I’m a bit of a contradiction when it comes to my autistic sensibilities.
I cannot tolerate noise.
Office chatter, traffic noise, dripping taps, ticking clocks, snoring, eating sounds (misophonia), or other people’s phone calls and conversations in general.
This would lead you to think I am sensory avoidant and, to some extent, I am.
However, My autistic noise sensitivity has an exception, I adore music.
Music is one of my great pleasures in life.
My noise-cancelling headphones are rarely off my head. I wear them as soon as I leave the house or office and listen to music constantly.
My musical tastes can best be described as:
“Yes.”
On any given day I might listen to progressive rock, punk, heavy metal, opera, film soundtracks, musical theatre, dad rock, classical music, or, on particularly unusual afternoons, Mongolian throat singing.
Spotify’s recommendation algorithm has long since given up trying to profile me and now simply appears to be selecting tracks using a random number generator and mild panic.
In the world of sound there is a profound difference between music and noise.
Music is controlled, predictable, and chosen.
Noise is intrusive, random, unwarranted and, in most cases, unavoidable.
I live in London.
It’s hardly a haven of peace, calm and quiet serenity and not a place for someone with autistic noise sensitivity!
Well, bits of it can be. More on that later.
But the city isn’t designed to be noisy. It’s not even designed to be quiet. Noise is simply an unavoidable side effect of being a large, bustling metropolis.
London is a loud place.
Then again, it’s not always about volume.
It’s about the inescapable wall of sound and its chaotic, unpredictable nature.
Noise Fatigue
Being constantly immersed in a sea of sound is draining.
Much like Chinese water torture, it slowly chips away at my calm and increases my cognitive overload. External noise increases my internal static and makes my stammer worse.
This results in difficulty concentrating, feeling worn out, exhaustion and an increased likelihood of meltdown.
Death by a thousand auditory paper cuts.
The Survival Equipment
In order to get through the day with minimal fuss, I have an everyday carry survival kit.
My noise-cancelling headphones (a battered pair of Sony WH-1000XM3s held together with duct tape)
Loop Quiet earplugs
A spare set of fallback Bluetooth earbuds (some cheap brand, as I keep losing them)
My morning routine as I leave the house is:
Headphones.
Keys.
Wallet.
Usually in that order.
I’d rather discover I’d forgotten my wallet or my keys than my headphones, which probably says something quite worrying about me.
More worrying, perhaps, is that I’ve frequently forgotten the latter, but as long as I have my headphones I’m fine.
I may not be able to get back into the house.
I may not be able to buy lunch.
But hey, at least I’m not exposed to noise.
Havens of Calm in the Chaos
As mentioned above, not all of London is a hellish soundscape.
For all its flaws, London has an astounding number of parks, museums, churches and galleries.
When I’m in the middle of London I can often find much-needed respite by nipping into one of the many parks and listening to birdsong, or by popping into a museum or gallery to calm my inner turmoil.
And although I’m not a religious person, I do love the peaceful calm of a church or cathedral.
I can understand why those of a more spiritual nature feel something in such places.
The peace is almost palpable.
Like a comforting presence.
Closing Thoughts
So yes, I love sound.
At least, I love music and the sounds of nature.
I love birdsong, babbling brooks, complex harmonies, soaring orchestras, distorted guitars, operatic voices and whatever noise Mongolian throat singers have somehow persuaded their anatomy to produce.
What I don’t love is my brain trying to process every single noise in the environment simultaneously.
The difference between music and noise isn’t volume.
It’s consent.
One I invited in.
The other kicked the door down and started defecating on the furniture.
I have long suspected that small talk is not really about talking at all. I mean, obviously it’s about talking, but it’s not about imparting information or saying anything of actual interest.
It is, I think, more accurately described as a kind of human protocol negotiation. A lightweight exchange whose purpose is not to transfer meaningful information, but to confirm that both parties are present, functional, and broadly willing to proceed without causing a scene.
In computer networking terms, it feels rather a lot like a TCP three-way handshake.
That may sound like an over-complicated way to describe “Morning” and “Busy day?” but I maintain it is exactly the right amount of over-complication.
