unglued and you’d be a hero forever. The girls would want to be with you and the boys would want to be you. Life couldn’t get better.

But you can’t give stunners to your teachers.

My friends and I would wait until my parents would go to a football tournament with my brother Mark or a gym competition with my younger brother Rob. I wish I had a picture of what we used to do but we would basically get every mattress, cushion and blanket in the house, launch it into the garden, set up a wrestling ring and recreate our favourite scenes and film it.

Truly ridiculous but it was so much fun and highly dangerous.

This one scene had Mick Foley get a piece of wood, wrap it in barbed wire and smash his opponent in the head with it. Brutal. So we found some barbed wire at an abandoned house and some scrap wood and made this weapon to use in our recreated scene. It looked super realistic.

It’s amusing thinking about how much video we use in our business today and yet my earliest uses of video were using my Dad’s video camera to recreate wrestling scenes.

We would edit the videos and dub over entrance music and commentary. It was embarrassingly brilliant.

One time my parents had gone to a gym competition with my brother Rob so we'd decided to have another session of Backyard Wrestling. I invited over my two friends Matt and Mushroom. We called him Mushroom because his hair was short on the sides and had this curly dome on top of his head. He looked like the character in Super Mario.

They came over and it was raining so we set up the wrestling ring in my bedroom, and in this match, Mushroom was taking on Matt. The big finish was going to be Mushroom doing an over rotating front flip from standing from the "top rope" to a belly flop with a front flip in the middle. Difficult at the best of times but made more difficult when he’s standing on my desk and going to do this onto a mattress on the floor.

He’s up on the desk, jumps, rotates, gets all the way over but he’s overshot Matt who’s laying in position on the mattress. He completely misses him by about 4ft and smashes his face on the edge of the wooden frame of my bed which has no mattress on it.

Blood. Fucking. Everywhere.

His face completely explodes. He’s running around the house in crazy amounts of pain just pissing blood up every wall. It’s just shooting out of his face like a snow cannon. We’re trying to keep him to the kitchen because we can clean it up easier. He’s lost the plot.

The ambulance take him away leaving the house and my room looking like it’s been in a war zone. We go with him and are in the hospital. We didn’t have mobile phones back then and I forgot to leave a note so we just went.

We get home after 3 or 4 hours and my folks are beside themselves. They’ve come in from watching my brother do gymnastics and walked into a murder scene with no explanation or any way of getting hold of me.

Whenever I’d do something wrong, my default was to defend myself and it was only later that guilt and remorse would kick in. This was instant.

The second I walked in the door and saw them it was like getting shot. It was the first time I can remember having an instant feeling of what someone else must have felt. I felt so awful. Of course they were relieved but my usual reaction would have been to argue my case.

It didn’t matter if I had one. My parents thought I could be dead or seriously injured. I hugged them and apologised for about the next 2 days straight. As you can imagine we weren’t going to do that again.

Not a chance! Next month was a ladder match for the title. But this time - safety first.

If you’re going to get kicked out of school, do it in style.

The year is 1999 and the computer system is run on RM Computers. My friend Liam, who was just as fascinated by technology as I was had the internet at home too (we were the only two). We started searching for the RM Computers admin passwords and what we found was a list of 8 different usernames and passwords that were basically the defaults.

Any good IT guy would have removed these and created his own but our computer guy didn’t, so if you logged in with ‘teacher’ and ‘changeme’ you had access to reset passwords, install software, unrestricted internet, set wallpaper etc.

We were in heaven. So one thing we installed was this little program called WinNuke 95. This is what it looked like: Every computer had a computer name written on it with permanent marker so if Amy was on RM008 and I put that where the IP address is, she sees this: There is no coming back from this.

So Liam and I thought, what if you put “RM008, RM009” in the textbox. Boom. They both crashed. Shiiiiiiiit.

Wait... How many computers are there in the school?

After a little discovery work in our “teacher” account, we worked out there were 310 computers in the school all named rather sequentially. We typed every one of them out. I did half, Liam did half. We didn’t do our own, so the plan was, blitz the others then at the same second, do each other so the evidence was gone.

Moment of truth. We hit ‘Nuke me’ and instantly, screams everywhere. Teacher’s computer has gone, the projector has gone. The admin staff in the computer room gone, head teacher’s computer gone.

Guess that worked. Now we type each other’s numbers in and count to three.

One. Tw..... Liam dives across and smashes enter on my computer.

Liam: “Miss, mine’s gone too!”

He gets the blue screen of death. I’m the only computer alive. Fuck. How do you blue screen of death yourself. I type in my own computer to try and nuke myself but you can’t. I’m quickly searching on Yahoo to try and find a way. Before I can do anything, I’m being marched out the room like I’ve been arrested.

You know when you do something and you just know that no matter what you do you are 100% fucked. That feeling.

I’m sitting in this meeting room in school for over an hour. I was in so much serious shit, I didn’t even know this room existed. Eventually, the head teacher, deputy and my Mum all come in. Shit, this isn’t good at all.

I refuse to answer anything because it would have meant getting Liam in trouble and he was one of my few friends in school so I didn’t want him to think I was dropping him in it. Never mind the fact that the cockhole stitched me up for the whole thing in the first place.

So my Mum is pleading my case and suggesting a 1 week suspension. They’re saying no, enough is enough and I’m done at Kings Manor. All I can think of is “Am I going to end up like people like Gary and my bullies who have nothing to live for?”.

It’s sad but there’s always a way if you’re prepared to get what you want. I’m going down anyway, might as well throw the kitchen sink at it.

I pipe up and ask “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”. Not making eye contact, staring forward with a sadistic look on my face.

They’re all looking at me. The head teacher says “I think it’s for the best”.

I turned, slowly, looked him right in the eye (which is super hard for me) and said “You actually think I need to be in this school to tear your computer systems down again?”

“I can do this from anywhere in the world so long as I have internet access so unless you want me to spend the next 18 months destroying your computer system from my bedroom at home, I suggest I take the week off and come back next week”.

He’s staring back at me, completely in shock. Looks at my Mum, the Deputy then back at me and reluctantly says:

“I think a week off is a good idea. We’ll see you next Monday. Perhaps when you come back you could help our IT department by explaining what you did and stop anyone else from being able to do it?”.

I’ll never know how I pulled that off. Also, massive result - my Mum was doing something called Activity Week. This is where she rewards her kids in her school and they do things like swimming, rock climbing, cooking, arts and crafts in her school. So seeing as Mum didn’t trust me to stay at home I spend the week doing abseiling and rock climbing.

Punish the right guy next time.

I did not find year 11 (Age 15 to 16) particularly useful, so I just didn’t really go. My attendance was 17% for the entire year. That equated to an average of about 4 lessons a week. Instead, I stayed home and continued to teach myself HTML and design.

I’d spend 16+ hours in front of the computer going to websites and trying to reverse engineer the whole website. It helped me learn different techniques. I felt this was a far better use of my time than sitting in school killing time before exams.

I wouldn't say negotiating is my greatest skill but I did manage to find out that the school pay to enter you into exams. Ultimately I would have got a U in French so I told them this and they gave me the £17.20 not to take the exam.

Bonus.

My Mum is a teacher and worked up the road so she’d have the odd 15 minutes to herself mid-morning. The whole of year 11 was basically me and my Mum playing cat and mouse with each other. Me wanting to stay home but make it look like I’d gone to school, my Mum trying to catch me and make me go.

I’d cover the obvious bases like “leave for school” with just enough time to make myself a little late so it didn’t look too suspect. I’d ride around on my bike for 20 minutes until I saw her car leave the driveway then go back to the house.

She would catch me in the most ridiculous ways.

I’d go round the back, hide my bike, sneak back in the house and she’d be standing in the hallway. Fuck.

