As a boy, I had two small aquaria in our backyard in which I watched, each spring, the nest building and other fascinating behaviours of sticklebacks.

I was not much interested in school, and both at secondary school and at university, I only just scraped through, with as little effort as I judged possible without failing.

Relatively many autists are first-born children. There is also a pretty widespread conviction that the parents of autists are somehow different - for instance, many of them are very serious people or people who are themselves under some sort of strain.

Whenever a gentle pressure is used to make a slight change in leg posture, the neck muscles react immediately. Conversely, when the therapist helps one to 'release' the neck muscles, it is amazing to see quite pronounced movements for instance of the toes, even when one is lying on a couch.