Chris Packham on Neurodiversity, Safe Spaces & Finding Solace in Nature

39:28I don't need to be given something or to have to take something from someone. But if there's nothing there, which is on offer, which is stimulating to me, then why am I going to be interested? I'm not. So that feeling in your early 20s, where you just felt like you were not like everybody else, how did you pull yourself out of that? How did you start to feel that that was okay? Or has that never happened? well so the first thing that was uh advantageous was before before that was was the whole punk rock thing kicked off because that in very simple terms that allowed me to look physically different i'd already come to realize that there was something different i don't know what it was but i could then dress differently and i could therefore outwardly say i'm not like you and the interesting thing about the punk movement is that i think a lot of people imagine it as like a massive youth movement but it wasn't it was tiny so in sort of 76 early 77 there were a handful of punk rockers you know most of them were in london or the suburbs outside of that even in the major cities there were just a handful you know so in southampton i can remember the days when there would have been about 15 of us punk rockers you know and then it grew obviously throughout sort of this later 77 78 and and it became much much a broader scene but you know that by sort of dyeing my hair and wearing like very very different clothes and and i know it's again with the benefit it's difficult to explain to people now but in 1977 if you bleached your hair and put on a spiky you know uh you know studded motorcycle jacket and really tight trousers as you stood out and people didn't like you.

41:13And that was great for me because, you know, people did cross the street when they were walking towards me on the pavement and, you know, it wasn't that I was physically intimidating, it was just that I was so different they didn't understand me. And that was, for me, was a manifestation of exactly the way that I felt. So that was empowering. Then there was the energy around the music and everyone thought it was always about spitting and destroying and it wasn't, it was about creativity. It was about, you know, people that couldn't afford synthesizers and, you know, just getting guitars and writing songs about girlfriends they'd never had in garages.

41:50It was real life, you know, really spoke about, you know, the life that I was living. A bit like the Smiths in the 80s and Billy Bragg forever. They were songs that came, you know, essentially from supermarkets and the street. and they were about, you know, experiences that I understood. I didn't understand anything about ELO or, God, any of that garbage. So that didn't speak to me, but that other stuff did. So that was the first thing. And I suppose it was about, you know, slowly, it's about confidence. It's about having the confidence to acknowledge that although there are difficulties in your life and there are limitations.

42:34There are also opportunities. To the extent that, you know, I often say my autism is a bit like a gift, only sometimes when you open it you don't get what you want. So that's the way it is. It's sometimes extremely challenging and it presents difficulties to this day. I mean, it's something that you can learn to manage and manage more skillfully. on a sort of a day-to-day basis. And obviously that does become easier as you become more practiced at it and it becomes more of a habit as an adult. But ultimately, of course, it never goes away. You know, I create a space where essentially I can feel comfortable because I've made it, I'm in control of it, but it's a space which isn't entirely comfortable for other people.

43:27And so as a consequence of that, It's my way of controlling the fact that really I just want to be there on my own, you know. And ultimately, what I accepted long ago is that, and I will say this to Charlotte, you know, I'm best on my own, you know, because then I'm not being judged by anyone. I don't have to judge myself. I can just be entirely comfortable. And, of course, those people that are closer to me come closer to that point. I've just been away for for 10 days in Spain going to art galleries and I arrive before they open and I'm the last person being kicked out and I do that on my own because I need to entirely within my own time and need immerse myself in in the in the subjects that I'm interested in and and that's not something that I can do with Charlotte the woman that I love and share my life with because she wants to go to have lunch she wants to go to the gift shop I mean she wants to look at that painting over there and you know and and and to have those periods where I can just take total control has become a very important sort of you know thing when it comes to sort of staying on the rails basically when you say staying on the rails what does it look like not being on the rails well not being on the rails is you know has been uh you know very difficult at times i mean there isn't a neurodiversity isn't a mental health condition but we know obviously that groups of neurodiverse people are more predisposed to mental health difficulties for sometimes for very obvious reasons um higher suicide rates speak to higher levels of depression and the inability for those people to possibly find the help that they need as rapidly or as adequately as possible so I've been to some pretty dark places and difficult times and in later life I realized that and I also realized that I needed to be able to manage those sorts of things and so I've therefore sought therapy which had proved to be has proved to be enormously valuable is that traditional psychotherapy you've done yeah yeah yeah yeah and i didn't do that until i was in my 40s um and i to be honest with you i didn't have the mindset for that and there wasn't the opportunity for that had that been available and it should be available to obviously to to far younger people now then i think it would have had a my life might have been a lot easier at times you know but again you know not everything has to be easy you know i i i'm very accepting with the fact that you know things come things go life's a roller coaster you know i i've never been able to generate happiness but i've been happy um so that's my sort of outlook and i have very few complaints about apart from the fact i've got a bad back which is really annoying um you know I've got very few complaints about my life I managed to have some extraordinary opportunities that I never dared dream of in that little bedroom in in Middenbury and um I've never and we'll never forget that you know given what you said about the or the picture that you painted of the child that you were it does seem really surprising to me that I mean certainly I have very early memories of you being on tv on the really wild show in front of an audience of millions of people tell me about that how did that come about how did you get into tv well just by accident I had intended to stay in the academic system but by the time I got to my undergraduate degree I those again the complex of those difficulties had made it obvious to me that that wasn't going to be the best thing for me to do so I had I had arranged to do a phd but But I very sadly, and with great difficulty, cancelled that.