She’d constantly catch me behind sofas, hiding in the garden, under my desk, in the wardrobe, under the bed, behind doors. I’d plead my case and explain what I was trying to do and get better at but she insisted I was better off going to school.

I disagreed and didn’t go, ever. I got D’s in literally everything in school which didn’t make any sense really because I’m ridiculously good when I want to be. Take art for instance, they told me if I didn’t submit any sketchbook work, no matter how good my final exam piece (2-day, 10 hour exam) I would only get a D.

Challenge accepted.

Got a fucking C didn’t I.

I made a 3ft tall spiral staircase out of wood. Then re-drew 2 HR Giger paintings. Cut them out and stuck them to the staircase so if you walked up the stairs you saw one painting and if you walked down the stairs you saw the other painting. Another kid drew an apple and someone else made a handbag out of paper.

My competition wasn’t exactly great but I managed to break the rules, skip hundreds of hours of sketchbook work and still get a passable grade in 10 hours of effort.

School was not designed for people like me.

I was somewhat of an easy target at school. I didn’t do the things the cool kids did, didn’t look like the cool kids either and most importantly I didn’t look like I’d cause any trouble if someone picked on me.

My cousin was the most popular kid in school but I hated falling back on that so I just didn’t.

There was Gary who would do “the typewriter” on my head. He’d sit on my chest, pin my arms back with his knees then do little slaps on my face making the tshtshtshtsh noise a typewriter would make.

When he “got to the end of the line” he’d slap me round the head like he’s knocking the typewriter back to the left and make a “dinnnngggg!” noise. The cunt must have written about 6 novels like this.

There were two kids who would give me endless shit at every available opportunity so I’d suss out their route between lessons and actively walk a completely different way just to avoid them. I always got in trouble for being late. Apparently “I was going the long way to avoid the guys that steal my lunch and give me dead legs” wasn’t a good enough excuse.

The school I went to literally didn’t give a single fuck that I got the shit kicked out of me every day without fail. I’d tell them and they would just say “What do you want us to do about it?” I don’t know, suspend them, detention maybe, perhaps if it’s not too much trouble, maybe ask them to stop?

I’m late to class for avoiding bullies so detention.

Detention was the most pointless thing imaginable. They would give you this permission slip you had to get your parents to sign so they knew you were going to be late home.

I didn’t give a single one to my parents for 3 years.

Then one day one teacher calls my Mum to tell her I’ve hit a century of 1h detentions. My Mum in her most defensive voice possible says “Excuse me but Adam hasn’t had a single detention ever and I’m not going to have you suggest he has”.

I’d done so well.

Basically I’d just forged her signature. The rules are there to cover everyone’s ass and not necessarily be logical. You don’t have to play that game or do what people say. People rarely find out and most of the time, can’t be bothered to check facts. I always used this to my advantage.

Fortunately this wasn’t the start of a career in fraud.

So, my two bully friends. They were amusing really. Their classic was knocking my lunch on the floor. So I’d get £1 for lunch, get my food from the canteen and they’d wait until I was about to eat it then just knock it out my hand. Not very inventive but highly annoying. Then they would just tread on it and say things like “Ohhhh noooo what happened” in a patronising voice.

After 2 years I’d just do stuff like see them then just give them the burger. Why get my hopes up?

They would always just walk past me and knee me in the leg. In a massive crowd of people passing from one lesson to another, they’d never get caught. The other thing they’d do is slam a certain locker into my head. They’d just have it open then when I walked past they’d slam it on my head.

Then there was the bogwashing. Basically they’d shove my head down the toilet then flush it. So you’d just come out the toilet with a soaking wet head and have to spend the rest of the day smelling like a toilet. Not fun.

At this point, it was gearing up towards the end of year 10, while they were about to finish year 11. I’d pretty well had enough so I plotted my revenge.

I knew when they’d head to the canteen and you had to walk under this walkway. It’s open on the sides but had a roof with lights in it. It was about 100ft long with 10 or so bathroom lights in. They were like this but you could just unscrew it with your hand: So one day while everyone was in class, I hid and turned them off, unscrewed all the bowl parts of the lights, took them into the bathroom, filled them up with water and screwed them back in and waited. 40 minutes I had my finger on that light switch.

Finally they walked past and were right under it. Now’s my chance! I flicked the switch. BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG. It was like a pyrotechnics display. One after the other, they got somewhat of a shower and covered in exploded plastic.

Bullies: 1000
Adam: 1

Flash forward about 4 years and I’m with my friend Heed. We called him that because he had a massive head and we’d call him Head. One night, some Scottish guy wondered “wha ya callin him heed”. After a little “We’re not, we’re calling him Head”. “Yea, wha ya callin him heed” so just agreed to call him Heed and it stuck.

So I’m out one night just doing nothing, mucking about in Southwick and we run into these two girls, we take them back into my bedroom by posting them through the window. I end up having sex with one of them. She was not the most aesthetically pleasing human but I wasn’t exactly in a position to be picking and choosing at this point.

Heed’s just chilling with the other girl in my room playing on the computer. I finish up and go to the kitchen with Heed to get milkshake and debrief. We come back a minute later and they’re gone.

I sit down at my computer and my mouse isn’t working.

One of them had crawled under the fucking desk and took the wireless receiver for my mouse. Who does that?

Heed then informs me that the girl I’ve just turned into a glazed donut is the sister of the guy who’s bullied me for 4 years. You fucking tell me NOW?

His response: “The hot one wanted to fuck you but I thought you’d rather get revenge on the twat who bullied you for 4 years”.

Me: “Heed, I’m probably never going to get the chance to fuck a hot girl ever again now!”.

Did you have a year book in your school? I thought it was just an American thing but apparently we do in the UK too. I should have known this wasn’t going to go well to be honest but like with anything that falls in the “fitting in” category, I gave it a go. Mum left me the £20 for it and I went into school on one of the rare occasions I actually attended in year 11.

I handed in my £20, got my year book and went to my first of 5 doss lessons. Essentially these lessons were chit chat and getting your mates to draw dicks in your year book and scribble on each other’s faces. No-one was too interested in signing my year book so I went to my second lesson and suffered the same fate.

While some people’s year books at this point had more dicks in than Asa Akira, mine looked as pristine as a nun’s vagina. No-one wanted to sign it. The day continued in this form with people making the simplest of excuses. “I’ll do it later man” and my personal favourite “I don’t have a pen” while I’m presenting them my virgin yearbook in one hand and a pen in the other.

2.43pm - The final bell is about to go and I have a grand total of zero signatures in my year book, until I ran into Davina and Kelly. Ah brilliant, these girls are lovely. At least they’ll sign it. I stop them in the hall and asked them with fairly genuine sincerity to sign my year book and this is how the conversation went.

Me: "Hey, will you guys sign my year book?"
Davina: "We can’t"
Me: "Why?""
Kelly: "Because if we sign yours then you’ll have to sign ours."
Me: “How is that a proble... oh... right.”
Kelly and Davina: “See yaaaaaa.”

And they left. The bell rang. Zero dicks drawn in my book. Zero "thank you’s". I went straight to the front office and the conversation went like this:

Me: “Hey, can I have a refund on my year book please?”
Office lady: “We can’t give you a refund on it, you’ve scribbled all over it. Don’t you want to keep it?”
Me: “It’s exactly the same as when you gave it to me 6 hours ago. No-ones signed it.”
Office lady: “Why didn’t you get anyone to sign it”
Me: “I tried”
Office lady: “So why didn’t they?”
Me: “Because they didn’t want me to sign theirs”
Office lady: “I don’t know what to say, darling. Here you go”.

I take my £20 and went to the shops and bought £10 worth of toffee crumble and £10 worth of milk bottles and sat at the kitchen table with a pint of strawberry Nesquik.

My mum comes in from work.

“What on earth are you eating?!”

