I recently wrote a book called Aspie and Me.
There are principly three main characters, Hartley, Aspie and Rea and one other that doesn't have a speaking part a real live Tyrannosaurus Rex. Now I know what you are going to think, I can't be serious? But if you were to read my book you would begin to realise Tyrannosaurus is responsible for the more intrusive plays anxieties that plague Hartley's life. In my book the character Hartley plays Me and Aspie plays Aspergers Syndrome.
While about my story can be found on the www.AspieandMe.com homepage I hope my brief bio will give you an insight into my lifestory.
I was born Laurence Paul Julius Mitchell on the 20th June 1953. My middle name Julius was in remembrance of Julius and Ethel Rosenburg, a Jewish couple who were executed after being convicted of conspiring to pass American atomic secrets to the Soviet Union.
I was born six weeks premature. As pictured, I am in an incubator being watched by my mother.
Here I am aged around 6 months playing with my favourite friend teddy.
I had hoped my teddy bear remained with me throughout my life. Teddy lasted until I was in my mid-teens. I would have liked to have kept him in perfect condition and as much as Aspie may have been affectionate towards him, pulling and prodding his limbs he would be showing visible signs of wear and tear. Then the inevitable occurs and I whole heartedly blame Aspie, teddy goes for a walk to never return. Aspie has no idea how much torture I endured over teddy going missing. My relationship with Teddy was very much the child in me, who I would cuddle, take to bed and he would be my comfort, whenever the need arises. Most likely like any other kid I treated him like he was a part of my family always there for me whenever I beckoned until that last unfortunate day yet so dear to me.
No doubt my emotional attachment missing Teddy could be compared to losing my wife traumatised for quiet a few years, time tries to heal but does it? Just think if there could be a missing teddy bureau how wonderful that would be for all kids who had lost those they cherished.
This photo of me aged around 18 months standing in a wheel barrel might look innocent enough but unbeknown to me such stunts would become regular with Aspie. It would begin as a prank that did result being hospitalised on numerous occasions with Aspie rarely glimpsing a thought it could be his doing.
Until the age of three, we lived in a three bedroom semi-detached home in the Jewish area of Finchley, in London, United Kingdom.
"While I was at Nursery School, my teachers noticed that I had confidence and security issues and these traits of Aspie's followed me throughout my life. I had a fondness for my own company, rather than sitting playing with the other children in the class. Teachers would find me sitting alone gazing into a wall where Aspie could find satiety in exploring an endless world beyond (This world would once I began reading science fiction and fantasy call the Aspie continuum) today a concoction of Star Trek, Star Wars and Dr. Who)". Nevertheless my mother thought of me as a happy child.
This is a photo of me on Bournemouth Beach shortly before I broke my arm.
By the time I was three, we had moved to a larger house just round the corner because my mother was pregnant and this is the house where I grew up and where my mother continues to live today. The house is in a street where all the neighbours know each other and although, as a child I mingled with the other childre in the street, other than these my only other friends were two boys I met at Junior school who lived in a neighbouring housing estate.
Here is a classic photo of Aspie camourflaged into the wall.
For the first ten years of my life my father had a children's book publishing company with his partner Bob Tyndall who was the eldest surviving artist for Enid Blyton and responsible for many of the illustrations of the Noddy series. Sadly, he passed away in 2012. There were times when I preferred him to my father and saw him as a replacement father figure, which had I known was more a concocted idea of Aspie's, but it adversely affected my relationship with my father throughout my life.
Ever since Aspie decided to go for a walk on his own aged a 3 when his grandparents momentarily took his eyes off him and he was gone, (many scary examples can be seen throughout my childhood in my book Aspie and Me)
After my years at Nursery and Junior School I fared no better at my Comprehensive School. The undiagnosed Alexithymia disorder created a labyrinth of emotions I was unable to filter and I was regularly bullied.