47:39I took some great advice from my supervisor at the time. And so then essentially I was an unemployed, antisocial, you know, ex-punk rocker in 1983 and 4. And I was very fortunate to get a job working as a camera assistant for someone who was making wildlife films. and then I started making some films myself and then I got I heard about an opportunity for the really wild show which was a kids science program in the 80s and I kind of sort of forced myself onto the program by demanding a um an audition and and harrying the producer who was a another really great great man and um and and yeah and he gave me a job so it was out of necessity basically i didn't have any money i was on and off the dole the whole time i'd started taking photographs and i needed money for petrol to drive my rusty reno 16 tl around the country and to buy kodachrome 64 for the camera and one lens that i had um because i was determined to do something you know at that point i was wanting to radically change wildlife photography and make it more then you know inject some art into it i'd always been interested in art since i was a kid and I just needed money.

49:01That's what it came down to. It wasn't something, it wasn't an aspiration of any kind. I remember telling my sister that I'd got this job and we were walking down through a park in Southampton to HMV, the record shop. And I said, oh, by the way, I think I've got a job making a children's TV program. And she said, doing what? And I said, well, presenting. And she said, oh, thank goodness for that. Now you can bore the entire world rather than just us. you know so that was it really and I mean there was no formal training or anything but typically I you know it was the days of VHS so I recorded loads of nature programs and and Alan Wicker and Brunoski I recorded all those sorts of communicators and I sat there with a notebook and I looked at the way that they communicated and I looked at how television was made i looked at how they cut it and how long the shots were and and and how these people behaved and um you know i broke it down sort of scientifically um to try and understand how that job would need to be done um which is typical chris basically yeah you know murder to dissect and and and then understand it to the nth degree yeah so interesting that's your approach to everything actually isn't it just to study it as much as you can yeah yeah I've just been in art galleries and I I mean I I have to understand how the paintings work you know and I have to firstly so I firstly look at them and you know I mean I don't not enjoy art on that level some art I can look at and I think okay all I need to do with this piece is to actually enjoy it because that's what it's there for that's its mission you know but then i think okay why am i enjoying it how can i maximize that enjoyment how has the artist you know you know shaped this piece so that you know that can happen you know what is there anything he or she could have done could have done better you know how is it working what's the history of that you know how did they come to that idea you know did they get that idea from someone else is that a modification of an idea um you know who who's or shaped who stuck with it you know and and and that i find you know really interesting so when i go i don't listen to the you know the audio tours i never do audio tours never you know because these pieces are representations of you know the artists have given something they've given something extraordinary they've taken something from their environment from their experience they personalized it they've made it unique they put it i don't know how maybe say on a canvas right and they've given it to the world that's an extraordinary gift and I want to receive that you know my way I'm not interested in what the audio tour says you know so I want to look at it and break it down and and understand it from that that point of view so I look at the color and I look at the shape and I look at the composition all the obvious stuff and then I look at how they come together and then I sort of think okay you know how does that make me feel what you know what am i learning from that what am i feeling from that and and and all the while as you can see i'm just sort of disappearing further and further down a tube into that painting and what that means is that the rest of the world putin trump everything else that's been going on in the last couple of weeks i have no idea because it can't get in because i'm so in that one space so i went to see las meninas the velasquith painting it's not my sort of thing at all but It was a very famous painting.

52:37It's interesting on a number of levels. First thing is I look at it and I realise that the top half of the painting has got nothing in it. It's a huge painting. But if you wanted to, you could get a Stanley knife or a chainsaw and you could cut the top off, right? And essentially you would lose none of the content, but you would lose the painting because the top half of the painting not having anything in it is all about what happens in the bottom half of the painting. So it's about those sorts of things. And, you know, that's always been my approach to everything, nature, architecture, art, history, you know.

