Page 4 of The Dark of the Moon
I was thinking about Leonardo da Vinci and birds as I bounced on the trampoline. I have to take my melatonin at bedtime because otherwise I feel too anxious to get to sleep. But often I wake up before it gets light, especially if I’ve had a nightmare, and so I gooutside in the darkness and jump. It helps me get the bad dreams out of my head and it’s the best time to do it, before the sun comes up and makes everything too bright and too busy. We have a big trampoline in the garden back home in Scotland. We’ve been coming to the house in France in the summer holidays for as long as I can remember – it used to belong to an old friend of my Great-granny Ella, a lady called Caroline, and then when she died a few years ago she sold it to Mum and Dad so we could keep coming. So then we got a trampoline here as well. Jumping takes the pressure off my brain. Not literally, of course, it just makes my thoughts go a bit quieter. They’re usually very loud.
After a while, I noticed a light come on in the window of one of the upstairs bedrooms. It wasn’t Mum – I knew she was downstairs doing her writing. Then the shutters opened, and the Old Lady looked out. She watched me jumping in the moonlight for a few seconds and then she raised one hand to her head, like a salute, and turned away. So I stopped jumping, because I didn’t want to disturb her if she wanted to go back to sleep, and I went back inside to do some maths instead.
The thing about the air pressure and the wings was really discovered by Daniel Bernoulli, who was a Swiss mathematician. He came up with an equation that, in its simplest form, is written like this:
P + ½ ρ V2= constant
Where P is Pressure (force exerted divided by area exerted on)
And ρ is density of the fluid or air
And V is velocity of the moving object or fluid
The Bernoulli equation states that an increase in velocity leads to a decrease in pressure. Thus, the higher the velocity of the flow, the lower the pressure. Therefore, air flowing over an aerofoil will decrease in pressure. The pressure loss over the top surface is greaterthan that of the bottom surface. The result is a net pressure force in the upward direction. This pressure force is lift.
Q.E.D., as Philly said to the mechanic.
I wrote out the equation and laminated it.
I like the language maths problems use. It takes you through a problem one step at a time until you can resolve it. It’s logical. Mostly, people aren’t logical, they are emotional. Emotions are often illogical on the surface, but if you look at them in a bit more detail, to get to the root of them, you can see that they actually come from a pretty logical origin. Like how our brains are programmed for fight or flight and that goes back to the days when we lived in caves and had to be ready for attacks by sabre-toothed tigers. The ones who didn’t either fight or run away got eaten, so their brain wiring died out. We’re left with the fight or flight wiring, even if there are no sabre-toothed tigers left now.
It was my fight wiring that got triggered when I had a meltdown about doing the sailing camp, the first time Dad brought it up. Afterwards, he said he couldn’t understand why I was getting so emotional about it. He was putting some antiseptic cream on his hand where I’d bitten it. I tried to explain about the La Palma volcano and the mega-tsunami hypothesis, but he wouldn’t listen. And that seemed pretty illogical to me.
I wonder whether Mrs Philly Delaney would like to sail the dinghy with me. I have a hypothesis that if she knows how to fly then she should understand how to sail. I don’t know if she could manage to climb into it with her false leg, but she seems pretty calm, so I think she’d be good in a crisis, unlike all the other kids who are going to be coming on the camp.
We’re not renowned for our calmness in the face of stressful situations, those of us with autism.
Dad says one day it would be nice to get a plane to France, just throw a few things into a suitcase and travel light. But we have totake the car because of needing to bring things like our bikes and the laminating machine and the jars of Marmite. Also, I don’t think I’d like going on a plane because of all the other people. A private plane would be cool though. Perhaps Philly could fly it.
I spent the whole morning looking at maths blogs. You can find all sorts of interesting things on them. My favourite one is by Stephen Wolfram. He’s developed his own computer language, and also an answer engine called Wolfram Alpha. I went on to it to find out about earthquakes in the Canary Islands, but it said there haven’t been any in the last 30 years. There was an eruption of the La Palma stratovolcano on Tuesday, 26 October 1971, though, which just goes to show there could be another one any day now, resulting in a catastrophic landslide.