“Milk bottles and toffee crumble”. She quite rightly quizzes me on why I have enough sweets to feed a small army. I gave her the short version of my day:

I bought a year book with the £20, I asked about 90 people to sign it and they all refused so I got a refund and bought sweets instead to make myself feel better. Girls buy shoes, I buy milk bottles”.

Mum: “Adam, why did no-one sign your year book?”.
Me: “Because they didn’t want me to sign theirs. Want some toffee crumble? I think I bought too much.”
Mum: “I don’t know what to say"

Neither do I Mum, neither do I.

Not the nicest feeling in the world but to be completely honest, it was only really preparation for the next decade or two. I do feel it's good to learn things early - How to deal with people's excuses not to do things, people ducking and diving out of plans and generally how to be cast aside. Learning to deal with that at a young age has prepared me for adult life brilliantly.

It’s just made me proactively avoid people who treat me like that. Partly because who would want anything to do with people who treat people like shit but there's another reason that I can't explain so easily. Remember how I never stitched Liam up when we got in trouble with the computer situation? It's the same thing here. Because I don’t want to cause them the same emotional bullshit I've had to go through I just avoid putting them in a position where they need to avoid hanging out with me. It’s bad enough one of us feeling shit about a situation, it doesn’t need both of us.

One of my brothers for instance I have a lot to do with, the other I don't. I love them both to pieces and would do anything for them. Rob, I ghost-wrote a book for for as a Christmas present so he could better promote his video business. Mark, I sent to Barcelona so he could achieve his dream of finally see Messi and Iniesta play together.

Yet, for some reason, Mark won't have much to do with me unless he absolutely has to or needs a favour. Because of that, I made the decision not so long ago to not ask him for anything. Saves him the trouble of making excuses and saves me trying to make an effort only for it to be turned down or palmed away. I'll say this though, there's no-one I'd rather have on my football team. He's the best I've ever played with and against.

It sounds cold as fuck and that’s one thing I’ve been consistently accused of over the years but I just feel like I can take the heat better than most. If something needs handling or a situation requires an awkward conversation, I’ll do it if it saves someone else having to. I’m basically an emotional bullshit sponge because I can take it.

The backstory for this goes back the best part of a year but the short version is, we’re about 14/15 and used to hang out on Southwick Green. This family with 2 girls who were I think 12 and 13 moved in across the other side of the park and we started hanging out.

Their Dad, who we’re gonna call Fat Angry Dad did not like this very much so he’d impose ridiculous curfews like 4pm on a Saturday etc. We’d hang out but he hated us. His wife’s car had her window broken and he assumed it was us which it wasn’t. I was a pain in the dick as a kid but that was beyond me.

So one day, this kid runs past their house - no idea who he was - and launches eggs at their windows. I’m sitting about 150ft away just outside my house on the driveway while the others were chilling on Southwick Green between both houses, then Fat Angry Dad, this bowling ball of a human comes storming out the house and marches towards me and my friend Matt.

He’s got this full blown Mr. McMahon strut going on. It’s too funny to watch. My brother Mark in an adapted version of Jim Carrey's brilliant line in the court room scene of Liar Liar rides round him on his bike in a circle repeatedly singing “Here he comes to wreck the daaaaaaayyyyy!” which is infuriating him to no end. The guy has completely lost it for absolutely no reason which was great for me. It was always me, always my fault but this time I genuinely did nothing other than make a friend for once in my life without my cousin or brother donating them to me.

We argue, he pushes me over a wall. Fine fatty. This means war.

We then did some petty shit like put lipstick on his windscreen wipers and put stink bombs in the cavity where your A/C pipes are just before he came out to drive for an hour to work.

Okay, I’m not innocent but I didn’t do the things he was accusing me of so I wanted to defend myself. Badly, sure but I couldn’t do anything else.

So he’s had enough and arranges to come over and have a meeting with my parents. I love my folks but they did not stick up for me at all.

Classic example - one time, some woman knocked on the door and said “I think your son just hit my son with a football just a moment ago”. My Mum responded with “That was probably Adam, I’ll have a word. I’m sorry”.

I know this because I was sitting in my bedroom next to the front door and had been for hours. I hadn't moved.

So Fat Angry Dad and his wife come over and they’re sitting in the kitchen running me down. There’s myself, my brother Mark, Rob and my friend Matt in the other room. We NEED to hear what they’re saying about us so we can argue our case later.

We send Rob in (the youngest and most innocent) to make a cup of tea (he doesn’t drink tea) and to leave a phone in “intercom mode” behind the kettle.

We run upstairs excited and all we hear is:

“Stop it”. Click.

Next plan.

I get my wireless microphone, put the sensitivity on max and sneak into the dining room and leave it on the floor just outside the room and try and make out what they’re saying.

It works but not quite. We need to get closer.

We abandon the microphone and just all crawl from the front of the house, all the way through it, one behind the other to the dining room and hide under the table. Matt sneezes and hits his head on the table so my Dad comes in and takes one look at two 16 year olds, a 14 year old and a 12 year old on their hands and knees under a dining room table.

He didn’t need to say anything. We went upstairs to Mark’s room above the kitchen.

Sitting there on this big bunk bed/sofa bed monstrosity we were racking our brains. They’ve been in there an hour. We need to know, what can we do?

Me and Matt get the same idea.

There’s a yellow tow rope on the floor, complete with carabiner and everything.

We look at each other, pick it up, look out the window then look at Mark.

He looks at us. “No fucking way. I’m not doing that”.

We plead with him: “You’re great at abseiling! You’ll be fine! They have the window open, it’s our only chance!”

3 minutes later, Mark’s got the rope round him, standing on the window sill outside his bedroom with the tow rope firmly attached to the bed.

He starts his descent. We need to get the details of the injustice. Matt and I lower Mark down and have the rope hooked on the left of the window sill so it comes down just to the side of the open window.

It works. He's managed to get level with the window and hear what they're saying and they have no idea he's there. This is perfect!

Then, disaster.

Matt had got off the sofa bed and the bed suddenly slides forward about a foot and slams into the wall, the rope comes unhooked from the window sill and Mark goes flying across the kitchen window. We’re all frantically trying to fling him back the other way and pull him back up to safety. We know we’re in serious shit now. He’s swinging across 8ft of windows like a drunk Tarzan.

Next thing we know, Mum and Dad storm into Mark’s room and start screaming at us all. “How could you do this? How could you embarrass us? What’s wrong with you?”

We didn’t have good answers. Mainly because we were still hanging out the window trying to pull Mark back up and in through the window.

It turns out that during the conversation, Fat Angry Dad is complaining about “all 3 of us". She says, “Look I’m sorry, Adam is definitely dodgy but Rob is never here and Mark has been as good as gold. He has never done anything wrong, he’s harmless and would never do anything like that.”

In that exact moment, Mark swings across the kitchen window like a pendulum, swimming in the air and clawing to try and get back. Trying desperately not to make eye contact as if they somehow might not have seen him. The fact that he was occasionally clattering into the window had slightly blown our cover.

Fat Angry Dad then announces to my parents “Oh, really?” then gets up and walks out.

Sorry Mum. Sorry Dad.

Moving out of my parents' house was an interesting experience. The relationship was almost beyond repair and it was entirely my fault.

In one of the few times my Dad and I agreed on something back then, we filled out the form for getting me a council flat. As much as I hated the idea of living in a council flat and being “one of them”, the concept of having my own place so I could run my life how I wanted was too good to pass up. My Mum’s off out and my Dad and I are filling out this form together.

I should explain that while I’ve been talking about my approach to having Asperger's throughout this book, at this time, around 19 or 20 years old, I completely ignored it. I was what I was and I was either going to fail miserably or succeed brilliantly but either way I was going to do it without acknowledging this Autism nonsense.

We get to the "Any mental illnesses" section of the form. I'm in full ignore mode so go to write 'none' in the box. My Dad says "Adam mate, what possible reason do they have to give you a flat if you don't sell this hard?”.