53:11So how long would you spend looking at that glass quest for? Probably in total over three goes, about an hour and a half. So this house we're in now, how long have you been here for? Four years, yeah. Four years, okay. Why here? Because we're in the new forest itself, it seems to me. Why do you want to live in the forest? Well, I was taken here. I grew up on the other side of Southampton, but this has always been a place that I'd wanted to come to as a kid because of the wildlife that was here. So I'd be badgering my dad to drive me out at weekends to see the birds and bugs and bees and butterflies and things.

53:49So it's an area that I've known all of my life. I mean, the key thing for me is that houses have always been spaces where I can be comfortable and I can control things, But my real home's been outside. And, you know, and I thought I'd found a difference to that when I moved to France. I bought a house in France and I really loved the house, the house itself. But I soon came to realise that, you know, I did like the house, but I liked where it was even more, you know. And although I live here and we've rewilded the garden and you can walk out the gate into the national park, I get in the car every morning and I drive five minutes around the corner and I go back to the woods where I lived with Itch and Scratch, my previous poodles, and where Sid and Nancy grew up, and I go walking there because, you know, that's my real home, as it were.

54:44Does Charlotte live here with you or does she just come and visit? She spends a lot more time here now than she did. She has her own house, which she loves, in East Cowes on the Isle of Wight. It's very different than this. Charlotte reads a magazine called Enki. And Enki is a magazine full of bland Scandinavian properties where everything is beige, cream, black, occasionally white. You never see a picture on the wall. And she loves all that stuff. She loves all of those natural colours, natural fabrics, and lack of detail. That's where she finds her comfort. ironically she lives in an older Victorian house but it's lovely it's got all sorts of shapes nooks and crannies and it really is sort of Charlotte you know it's quirky and and so she loves it there I mean if I'm working I mean we share the dogs and she's got her rabbits so she necessarily spends time here but she likes she likes a bit like me she likes going home she's she's just been I mean obviously if I'm away she goes she goes home and sometimes she's at home and I'm here is it fair to say that you like living alone I mean I like having time on my own I you know obviously in a relationship with Charlotte like spend like spending time with her we sort of share our lives together but you know I think both of us recognize that we you know it's it's a value to our relationship to have time when we're not together.

56:27You know, absence, my mum used to say this ridiculous thing, absence makes the heart go fonder. It's absolutely true, I'm afraid. It's really that simple. I've just been away for these 10 days and, you know, on the final day I get really excited about seeing Charlotte. You know, things I want to tell her, things I want to show her. She'll say, you know, did you miss me? And it's not like I'll be walking down the street in Madrid on the way to the Prada and think, God, I wish Charlotte was here because I didn't because she'd be wanting to go to the bloody gift shop and I don't go to the gift shop in the Prada.

57:00So it's not like that. But, yeah, we share our lives together. We love her very much. But I think we both recognise that a strength in our relationship is having our own spaces. And joking apart, Charlotte doesn't like my decor. I don't – I mean, she dislikes my decor. I don't dislike her decor at all, but, you know, it's just not mine. So, again, that helps. We can both express ourselves in our own homes and we're very fortunate that we, you know, we can afford to, you know, live like that. Because you kindly showed me around the house earlier and you described yourself as liking and enjoying art that is somehow provocative, maybe a bit offensive, maybe what other people would find challenging.

57:50and you surround yourself with that in your home. Why do you do that, do you think? Well, I mean, there are things in here that I just like, and I have got a few things that, you know, you could say were actually just decorative. I don't really like decorative art. I think art has to say something. I like things. I mean, I also cycle a lot of it. A lot of it's not on the wall, and it gets moved around, you know. Not as much as I'd like, but just because I don't have time. um I've never really found the need to be comfortable I've always worried about contentment because I think complacency might come with it and if you're content and complacent then you're obviously not going to be doing what you need to be doing um so yeah I do like sort of challenging spaces I'll have to be very clear I don't choose pieces of art because I think they're going to be offensive to other people I choose pieces of art because I find them challenging and they're probably more challenging than most other people might want to confront.

58:51So they see that as being a bit weird. Why make a space where it's, you know, you're not, I mean, I don't know. I go to people's houses and they've just got a piece of nothing on the wall and I just sort of think, what a waste of space. Why not put something there you can think about or something there which is really beautiful that you can enjoy every day? And I've got to be very honest with you, I think I've got one piece of art. There are other pieces that I'd aspire to, but I don't own them. But I've got one piece of art which I could absolutely tell you that every day that I've looked at it, I've enjoyed it.

