I am lucky enough to have a room of my own. High in the attic, with dormer windows and a little gable, there is a writing, painting, creating space – for me.

I have not been using it. I say this with guilt, because I know how lucky I am. But it’s become a dumping ground, full of things I need to deal with but haven’t got round to. Beyond that, my writing journey has not been all smooth sailing and I have needed softness – sofa writing, pillows, blankets not a desk.

Yet now, I am starting to reclaim this space. Eighteen months ago, as I waited for my then-agent to read my newest novel, I pulled up the carpet and painted the old floorboards a beautiful burnt orange. Now, agentless and back in the submissions whirlwind, I have finally curated my creativity wall. Beside the orange floorboards, on the big stretch of space beside the stairs, are pieces of art, either by someone I know, or with meaning for me. My hope is that, as I walk up to write, as I walk down to fetch tea, I will remember all the incredible people, making their way as artists in a world that doesn’t always value that as much as it should.

A huge amount of this wall is filled with art from my wonderful friend, Catherine Lovett, my best, most inspiring collaborator. We have been on four residencies together and are working on an illustrated short story collection inspired by the landscape and folklore of the British Isles.

The screen print Winter in the Cove is of the tidal pool just down from Brisons Veor at Cape Cornwall, where we spent an incredible two weeks searching for stories in rock pools and cliffs, ruins and stone circles. The screenprint Death by Dropwort, a limited edition of only one with that name, is from a time we swam in the river together, and then discovered huge stalks of hemlock water dropwort – highly poisonous – beside our discarded clothes. There are also earlier lino prints in circular frames, featuring swimmers taken from outlines of me, and a lino-print of Kynance Cove, taken from a sketch Cat did when I was doodling beside her, sea pinks whipping around us.

I have so much of Cat’s work because it encapsulates the feeling of walking by the sea, wading into clear water, staring at seaweed until your fingers prune. But also because, for me, it is a reminder of this friend of mine who has made such beautiful things and who is – as I am – trying to find a different way to live this life. To live creatively, freely, as an artist without cringing into a ball at the word.

These are memories from the Mawddach Residency, the first I did. The Water Babies are lithographs by printmaker Scarlett Rebecca, one of the artists running the residency. Jake Spicer, the other artist who runs it, drew her holding their cat, Toby.

These works are by Georgia Green. I saw The Bear in the printmaker’s gallery near the Tate Modern. I had just had a rejection email from an agent who’d previously shown interest in my work. This image, of a powerful creature peering in, through the glass, the rich colours and detail, the nostalgia of the Raymond Briggs classic which inspired it, all come back to me when I pass it. It has become a reminder to carry on. I bought a few of Georgia’s prints, and the mood of them leaves me inspired; there are many stories to be told within each image.

These are artworks of my own. I have, up in that attic filled with dumped bags and dead plants, hundreds of paintings. I make them because of the way the colours spark for me, because of the way blue captures something inside and soothes it, because there is a magic to playing with pigment and letting it lead you, seeing what it begins as and then how it changes as it dries. It is a good exercise in letting go of control. It has taken a long time to share these, but recently I decided to stop holding back, and set up an online shop for my own paintings. I added them to my wall too – because I like them, and that’s enough.

These two inky landscapes are by James Roberts, one of the first writers I found on Substack, whose work – both visual and words – always pulls me into a deeper, more soulful appreciation of nature. The other is a print by Nancy Jones, showing the beach in Dorset where Cat and I did a self-guided residency at the start of this year – deciding we needed to do the work more than we needed to wait for permission. We rented a cottage and made plans for our future story collections, including the idea to start our own small press. We also swam in the sea, went to a beach sauna, found fossils, walked on the dunes and ate lots of cake.

This seaweed was gathered from a private beach on the Kintyre Peninsula, where I was lucky enough to work last summer, and the print was bought in Edinburgh, when I went to the Festival there. The cloud painting is by artist Pippa Brown, a breakdown artist I worked with, who gifted me this when the film we were working on wrapped.

All in all, it is a wall of stories – of people who make beautiful things and believe that is the best possible use of their time. Who are talented and hard-working and are making creativity central to their days, as I strive to do. So now, when I have a slot of time in which to write, I can walk up my orange stairs and be surrounded by – supported by – all these people who know just what it is like to try, to fail, to gamble, and to go on creating anyway. This is what brings me the greatest joy – the pursuit of a creative life.

About Bonnie Radcliffe

Bonnie is a feminist fiction, nature writer and artist searching for the wild wonder of the everyday. She is fascinated by overlooked stories, the sea and moments of care. She has been published by Echtrai journal, Folkways Press, Dear Damsels and the Outdoor Swimming Society, and writes a regular nature blog, Wild Quiet Folk, on Substack. In 2026 she founded the Wild Lines writing group, focusing on feminist and Queer stories honouring the wild, the weird, the dark and the dismissed, with writer Jess Glaisher. She is currently working on a speculative novel set between a sea-swallowed fishing village and a haunted lighthouse, and collaborating with artist Catherine Lovett on a series of illustrated short stories inspired by the folklore and landscape of the British Isles. She also paints abstract seascapes, which can be seen – and purchased to make her very happy – here.

Yesterday I had a meltdown over kitchen cupboards. Today, I decided I wanted to write about it, but my black-and-white, order and rule obsessed brain said I shouldn’t. Not because it was too personal, but because The Autistic Joy Project is fortnightly, and now that I’ve introduced guest posts, mine appear once every four weeks.

My last article was published a week ago so, no, I couldn’t put up another. I could write a note, but that would reach only followers not subscribers. (I think that’s right, but I’m pretty new to Substack and still vague about how it works.)

What’s making me happy right now is that, as you can see, I told that controlling, censorious inner voice to shut up. Today, I’m going rogue.