Good point. So we go full tilt, explain how fucked up I am, explain all the dumb shit I've done and how much of a disaster I am to live with. We submit the form and the woman calls me in. I go online beforehand to do a little research and learn that they prioritise it in order of urgency. A fit and healthy 21-year-old probably isn't the top of the list. The 16-year-old pregnant girl might be higher at this point.

How do you put yourself higher on the list than a homeless, pregnant teenager? It's all good. I like it when the odds are stacked against me. It's Monday morning so I sit down and the woman says: 

"Thanks for coming in Adam. So I’ve read through your details, could you explain to me please why you've gone out of your way to make your parents' lives a living hell? I mean, looking at this, it looks to me like you've had a perfect upbringing and all you've done is set out to intentionally ruin their lives. Why would you do that?”

Perfect. This is just the opening I needed.

I learned quite early on (not that I’m proud of it) how to “raise the temperature” of an interaction. I could take the most calm of individuals and could make their blood boil within seconds. Whether it was a perfectly timed smirk or getting them to “break character” and lose their cool, I had every technique down.

I of course called her out on her bullshit and the argument commenced. Me slowly ramping up the intensity of the conversation. What I knew was that I couldn’t leave this room until I had their 100% attention. That was the only way I was getting pushed to the front of the queue. Getting her emotionally invested was key.

We kept going back and forth until I realised enough was enough. I stood up and launched the chair I was sitting on into her plasterboard wall. On my way out, I filed a complaint about how outrageous her line of questioning was. This should add to the drama. It was out of line in fairness.

72 hours later I get a call.

"Hi Mr Hempenstall, your keys are at the Civic Centre".

Love it when a plan comes together. 

So my aunt died, my uncle and their two kids lived in Yorkshire and they came down to scatter the ashes and do some sort of wake. Not a fun day, but you show your support.

So at the wishes of my uncle he decided she would have liked her ashes scattered here. Looks amazing right? What an incredible send-off for an awesome lady.

So I think the general idea is to do two things when scattering ashes:

1. Check the direction of the wind
2. Only do a little bit. It’s symbolic.

So my uncle opens this pot with a bag in it and just tips the whole fucking thing out. Like, the WHOLE THING.

I’m standing about 30ft away with the rest of the family and all we see is this massive dust cloud emerge. It looked like armageddon. Just endless dust piling up and flowing towards us. We’re all in suits thinking the worst. Imagine Indiana Jones running away from the huge boulder - kinda like that.

So one half of us run left, one half run right.

My uncle had a black suit, he now looked like he’d cleaned a fucking chimney.

Not a great start.

So we now head to the service-like-thing. It wasn’t really a wake because there wasn’t any food. I'm not sure what it was. We were going to be standing around in a room on the ground floor of this windmill so we stopped at a corner shop to get some food before we went in. It was super late on a Sunday and they had nothing so seeing as there was about 15 of us, we cleaned them out of sandwiches and were all sharing.

Trying to be helpful, I gave my sandwiches away to the others because I saw these Milkybar yoghurts. They’re like orgasms in your mouth, so I grabbed a 2-pack and stuffed them in my pocket. Everyone’s munched their sandwiches and I’m kinda stuck because I don’t have a spoon. Do you see my problem? You might be able to tell where this is going.

My uncle and my two cousins are giving this speech. My uncle is covered in his wife’s ashes still and as sad of a day as it was, it was fucking hilarious.

This is taking an absolute age and I have now lost the battle with my stomach and need the Milkybar yoghurts. There's no way I can wait for this guy to finish his hour long speech. I’ve intelligently sat at the back of the room in preparation for my face orgasm, so I get them out my pocket, quietly peel the foil lid and start gently licking the yoghurt.

No-one notices to start with because it’s all on the surface so I’m alternating between the easy bits on top of both but this soon becomes a challenge as I have to dig deeper.

My cousin looks at me and silently laughs then gestures to stop.

Not a chance man, I’m tongue deep in this melted Milkybar now. I’m seeing this through to the end.

So if you can imagine, I’m just going full tilt tongue fucking these bright ass yellow yoghurt pots at my dead aunt’s delayed funeral service. I hate to put it in graphic terms but... you can figure it out.

I’m going for this like it’s my last supper. The more I go for it, the more people look round. It gets to the point where more people are facing me than my Uncle while I give this yoghurt pot the best moment of it’s little yellow plastic life. When I was done, I quietly put it down on this dark wood floor as if somehow, I’d gone undetected.

I hadn’t. Spot the villain of the day. How can no-one have found that funny?

Here’s the amusing thing about being awkward. It wasn’t awkward for me. I was hungry, I wanted that Milkybar in me and that’s what was happening. It was seemingly more awkward to tell me to stop than to just put up with yoghurt slurping during some sort of funeral service.

Side note - you get better value for money with your tongue compared to a spoon.

Money issues are part of life. We all have to deal with them. Things might be looking good these days with Better Proposals doing well but it’s a far cry from how things were back in the day.

One time, I was working on putting an update live for a client when, click, the electricity goes off.

Fuck.

The electric meter.

If you haven’t instantly clocked onto what’s just happened, I’ll explain. If you’re broke as fuck and can’t manage life’s basics, never mind a bill that needs to be paid on time then they give you this pay as you go electricity meter. It has a plastic key in it and you take the key to the shops with your £5 and they “charge up” the key. You stick it back in the meter and boom, lights on.

Yeah, fucking stupid right?

But, it had this emergency £5 you could use if you were stuck. Trouble is, it never was for emergencies, you just ran out, kicked it into emergency mode and kept topping it up from -£5 to £0.

I call this phase of my life “Single twat in a council flat.”. Mainly because it rhymes.

So with this meter on -£5 and zero cash, I get as much money together as I can, £4.84 to be exact and head to the shop only to be told £5 is the minimum.

I’m 16p short. The guy won’t let me top up because I’m 16p short. I needed to get this work uploaded for my client. “I ran out of electricity” wasn’t exactly a viable excuse.

I didn’t own a coat and it was pissing down with rain so having already raided any penny jar, the sofas, pockets and still being 16p short I just decided in that moment I was going to to walk.

I was going to walk and walk and walk until I found 16p on the floor. Failure was not an option.

It took me 4 hours.

I walked back into the same shop and said “There you go. £5 exactly” and handed him the £5 made up of dirty wet coins. I now have this Indian guy about my age who I’m pretty sure lived in a slum at some point in his life look at me with the saddest, most pitiful look.

He charged the key and I rushed back, powered up my little flat and finished the work. I have never been more proud to push a website update in my life.

Adam vs Bailiffs

I was in a period of not talking to my parents and determined to make it on my own. If they’d known this was happening to this extent they would have helped me but it’s not what I wanted and not what I needed.

Around 6 months after my penny hunt, things were about as shit as ever. I didn’t have even the slightest amount of money to rub together. I’d have to choose between heating and cooking. I’d tape up the windows and put towels by the front door to keep the heat in.

Determined to make this website design business work I just kept powering through, reading self-help, learning skills, making sites, trying anything to get clients. I remember it clearly because it was brutal. Rejection after rejection, no after no, the occasional yes.

Until one day, a knock at the door. It’s a bailiff. He explains to me that I need to pay £500 in 24 hours or he’s coming back to take my TV. It is literally the only thing of value in the house. I don’t have a sofa, I can’t remember if I had a bed at the time but there were no luxuries. There was nothing in my flat at all really.

Knowing that selling the TV was my backup plan if I literally had no food, I needed it and I needed the £500. Let me explain what I owed £500 for.

The government would give you free rent on a council flat if you applied for help which I did, once. So for 3 months I didn’t have to pay rent. Then when I went back in, they saw £600 income on my bank statement and told me I wasn’t eligible for the help because I’d received more than £300 in a month.

