Special Interests

A rather cliched special interest for one on the spectrum: Maps. It started when I was very ill during early childhood, when an elderly neighbor felt that I needed something to take my mind off my rather lengthy recuperation, He used to draw pictorial maps of local countryside and even imaginary places. It was very therapeutic.And I started to draw my own maps. It probably helped me to begin conversing with more than one word at a time. Now it took a very long time to fit that obsession together with a diagnosis, but it was one of those things that made self-identification rather obvious. Yep, I'm afraid I also have another special interest which is rather classic:steam railways - but it is a bit less obsessional than maps. Hardly surprising when there a steam railway in clear view. I note, however, that I'm not really obsessional enough about it to be a true railnut. I probably wouldn't bore the pants off Bill Bryson if he was unfortunate enough to sit next to me on a train. I rarely even travel by train these days. Nevertheless, my even deeper special interest could probably be best described as railways on maps - past, present and future, with more recent slight digressions into Google Streetview and archived maps online.

A rather cliched special interest for one on the spectrum: Maps. It started when I was very ill during early childhood, when an elderly neighbor felt that I needed something to take my mind off my rather lengthy recuperation, He used to draw pictorial maps of local countryside and even imaginary places. It was very therapeutic.And I started to draw my own maps. It probably helped me to begin conversing with more than one word at a time. Now it took a very long time to fit that obsession together with a diagnosis, but it was one of those things that made self-identification rather obvious. Yep, I'm afraid I also have another special interest which is rather classic:steam railways - but it is a bit less obsessional than maps. Hardly surprising when there a steam railway in clear view. I note, however, that I'm not really obsessional enough about it to be a true railnut. I probably wouldn't bore the pants off Bill Bryson if he was unfortunate enough to sit next to me on a train. I rarely even travel by train these days. Nevertheless, my even deeper special interest could probably be best described as railways on maps - past, present and future, with more recent slight digressions into Google Streetview and archived maps online.