This article is about something that, at first glance, is wholly negative – the meltdown did, after all, involve me flapping my arms, shouting incoherently at my husband, TJ, and shedding howling, snotty, gulping tears – but, please, bear with, as there is joy behind it.

We had decided to move the kettle to a more convenient spot in the kitchen. Within hours, we realised that to make this work without tripping over each other, the contents of a wide cupboard – mugs, cups, saucers, tea, coffee and their respective pots – would need to swap with those of two narrow ones – breakfast stuff, nuts and seeds in small jars, dry goods and other bits and bobs.

TJ’s job, I decreed, was to put everything on the work surface; mine was to reorganise it. The narrow cupboards went smoothly. He passed me stuff. Mugs and cups went into one, drinks and pots into the other.

We moved onto the big cupboard and I started putting things in – not in their previous order but where I thought they should go. TJ (analytical, hyper-focused ADHDer) said this was wrong. He’d laid everything out exactly as it was organised before, he said, to make things easy for me, and I should follow this arrangement.

That’s when I lost it. Suddenly, I was yelling that I couldn’t do that. It just wasn’t right, and he needed to stop telling me what to do because it was crowding my brain, making it impossible to think.

Before I knew it, I was mutely waving my arms and howling, unable to explain why simply moving the contents of two small cupboards into a big one couldn’t work the way he wanted it to. Sensibly, he left me to it and I eventually calmed down enough to finish the job in a way that satisfied me.

It wasn’t til much later that I was able to explain to myself, and to him, why it was necessary to arrange things differently. If I’d put the breakfast stuff in one side and the large containers of dry goods in the other, when both doors were open, each shelf would be half one thing, half something else – which I simply couldn’t contemplate. My sense of order demanded each shelf contain one type of thing. The bottom one had to be items used every morning, including small jars, with other things higher up, divided into plastic containers and big jars.

What I also realised was that the meltdown wasn’t just about difficulty with change and the need to restore my very particular form of order and control.

High temperatures mess with my autistic system, and we’re in the middle of a heatwave. The thermostat in our well-insulated matchbox of a house hasn’t been below 26 degrees in daytime for ages. My brain and body were still recovering from the stress of launching and publicising my memoir Mothertongue and the traumatic holiday that followed. On top of all that, I’d had acupuncture that morning, making me even more fragile. The cupboard swap was the last straw that broke the camel’s ability to cope.

However, I am feeling joy despite the sweating, yelling and tears, because:

I’ve managed to silence my inner ‘shouldn’t’ and allowed myself to write about something simply because I feel like it.

I’ve allowed myself to make a post that doesn’t follow my usual rule of including several rows of colourful pictures.

I’ve been open about what happens when my complex, vulnerable autistic system is overloaded. It’s isn’t pleasant or pretty, but if writing about it helps other neurodivergent people feel less alone – and maybe enables a few neurotypical ones to understand what we go through – that has to be positive.

Writing out of sequence also gives me an opportunity to say a proper hello to all the new subscribers who’ve joined over the past few days, since Mothertongue and I appeared on the BBC News website. Welcome and thank you!

Last, but not least, opening the cupboards, recognising the order and logic behind the new arrangement and seeing the patterns the contents make absolutely brings me joy.

So, I’m sorry for flying off the handle, TJ, but it was worth it in the end.

Normal service will be resumed next Saturday with a guest post from writer and artist Bonnie Radcliffe, author of the beautiful Wild Quiet Folk blog.

This blog is meant to be about joy. So is this holiday. But life is more complicated than that. My husband, TJ, and I are spending a week on the Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal in South Wales, and things aren’t going to plan.

We’ve had successful narrowboat holidays before. TJ likes to take the helm, something I’ve no interest in, being too anxious and dyspraxic to drive a car or even, these days, ride a bike. But we both enjoy the chance the slow down, travelling at walking pace in peaceful, rural surroundings and mostly keeping ourselves to ourselves.

We chose the Mon and Brec, which meanders between Cwmbran and Brecon, because it’s even quieter and has fewer locks than we’re used to. The latter was particularly important as, with TJ steering, it’s my job to open and close them. Locks are hard work and, for me, risky. Living with hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, I’m injury prone and don’t recover well – I’ve been struggling for the past six months with an elbow injury that won’t heal.

We arrive at the marina on Friday afternoon to be told a power cut means our boat isn’t ready. We can have another but mustn’t unpack as it needs to be returned in the morning, when – hopefully – power restored, we’ll restart the holiday in our allocated craft. The autistic nightmare combination of unexpected change, ongoing uncertainty and enforced disorder, after an eight-hour motorway journey (I’m a nervous passenger), leaves me shaking and gasping for breath.

By the time we find an overnight mooring, where we promptly run aground – having already got stuck once – I’m barely holding it together. Preparing and eating dinner uses the last of my strength. Before I know it, I’m weeping and flapping, months of book production and launch stress piling on top of the day’s trauma.

I’m exhausted, I howl. Worn out, nothing left. It’s meant to be a relaxing holiday, but this is too much. I only had one glass of wine with dinner and now my head hurts. It’s not fair. Other people don’t get like this. Why do I have to be different? And the boat’s too hot. We’re going to be stuck here forever, boiling to death like a couple of frogs in a cauldron.

TJ has learned over twenty-seven years together that reasoning with me or offering solutions only increases my fury and prolongs the meltdown. So he hugs me tight and murmurs words of comfort. Yes, it’s been a difficult day on top of months of stress. No, it isn’t fair at all. It’s no wonder you’re upset and that’s okay – you just needed to let it out. Then he waits, quiet and patient, as I mop my eyes and blow my nose and rage a bit more. Eventually, my migraine tablet starts to work and I feel a little better.