I tried explaining the tricky concept of irregular payments in a new business to the highly intelligent middle aged woman working in the Civic Centre that day but it was beyond her capabilities. Turns out if you have a payment of more than £300 then you aren’t eligible and they backdate what they’ve given you in free rent.

Right, so now I owe them about £1200 and I have nothing to pay them with.

This dragged on with me chipping away at the debt until eventually Mr Bailiff turns up and demands the remaining £500 because I hadn’t kept up with my payment plan.

He gives me my 24 hours and the phone rings.

Me: “Good afternoon, Adam Hemp Designs”

Caller: “Hi, I’m looking to get a new website done as soon as possible, I've seen your work and I love it. Can we arrange a meeting?”

Me: "We certainly can, my schedule is absolutely rammed for the next 3 weeks but as luck would have it, I have an opening tomorrow at 10am due to a cancellation. Does that work for you?"

"Sure does!"

I’m in!

I have enough petrol to get to Brighton, where he lived but not enough to get home. I don’t have money for a bus either. I drove there at 10am the following day, sat in that meeting knowing if I didn’t get a £500 payment right there then I’d be losing my TV and probably any hope of eating anytime soon.

3 hours I was there. At 1pm he hands me a cheque for £500.

I can’t drive home so I walk which was about 7 miles. It takes me hours. I haven’t eaten or drank anything except the token cup of tea he offered me.

I get home, collapse on the floor with this cheque, sort of crying. Not really sure whether to be happy or sad but certainly relieved and oddly empowered.

Knock knock.

It’s the bailiff.

I explained the situation to him and told him that I didn’t have the cash today but I did have the cheque and I’d be cashing it first thing tomorrow and promptly wrote him one for the same £500.

I thanked him for making me step up and find out what I was capable of. He didn’t understand but told me to keep my head up.

That guy will never know how big of a moment that turned out to be.

Now, when I find myself with my back against the wall I think back to that moment sitting on the floor, knees to my chest holding that cheque in front of me, sweat dripping from my head and seeing the ink run down it. It reminds me that I’m at my best when the pressure is on. Some people struggle under pressure, I demand it.

If there’s a league table of things a kid with Asperger's is likely to suck at, meeting girls is probably top of that table. What reputable skills do I have to fall back on?

Social skills? Nope
Typical good look? Nope
Being popular? Nope
Ability to download MySpace bots and spam every girl in a 10 mile radius with automatic messages? Ooooooh, this I can do!

Sometimes life isn’t about looking at always improving what you don’t have, it’s about looking at what you have that others don’t. I wasn’t blessed with movie star good looks or a classic social circle but internet dating was on the up and if there was one thing I understood, it was the internet.

My friend Woz showed me MySpace and the search bar, it was ridiculous. You could literally search for all blonde girls who called themselves slim within a 1 mile radius of your house. Overweight brunettes more your thing? - there was a box for that too. It was unreal.

So I set up my terrible profile and ran searches. Was only 7,000 or so in my area so I thought, if I suck at this, I’m going to burn through the whole of Brighton. So I set myself up in Manchester so I could “practice” with my profile and my approach and when I’ve nailed it I’ll bring it back to Brighton and crush it. Part of that practice was pretending to be a “hot girl” and seeing what absolute rubbish the guys sent through. That proved useful in what not to do.

After 3 months of trial and error of thousands of messages, this was the winning formula.

First message:

“Dear ______

I think it’s absolutely disgusting the way you have your breasts out on what is supposed to be a friends and networking website.

I demand you remove them immediately and contact me to confirm you’ve actioned my request.

Kind regards
Adam”

Now as you can imagine, that went down about as well as a Nun so when they inevitably responded with some variant of “I’ll do whatever I want thank you very much”, I’d respond with this.

“Hahaha.

Well, look, with all the other guys telling you, “You fine babe. Hit me up” I had to do something to get your attention. Apparently it worked.

I’m not going to admit to our grandkids we met on MySpace so give me your number so we can continue this conversation like real people.”

Phone number after phone number after phone number piled in.

I felt like Neo from The Matrix the minute he figured out he could stop bullets.

This did have a downside though. It took fucking ages! I’m not exaggerating when I say this was a 30 hour a week job responding, sending new messages, doing the texting. It was completely out of control. Once the filter system made its way down I’d have to do phone calls with these people too.

Essentially I was running a dating call centre. I needed help.

That’s when I discovered the MySpace messaging bots. Turns out you could simulate a conversation and my messages were great because they were completely predictable. The first message triggered the exact same response.

So I loaded this thing up and hit 500 messages a day. I’d go to sleep and wake up to 40 or 50 phone numbers. It was simply out of control.

In real life it got even more ridiculous. I’d arrange to meet every girl at a bar called Old Orleans in Brighton. I’d set the first date up at 8pm, the second one at 9pm and the last one at 10pm. I just scheduled them in order of which ones might need a second date or not.

Sometimes I’d judge it wrong and get on great with the first date, I’d lose track of time and the second girl would roll up. I’d just say “I’m really busy so I’m doing all my dates this week on the same night”. More often than not, the girls would just look at each other, sit down and have a chat. It was funny. It was probably more out of intrigue than interest but I didn’t care. The company of girls in public was a step in the right direction.

Until Miss 10pm would rock up. That never ended well.

This isn’t kiss and tell but there was one rather amusing encounter.

“I’m petit”

One girl had a normal profile, 3 or 4 selfies before selfies were a thing and described herself as “petit”. Good, I’m not tall, the last thing I want is a tall girl.

So I’d always go into the bar early, chat with the barman. This particular guy, Kieran always found my approach to be amusing because it was somewhat of a surprise as to what would turn up. I’m sitting at this big long bar. 7-10 meters wide. The dance floor in front of it wasn’t very deep, then there’s the door behind. So I'm facing the bar, he’s facing the door.

I show him the girl’s pictures and told him to give me a nod when she comes in as he’ll see first and give me a second to prepare myself, sit up straight and pretend to be confident.

I’m drinking. I see him look up, start to crack up laughing and just legs it the full length of the bar out the back. Before I can really clock onto what’s going on I feel a tap on my leg. I swing round on the bar stool and there’s no-one there.

I look down.

Fuck.

That’s what she meant by “petit”. She’s a fucking midget.

The relatively short exchange (pun definitely intended) went something like this.

Midget: “Are you Adam?”.
Me: “Yeah, but why didn’t you tell me?”
Midget: “Because if I had you might not had met me”.
Me: “Did you think I wasn’t going to notice? I nearly knocked you out cold with my knee swinging round on a fucking bar stool”.
Midget: “I understand. It’s cool. No worries”

She left. I’m pretty deflated because I feel bad for some reason even though she lied. If the roles had been reversed I’d be getting crucified.
Kieran comes back laughing his little face off and says the only thing that could have made me feel better in that moment.

“What happened man? Why didn’t you give her a spin?”

I burst out laughing. Apparently he didn’t mean literally.

At the risk of this coming across arrogant as fuck, I’m better than most people I meet in several ways. My ideas are generally better, I work harder than everyone I meet, my execution is almost always better. The problem is you can’t just say “My way is better” and expect everyone to go along with it.

Recently I’ve done a lot of hiring for Better Proposals and it’s been strange because I’ve had to accept that there are certain parts of the business which are going to be performing worse than when I did them. What ended up happening in some cases, because I was hiring specialists, it’s actually improved things dramatically. This has been a massive learning curve.

I want to be clear, I’m not suggesting I’m better at everything, far from it. It’s just my natural response because I can control my own actions. It’s then annoyingly backed up by two decades of experience proving that right. It’s a strange thing to type because reading that back, I don’t fully agree with it in the light of day but in the interest of being honest, it’s how I’ve approached things.

It all comes from wanting to give people the best possible experience regardless of the cost. If I need to drag people into that to make it happen and I get resistance then I find that difficult to take.