Having failed my Eleven Plus exam, whatever occupational therapy I was receiving was of little benefit finding me the ideal school with Hampstead Comprehensive some four miles away being the only school to support did nothing to thwart the painstaking time for my mother to find an alternative and there would be further bullying because of my yet to be diagnosed learning and communication difficulties. Worse was my first year at school would see me traumatised until halfway through the second year; I was to be tormented with a congenital condition in my arms that mimicked paralysis.
Sadly, this period of my life had serious implications for me, given the horrible things that were in store for me particularly, missing the majority of sex education lessons at school. This was perhaps the conduit for Aspie developing a terrible fear of female body parts after my run-in with a paedophile at the age of twelve.
PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT - YOUTH AND PHILATELY
While the trauma of my encounter with the Paedophile would take me many years to recover( I wonder if we do ever recover, perhaps just ecome more aware of our coping mechanisms) I had enjoyed learning the piano, since the age of five up to grade eight aged 14. Aspie only allowed me to play if we were on our own and no one was watching. Little did I know music would come to my rescue in my battle with Aspie’s tumultuous emotional tidal waves that confronted me continuously.
During the summer holidays after the end of the duration of the last spring term at Junior school, I was already showing an acumen for doing more than the average paperboy. I had a job working for a friend of my parents who had a Dutch cigar importing company.
After my first year of Saturday jobs, I succeeded in getting a 100% pay rise; from 10 shillings to £1 an hour. If I thought I knew where my skillset lay so early on in my career at school I could not have been more wrong. Unable to be aware much of this inability to create positive learning skills was all of Aspie's doing. When it was time for all of the other classmates to do their GCE's I being at the lower end of the class stats as far as who was top of the class teachers decided I my lack of enthusiasm of every subject other than music meant the lower graded CSE was all I was fit for.
I am sure they knew of Aspie otherwise I wonder how they could be correct with their assumption when it came to my exams Aspie really caused to to fail, lucky to get three basic C passes. When I was ready to leave school with only three CSE exams, it looked as though my career path was set to be a draughtsman; the alternative was sweeping the streets.
However, I am pleased to say my childhood hobby of collecting stamps saved my bacon. By the time I left school aged 17, I had two years of experience of buying and selling stamps and for the following six years enjoyed a career in Philately.
In this picture of me wearing a leather jacket I am looking very pleased with myself. Except I shouldn't have. A few moments earlier while driving my vovlo estate home, Aspie managed to have a head on collision at the bottom of our street. Our road was quite narrow especially if vehicles were parked either side. I felt very sorry for the driver we hit, there was no room for either car to pass. Definitely Aspie was in the wrong and there were plenty of witnesses, pushed the poor buggers engine block into the passenger compartment was how strong the collision was. Aspie was pleased none of the witnesses would come forward.
Little did I know there were going to be plenty more prangs in the months to come, including quite a few during my antiquing years(that's the only trouble being a ceramics dealer) china doesn't fare too well in car accidents.
My interest in antiques was stimulated during my philatelist years, my mother already had her own antique unit, which she shared with a Scottish business partner who Aspie certainly could not stand because of her accent; another Alexithymic trait.
PART THREE: MATURITY - BUSINESSMAN AND ANTIQUES
My first antique shop was a small lock up unit two units away from my mother’s shop in the antique centre known then as the Flea Market in London's famous Camden Passage Islington close to the Angel Station on the Northern Line. Today, part of Kevin Page Oriental Art. With my profits from buying and selling escalating within eighteen months I moved to a larger shop at 14 Pierrepont Row and my mother and her partner moved to larger premises at what was known then as the Tram Shed,now occupied by Sofa.com.
The main source for my purchases was Bermondsey Market, just south of Tower Bridge, where hundreds of dealers from around the country would arrive on an early Friday morning to sell their week’s purchases, while buyers from the entire country and abroad conglomerated around the individual stalls, sometimes several dealers deep. Unbeknown to me Aspie was already getting to be well disliked by my compatriots. Basically there were protocols that dealers followed otherwise they would be shooting each other.