Next morning, after a lot of pushing and shoving, we get the boat unstuck and return to the marina. The power is back on, our boat ready. A staff member transfers our belongings. We eat a full English in a nearby café at the hire company’s expense and set off again.

We were told the Mon and Brec was a particularly pretty canal. Thankfully, it’s true, as it’s also narrow and incredibly shallow, meaning boats have to keep to the centre. Every time we meet one coming the other way, there’s a good chance one of us will run aground. We also ground if we take a tight turn or attempt to tie up for coffee, lunch or the night anywhere other than the rare and often fully occupied official moorings.

Approximately once an hour, I have to wrestle the 3.5-metre, 6kg barge pole off the roof, stick it in the mud and shove until our 15-tonne home starts moving again. It takes everything I have and I can feel my joints twist and pull out of alignment. I pray to a god I don’t believe in that they’ll spring back and, so far, they have, but the fear is doing me in.

Meanwhile, the temperature has soared. Even crossing Europe in the height of summer in my youth wasn’t this bad. There were always air-conditioned cafés and galleries to hide out in. Here, in the boat and on the towpath, even beneath the trees, even in the middle of the night, it’s over 30 degrees and there’s no escape.

But still, there is joy, and that matters as I continue to fret about whether I’ll have the strength to get us unstuck next time (I generally do), what’ll happen if I don’t (the answer is another boat will tow us) and whether we’ll find space to moor safely that’s not too close to other people or noisy pubs (we always find something).

When we’re not wedged in the mud, we glide beneath a canopy of trees in more shades of green than I can name. There are beeches, willows, oaks, limes, chestnuts, sycamores and others I can’t identify, roots like alien fingers reaching for us through the brown water.

We pass great patches of irises and foxgloves. We spot cows, goats, sheep and dogs, rabbits and hares, swans, ducks, herons and moorhens. We meet a cat on the towpath, following its human and her dog.

Squirrels play chase and scoot from one bank to the other via branches above our heads. For us, the ground is the two-dimensional thing beneath our feet; for them, it has three, encompassing anywhere they can run, climb or leap.

My days as a rowing coach flood back as children in canoes and kayaks skitter about us like water boatmen. I only just resist the urge to yell, Sit up straight and keep your blades on the water!

I even spot a model lamb on a bridge, but the joy of the sighting is fleeting, as I re-remember how my childish negligence led to the death of Larry, my beloved (plastic) lamb, a story recounted in my memoir, Mothertongue.

After we moor each afternoon, I read, first Matt Haig’s How to Stop Time, the unputdownable story of a man who lives for more than 400 years, then – as research for my new novel – I begin Sy Montgomery’s extraordinary memoir, The Soul of An Octopus.

In the evenings, TJ and I stroll sweatily along the towpath, marvelling at antique signage, other boats and interesting buildings. One night, we encounter a celebrity. Dave Thompson, who featured in an episode of Ben Fogel’s New Lives in the Wild talking about his mental health and love of nature, now lives on the Mon and Brec, and we have a long chat with him and admire his beautiful boat.

A few days have passed since I started writing this. The holiday is over and we’re back to the welcome predictability of home. The temperature has fallen – at least temporarily. But I’m still exhausted. Although I made it through the week without injury, the stress has taken its toll.

Like many people with Ehlers-Danlos, I also have histamine disorder Mast Cell Activation Syndrome. Despite swallowing migraine tablets and four one-a-day Fexofenadine daily, my head’s sore, my muscles and joints ache, my eyes are itchy and my nose is snuffly. My teeth hurt, my ears are weeping and inflamed, tinnitus louder than usual, and my balance is off.

It isn’t fair, but I’m grateful for the privilege that allows us to afford a holiday – and to share so many joyful moments.

I sit on a warm rock in the sunshine watching a gannet dive into the sea.

When I used to sail, before my head injury and before my sailor partner and I split up, I loved watching gannets: their lean white bodies and long, slender, black-tipped wings, their languid, gliding flight and, when you see them up close, the warm yellow blush of their heads, forming such a contrast with their cold blue eyes.

I loved watching them fly, alone or in straggly lines of three or four, but most of all I loved watching them dive. I lived for that moment when they transform, from an elegant cross soaring high above the sea to a muscular needle, violently plunging down.

Today the gannet is doing fairly shallow dives, folding itself in at the last moment before slicing diagonally into the waves. I follow with my binoculars – there! After the splash, I see it coursing beneath the surface of the water for a few moments before sliding out and beating itself heavily into the air.

I’ve mainly observed gannets when out at sea and we sailed past several gannetries during our maritime travels. Grassholm was the first, a tiny island off south-west Wales, which from a distance appeared to be made of white rock so thickly was it covered in the birds, then Ailsa Craig off the west coast of Scotland, Sula Stack and Sule Skerry off the north coast, then the grand cliffs of Noss in Shetland, clouds of gannets drifting in and out from their immense vertical faces.

It’s a rare treat to see one flying and feeding so close inshore, just a few hundred yards out from the pale golden sands of Vestey’s beach at Achmelvich. It’s also a rare treat to have the beach to myself on a sunny summer Sunday. Maybe the forecast of rain has kept the tourists away, or the unseasonably cold westerly.

While the beach may be quiet in terms of people, it’s busy with birds. In the sandy soil above the low cliffs, sand martins are darting in and out of their burrows, weaving the air with their deft flight. A flurry of oystercatchers barrel through. A couple of terns are flapping swoopily over the sea, and overhead a gaggle of greylag geese honk their way northward. The pair of red-throated divers I passed earlier, in the sea below the headland, have appeared in the middle of the bay, the gannet banking away from them as it continues to glide over the short waves.

