Pathetic Apology about The Gift

This is probably really pathetic, and I apologise, but I should say that the very many creative spellings on this blog may be in part because I apparently have the so-called gift of so-called dyslexia.

I’m afraid I can’t be bothered to look everything I’m not sure about up and the spell checker on this blog seems slow and not very good. I usually type my posts in Word and spell check them there, so you don’t know what horrors you are being spared from, Dear Reader.

Gervase told me my use of Word was creating some kind of technical problem with an RSS feed or something? I don’t know what that is. Is there a better free alternative to Word? Sun Microsystems? Star Office? Or have I made those up?

The Church of England kindly paid a man with a PhD to give me a letter telling me I am intellectually disabled and so I should be treated like a special case. I am certified. 20% extra time in exams, which I rarely need and don’t really want. Sadly I am not dyslexic or stupid enough for the Church of England or anyone else to give me huge sums of cash, apparently, with which I could buy whizzy voice recognition and speaker software and a hand held scanner to type (capture) text for me.

When I was 10 I had a dyslexia test in Cardiff and the shrink said, yes, I seemed to be somewhat dyslexic but I shouldn’t sit on the less able table and we should ignore it and I’d be fine.

Would I have got a 1^st at Oxford if I’d been certified then, or is that really sad special pleading?

What is dyslexia? A gift? A disability? Both? How does it differ from other so-called learning disabilities? How does it differ from being thick? Is it appropriate to discriminate in favour of dyslexics (its not their fault they are dyslexic) or against them – we have a written statement that they are less intellectually able than they would otherwise be? Are numbers of dyslexics going up? Or diagnosis rates? Have we always had dyslexics? Any tips for dyslexic?

There seems to be little good stuff to read for clever educated adults with dyslexia.