Perhaps the best example of this is special occasions like people’s birthdays and Christmas. Fortunately, Sabrina’s always been great at going along with things and deserves a ton of credit for just getting behind my mad ideas and seeing where it goes. At this point, she generally knows that I’ve sussed out details in advance that most people naturally wouldn’t consider until it smacks them in the face.

There’s probably no better example of this than turning my Dad into Jack Bauer for the day. He was super into the show 24 at the time and for his birthday we sent him on a 12 hour mission to rescue his kidnapped son. It took over 6 months of planning but it turned into the most insane day and one of the coolest things I’ve ever done.

We legitimately kidnapped my brother from my parents' house, left a ransom note pinned to one of the cars, sent him on a mad treasure hunt and had him find a hard drive buried in the middle of a national park which we’d planted about half an hour before. We had him interrogate a friend of ours to get an address which led him to a climbing wall 30 minutes drive away. The password to the hard drive pinned at the top of the wall. When I called and asked for this insane favour the guy on the end of the phone was super into it, he thought it was so cool he never charged my Dad for it.

We were 3 seconds from being caught by my parents as they’d caught up with us in the adventure while we were making them lunch at their house. This happened because we nearly got arrested by the police because they thought it was a legitimate kidnapping.

So much so that there were two girls sitting in the police car who had to “identify” Sabrina. You should have seen their little faces. The police dude asks them “Is this the getaway driver?” and points to Sabrina. It turns out they’d scrambled two helicopters and had a full scale search mission going.

I’m trying to explain to a guy who’s just told me I’v just wasted about £50,000 in Police resources that it’s because my Dad is Jack Bauer for the day and it’s his 55th birthday. He asks me where my kidnapped brother is.

Me: “He’s at Gay Pride in Brighton”.
Police dude: “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. Get out of here will you!”

We send them on a few more afternoon adventures which were truly mad. One of them had us leave a “bag of cash” behind a wheely bin in a town 4 miles away. He found it with 2 ridiculously vague clues. My Dad is crazy analytical and an incredible problem solver. This environment was him in his element. It really was amazing to see him operating at his absolute peak.

Somehow, in amongst all this, Sabrina and I took orders and cooked dinner for 20 people and synced it perfectly to my brother getting home from Gay Pride, duct taping him up and locked him back in the garage in time for my Dad to “save him” before the “bomb” went off.

A full 12 hour full tilt mission that took over 6 months to plan and it went off without a single hitch, minus the Police thing. Without a doubt one of the coolest things I’ve done.

When I decide the outcome of something, it’s a foregone conclusion, not a case of ‘if’. Because it’s already decided it can sometimes feel like going through the motions. This results in boredom and getting frustrated with things not happening fast enough.

You’ll often find people say that Autistic kids aren’t flexible and don’t like change. This is true and I’m the same but the reason is often because deterring from the plan and the way you know is going to work just seems like unnecessary risk.

The thought process goes something like this: “I’ve already worked out that this is the plan that will work the best, any changes to it run the risk of messing it up”. This is why it’s not easy to work in teams with Autistic people.

One place someone with Autism or Asperger's specifically will likely struggle is in a job. Let's look at a few characteristics of a typical workplace:

• Rare you’re told why to do something, just to do it and not to ask questions
• It’s very rare that companies are ever looking to improve something
• No-one wants to work harder than necessary.

Based on what you’ve read so far about how I’ve handled simple shit like going up and down a slide for example, how do you think I did in a typical workplace? Beyond horrific would be putting it mildly. Let's, just for fun, run down a few of these jobs I’ve had.

My paper round (Age 13 to 15)
Fired twice: We were given newspapers to deliver in a certain order. I knew the area like the back of my hand and was convinced it wasn’t the best order so I did it in the most efficient route. I got the round down from 45 minutes to 28 minutes. The person who was used to getting their paper at 4pm was now getting it at the end of my round at 4:30 though. They complained. I argued with Fred, the guy who owned the paper shop and he fired me.

He got light on staff a week later and called me back. At Christmas I delivered the papers by knocking on the door and handing them to them. 50% of the time they’d say “Oh bear with me a moment” and get me £5 or so as a Christmas tip.

I got fired the second time a week before Christmas tips were handed out because he didn’t want to pay me my portion of the joint tips that customers had left in the shop.

Computer shop: Sales (Age 15 - 16)
Fired: I was left alone in the computer shop while the boss went to the computer fair. Basically, no-one went to the shops on Saturdays, I was just there to hold the fort really. One guy came in and I upsold a guy a £300 computer a £600 computer, built it for him within 3 hours, called him back, gave him a demo and got the money in the cash drawer. I went home with my usual £15 daily wage and got a call in the week that I shouldn’t have done what I did and they fired me. No reason given.

Tesco: Supermarket (Age 16 - 18)
Fired: Dyed my hair bleach blonde, spiked it up in an effort to look like Gohan from Dragonball Z. Supplemented Kerrang magazine with my brother’s demo CD, made weird noises down the tannoy, would clock in, do my work, go home, come back, clock out.

I would help out other departments constantly and get told off for it. In the end, after about 16 months of working there they fired me for having bleached blonde hair.

McDonalds: Fast food (Age 18)
Quit: Tesco and McDonalds were in the same building. I walked out of Tesco, into Maccy D’s and asked for a job. I started at 7am the following morning. I went home for lunch at 12pm and never came back. Fuck that.

Sainsburys: Supermarket (Age 18)
Fired: I worked in the admin department. This was right up my street, swapping pricing around, doing computer work, setting out the specialised marketing for Easter, Summer etc. I was supposed to be on an early shift so I turned up at 8am and they sent me away telling me I was on a late. I can’t be on a late, my favourite band is on at 9pm and it’s a planned night out.

I came in at 3pm like they told me to, my boss left at 6pm. I left at 8pm, went to the show, came back about midnight, worked till about 5am and did an amazing job. My boss then turns up. Fuck. She fires me on the spot. Not really sure what for. Good, she stank anyway.

Toys ‘R’ Us: Toy shop (Age 18)
Quit: I interviewed so well that they only wanted to employ me out of 12 in the group interview. I said I’d only do it if they took on my friend and girlfriend at the time. They agreed. I would fuck about every time I stepped foot in this place. I’d ride the bikes round, wear masks and scare customers, rename products like “Monopoly” to “Big Black Dildo” in the office and things like that. I got bored and quit.

Virgin Media: Customer service - was called NTL at the time (Age 18 - 19)
Made redundant: They closed the call centre but on the final day, I went into my Dad and Uncle’s accounts and applied every discount I could find. At one point my Uncle was being paid about £40 a month to have phone, internet, TV and every channel imaginable.

My favourite calls to take were the distressed parents who would complain about 0906 numbers being called and having £40 charges and things like this. The thing is, it told us exactly what they’d done. They were dial up porn sites. We’d start the line of questioning subtly by saying things like “Do you have a teenage son by any chance?”.

One time this happened:

Woman: “There’s a mistake on my account. £90 to an 0906 number”
Me: “Let's take a look. Do you have a teenage son by any chance Mrs Jones?”
Mrs Jones: “Yes, I do, he’s 15”
Me: “Ah, he has good taste”
Mrs Jones: “What on earth are you talking about?”
Me: “I’ve just looked it up and 0906 123456 gives you dial up internet access to Anal Invasion Volume 7”
Mrs Jones: “What! This is outrageous. I want to talk to a manager”
Me: “A manager will also confirm it’s for Anal Invasion Volume 7. In fairness Mrs Jones, it’s worth every penny, maybe just have a word with him and teach him about Limewire”
Mrs Jones: “I’ll do that, thank you”.

Somehow, the funniest part was the “Volume 7” bit.