There must be plenty of fish as it’s diving every minute or so. At one point, it hasn’t even finished lifting itself laboriously off the sea when it lunges in again, coming up swallowing. The terns are starting to pluck things out of the water, too, and a seagull flew overhead a few moments ago with a shining silver sprat in its beak.

I pour myself a cup of green tea from my flask and slowly munch a chocolate almond cake. I turn my attention to the rocks behind me. The beach is backed by broken cliffs of Lewisian gneiss, which, as well as being among the oldest rock in the world, must be among the most beautiful, certainly here, where it forms smooth faces striped vertically in grey and rosy pink. Thrift and roseroot grow in some of its crevices, adding pink, yellow and green flourishes, but otherwise the rock is clean.

I don’t know why it’s so pleasurable looking at rock but I’m often compelled by it. Perhaps it’s the contrast with the sea, the stillness compared to the constant motion, the sensation of gravity and weight. I was particularly drawn to rock after my head injury when the perception of movement would often make me nauseous.

When I sustained the concussion, slipping and falling on Lewisian gneiss just round the coast from here, I also damaged my right inner ear, with the result that moving my eyes and head independently of each other made me feel sick. Tracking bird flight was one of the activities the vestibular physiotherapist recommended for rehabilitation. I knew the rehab was working when following a bird flying with my eyes, even with the close focus of binoculars, was no longer debilitating.

I remember the relief. After all, watching what’s going on around me isn’t a casual activity, it’s a key means of understanding. I’m not just looking at but looking into, trying to get a feel for what I’m regarding, trying to become familiar with it, trying as well to bring myself into relation with it, to integrate everything into a whole.

Looking is, thus, also a deep source of joy and connection. To glimpse that integrity and to visually behold that which is inspiring and moving – like these stunning and powerful birds – is not just observation; it’s observance. It’s how I love the world.

I get up to leave. There are three gannets now. I’ve noticed this often – for a while there’s one, then they multiply, attracted by the sight of each other feeding. People are multiplying too. A lady with neatly bobbed white hair is strolling along the shoreline with her dog and, at the far end of the beach, a couple in dry robes peer nervously at the sea as if attempting to assess its temperature with their eyes.

I turn my back and follow the sandy path past the rocks and through the machair. Primroses and marsh marigolds line the burn and purple orchids stud the grass, dainty delights in their own right, but I can’t help stopping every few steps to cast backward glances to the sea. It’s hard to pull myself away from the lure of diving gannets, but other sights and solitudes beckon. I walk on.

About Alison Roe

Alison is from Edinburgh and now lives on the north-west Highland coast of Scotland. She’s currently writing books about a sailing trip to Arctic Norway and her recovery from a concussion, and has recently self-published a pamphlet of memoir pieces and poetry, This Time.

She’s had work published by the Scottish Mountaineering Press’ Creatives platform, Northwords Now, Stravaig (Journal of the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics) and Elsewhere journal, among others.

Otherwise, she’s usually up a hill, playing taiko (Japanese drums), building dry stone walls or flitting around in her van, a mobile writing studio which doubles up as drum transport. Her intermittent musings on all this can be found at solanoire.com.

Monday

It’s publication day, when Mothertongue, my autism memoir, is supposed to be released into the world. The publisher, Thorn & Haw, is such a small operation that there’s not enough storage space for the books, so the entire consignment is coming to my house. I’d planned to spend the morning packing and dispatching pre-orders. But there’s a hitch – no consignment.

The final proofs went to the printer more than five weeks ago. Printing, binding and delivery would be, we were told, a two-week process, which meant there was plenty of time in the schedule for hold ups. Or so we thought.

The last we heard, the print run was on a lorry somewhere between Tamworth and Carlisle. So, unless Thorn & Haw founder Zoe, my husband TJ and I don balaclavas and stake out the city’s UPS depot, there’s nothing for it but to wait at home and hope.

That, of course, is easier said than done. Uncertainty, lack of control and broken promises on this level are the stuff of autistic nightmares.

Focussing on the glorious, colourful chaos of our back garden and scrolling through pictures I took last weekend at the joyful A Dog’s Life exhibition at Rheged, near Penrith, I manage to calm myself a little.

Finally, at around four o’clock, as I’m heading to Aldi for supplies, I spot a UPS van. I fight the urge to run after it and demand to know if Mothertongue is on board. I tell myself all will be well – and very soon it is.

Tuesday

The pre-orders have been dispatched and an entire box of books delivered to the shop that’s hosting tonight’s launch event. All the tickets have been sold so it’s going to be quite a crowd. I’ve practiced and timed my readings and rehearsed answers to likely questions. I can’t tell if I’m scared or excited.

When you’re autistic, gatherings, whether social or professional, can be very stressful – particularly if you’re the centre of attention. The lights, the noise, the crush of people, the small talk, the worry about whether you’re saying and doing the right things, about what might happen next and whether everyone is enjoying themselves... It’s a lot, physically and mentally, especially coming on top of the trauma of publication and eleventh-hour book delivery.

An hour before I should be leaving the house, I’m frantically polishing the front of the oven. Half-an-hour after that, I’m folding washing. I can’t get myself ready until everything is clean and tidy. Classic autistic behaviour, or just me? I’m too demented to know or care.

The evening I’ve waited so long for is over in a flash. A mixture of friends, family and smiling strangers pour into the shop. They drink wine and chat; I drink water and pace the shelves as I wait to start. The sight of perfect yellow lines of pre-paid copies covering an entire desk, each with a matching bookmark, the purchaser’s name written in beautiful script on a Post-It note, gives me a surge of what I guess is pride – not an emotion I’m accustomed to.