59:30And I've had it for about, I don't know, 20 years, I suppose. What is it? It's a Bridget Riley print. It's a print by Bridget Riley. And I used to have it on the wall opposite me. So I woke up every morning in the farm and looked at it. and every day I woke up and looked at it it made me feel good why do you think it did well because the shapes and the colors and the patterns it's clever um it looks different in different light I think it offers me it offers although it's very simple in the fact that it's a piece of what used to be called op art um I think it's something that can be you know reinterpreted through your own mood so it's one of those things where you can project yourself onto it you don't have to take everything from it you can give something to it and and and of your own time space and mood and it offers you a different perspective and and and aside from that it is actually just very very beautiful i love it's the you know it's the piece that would go in the in the arc i mean i've got to say you've really really surprised me in one particular way coming here because i think that I would have expected you to find a colourful, busy environment with some quite sharp edges going on, some provocative artwork, to be quite challenging for you to live with, with obviously being someone who on a sensory level, you know, gets quite triggered by things.

1:01:01So how do you explain that? Well, you know, when you're watching a horror film and you put your fingers in front of your face but you can't resist peeping through them. Yeah. I think it's a bit like that. I think it's a lot about being on edge. It's that, you know, like when you're at school and you would lean back on the chair and you keep leaning, you keep leaning, you get to that point where it just starts to fall. That's my favourite point. It's that feeling when you just start to fall. so i think that you know it's here's another thing so i will watch certain sequences from films like wait for it right you know, prepare yourself for ridicule.

1:01:49Transformers and Pacific Rim right Charlotte says they're films for 12 year old boys and she's absolutely right the narrative's awful but visually they are so unbelievably complex and unbelievably quick they're almost visually incomprehensible you just can't get the detail in you know Yo-Yo Kasami's Infinity Rooms I was in one the other day and in fact I got up every morning and went so I was the first person in there and and I could live in one of those rooms. I said to Charlotte, do you know what? I could build one of those. I don't think it would cost that much to build. I just need a small square room.

1:02:24It only needs to be about sort of, I don't know, four metres by four metres. And she said, what would you do with it? I said, I'd put my desk in there. I'd just work in there. And she said, wouldn't you get bored by it? She said, you'd go out your mind. It's like a torture chamber. And I sort of thought, no, I wouldn't, no. I'd just have the lights flashing and stuff. I mean, that's extreme, isn't it? do you ever get panic attacks have you had um i mean i get i get extremely anxious sometimes but no not those sorts of full-on panic attacks no but do ever any kinds of environments make you feel anxious a small sort of series of events i mean obviously there are environments that i don't find comfortable a classic one and everyone says this well not everyone many autistic people say supermarkets and that's because of the you know the terrible mixture of smells and textures and colors and lighting and sound i mean the whole thing is like that is just guantanamo shopping you know it's just horrendous uh bookshops i struggle with bookshops although i love books why bookshops just a mess that's badly ordered never the taxonomy of bookshops It's never been sorted out by someone who's sane.

1:03:37And the – but, no, it's more sort of sequences of events, you know. So I fret about things where I think I might lose control. So if I'm going to get on a train – I mean, I get the train to Southampton the whole time. I know that I'm going to get a seat. I know I can get a seat facing the right direction. But if I'm going, you know, anywhere else, I have to book seats and things like that, you know. Because you need to face the right direction. Yeah. And because I need to work, so I can't be standing up. So I need to be able to get a seat. So I don't want to be in a position where I'm going to be anxious about being on a train and having to stand up for four hours and not get any work done.

1:04:14So it's those sorts of sequences of things like that that I find that those are the things that most often generate anxiety. So it's never anything sensory. I mean, what about acoustics or things like that? No. I'm lucky acoustics don't bother me. It's the visual things that bother me. It's being in those sort of really complex visual spaces where nothing works or where there's something broken. So if I go into a room and I've got to spend time there, say I'm like doing a talk or something like that, or I was in court the other day, I go into a courtroom, I've got to spend a couple of days sat in there.

1:04:54The first thing I have to do is build that room. I have to look at everything. I count everything. I know the shape of everything so I build that space so I know everything about it I know that there's six lamps in that and one of them's blown in that one and I know that those books are over there and the two of them lying down and one of them's back to front and then one of them's upside down and I know that and I sort of build that entire room until I understand it quite quickly it doesn't take long and and then I can sort of be more comfortable in it that is so interesting so actually it's a it's a for you it's about disorder isn't it it's it's almost like you're trying to sort of file it well it's not it's not about that i don't care the book's upside down i just need to know it's upside down okay and i just need to know it's that book that's upside down and you know and and and i just need to know all of that space i mean ideally of course if it's my room i go over and put it up i'll put it the right way up but you know it's not my room i don't need to own that um you know i don't need to control that space but i do need to understand it i've got to be in it i don't want to be you know visually challenged by any aspect of it by surprise so i just need to i just need to build it so whenever i go into those spaces people always say to me what you're looking at and i actually just everything i'm just looking at everything so then once i've got the lie of all of that which isn't difficult to do it happens really quickly um then um then yeah that's that's that's cool so it sounds like you you you had some psychotherapy and you you got your diagnosis of autism what was it in your 40s yeah why why did it happen then well it came at the end of that period of therapy actually i think it was part and parcel of of that it was about sort of signing it off um to be fair i had a partner who was a medical professional in the 1990s and she'd said to me uh you know she was doing a course and she said i i think you fit these criteria and we had conversations about it and um and i've found some notes that i'd made about it and i'd sort of pretty much sort of thought yeah there's very good chance that that could be the case and that was in the 90s and it wasn't until 10 years later that I had that therapy.