Sussex Signs: Sales (Age 22)
Fired: Sold £20,000 of signage in 3 months. On par with the senior guys there. I was the first sales guy they had ever hired and they wanted a professional sales guy and a culture fit with a bunch of tradies. Not going to happen. The guy didn’t really get on with me and he had a weird cut off finger which creeped me out. He fired me because I listed Sussex Signs as an occupation on my MySpace page. He worked in the same town as my Uncle and threatened to tell him how shit of a human being I was if I got a union involved over unfair dismissal.

Pure 360: Sales (Age 23 - 24)
Quit: This lot were alright actually. I learned a lot about running a subscription business, how to deal with customers on a large scale, cancellations, systems, getting people using your software. There were some wicked people there and some I’m still in touch with today. One of my managers Marc - he was brilliant and taught me loads. The last thing he said to me was “Hey Ads, let me know when you’ve joined the 6 figure club”. I’m not actually sure if he said 6 or 7 figure club but either way - I’ve done both. Thanks Marc, I owe you a lot.

I left because I’d been considering quitting and found myself laying on my sofa asking myself “What is life going to be like in 6 months if I stay vs if I go?”. The answer to if I stayed was simple: Laying on the sofa like I am now asking myself the exact same question.

What would happen if I left? Not a fucking clue. That sounded a lot more exciting so I walked in the following day, the day they announced the “credit crunch” in late 2008 and handed my notice in.

Everyone told me I was completely insane. Zero savings, no real plan but I did know one thing. I was either going to make my business successful or I was going to die trying.

My business has had three phases to it. First as a web design agency for about 10 years or so, then into building software (which is where this story takes place) and later with Better Proposals. In all of them I’ve been lucky enough to have the best business partner and life partner someone could hope for in Sabrina.

Without her, stories like this may happen but the endings would be very very different.

Upshot is this - we’ve built some software for a barrister who helps people get away with paying Stamp Duty Land Tax. It’s a brutal tax charged to people when buying a house in the UK and gets progressively worse the more expensive the houses you get. Over £1,000,000 and its basically financial rape. The project is tricky but it goes well, he pays about half of it with a payment plan and right at the end of the project the British Government put a stop to that particular type of tax planning.

He claims the software isn’t fit for purpose despite it being perfectly to spec. We want to be paid for the work we’ve done and will price up what it’ll cost to adapt it for the new rules. Stalemate.

This is a guy that told me he only hired one of the girls who worked for him “because she had massive tits” then followed it up with “why do you think I make her sit opposite me?”.

I mean, do it if you want but don’t brag about it.

We have a mutual contact who had a secretary who had to email him about something simple. He replied by calling her a waste of space, a useless piece of shit and questioned how she ever got a job. He didn’t even have a cause to complain because he was wrong in the first place.

Not prepared to wait around, we start legal proceedings and with our digital signature software we can prove he’s signed the agreements etc so we file in court for the remainder of the money. He then countersues us saying the project isn’t complete.

We go to court and Sabrina has printed off every email, every agreement, the timeline, colour coded everything and has us well prepared. When you go to court, you have to submit everything three times. Once for yourself, once for your opponent and once to the judge. They have to do the same for you. I figured there was an opportunity for some sort of character reference here so I buried in the folder of documents copies of emails he’s sent to our mutual contact’s secretary among shitty emails he’d sent to Sabrina. The chances are the judge would never have looked at them but our opponent did.

The first thing he does when the case starts is say “Judge, there’s some evidence in here which needs to be thrown out”. He then proceeds to direct the Judge to it who then reads it and says it is dismissed. Doesn’t matter, job done. You can’t unread things.

I bumble my way through this gruelling three hour court case and the Judge eventually rules in our favour and awards us the money we deserve along with just about every possible extra he can give us.

We come outside, pretty emotional knowing that if we’d lost we would have been out of money and essentially out of business. Hugs all round. I see he gets in his car, drives up on the pavement heading directly for Sabrina, myself and the guy helping us with the case. He swerves at the last second and takes off.

Unreal. It’s moments like this when you realise that just because someone is older than you or more experienced doesn’t mean they’re better than you. It was obviously weird seeing a fully grown man try to run you over but in a way you look to signals like him wearing a suit, being rich, having an office in Windsor High Street and think “Ah he must have his shit together”.

It’s important to see things for what they really are instead of making judgements on just the presentation of someone or a situation alone.

The relationships I have in my life are fucking special to me and I’ll do anything in the world to protect them. You might have gathered by now but where most people make friends easily, talk to strangers without too much trouble and go about their day effortlessly, that is my biggest struggle.

My worst nightmare? A family BBQ. How the fuck do you act around your family? Be yourself would be good starting advice but I can’t do that or I get chastised. I’ve been told by various family members over the years that I’ve ruined countless holidays.

So much so in fact that when I was 15 I actually stayed at home for two weeks once while the rest of my family and extended family all went off to Florida.

Family situations aren’t easy and neither are social ones.

So when I occasionally find someone I can truly be myself around, I treasure that shit like my life depends on it because in some ways, it does.

I’m often told that what Better Proposals has become must be my biggest achievement. It’s not even close. Imagine being told routinely for decades by multiple people you’ll never hold down a relationship then growing up to find it impossible to talk to people. That’s the first 15-20 years of my life. Not a great start.

Going from that to creating a relationship with Sabrina, which most people would describe as weird, and turning that into a crazy successful business partnership but have it last 10+ years and continue to get better and better, is without a doubt my proudest achievement. It amazes me every day and I hope will continue all the time it works the way it does.

If I had to choose between what I have with Sabrina and the business, I’d throw the business away in a heartbeat because I know the pair of us could build something else. We always have, we always will.

Without her, I’d either be a billionaire or dead, I’m not sure which.

Being someone with very few true friends and knowing how much effort it takes to maintain those relationships, especially when the girls get boyfriends can be incredibly hard. It takes a lot of patience and understanding - something I suck at.

I’ve come to realise that having friends over a period of decades is a massive filter system and one that continually needs topping up because some eventually fall away. It’s why I still meet new people today with an effort to create new friendships. It’s the only way I know how.

Creating UltraMeet and ultimately my friendship circle in Split, Croatia is one of the reasons I often call it home. It’s where I feel appreciated, not judged and can truly be myself. That is what home is.

Ultra Music Festival is the world’s biggest music festival. They’re in about 20 countries and just celebrated their 20th anniversary. It’s a big deal and they’re a big company these days. Their European version takes place in Split, Croatia over. This is what it looks like: Myself, Sabrina, Rob and Karla decided that because people flew into Split on Wednesday and Thursday and Ultra was 3 nights starting Friday, that we could host a little meetup on the Thursday. We called it UltraMeet.

UltraMeet is best described as a mini festival with no rules and embraces not only Dalmatian culture but what dance music is truly about. We’re about to celebrate our fifth anniversary in the summer of 2019 and will have our 10,000th attendee. Not bad for a bunch of amateurs. If you watch the after movie from last year you’d think we’re professional promoters but there is a rather hilarious catalogue of errors for every one thing that went right.

Part of the benefit of being autistic and more specifically, having Asperger's is you can foresee things other people just can’t even begin to imagine. Helpful when it comes to party planning.

Sorting out a venue willing to fund the production of an event with a bunch of foreigners promising 3000 people just sounds like waffle. Show them footage from the previous year and you need to pick their jaw up off the floor. One thing about Dalmatian people is they agree to everything by saying “Može” which literally translates to “deal” but to them it’s not really an agreement, it’s more a loose “We’ll see later” type of agreement. These are not the agreements you want with production companies and venues.

The first year, the venue ran out of vodka by 11pm. The second year they ran out by 1am (while the show finished at 5am). Third year by 2am and last year they ordered enough to get a small city drunk, or as Mel Gibson would call it, breakfast.

The third year we held it at the same venue we did the first year and the owner promised us they had city permission to construct a 6m wide, 6m deep and 6m tall stage on the public walkway in front of their bar. After 8 hours of setting up and sound checking, the Mayor of Bačvice Beach walks by and says “Where’s your permit for this?”, we’re like “Errr, talk to him”. The owner talks to him then says we need to move it in the tone you’d ask someone to move a chair so you can squeeze by.