Looking at the audience’s rapt faces and hearing their silent attention as I read extracts and talk about my childhood, writing and late-discovered autism in general is extraordinary. They laugh and gasp in all the right places – and their applause is a warm hug. This, I tell myself, is what joy feels like.

I’m feeling exhaustion, too, and there’ll be a migraine tomorrow, but that’s okay. For once, it’s a price I’m happy to pay.

If you haven’t yet ordered a copy of Mothertongue, you can read a few pages and – if they speak to you – buy one here.

The rest of the week passes in a blur of more order dispatching and bookshop deliveries and time spent with my older daughter, son-in-law and youngest grandchildren, who travelled several hours to surprise me at the launch. I sleep badly, swallow migraine tablets and swim twice – the repetitive movement and cool, velvet of the water soothe my head.

It’s been a week to (mostly) treasure, but the calm of the weekend can’t come soon enough. A Qigong class, dog sitting the marvellous Mr Sparkles, time to dip into my tantalising to-read pile and, hopefully, better sleep await.

What’s brought you joy recently – and what are you looking forward to?

It’s three days since I was in the same room as another human being – the longest I’ve spent on my own – and it’s been wonderful. Until recently, I thought joy was impossible without the company of others. I’ve never lived alone, have always depended on the physical closeness of those I trust, have never believed I could function independently. Yet, here I am, in deepest Shropshire, silent, functioning and happy.

I’m staying in a house with four one-person apartments and a shared kitchen/diner. The Clockhouse is part of the Hurst estate, once home to playwright John Osborne and his journalist wife Helen, which now belongs to creative writing charity Arvon.

I’ve been before. The difference then was that all the apartments were occupied, and the other writers and I would meet and chat in various combinations as we cooked and ate. This time, there’s only me and one other – and we haven’t set eyes on each other since the welcome briefing. I know she’s here because I hear her moving about in the apartment below mine and have seen her cups and plates in the dishwasher.

For the first day or so, I kept hoping to bump into her when I ventured downstairs in search of food. I felt it was my duty to socialise, to find out about her and what she was working on.

The joy of unmasking

But as the hours and days ticked by, that notion evaporated. I realised I didn’t need to know, didn’t need company. I didn’t need to be that sociable person who would, inevitably, mask as I questioned, smiled and forced myself to make eye contact.

I spent every day of nearly sixty years masking. I didn’t know why I felt so different to everyone else, but I knew I had to hide it. They were the majority. The way they thought and behaved in the world they’d built must be right, and I, with my anxiety and confusion and desire to be left alone, must be wrong.

Hiding my true self was exhausting, not least because I didn’t know what or who that self was. Now I know I’m autistic, with the added difficulties of Ehlers-Danlos and Mast Cell Activation syndromes, being in situations that require making conversation, feigning interest, feeling unable to say when I’ve had enough – basically, overriding my own needs – not only tires me out, it makes me furious.

Before long a voice inside me is shouting: I’ve endured too much, come too far to put up with more of this shit.

I love being here because the apartment is peaceful and comfortable, the surroundings beautiful, and the kitchen is stocked with great food. The only drawback on previous visits was the socialising – unless I ate my meals in the middle of the night, or was prepared to appear rude (unthinkable to a people-pleaser like me), I had to talk.

That’s why this week has been perfect. So far, there’s been no pressure to perform or meet anyone else’s standards. I’ve been quietly writing, reading, watching episodes of Rivals (I know, I know, but I can’t help loving Freddie and Lizzie) and, when the rain stays off, there are gardens and woods to explore.

I’m privileged to have the resources to come here. With our lower than average incomes, health issues and responsibilities to others, this type of break is unthinkable for many neurodivergent people. That, too, makes me angry. It also makes me thankful for every second of it.

An inspiring view

John Osborne was one of the Angry Young Men. Middle and working-class writers of the 1950s, whose name was taken from Look Back in Anger, his most famous play, their pioneering-style of ‘kitchen-sink drama’ was the precursor to today’s soap operas.

By the time Osborne was living at The Hurst, his work was out of fashion and he was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, but he found joy in his surroundings. His biographer, John Heilpern, quotes him as saying, ‘I might be the poorest playwright in England, but I have the best views.’

This afternoon, I walked to the village graveyard where he and Helen, his fifth and longest lasting wife, are buried. The irreverent inscriptions on their headstones made me smile. His reads: ‘Let me know where you’re working tomorrow and I’ll come and see you.’ Google tells me it’s a line from his play The Entertainer, hurled at an unresponsive audience by central character Archie Rice. Hers says, ‘My feet hurt – Try washing your socks,’ an exchange from Look Back in Anger.

I explored the ruins of 11^th-century Clun Castle, met an escaped lamb, and ate ginger and turmeric cake in a little café, before returning down lanes fringed with hawthorn blossom, cow parsley, buttercups, dandelions, red campion and bright blue speedwell.

A friend told me recently that hawthorn has traditionally been used to make heart tonic, which pleased me a great deal, as my memoir Mothertongue (available to pre-order here – sorry, I’m obliged to say that) is published by Thorn & Haw. Writing the book was a heart tonic for me. I hope reading it will be one for you.

PS: After writing this, I coincide in the kitchen at dinner time with my fellow resident. She seems lovely and we chat briefly, but I get the feeling she’s equally keen to return to the solitude of her apartment.

Think ‘yellow’ and what comes to mind? For me, it’s the colour of Saturdays and our kitchen and bathroom walls. It’s the dandelions taking over our grass, lemons and bananas in the fruit bowl, fields of oilseed rape, the coconut sun-cream scent of gorse bushes, an old mustard tin repurposed to hold bits and bobs: sunshiny things to lift the spirits.

I’ve always known the days of the week have colours. Monday is dark blue, Tuesday and Thursday an identical orangey-brown. Wednesday is forest green, Friday apple, Saturday bright yellow and Sunday black. As a small child, I kept this to myself because I sensed others didn’t think the same way.