1:07:08And then obviously that was very much part of that. And so I think in terms of like wrapping that, it was never really wrapped up, but bringing that part of it to some sort of conclusion, then getting the diagnosis was important. And, you know, had you asked me at the time and people did, and they said, you know, was it a help? And I would have said, no, it wasn't making any difference. I kind of figured it out. And I'd had a management strategy to deal with most aspects of my life, clearly not adequately otherwise I wouldn't have been in therapy in the first place but whatever but I only know like a couple of people who I you know from the from that period in the early 2000s that I still see today and they both say you know it changed you quite radically and I think one of the key things was having the confidence to talk about it and also to say to stop doing things or to do things that previously I wouldn't have done so I would have you know I would have done things like gone to parties with people I didn't know.

1:08:07I would have gone for meals after work. I would have gone to weddings with people I didn't know and I would have hated them and suffered and I would drink too much alcohol to try and anaesthetise the situation. Whereas now, of course, I just say, I'm not going. You know, Charlotte struggled to get me to go to a wedding. So I think it's having that sort of confidence And certainly in a working environment, you know, I will say to people, you know, would it be OK if I do my part of our job in this manner because I'll be able to do it more effectively? What would that look like then? Really simple things.

1:08:49So when we do things like the watches, we have a morning meeting which everyone attends, very democratic, it's great, and we all sit down and we discuss the content of the programme and everyone chucks ideas around to see if we can best make it work. And I just want to sit in the same place. And if I travel in a vehicle, I want to sit in the same seat in the same vehicle. And that sounds really trivial, but again, it's just that control thing. So if I can control one square metre of desk space in front of me first thing in the morning, which is not a time really when I want to be confronted by large numbers of people, then, you know, that helps.

1:09:25And no one cares. Everyone just accepts it now that if that's wherever I choose to sit down on day one and I just want my pen and my laptop and my bit of paper and that's it. Can I ask you, that position that you're choosing to sit in, is that to do with the position of the chair or is it the fact that you chose it first time and you want to have it again? If I had option, i.e. no one else in the room, and so I would choose a position which best suited me being able to understand the environment, the complexity of that environment. It might be to do with the perspectives of the building or something like that.

1:10:04so I would find the most comfortable place for me to be physically in there and then I would sit there and then I would want to sit there the whole time because I'd chosen that place and then just having that habit but no one complains about that they all they you know they don't even think it's funny they just think it's the way people like me are I mean I'm really lucky I you know working at the BBC um and and with the teams of people I'm working obviously science you know um then I think there's quite a broad understanding of neurodiversity and if there isn't people are always open to those sorts of conversations and they're quite forgiving every now and again I'll do something which I probably shouldn't um like some info dump you know I'll just talk at someone for five minutes about the civil war or something and they don't really want to know about the civil war and then I'll suddenly wake up and think oh yeah I only came in here to get a biscuit and I'm just just giving you a lecture on the civil war but they but they kind of like you know sometimes I'll see them laughing right but I know them so they're not laughing at me they're just laughing because they know I've forgotten you know yeah well let's play the game for a bit yeah yeah I mean it did happen the last time I was working with two women that I've worked with for a long time and and we all have a laugh about it afterwards but at the time you know it's a sort of stress thing I hadn't seen them for a while and you know that happens but so I mean this is also interesting to me personally because I was diagnosed as autistic myself about a year ago um so similar to you actually in my 40s um really not understanding so many things about myself as i went through life and it's really helped me to i think piece it together a lot especially like you i find i found my kind of late teens early 20s very challenging and i think that's obviously a period where your brain's going through a big shift anyway what i'm so interested about this conversation particularly is is the way it manifests itself for me environmentally is very different than it is for you there are certainly some crossovers there but I was asking you about your sitting position for example because I went to a restaurant in New York recently and I sat with my back to the room and as you know that's a lot more challenging than when you can see what's going on in front of you and it was one of those very loud environments where you can hear people mixing drinks and there's stuff clattering on the bar and there's loud people next to you and behind you and i sort of experienced it acoustically as kind of like bombs going off behind me and things arriving over the shoulder rather than things that you can perceive with your eyes you know that's what i find the most difficult thing is when i can't see to be able to process it visually yeah do you see what i mean does that does that ring a bell with you yeah it does because i don't like surprises so one of the worst things about being a child and being a child is terrible let's face it right it's because you don't have choice so i remember i'd be in my room and doing something reading a book making their fixed model and then one of my parents would come in and say we're going and it would be like oh god like the blue touch paper we're going right so where are we going when are we going how long are we going there for i mean do you know what i mean it's just like so bad and so what i i did with megs she's not autistic i would always say to her right next week we're gonna go to such and such and then on friday i'd say remember next week i said we were going so and so weekend right on wednesday morning we're going such and such tuesday tomorrow don't forget that tomorrow we're doing so and so the whole thing would just be built up in a series of steps so there was never a surprise for her she always knew what she was going to be doing she knew where she was going to be going she knew what she had to wear and all those sorts of things and and although it was unnecessary um meg's is neurodiverse in the the fact that she's dyslexic but she was never she never had the problems that i had with those sorts of things but that was a means of me manifesting the behavior that i so wish my parents had done because like you say when you've got your back when you can't predict what things are going to happen because they come as surprises.

