Perfect Pub Walks (More4)
That’s the best description of autism I’ve ever heard. Alexander Armstrong, his voice choking up, called it, ‘a journey with no arrival… you just have to hope that the road is going largely in the right direction.’
He pointed off to the left and said, ‘Somebody is having to live on this sort of axis.’ And then he pointed straight ahead, and added, ‘The rest of us live on this axis.’ In other words, life for all involved is tipped on its side, at right angles to the rest of the world.
Talking to Chris Packham on his Perfect Pub Walks, Armstrong was revealing for the first time that one of his sons is autistic. He and his wife, Hannah, have four boys, aged about ten to 18, and he did not specify which one has the autism diagnosis.
‘I’ve never spoken about my son before,’ he said. ‘As a parent of an autistic child, it’s a wonderful but incredibly challenging life.’
I’m the father of a profoundly autistic son myself, and I realise that no description, however apt or eloquent, can really convey how tough it is to see your child struggle endlessly with the most basic aspects of daily life.
But the earnest intensity of Armstrong’s words implies that his family has been going through an exhausting struggle, one with no apparent resolution, and I wish them all the very best.
The aim of these pub walks is to get his middle-aged male guests talking about their emotions and anxieties, rather than just brushing them off as chaps are prone to do. Last week’s opener was only partially successful: James May unbuttoned just a little, to admit he was contemplating retirement and mortality.
Talking to Chris Packham on his Perfect Pub Walks, Armstrong (pictured) was revealing for the first time that one of his sons is autistic
Last week’s opener was only partially successful: James May (pictured) unbuttoned just a little, to admit he was contemplating retirement and mortality
In such a confessional atmosphere, the rural backdrop was almost irrelevant. Armstrong and May are pictured
Chris Packham was more comfortable with self-examination. He revealed in his 2016 memoir Fingers In The Sparkle Jar that he went through three years of therapy in his forties, following a breakdown, and he still speaks the language of the analyst’s couch.
Strolling through the Kent countryside from one beer garden to the next, he talked with raw openness about a bout of suicidal depression, and how his love for his dogs had given him a reason to live.
He also didn’t minimise his propensity for hard drinking. Abstinent at the moment, he said he was planning to chuck himself off the wagon at Christmas — with a bottle of champagne mixed with tequila. ‘Straight back in on the hard end of things,’ he declared.
Spluttering on his pint, Armstrong — an unabashed wine snob — could only mutter, ‘Wow!’
In such a confessional atmosphere, the rural backdrop was almost irrelevant. They tried some tree-hugging, and took a boat around the Hoo shoreline, but this was no Naturewatch.
Packham did spot an avocet, and compared it to Audrey Hepburn. I see his point — elegant black-and-white plumage, like Parisian couture, and an upturned bill. Much more glam than the average seagull.
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CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews Perfect Pub Walks: An emotional Alexander Armstrong reveals the challenges of raising an autistic son