Such a shame I didn't know Aspie was causing so much embarrassment. It was common practice that the hand, which touched the piece was not available to any other dealer unless the first person turned it down. With Aspie's long, crane-like arms it became clear from early on that I did things differently and didn't abide by the rules of the other gentlemen dealers.
Here I am again in my late 20's looking like a prized catch for any would be woman who was looking for her ideal man wearing psychadelic clothing .
By the age of 25, I had already travelled the globe procuring wondrous objects of ceramic talent. My stock was almost going out quicker than it was coming in and business for me was easy and all-consuming. I was expanding my business very fast; buying and selling everything that was ceramic from English antiques to continental, to oriental.
I moved to a larger rented shop at 27 Camden Passage and after a while, my mother decided to leave her business and come to work for me. While I might have been good at buying and selling, I was unaware that I lacked the required organizational and bookkeeping skills. I branched out opening my second shop at Gateway Arcade, which specialised in English and European ceramics, while at my main shop I dealt in Chinese and Japanese ceramics and works of art.
Marriage Difficulties Death and Worse
At the age of 40, an opportunity to purchase a freehold property, formerly the French restaurant Carriers Cookshop with four floors of space became available to me. This meant I could consolidate my stock in one outlet and I turned my shop at 27 Camden Passage into a decorative antique shop specialising in home decorations.
My misfortune in my relationship with Aspie was that he invariably had a backup plan for my life. By the time I was 47, my marriage was teetering on the edge. My wife and three children moved to Bournemouth, which was her preference because she had watched a documentary about Asperger’s and she needed to get as far away from Aspie as she could.
However, it was like living with an unravelled ball of string, which unknowingly tied me to my wife. Sadly, the years ahead were not joyous. My Asperger’s diagnosis, at the age of 49, marked the end of a beautiful marriage. I now had to accept I was out on my own with the biggest troublemaker anyone would ever want to share their life with; Aspie. Two years later in 2004 my three children had to cope with the most terrible news, their Mother had taken her life.
During my successful years in business I employed people to help me run my business efficiently with the best PA any employer could ever want. Not only was I a successful antiques dealer with specialist knowledge of many genres in the field of antiques, I was a consultant to a Lloyds Syndicate advising on antique related claims. However, I was unaware that with Aspie firmly concreted into my life, I now had to worry about how I contended with this thorn in my side, as well as the organisational skills I lacked, which lost me customers. My only solace was that during the next few years and my travels to the United States I was able to combine my antiques buying regime with visiting the major Autism Conferences.
I learned as much as I could about the Autism Spectrum Disorder and set up my first website to share the knowledge I learned with as many people as possible; www.lifewithoutlabels.co.uk. This changed my life because everyone asked me who had written the text for the website; they did not believe that I had the skills to write for an audience. The idea that I could write a book was the most preposterous idea from their perspective. Go and find a ghostwriter I was told.
Beginning a new life as an Author and Web Developer
So instead, I began typing away on a keyboard. Some days it seemed I typed all day and all night and it wasn't long before I became aware that I was writing my autobiography. However, I had a dilemma now because it couldn't remain this way if it was to be written in a book format and sold. Therefore, I spent the next five years writing and researching and during the second half of 2016, following the case of the Welsh multi-millionaire businessman Peter Morgan convicted of murder, I decided to make my Aspie and Me story into a psychological thriller.
I had written a story and the next stage was to get it published. I decided to focus on building a second web-platform, which analysed the many situations and incidents from my life that were Aspie generated. I created a web-platform with a difference. There was so much going on in the media about mental health impeding many people's lives that I designed the platform in such a way that readers of my book could tap into the story and gain huge benefits.
Now my focus is to provide a deeper understanding of how Aspie's play a very unique and important role in everyone's life. My intention is that this web platform will help other people with similar conditions to me and it will enable people to realise their own dreams.
Laurence Mitchell
October 2017
London