1:14:12Therefore, you're not managing them. You're not controlling them, I don't think. And another one is, so when I first met Charlotte, we'd have to go to a supermarket. So I would park right on the other side of the car park. And she would say, why parking over here? And I'd say, it's just easy to park. But it's not easy to park. I can park cars. I've been parking cars for X years. it was because if I could park as far away from the door as possible walking between the car and the door of the supermarket just gave me that time to start thinking right this is going to be pretty bad this is what I'm going to smell this is what it's going to be like this is it right it's a raid got to get in there get the trolley get the food get out how am I going to do that and just walking across the you know 200 meters to there just gives you that time to reduce the surprise and i think that's again you know that's another thing that i've learned you're going to go and talk to a group of 2 000 people okay i start thinking about that and i don't think about it too far in advance now but but you know i i think okay i'm going to go into a room there's gonna be 2 000 people in there i'm going to do this this and this is how i'm going to manage it and so knowing in advance again is a way of even if it's going to be challenging if you know in advance it's going to be challenging you're in a better position you're sat in a restaurant you don't know what's going on behind you people just you know all of a sudden something appears over your shoulder you're not prepared for it are you?

1:15:50That's so interesting about the supermarket I do something similar with trains so I'll always sit in the front carriage which means I can walk all the way along the length of the platform and I can assess each carriage as I go and see who's in it, how many people are in it, and how comfortable it looks. Yeah. Well, that's it, isn't it? It's about control, isn't it? It is, yeah. And basically what it is, I think, is that you've formulated a practice walking the length of the train, sitting in the first carriage, which again is, in a way you've got a method, you've got a format. And having a format means you're in control because you're implying your format, something that you've devised, you own it, you're going to employ it.

1:16:30And you know it works for you in the main, in case they're all filled up with football hooligans and don't get on the train. But, you know, so again, you know, I think there are real parallels there because that's about having that. It's a process, isn't it? It's a process. And I think that the really difficult thing is when you introduce another human being and their agenda into something, which is why you're describing spending a lot of time on your own. Because if you're with your partner and they say, let's just sit on this carriage and and when i'm with my wife faye i said look faye let's just go down the end she says we don't need to because when we get off the other end we're much closer to the gate and i and it's and it's you know and then you have a long conversation about why you just want to go to the front yeah um but then don't you say to your partner i you know so i would say to charlotte this is why i need to this is the difference of like this is what people say that i changed when i had my diagnosis rather than just sort of like either give in and feel bad or feel uncomfortable or just say, I'm not doing that.

1:17:32I want to sit here, right? And that basically means you sort of being didactic and bullying. So now I would just explain everything to Charlotte. This is what I want to do. This is why I want to do it. This is why this, this, this, this and this. I'm not saying she's always happy about it, right? Because sometimes she might put up a case, as your partner might, and say that's not a rational thing to do because it means we're going to be last off the train. But I think that having that confidence as an adult to be able to explain to people why that process is important to you and why going through that process, even if you don't get 100 % the outcome you want, but going through that process is part of that system of life management.

