Hello! I hope you are well and have had a nice week. I’m currently sitting in a Costa Coffee in Burton, treating myself to a skinny latte with the gift card my darling stepmother Donna so generously gifted me for my birthday last week. There is an elderly woman sitting opposite me reading The Guardian, and another chap sitting adjacent to me reading a book, so I feel like I’m in good company this morning. 

Some bullet points to get us started: 

• Harry Styles’ new album, Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally, is growing on me. I wasn’t particularly impressed when I first heard it, but I find myself listening to it a lot nonetheless. I am especially enjoying The Waiting Game and Dance No More.
• The new McDonalds that they’re building at the Egginton/Willington junction of the A38 is an absolute abomination. Aside from the fact that the traffic it inevitably causes will be extremely inconvenient for me, the architecture of these modern fast food restaurants, which are essentially flat-pack furniture in building form, is utterly repulsive and a stain on the beauty of this great nation. 
• The response of His Majesty’s Government to the war in Iran has been nothing short of pathetic, and Keir Starmer should resign immediately. The sight of French warships being sent to defend British airbases on the island of Cyprus is so embarrassing it should make John Healey cower in shame.  
• Congratulations to Kimi Antonelli on winning his first Grand Prix this morning, it was a fantastic race to watch. Congratulations also for being one of the sexiest twinks I’ve ever seen. 

The Age of Diagnosis 

With my being off work for several weeks recently with “stress and low mood”, as the Doctor’s so delicately like to put it, I have been considering the appropriateness of my diagnosis as an Autistic person, especially since I now realise my recent struggles are likely attributable to what is termed “autistic burnout”. Since being diagnosed in May 2024, I’ve devoured all sorts of reading on the subject, and I have slowly been moving towards the conclusion that, although Autism is definitely a valid condition, the spectrum as described in the DSM-5 (which is essentially the bible of mental disorders) has become so wide as to render it essentially meaningless. 

It was therefore interesting to see that Professor Dame Uta Frith, a professor who has played a central role in researching and defining autism since the 1960’s, largely agreed with my thinking in an interview with The Sunday Times last week:

Frith says “there is no longer a common denominator for all the individuals who are diagnosed as having ASD [autism spectrum disorder]. 

“The spectrum has become so accommodating that I fear that it has now been stretched so far that it has become meaningless and is no longer useful as a medical diagnosis.”

This is a point I feel is extremely important. I understand that it is a spectrum, but surely a spectrum that can include both someone like myself, who, despite what my enemies might suggest, is quite clearly intelligent and independent, as well as someone who cannot communicate their most basic needs and has severe learning difficulties, is so broad that it is basically pointless.

My main concern, which is shared by Frith and also by Dr. Suzanne O’Sullivan in her excellent book The Age of Diagnosis, is that so many people are now being diagnosed with autism that the needs of those with the severest issues are being overlooked in favour of those with milder issues who, because they can function independently and advocate for themselves, are better able to lobby for the care they need. It also concerns me that the spectrum becoming so broad makes any further research on the condition pointless because it has moved so far away from its defining characteristics – Frith sums it up better than I can: 

For Frith the widening of the autism spectrum also represents a troubling departure from the clinical rigour expected in a scientific field. She uses the example of young adults who have self-diagnosed with autism after reading about it online or on social media and coupled it with their extreme social anxiety, but who have excellent communication skills.

“Having a conversation with someone with autism is likely not to feel fluent, but to feel stilted or abrupt. So this fluency is a contra-indicator for the diagnosis of autism,” Frith says.

The clinical implications of this are particularly concerning, she says. Overdiagnosis dilutes research, Frith argues, because it mixes groups with potentially different biological causes and different cognitive dysfunctions. “This makes the data we obtain from large groups very noisy.”

She believes we should do away with the spectrum entirely. She would like to see it replaced with subcategories which separate those with childhood autism of the strict clinical kind, those with Asperger’s, and those with hypersensitivity.

I couldn’t agree more with this, especially as I personally identify much more closely with the definition of Asperger’s than ASD. The decision to remove Asperger’s as a diagnosis when they moved from the DSM-4 to the DSM-5 in 2013 was a mistake – one I sincerely hope they rectify in the DSM-6, for the sake of those with the severest difficulties that need help now more than ever. 

The God of Twinks is dead 

When I first watched Timothée Chalamet in Call Me By Your Name in 2017, it was a life changing experience – never in my life had I experienced such raw beauty. There aren’t enough superlatives in the English dictionary to describe quite how pulchritudinous Timmy looked in that film, and his jaw dropping performance just added to the allure, instantly crowning him the God of Twinks. It had such a profound impact on my life that in 2023, I went on a pilgrimage to the city in Italy, Crema, where the film was shot. 

In a recent Substack essay, Jenny G. Zhang put it better than I ever could: 

He was a revelation in that film, which remains one of my favorites to this day for reasons dear to me. At 21, Chalamet played a teenager blessed with his first love—and doomed to his first heartbreak—with a breathtaking emotional depth. Elio is quiet, observing, sensitive, steeped in intellectual and artistic pursuits, full of longing and the requisite vulnerability it takes to fall head over heels. He is lithe and boyish, like the youths that the ancient gods fixated on and often killed with their divine, cruel ardor. 