After lunch (my usual Marmite sandwiches on white bread with the crusts cut off), Mum and Mrs Ophelia Delaney did another session of the Old Lady’s life story.
I just sat and listened this time, without even pretending to read the book about sailing.
Philly
Once I’ve had a rest after lunch, I go down to the room leading off the kitchen that Kendra uses as a makeshift study. I suppose it must once have been used as a formal dining room, although now we eat our meals sitting at the round kitchen table, the doors propped open to the patch of garden beyond, which contains a few ancient fruit trees and that large trampoline Finn was bouncing on in the wee small hours. The sea breeze is pleasant, cooling the summer heat, carrying with it the faint sound of the waves breaking on the beach beyond the dunes.
As I enter, Kendra is typing on her computer. I don’t think she notices me standing there in the doorway because she takes off her glasses and rests her chin on her hand for a moment, gazing towards the window. Her expression is one of complete exhaustion. Then she suddenly realises she’s being watched and turns to smile at me. As she does so, she is transformed, although the tiredness is still just visible behind her calm blue-green eyes, even as they shine with their customary warmth. She reminds me so much of Ella again, with her honey-blonde hair and heart-shaped face.
‘Did you have a good rest?’ she asks. ‘I hope Finn’s bouncing didn’t disturb you last night? I can ask him not to, while you’re here.’
‘No, please don’t do that. I’ll only hear him if I’m already awake anyway.’ It’s a polite lie, of course, meant to ease the burden of anxiety that is evident behind those eyes.
‘It helps him, you see,’ she says. ‘He has bad dreams. I think it brings him some relief from the anxiety he feels.’ There’s a defensive edge to her voice, as if she’s expecting criticism.
I nod. ‘It can’t be easy, having a brain that active. He’s a bright boy.’
She sighs. ‘He finds transitions hard. Any changes. So even something as simple as waking up can be overwhelming for him. The jumping is a way of dealing with the feelings it triggers.’ She hesitates, fiddling with a pen on her desk, setting it perfectly straight alongside the tape recorder and notepad she’s using to jot down my story. I sense she’s reluctant to talk about Finn to others she thinks may not understand. I suppose it must be something she’s come up against a lot. She glances up at me and I nod, recognising her need to talk. I can’t do much these days, but at least I can listen.
‘Even falling asleep used to be hard for him,’ she continues, encouraged. ‘It’s another transition, you see? He’d fight it, frightened and anxious about giving up control, but now he takes a pill to help him drop off. The minutest of changes can be terrifying for him – the fear of the unknown, I suppose.’ She laughs and shakes her head. ‘We learned that the hard way, which is the way we learn most things, come to think of it. He hates surprises, you see. So even something that’s meant to be fun, like a wrapped gift, can trigger panic. I took him to another child’s birthday party when he was about five and they were playing a game of Pass the Parcel. You can just imagine how that went down for him. In the end, we had to ask the hosts if he could take over being in charge of the music rather than playing the game – he liked that, feeling in control of something. Of course, it made him seem even more strange and antisocial to the other kids.’
‘Hmm. Well, socialising can be a complete minefield at the best of times,’ I say.
‘Yes, but for a child it’s so important. We’ve struggled with it for Finn, walking that tightrope between what he can and can’t manage. I’ve pretty much given up now. We’ve had to learn to change in the context of Finn’s life, to be with him in his world instead of making him fit into ours, to create an environment where he doesn’t feel he’s being punished all the time for simply being himself. Basically, that means being confined to home. So I think we’ve all become more isolated. Ironically, we’re not alone in our isolation, if you see what I mean. So many families live with autism nowadays, desperately in need of help when there is none. You just have to get on with it as best you can.’
‘It must be a worry,’ I say. ‘Thinking about what the future may hold for him?’