1:18:21Yeah, exactly. Can I ask you about routines? Yeah. there's maybe a long one i don't know but no no very much i mean i when charlotte's not here i eat the same food every night okay what will that be whatever there is lots of whatever's easy i don't cook charlotte's a great cook and um she likes to make food and she sort of turns it into an art form um it's not my bag so i would eat uh anything that goes bing you know and and or i'd have a heat up pizza so before she went away i go to i you know i go and i buy like four i'm here for four nights i buy four vegan pizzas i i eat them at the same time with the same stuff and i wear the same clothes i have my indoor clothes the dogs love that because they know when i put my indoor clothes on that i'm not going anywhere so hang on so indoor clothes and outdoor clothes so you change i just have a i have an outfit that i wear when i'm in the house i see oh so they know you're not going on a location or anything yeah but for me it's because i just want to wear the same clothes you know you know they know that and i have a dog walking i have a dog walking clothes so i wear the same clothes every day when i go dog walking um and they love that as well because as soon as i put those on they're like they're flying all over the ceiling you know so i don't do it for the dogs but dogs like routine it's one of the reasons i like dogs yeah it's because they like routine i like routine we go through our same routines we have patterns they come to me at six o 'clock because they want some crisps.

1:19:53I always have the crisps. At bedtime, they come to me because it's BT, which is biscuit time. They're allowed to share a digestive biscuit. I like the process of it being part of my process of going to bed is sharing the biscuit with them in that routine. So those shared routines are very much an integral part of the relationship that I have with them. Then we go upstairs and the whole thing's patterned. Everything about it, where they have the biscuit is the same. What each one of the dogs do in order to get the biscuit, they're not performing tricks or anything, is the same. And coming towards the end of the day, having those routines that we go through like that is a great way of settling into a period of relaxation because, you know, I've got the same clothes on.

1:20:39They always have the same biscuit and they have the same bits in the same place and we settle on it and they settle in the same places on the bed and then we do the same stuff. Comfort. Comfort. So what happens if the routine gets thrown out? It's annoying. So imagine it doesn't happen, but imagine not having any digestive biscuits at BT time. It's virtually unimaginable. So if it got to 9 o 'clock and I was really tired, right, and I realised we didn't have any biscuits and it's pouring with rain and there's hardly any charge in the car, I'd cycle to the you know to the local shop to get the biscuits it just can't happen would you yeah but also that's about the dogs it's about not letting them down they have an expectation their expectations are very simple and and my duty is to make them as happy and healthy as possible and they like that routine and I don't like the idea of failing them ever that's that's really really important to me incredibly important so yes i would i'd get out and walk naked over broken glass to get digestive biscuits just to make sure that they were satisfied the thing is you're you're you're getting so incredibly close to them and their lives are so intertwined with yours what what happens when inevitably they die which they do and of course you had two previously Well, yeah, I mean, you know, in the past it's been disastrous.

1:22:15I didn't learn much from losing the bird, and then my first dog died, Max. I didn't have dogs. I was never into domestic animals when I was a kid. I wasn't interested. Seriously, rabbits, guinea pigs, dogs, cats, what's the point? They're not interesting. It was all about wild animals. And I had foxes and badgers, and you have relationships with them, but bear in mind I was trying to get them back into the wild as well, so that wasn't the animals I was trying to keep forever. And then I got my first poodle and he lived until he was 15, Max. And yeah, I mean, I'll be honest with you, every time I lost dogs up until Litchie and Scratchie, it precipitated a significant mental health episode because I hadn't prepared myself.

1:22:56I know it's ridiculous, but I hadn't prepared myself for that loss. And because of the enormous investment of love for those animals and the dependence that that generated on them, being there at the expense of other relationships. I, you know, I mean, obviously Charlotte and I've been together in a much more sort of stable relationship, but when I was young I didn't have the stability in any, you know, human relationships like that. I'm not just about my partners, but my friends. I've always had my sister, of course. Relationships with my parents always a bit like, you know. So, yeah, no, it was absolutely catastrophic.

1:23:35so when um fish died that was when i had that course of therapy because i and i became suicidal um and then i thought right okay i'm gonna have more dogs um i don't i can't be in this position again i need to i need to i need to go through a process of understanding how i got there and how to manage it and now not to go not to go back there i was lucky enough to take part in some research that was done at Lincoln University, a byproduct which showed that 17 % of autistic people who had dogs reported that they had not taken their own life because of a relationship essentially that they had with their dog.

1:24:16In the main, because they felt that they couldn't leave that dog to be cared by someone else because no one else could love it as much as they could. And they may well have been right. But it kept them alive. And I mean, I'm only here because of itch and scratch and you know so as much as there's you know the the terrible loss and the difficulties that you're confronted with then you you i can never underestimate the value that those relationships bring through their um stability and the joy that they bring you know despite the fact they're barking outside now but you know they you know i always used to call itch and scratch my joy grenades because i would take them to the woods and let them off the lead and they would run for the sheer joy of running and I would smile and there's not there was nothing else on earth at that point that you could say I can show it to you and it will make you smile but those two dogs just running for the sheer joy of running that that you know joy de vivre that love of life just being alive is so uplifting you know you had this horrendous experience where someone set fire to a Land Rover and it exploded outside your front gates and blew your front gates off.

