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This website came about as a result of my realizing, in September 2021, that I am autistic and had spent a lifetime masking to survive in a neurodominant (aka neurotypical) society. This was not the “finding myself” experience I had expected as a 41-year-old father and husband, but it made perfect sense immediately in terms of pretty well all of my experiences since early childhood. The psychiatrist who assessed me in March 2022 obviously agreed, because he diagnosed me as autistic without hesitation.

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The Gary Boyle Biography, which is my main writing project. Gary is a jazz guitarist whose career spans 60-plus years and includes playing in Hamburg when the Beatles were there; backing Millie Small, Lulu and Dusty Springfield; playing in the Brian Auger Trinity when Jimi Hendrix arrived in Swinging London (and lending Hendrix his guitar); and forming the jazz fusion group Isotope, which toured from 1972 to 1976 and recorded three albums.

Jazz, with which I am obsessed. Expect a lot of posts about jazz music — especially jazz fusion — some of which may overlap with the Gary Boyle project.

Autism, because I am autistic. I am sure there are probably many other people out there who are in a position similar to the one I was in back in September 2021 and find themselves learning, from scratch, how to live authentically.

Miscellaneous stuff, because not everything fits neatly into a category. There’s a lot of really banal, everyday stuff that I feel moved to write about, so there will probably be some stuff about the joys of motorway services and hotel stays, the excitement I feel whenever I see a classic car, the running that I do in order to regain my fitness after my last autistic burnout, and the Zen Buddhism that I practise so that I can keep a sense of perspective in this rather unsettled world.

If you are interested in anything I have described above, this Substack is for you.

I also write about politics, somewhat infrequently, on Persona Non Grata.

At this juncture, I am not charging for subscriptions. I want people to be able to access my writings with ease. I would like to get paid for my writing, though, so I may consider implementing a subscription fee later on. However, if that happens, I will continue to write plenty of articles that can be accessed free of charge.

I love coffee

I have set up a Buy Me a Coffee page, which enables people to make donations, if they so wish. This is, of course, entirely optional. One day, I would like to be a full-time writer again, but being paid for what I write will enable me to treat it as a second job, and will allow me to purchase materials that will improve my writing and research (such as subscriptions to academic journals, entry fees to conferences, and maybe even a laptop to replace this Lenovo, which is just turning nine and is getting rather slow).

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