The colour of excitement

Since discovering I’m autistic and reading up on co-occurring conditions, I’ve realised I have a mild form of synaesthesia, a mixing up of the senses. Fewer than a tenth of the neurotypical population have it, but among autistics, it’s thought to be nearly a fifth. It can involve tasting certain sounds, smelling colours or shapes. It doesn’t work that way for me, but it does explain why Saturday is yellow, and why I tend to think of smells as loud or quiet, or even having a texture, rather than strong or weak.

Looking at my subconscious and largely gloomy days-of-the-week colour choices from an adult perspective, it’s clear they were informed by my hatred of going to nursery and later school. By Friday, the freedom of the weekend beckoned; by Sunday, I was dreading the week to come.

Those feelings persisted into working life. Like many autistics, I spent decades struggling with hierarchies, teamwork, sensory overload and expectations around socialising. Thankfully, I don’t work for others any more. Weekdays are my own and no longer gloomy, Sundays no longer bleak. But Saturdays – I’m pleased to say – are still sunshiny-yellow.

A disreputable choice

When it came to agreeing the cover colour for my memoir, Mothertongue, which comes out on 1 June, I wanted it to reflect the relief of that autism diagnosis, the understanding it brought, the fresh start it allowed. In my eyes, that could mean only one thing: it had to be some kind of yellow.

That’s when I looked at my bookcases and realised what an unusual choice this was. I have whole shelves of red, blue, white and black spines, but only a third of a shelf of yellow. (As I’ve mentioned before, my bookcases are arranged by colour, not author or subject.) That discovery sent me online and down a rabbit hole – classic autistic behaviour when something captures our interest.

What did I learn? Historically, yellow has not just been seen as the colour of cowardice. It’s had a bad reputation when it comes to literature, too. In 19th-century France, cheap paperbacks known as ‘yellowbacks’ or ‘mustard-plaster’ novels and often sold in railway stations were wrapped in yellow paper to alert readers to their risqué or sensational content.

Playing on this association, British avant-garde literary quarterly The Yellow Book, founded in 1894, was named – and given a yellow cover by its art editor, aesthetic movement pioneer Aubrey Beardsley – to reflect its anti-establishment stance.

When Oscar Wilde was arrested for gross indecency the following year, he was carrying a copy of another yellow book, Aphrodite by Pierre Louys, further cementing the colour’s scandalous credentials.

In the twentieth century, yellow continued to be used to flag racy or provocative content, particularly in the form of thrillers and crime fiction. As a young teen in the seventies, I devoured the Ellery Queen detective mysteries and many of them had yellow covers.

So there you have it. Yellow is not a respectable choice, not one for ‘proper’ literature or discerning readers. All of which makes me even happier to have chosen it.

Sunshine on a plate

Other colourful things making me happy, as spring edges towards its end and summer approaches, are bright salads. Many autistic people have sensitivities around diet, even as adults shunning foods that are highly flavoured or textured in favour of an unchallenging ‘beige’ diet. Others, me included, have underactive taste receptors, leading us to crave the stimulus of salty snacks, curries, sharp salad dressings, colourful fruit and raw vegetables.

Recently, we’ve been eating big bowls of dressed raw carrot and red cabbage, cauliflower slaws, and grain salads spiked with dried apricots, sour cherries and cranberries. Several of the recipes came from my current favourite cookbook: Sabrina Ghayour’s delicious Sirocco.

We’ve also been making our own pesto with rocket or basil. When the nasturtiums come up, their leaves will be turned into this versatile sauce, too. In the meantime, I’m eyeing up those dandelions...

What’s brought you joy recently on the literary, culinary or any other front?

This isn’t a sentence I ever thought I’d write: I’ve been finding joy recently in friends, art and plastic. The first two are uncontroversial – I enjoy being with close friends who understand and don’t expect too much of me, and I’ve always loved art – but plastic? Nevertheless, it’s true, and that’s thanks to the friends and the art. Bear with and, at the risk of revealing myself to be a complete idiot, I’ll explain.

A couple of weeks ago, a group of us went to Edinburgh and visited the city’s Modern One and Two art galleries. Just before we left Modern One, I spotted its excellent welcome wall. (I know, either I’m not very observant or it needs better signage.) Alongside ear defenders, interaction lanyards, dark glasses, magnifiers, large print labels and sensory maps, there was a holder of coloured plastic reading overlays.

Visually staggering

I’d heard about people with dyslexia or the visual processing disability Irlen Syndrome (neither of which I have) using overlays so, being a curious soul, I picked out a couple and held them over some type on the wall. I was stunned. Suddenly, the words were stable and clear. I am sixty-two years old and an avid reader, and I’d spent my entire life up to that moment thinking it was normal for words to vibrate in front of my eyes. I thought everyone had to focus hard to hold them still. That it was normal for the effort to strain my eyes and make my head ache. Turns out I was wrong.

When I got home, I went online and invested £5.99 in a set of overlay strips. All the colours help, but yellow and red seem to be most beneficial for me. I’m now looking forward to many more years of – stress-free – reading. I might start by finding out more about Irlen Syndrome.

Art galleries have always been happy places for me. The white walls, clear light, cool air and peacefulness lower my pulse rate and relax my body and brain. Of course, the content matters, too – colour, detail and pattern please my autistic soul. As the pictures above show, Modern One and its neighbour, Modern Two, are packed with the most gorgeous paintings and installations.

I was particularly drawn to Anne Redpath’s Still Life With Milk Bottle, painted in about 1945. It wasn’t just because of the freedom of the brushwork, the mismatched crockery, the mouse teapot half-hidden behind the milk bottle, and the casually placed Penguin classic – much as I loved those things. Redpath’s work always pulls at my heartstrings. The extract below from my memoir, Mothertongue, explains why.