The Timothée Chalamet of old that his fans felt so attached to was a twink through and through. He could claim French heritage and fluency; he had hair you could run your hands through, a perfectly androgynous face, and sartorially daring red-carpet ensembles that highlighted his lean frame; he appeared to be humble, introspective, and artsy; he made his name working with admired female and queer directors, such as Greta Gerwig and Luca Guadagnino.

Over the last few years, however, Timothée has lost some of that allure, but I’ve been unable to quite put my finger on why – until now, as Zhang has done it for me, saying of his fans:

what they also miss is simply his youth, a tale as old as time. While fans’ anti-Chalamet sentiment is currently at an all-time high, rumblings of unease actually began a few years ago when Chalamet started putting on weight and muscles, with fans then making videos comparing the chiseled cheekbones and the cut of Chalamet’s jawline in his early 20s to his puffier face in his late 20s. Now, at 30, Chalamet has officially aged out of being the fae-like prince that devotees once loved him for. His physical transformation is complete, just as his artistic one will imminently be.

I will miss Timmy the Twink, but at least I will always have Elio. 

Qin F22 Pro 

I have decided to try something a bit different. I’ve had several stretches on the Barbie Phone recently, which is utterly stunning and a fabulous break from the relentlessness of modern technology, but, unfortunately, it just isn’t practical in this day and age. I have therefore decided to try the Qin F22 Pro, which markets itself as a “smart dumbphone”, if it’s possible to have such a thing. 

The F22 has a classic keypad, which makes typing fiddly, and the screen is only 3.5in, compared to almost 7in on the iPhone, which I am hoping makes it less appealing to use. Nonetheless, it is a touchscreen, and it runs on Android, so you can still get Spotify, Google Maps etc. I am hoping it will further reduce my reliance/dependency on technology, and provide a better balance between usability and necessity. I will let you know how I get on! 

How Reading Made Us

My childish fangirling over James Marriott continues, as he released the first of three episodes of his new series on Radio 4 this week. The first episode, How Reading Made Our Brains, was just as fascinating as I expected it to be, with some really interesting and authoritative guests. The synopsis sums it up better than I could: 

Learning to read permanently alters your brain. It changes the emotions you experience and the way you relate to others. When a society learns to read the consequences are dramatic: wars break out, revolutions erupt and new political systems spring into being. Reading made us who we are.

For centuries people have been reading more and more. Recently the trend has gone into reverse. The number of people who pick up a book has been falling steadily for twenty years. Now half of adults no longer read regularly.

How will this change us?

I really enjoyed the discussions Marriott had with his guests, and I genuinely believe his overall point, that a decline in reading will have drastic consequences for the stability of society, is extremely valid. Give it a listen! 

Mummy’s Favourite

I have been a staunch supporter of the Royal Family since I first came out of the womb. I would have taken a bullet in the name of our former monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, and I think those who eschew the principle of hereditary rule are blind to the prestige and power that the Royal Family gives the United Kingdom (the clue is in the name, darlings) across the globe. 

I am slowly and reluctantly coming to the conclusion, however, that The Firm have lost their allure – Walter Bagehot famously said in his 1867 book The English Constitution: “Above all things our royalty is to be reverenced, and if you begin to poke about it you cannot reverence it… Its mystery is its life. We must not let in daylight upon the magic”. Recent news coverage around Randy Andy has shattered this mystery. 

Andrew O’Hagan has an excellent piece in the latest issue of the London Review of Books that exposes quite how shameless, arrogant and repulsive Andrew and Fergie’s behaviour has been since they first met in the mid 1980s, but not only this – it also focuses on the extent to which the Queen not only knew about it, but actively covered it up: 

Andrew found that he liked the company of men who floated above the clouds and above the law. He seems to have volumised his bad behaviour to match theirs, while hoping, in the fetid conditions of the modern Elizabethan court, that if Mummy didn’t think badly of him it didn’t matter. Every time he disgraced himself the queen gave him another honour. He had just been appointed commodore-in-chief of the Fleet Air Arm when, just before the business of passing girls back and forth in Bangkok appeared in the papers, she made him a knight of the Garter, Britain’s oldest, most coveted order of chivalry.

Andrew’s corruption and depravity were long an open secret, but the extent to which he brought the family into disrepute should have been enough for the late Queen to exile him decades ago – instead, she appears to have done her best to hide it, a perverse and disgraceful abuse of the ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ attitude the family embodies so well. 

There are other reasons why the family is losing my support, such as Prince William’s attempts to be woke (his talks on mental health and his environmental awards, which are laughably out of touch) and King Charles’ giant sausage fingers, but the fundamental crux of it is that, in their attempt to placate the public by being more open, honest and relatable, they have destroyed the magic and mystery that kept the public interested in them. They’ve lost the deference they relied on for so long, and now people are willing to so openly question their right to rule over us, all they have left is their titles – a point hilariously summed up by a quote from Beatrice in O’Hagan’s piece: 

‘Daddy loves Mummy more than Mummy loves Daddy,’ Beatrice told him. ‘But Mummy lives for her title and she loses her title if Daddy remarries.’

If it wasn’t so calculatedly evil, it would be laughably pathetic.

On that cheerful note, I shall leave you to it – enjoy the rest of your Sunday!