When I was a child, I loved window AC units because I used to think there was a magical land inside them (forests, castles, cities at night from a plane, etc). The image above explains what I "saw" in a window AC unit.

I always used to want to know how fast every car or other vehicle was travelling because for me, if a car was travelling at 10mph and wasn’t making a “J” sound, I would get very upset because “J” is the 10th letter of the alphabet (I would repeat the alphabet and a car would have to be making a “H” sound if it were travelling at 34mph as “H” is the “34th” letter of the alphabet. Because of this, my 26 times table was the first times table I ever learned at age 7 (when Western Easter hit its third-latest date).

I also have had fixations about maps and wanting to follow flight paths and railway lines in cars, for instance on a car journey to Cardiff for instance, I would get my father to come off the M4 motorway at J12 near Theale and would make him drive past Didcot and Wantage before joining the M4 again at J15 (near Swindon), to follow the route of the Great Western Main Line in the car and would occasionally stop for meals. He’s the driver and I’m the navigator.

Similarly, on a car journey to Liverpool (where my younger sister lives), I would want my father to drive up to M25 and come off at Junction 20 near Watford, then drive towards Aylesbury and Cublington in Buckinghamshire before heading through Winslow and Brackley (Northants) before joining the M40 at J11 as this follows the flight path of many BA flights heading from UK destinations such as Edinburgh, Glasgow, Newcastle, Manchester and Aberdeen into Heathrow after watching planes on flightradar24. Would make my father do long detours!

I also had a huge fear of the British Rail Class 159 diesel trains – during the “boring year” of 2004 aged 11 (which actually had loads of different rolling stock), I had a trip with my mother and sister to Wimbledon Park and on the way back at Wimbledon station, a class 159 train made a special stop for the tennis and when it left the revving diesel engine frightened me and I was shaking a Walls twister lolly (I had seen fast Class 159s up until then but never one accelerating from a stop). For years I would avoid Wimbledon station not realising Class 159 services only ever there call during the tennis tournament until I came across the national rail timetable website in 2015 (another boring year).

I also only ever eat pears during the month of November and have a bath at different times on Christmas day repeating every four years, for example I have a jazzy light show bath celebration using an underwater light display and a mood cube and an evening bath in the dark every time Christmas falls on the weekday it has not been on in 11 years (e.g. 2017, 2021, 2025 and 2285), a standard evening bath with an artificial light in "World Cup" years like 2026, 2038 and "1818", a morning bath every on Christmas Day in every year preceding a leap year (e.g 2019, 2023) and a morning bath on Christmas Day in leap years.  I call this my "Christmas Bath Cycle".