In 1943, to mark Mum’s twenty-first birthday, her father decided local artist Anne Redpath would paint her portrait. This might seem a rather lovely gesture, and surprisingly showy, given how little positive attention she’d come to expect from her parents. It horrified Mum but, as usual, she felt unable to refuse.

She told me he commissioned the portrait to help a struggling artist, but this doesn’t add up. Redpath was already pretty well-known, so his motivation may have been less altruistic. Did the randy old goat, by then well into his sixties, use his unsuspecting daughter as an excuse to spend time with the attractive painter?

Redpath painted the background and even Mum’s skin in gloomy shades of green and turned her dark brown hair black. Mum said this was because paint was scarce during the war. However, Redpath, who later became president of the Scottish Society of Women Artists and the first female painter fully admitted to the Royal Scottish Academy, also completed a self-portrait that year – and it used a full range of naturalistic colours. It makes me wonder what she was saying in her depiction of Mum.

The portrait hung in our sitting room throughout my childhood. It’s over thirty years since I last saw it, but on this my memory is clear: the woman Redpath captured was the one I knew, stiff, almost mournful, resigned. It’s as if she looked into Mum’s soul and saw the hopelessness of a young woman whose dreams were shattered before they could take shape, who viewed the world as a hostile place. Friendless and lacking confidence, pushed into a career she didn’t want, she’d already given up on life. Was already just going through the motions. Thinking about this now is almost physically painful. No one should feel that way at any age, but especially not so young.

Mothertongue, a meditation on memory, truth and love shortlisted in the Northern Writers’ Awards, will be published on 1 June by Thorn & Haw. (In case you’re wondering, as far as I’m aware, there are no photographs of Mum’s portrait, which is why I can’t share it with you.)

To counteract that rather downbeat reflection, here are a few more things that have given me joy since I last wrote. What’s brought a smile to your face and a lightness to your heart recently?

An affronted pigeon staggers sideways on our tatty lawn, feathers in disarray, as Storm Dave makes his presence felt. It recovers its footing, ruffles itself smooth and, dignity restored, takes to the air. Later, I watch the grass’s delighted shivering as Dave’s anger is replaced by a gentle breeze. Later still, when I bring in some washing, a ladybird drops from the folds of a duvet cover and bustles off across the lino – my husband gently thwarts it with a piece of kitchen paper and takes it outside.

All sorts of small things have made me smile over the past couple of weeks, some too fleeting to capture with my phone, others impossible to do justice. But the lack of permanent reminders doesn’t matter, because I enjoyed them at the time and, for a while at least, I’ll hold the images in my mind’s eye.

These flashes of joy are a relatively new sensation for me and I want to hug them close. For too long, I believed I wasn’t capable of positive emotion. As I mentioned last time, alexithymia has a part of play in this, making it hard for me – and many other autistic people – to identify and express what’s happening inside. But that’s just one element in a more complex picture.

It’s virtually impossible to experience happiness, even in small ways, if you don’t feel safe in the world. And feeling unsafe can be a constant state when you’re neurodivergent. Since my diagnosis, that’s begun to change for me. I’m extremely fortunate in many ways. I live in a country where autism is slowly becoming better understood. I no longer have to go out into the workplace and am, in a very modest way, financially secure. As I age, I’m also getting better at advocating for and taking care of myself, regardless of what others might think about my choices. That still isn’t the whole story, though.

Attack of the zombies

I learned from my mother that while it was fine to be hungry or tired – everyone experienced those things – it was utterly unacceptable to appear sad, angry or even happy. Showing emotion of any kind was the height of rudeness, because it imposed on others and drew attention to oneself, two things properly brought up, well-behaved people simply did not do. No matter the circumstances, the upper lip must remain stiff and expressionless.

My mother was my sole caregiver and I relied on her to keep me safe so, naturally, I took what she said as gospel. Outwardly, I might have appeared to be an untroubled, well-adjusted child, but it was just a façade. Inside, I was a small would-be zombie, fighting to supress all emotion.

By my late twenties, I’d begun to question the truth of what she’d drummed into me. But it wasn’t until decades later that I was able to exorcise her ghost (not literally) via therapy and writing about the trauma of my childhood and early life.

That writing became my memoir Mothertongue, which was shortlisted in the Northern Writers’ Awards and is due to be published by Thorn & Haw on 1 June. Perhaps surprisingly, writing the book, which tells my mother’s painful story and my own, has been another source of joy. I’ll share some short extracts over the coming weeks.

In the meantime, here are some more things that have brought me joy recently. Perhaps they’ll make you smile too.

I loved Alison Roe’s new pamphlet This Time not just for the look and the packaging, splendid though they were. It’s a beautifully written glimpse into her life on sea and shore in the Scottish Highlands. As she says, it all began when she sailed into Assynt on a summer’s afternoon… I can’t wait to read whatever she writes next.

While taking a break from my own writing to proofread Mothertongue, I was interviewed for the US website Nifty50plus.com by journalist Rose Palazzolo about why so many women are being diagnosed as autistic in later life. The fact that we’re finally being recognised is, I think, a cause for celebration.

I also read The Curious Incident of The Dog in the Night-Time author Mark Haddon’s new memoir, Leaving Home. Again, I was attracted by the book’s appearance – the covers and end papers are glorious, and it’s packed with fabulous illustrations – but the story of his life and mental health struggles was riveting too. Like me, he grew up in the Sixties and Seventies, and I devoured his nostalgic, funny, painful, chaotic and brave book in couple of sittings.

Where have you been finding your joy lately? I’d love to know.

