Ever Had That Sinking Feeling?

It's 10.30pm and the fact that I haven't opened a bottle of wine is totally to my credit, having spent a full day in the company of Year 5 Outwood School on their school trip to Liverpool's Maritime Museum.

Excuse me one moment whilst I shut my husband up, who can be heard downstairs shouting at the TV (and England haven't even had a match yet)...

Reasons why I decided to accompany Bobby on his school trip:

1) They were off to see the Titanic exhibition and I was very interested in it
2) It's been a while since I did anything to re-establish my good name as a pillar of the community
3) His teachers are a lovely bunch and I was feeling altruistic

Things I didn't consider:

1) Twenty-eight neurotypical ten year olds (give or take a few).
2) Twenty-eight neurotypical ten year-olds on a coach
3) Twenty-eight neurotypical ten year-olds in a gift shop with limited spending money and no calculators to hand.

Myself and a little (no bother) group who'd been assigned to me started the morning at the back of the coach composing the next chart-topping hit based on our school trip.


Then Jahmahl, Bobby's mate, started adding rap terms such as 'chow', the girls started singing Katy Perry's Roar and the whole thing started to resemble a 21st century version of Kids From Fame.

"Did you show me pictures of the place beforehand?" asked Bobby, pointing out with the subtlety of a brick through the living room window that I'd failed to prepare him for this trip in the usual way. I used to make him picture stories but he's pretty laid back about it all these days. He just enjoys pointing out that if I ever wanted to promote myself as the Perfect Spectrumite Mum, the trade description people may have something to say about it.

Eventually we disembark and after roughly a year of trickling along Albert Dock and into the building, we are met by a fierce looking woman in Victorian costume who leads us to a quiet part of the museum in order to tell us of her first hand experience of being on the Titanic and surviving.

Uh-oh, I can see it happening. She's in full swing playing the part and although my eyes are focused on the back of my son's head I can clearly see that confusion is written all over his face. Bobby won't have fully registered what the heck is going on here. Anyone who acts without firstly announcing it in capital letters is likely to be taken at their word.

It's still fresh in my mind what happened in Year 2, when Bobby shouted "FIRE FIRE EVERYONE OUT!" after hearing about the Great Fire of London.

One of Bobby's mates knows him only too well. "She's ACTING Bobby, she's ACTING."

This Bobby accepts quite readily but then joins in the spirit of things a little too loudly and gets sharply reprimanded by her. Of course, every time she says something he has a little chirpy come-back, and he's not intending to be naughty, he just can't keep entirely quiet - and he's heading for big trouble when his teaching assistant takes the museum guide to one side and explains that Bobby's autistic. She stops reprimanding him then, thank goodness. I was fully expecting Bobby's starfish act (adopt said pose in the middle of the floor) and a massive meltdown to accompany it, but he was just a little embarrassed by her ice-like attitude. Such a difference between ages five and ten, it's unbelievable.

The high point of the entire day was when our guide showed us how those in the post room tapped out the Morse code signal for help.

"Who knows what the Morse code signal for help is? Which three letters?"

One boy's hand shot up: "It's L.O.L." he says, without irony.

Hey, we're sinking - it's bloody hilarious!!