MOVE IT?!

“It’s about 4 tons of steel, sound system and LED boards. Where the fuck do you suggest we put it?!”

My stupid little Autistic brain was having a right spaz out over this. We decided where to move it to, everyone chipped in, took the stage apart, moved it and set it up in its new location. It went perfectly. Another magical night in the books.

The following year, we’d made each DJ 5 minute video intros so they had this beautifully time coded show when they came on. The best of which was my friend Toni. This was the biggest show he’d ever played and he was headlining the main stage to close the main portion of the show. In the few minutes after the guy before him finished the heavens opened and it’s chucking it down. We didn’t account for this in Croatia in the middle of July. We’re scrambling to cover the DJ decks and put massive parasols on the stage which are now covering up the screen. In everyone’s blind panic, the visuals guy just played any old intro so the whole thing was completely out of time. So frustrating but I’ve come to learn, that’s exactly what UltraMeet is about.

Something will always go wrong, it’s what it does. It’s just about how you react to it and fix it. To top off my, how do I describe it, “happy sadness” at Toni’s intro being mucked up I’m standing side stage, my friend Dora giving me a sympathetic hug, I turn right to go back to our VIP bit and watch the show and SMACK!

Fucking Ivan comes flying in with this massive parasol with a huge concrete base on it and smashes it into my face. Blood everywhere. I go back and try to get it sorted and run into Dennis, who’s one of my best friends. He’s Italian, lives in Croatia and couldn’t be more chill if he tried. There’s not an energetic bone in his body. I walk over with blood pissing out my nose and he takes one look at me and says in his Italian accent.

“It is very broken so you need two things, this and this”. He hands me a cup and tells me to drink it. I don’t question Dennis so I drink it. He tips the other one on my face.

It was gin and it stung like a motherfucker.

The rest of the show went off without a hitch, except the part where we got fined by the corrupt Croatian Police for playing 1 minute too late and setting fireworks off when we shouldn’t.

It’s my favourite time of the year by such a distance.

If you think back to when you learned how to be patient, or to stand up for yourself or when you learned how to talk to the opposite sex you probably can’t pinpoint even a 3 year period. They are things normal people piece together over a decade or so.

I can tell you the fucking date I learned those things.

They are moments in time when I suss something out and get myself “up to scratch” with everyone else. To most people these things are things you naturally learn but for me I had to source the best methods I could and learn from them. This is why you’ll often see Asperger's kids labelled as obsessive. We need to be - it’s how we learn.

One of the biggest sticking points for someone with Asperger's is not being able to deviate from a plan. Learning that you can embrace change was brought about with UltraMeet. I love that we’ll plan it one way and it’ll get fucked up about 50 times before a single beat emanates from those beautiful speakers. That forces me to be at my best. Like how an athlete would physically prepare themselves for a big match or fight, I’m the same. If I’m not on form for the 3 months preparation for UltraMeet, it’ll collapse.

Social skills are another one. How do you talk to a girl? “Just be yourself man” right?

Well, what if “being yourself” is being a complete fucking idiot and the last thing any girl would want? What do you do then? If you’re an Autistic kid you systematically figure out what success looks like, look at the people who are the best at it, reverse engineer what they do well and then dress it up with your own individual style. I wouldn’t say I’m particularly good but I get by.

I think on reflection, this is why a lot of Autistic kids get labelled “bad kids”, or at least badly behaved because you need to learn by doing a lot of the time so you’re making more mistakes. Someone telling you not to do something rarely feels like enough, it’s like you have to test it yourself just to be sure.

If there’s one thing that I’ve always wanted, it’s a big house. Some people want to be an astronaut, I always wanted a big house. It’s been my driver for about two decades and I’m finally there. Almost.

Those of you that understand the house buying process in the UK will know it’s the most inefficient process imaginable. No-one knows what’s going on from one minute to the next, no-one seemingly wants the sale to go through, it’s a next level nightmare for someone who has the patience of a kid at 4am on Christmas morning.

Being someone who thinks in ideas, improvements and creative thoughts, all I’ve wanted is a big house to work on, do things to and enjoy the process of making better. I finally found the place, it was the perfect mix of done structurally and needing work, it had a place for the ideal office, pool, views, space for parties aaaaaand now I’ve got to wait for 6 weeks minimum while it all goes through.

If I had to design a situation for me to function at my absolute worst, this would be it. It’s so hard it’s almost funny so I’ve decided to get good at having patience the only way I know how. I started by driving down to Split to see my friends before the summer season starts. Then went to Poland and then to Stockholm to see the Swedish House Mafia do their thing. Not the worst distraction in the world.

This is where we are today so as a way to keep myself amused I decided to write a book about being a socially retarded kid and call it Licking the Yoghurt Pot. I’m basically amusing myself while my Solicitor earns her money.

I feel like part of the journey as someone who’s Autistic is figuring out where you have a gap, be it a social skill, a technical skill, a personal presentation issue or otherwise and find a way to plug it. It’s something I’ve had to do my entire life and I look at it now as a positive. When I fuck something up, I need to learn to fix it. The difference for most people is you have an intuitive understanding of right and wrong. I don’t, it needs to be learned intentionally.

It’s hard to imagine what the next 10-15 years look like to be honest. As the business grows it gets easier to avoid people. I can fly business class for the rest of my life if I want. I will soon have a house that will have everything in it so I could conceivably never leave. With delivery services, I don’t even need to go food shopping.

This is comfortable for me - automatic income and no reason to leave the house unless I invite people over. It sounds amazing in theory but battling against that natural urge to take it easy is hard right now and will only get harder. It’s that struggle that I loved.

It’s the pursuit of being “normal” and fitting in that I have always struggled with. I don’t “go to the pub with my mates” or socialise much with anyone in the UK really. I do when I’m in Split which is pretty odd. In recent years I’ve been sitting on the fence of “just learn to fit in and be like other people” and “fuck it, just be a mentalist and let the people who like it find you”.

It’s going to be interesting to see what I’m like when I’m 45. Knowing how fast the last 10 years have gone, this is going to fly by too and I know I don’t want to spend it sitting around in a big house, as much as I’ve always felt like that’s all I want. It’s a balance and one that I imagine, if you get wrong, leaves you with endless regret. I can’t imagine too many people lying on their death bed wishing they spent more time rattling around in a mansion.

I plan on enjoying the position I’ve spent 20 years working towards. It’s a cool feeling but I’m not stupid enough to think we’ve “made it”. One wrong move and I’m back hunting the streets for pennies to top up my electric meter again.

It sounds strange but I sort of fantasise about the idea of everything falling apart, being back with nothing, having no money to employ anyone and it just being me on my own building up another business. Part of me wants to find out if I’ve “still got it”, can still do the all nighters and the 5am starts. I loved those days. There is a part of me that hates the complacency that recurring income gives you. It allows you to put things in auto pilot and become your worst self.

Physically I’m the most out of shape I’ve ever been and some of that is just because my business has enabled me to perform at such a low level, while the business still grows month on month. That isn’t the attitude of a successful person in my mind and not who I feel I am as a person.

Performing at your best is an amazing feeling, every artist, performer or athlete will tell you the same. I just don’t know what me being at my best looks like anymore now my job and life is so different.

Maybe that’s what I’ll spend the next 10 years doing. Figuring it out.

I hope by reading this you’ll have done a couple of things. Laugh a little - at me, with me, I don’t mind. Hopefully you understand me a little bit. Maybe next time you see a comment from me on Facebook or talk to me and think “What a dick”, maybe it’ll be more like “I wonder what the dickhead is thinking there”.

Most importantly, realise that everyone has a super power. Find yours and use it for good - the world needs more of that.