Today is a perfect day for seeking out joy. It’s raining cats and dogs (if only it really was, although I wouldn’t want them to get hurt) and blowing a hoolie (there’s a word from my childhood that should be used more often – along with stooshie and stramash). I had hoped to go for a walk with Mr Sparkles, the elderly Patterdale terrier from down the road, he of the excellent side-eye, but he’s indisposed after a sickly night, so my waterproof trousers and I are staying put.

While the trousers spend the day folded in the bottom of the wardrobe, I’m focusing on mental exercise, walking through the subject of happiness. Perhaps my thoughts will resonate with you. Equally, if you disagree, I’d love to hear from you.

For some autistic people, joy is a regular and intense sensation. Naturalist Chris Packham talks of the pleasure of walking in woodland, as he experiences every individual leaf, every single flower. Sadly, it’s not like that for all of us. Especially if you’re autistic with co-occurring health conditions and/or financial issues, joy can be in short supply.

I do get glimpses of what he means. Sitting in yoga class the other day, cells dancing in the afterglow of a long, slow stretch, I knew I was alive, felt light, peaceful and fully present. This, I thought, this. Then the class ended and real life intervened.

When you’re neurodivergent, the wider world and our personal ones are often scary, stressful places. As if that wasn’t enough, many of us struggle to identify and express what’s happening inside us. The condition, known as alexithymia, is thought to affect around fifty per cent of autistic people compared to only ten per cent of the neurotypical population. It means that even when we find something that might, in theory, make us joyful, we don’t actually feel much.

A perfect storm of mental weather

Add to that the fact that existing from early childhood in a state of anxiety and fear teaches us it’s not safe to enjoy anything, and we’re caught in a perfect storm of mental weather. We know, in the deepest part of our being, that it’s dangerous to be happy. Drop our guard and risk it even for a moment and something very bad is likely to happen. For many of us, that’s the reality of being neurodivergent on a planet not designed for us – bad stuff happens all the time. To protect ourselves from additional pain and disappointment, we push away any glimmer of positive feeling we might otherwise have experienced.

Once this type of magical thinking takes hold, it’s incredibly hard to unlearn. I know because I’ve been trying for a while now. It’s a big part of why I launched this blog. To use the need for content to force me into finding and – in however small a way – feeling autistic joy. And to do it without fear.

I said last time I didn’t want to focus on the negative, yet I seem to be doing exactly that. To make up for it, here are a couple dog pictures I’ve been enjoying on my phone as compensation for not walking with Mr Sparkles.

The third photo is of Lionel, the capybara who lives on my desk, in celebration of my news story of the week: ‘It was bonkers’: Samba the runaway capybara inspires a wild rodent hunt from The Guardian. For me, capybaras are a huge source of joy. They’re large and rough as sandpaper, with small ears, a ridiculously long upper lip and a very bad attitude. (Lionel may be small and made of cardboard but, as you can see, he’s all attitude.) What’s more, they can hold their breath for up to five minutes and reach top speeds of 22mph when evading capture. What’s not to love?

(In the time it’s taken me to write that, the rain has been replaced by hail then blue sky and sunshine and now looks ominously as if it’s about to release more rain.)

In defence of my negativity, it’s been a stressful couple of weeks. The house has been turned upside down as our first new carpets in twenty years were laid. With only the stairs and landing still to do, things are almost back to normal. My bookshelves are refilled, my office noticeboard reorganised, and I’ve bought myself a laptop stand with drawers for small stuff, as a reward for surviving the ordeal.

I’d love to know what it feels like to be neurotypical and experience joy. I suspect it’s more powerful and longer lasting than the flutter these lovely things trigger in my gut, the brief pulse of warmth in my heart, the flash of lightness and positivity in my brain, or the smile that flits across my face. Still, it’s early days.

What gives you joy – and how does it feel?

Whether you’re neurodivergent or neurotypical, I hope you’ll spread the word and get involved in The Autistic Joy Project – either here, on Substack, on Instagram at the_autistic_woman or on Facebook at Alex Morgan – The Autistic Woman. Because we all need more joy in our lives.

Until next time. Alex x

Like many autistic people, I’m prone to black-and-white thinking - it helps reduce uncertainty in a world that often feels chaotic and threatening. In my book, things are either good or bad, right or wrong. But I’m also very keen on colour.

Whether it comes in the form of museum cases of ceramics arranged by shade (the ones pictured are in Glasgow’s Burrell Collection), a box of cakes from a Turkish patisserie or a beautiful rug, a splash of colour brings a smile to my face. It provides a moment of respite from the negativity that surrounds us - the wars we’re waging against each other, the damage we’re doing to the planet, the bigotry, intolerance, corruption, inequality... I could go on but I won’t.

I want to hold onto the positives, in the form of the details, the patterns, the subtle variations that are all around us. Things that often appeal to autistic brains. Things it’s easy to overlook when we’re stressed and preoccupied.

For me, they include bookshelves arranged by colour, cheerful flowers, interesting typography, my favourite blue trainers, and my friends’ Patterdale terrier, who - as you can see below - gives excellent side eye.

It’s why I decided to start this blog focusing on the small and the quirky. To seek out and share insignificant, everyday things – from books to meals, household objects to wonders of nature, old photographs to new experiences – that bring me flashes of joy, in the hope they might help others feel a little lighter, a bit brighter too.

It’s why I’d love it if you would get in touch - whether you’re autistic or not - and share some of the often overlooked things that make your life more pleasant and the world more bearable.

Get involved in The Autistic Joy Project

I hope this strikes a chord and that you’ll spread the word and get involved – either here, on Substack, on Instagram at the_autistic_woman or on Facebook at Alex Morgan – The Autistic Woman.

I look forward to meeting you and hearing what makes you joyful!

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