1:25:29Tell me about that. I mean, what do you make of that experience now? See that table there? Yes. And the one that was on the home cinema? And you know the fox bench that we sat on? Yes. So those are made from the gates. Right. And the fox bench was made from the gate post. Okay. So you repurposed them? Yeah. And when the gates burned, you can't really see it because it's got books on, but it had this lovely sort of macro blue iridescent finish to it. So me and Simon cut up the gates really carefully and then we screwed them all together, really fragile. And then I got this guy to set them in resin.

1:26:09I'm going to give away that table to someone else, but the one in the home cinema I'll keep myself. They can blow the gates up if they want. They can burn it down. and I'd just make a table and a bench out of it. All they did really was add more fuel to the fact that, you know, that winter after that happened, I just worked harder and harder, you know. I mean, I don't, I can't be 100 % certain about who was responsible. Well, you know, who orchestrated it. But I've got a pretty good idea and I just sort of thought, like, okay, it's just some gates. I'll just work harder then. You know, I'm very defiant, you know, in that sense.

1:26:52I'm not going to be swayed by that sort of violence. For those people who are not necessarily familiar with your wider work, why might someone want to blow your front gates off? Because I'm asking people to change their minds more quickly than they either want to or are able to, because we're in a time of crisis. We're in a climate breakdown and biodiversity crisis, which is going to kill our planet and us with it, unless we do something about it. So someone, me and others, have to stand up and tell the truth. And if you do stand up and tell the truth, people blow your gates up. Last question, Chris.

1:27:29If I could ask you to define what the word home means to you, what would you say? You know that photo taken on Apollo 8 of Earthrise? I remember seeing it for the first time way back in the 1960s. and the beauty of our planet that blue white you know smeared green planet taken over the very sterile surface of the moon has never has never ever left me and then the other photograph taken from far deeper in space the pale blue dot that was taken on the voyager program when carl sagan turned it around and photographed the earth as it disappeared out of our solar system and it's just like this tiny one pixel in the sort of columns of light generated by the sun that's home and that's our one and only home we are the you know this planet is the only place that we know that there's life let alone complex life and and i've been fortunate enough to go around this planet and i mean it's just incomprehensibly beautiful but equally we are incomprehensibly lucky to have it.

1:28:49The chances of this happening, when it comes down to the evolution of life on Earth, you know, the serendipity of it actually happening and of us, a conscious organism, being here to be able to witness it are so infinitesimally small. So, you know, absolutely, absurdly, mathematically, you know, immeasurably tiny. that to not value that, you know, it strikes me as insane. You know, this is our home, our one and only home, and it is so amazing. And even if you're not into wildlife, even if you're just think about what we've done, you know, it's easy to say, oh, we're, I hear people say, oh, it's better off we'll be all gone, we have just a terrible virus, we're messing everything up.

1:29:43No, no. I just stood in galleries where people have done remarkable things. They've created remarkable things. You know, we use technologies on a day-to-day basis. We pick up our phones and we, you know, they've become such a part of everyday life. We forget that as kids, you know, they were just on Star Trek. you know we are part of that beauty and and therefore i can't countenance that we should also be part of its destruction you know this is my home this planet you know this shell of a building is so it's a wardrobe storage unit with some food in it which is past the sell-by date you know that that's that's home look at that look at the color of that beech tree so green it hurts such a brilliant answer thank you so much i couldn't have enjoyed that more it's so fascinating to meet you and to hear your story thank you i really appreciate it thank you huge thanks to chris for welcoming us into his home and thanks very much to all of you for listening.

1:30:57I really hope you found it as interesting as I did. If you want to watch the video version filmed inside Chris's home, head over to YouTube. You'll find us at Homing with Matt. And for those who want to go deeper, you can subscribe to Homing on Patreon, where you'll find exclusive home tours with our guests. In these videos, we're not just observing rooms and furniture, we're really exploring the memories and rituals that make a home feel alive. If supporting financially isn't for you, that's completely fine. Of course, we're very happy to have you here. Even just sharing the podcast with a friend or leaving a review really helps us and it means we can keep these conversations going.

1:31:39You can follow Homing on Instagram at homingwithmat to see what's coming up on our show and stay in touch. Homing is an independent podcast produced by Podshop with music by Simeon Walker. Thanks again for listening and see you next time.