The analogy works on several levels at once.
TCP handshake
Human small talk
SYN
“Morning.”
SYN/ACK
“Morning. Busy today?”
ACK
“Yeah, not too bad.”
Connection established
Actual conversation may now proceed
The actual content is almost irrelevant.
The handshake exists to establish availability, willingness, compatibility, safety, and communication parameters. Small talk does much the same thing. It is not there to win prizes for insight. It is there to say, in the safest possible way:
I see you. You seem non-threatening. We may now continue.
That is quite a useful invention, really.
It is also, for some of us, faintly bewildering.
Because my brain has a tendency to assume conversations should do one of three things:
exchange useful information.
explore an interesting idea.
contain at least one genuinely terrible joke.
Small talk often does none of these things.
Which is not to say it is pointless. Far from it. It is just that its point is not always the same as the point my brain is looking for.
That can make it feel a bit like packet loss.
Some of the signal gets through. Some of it doesn’t. A few words arrive intact, but the important meaning seems to have been dropped somewhere between the intention and the execution.
The weather is discussed.
The weekend is mentioned.
A vague inquiry is made about one’s wellbeing.
And yet the actual data being transmitted is something like:
I am safe. You are safe. We may continue this interaction without immediate risk of social collapse.
That is a rather elegant system when it works properly.
It is also a system with some spectacular failure modes.
Failed Handshake
Sometimes the handshake fails immediately.
You offer the smallest possible opening.
“Morning.”
And the other person replies:
“Is it? I mean the way the world’s going it might as well be the end of days. The planet’s going to hell in a hand basket and we’re all doomed.”
At that point the connection has not merely failed. It has been forcibly terminated, the cable has been unplugged, and the router has probably started smoking.
Connection reset by peer.
Timeout
Then there is the timeout problem.
Someone asks:
“How are you?”
and the answer requires a socially acceptable level of detail, emotional calibration, and acceptable honesty.
My brain, meanwhile, is attempting to calculate whether “fine” is technically accurate, whether “surviving” sounds too bleak, whether “not bad” is too British to be believable (see below!), and whether any response longer than six words will prompt a follow-up I do not have the energy to sustain.
By the time I have finished this internal analysis, the moment has passed.
Connection timed out.
Packet Flooding
Some people go in the opposite direction.
You offer:
“Morning.”
And they respond:
“Morning! Did you see that interesting show on TV last night about medieval bridge taxation? Made me think about my current view on plug in solar panels, my advancing years, my neighbour’s cat, and the collapse of the world’s democratic politics systems..”
That is not a handshake.
That is packet flooding.
ADHD can do this rather beautifully. One tiny conversational spark and suddenly a completely unrelated archive of information is bursting out of the firewall at speed.
Which, to be fair, can sometimes be entertaining.
It just isn’t small talk anymore. There’s nothing small about it.
Encrypted Traffic
Us British people add another layer of complexity, because many of us speak in what is essentially encrypted traffic.
“Not bad.”
Not only is this British understatement at its very best, this can mean:
life is actually pretty good actually!
life is acceptable.
life is mildly annoying and could be better.
life is a bit of a struggle but let us not make a fuss.
a bottomless abyss has opened beneath me, but the kettle still works, so we are continuing cup in hand and trying our best to avoid the hordes of demons spewing forth from this hellish portal.
That is an extraordinary amount of information to pack into two words.
It is also one of the reasons small talk can be so difficult to decode. The literal words are only half the message. Tone, timing, context, and cultural expectation carry the rest.
The protocol is not just words.
It is inference, and unfortunately, not something I’m particularly good at.
UDP People
Then there are people who skip the handshake entirely.
“HELLO STRANGER HERE IS MY INFODUMP OF TRAUMAS, PROBLEMS AND CONCERNS!!.”
No connection setup.
No reliability guarantees.
No orderly exchange of packets.
Just pure, immediate data transfer with absolutely no regard for conventional protocol.
This can be alarming, but occasionally refreshing.
Stateful Firewall
Autistic masking probably deserves its own category here.
It can feel a bit like trying to pass through a stateful firewall while manually monitoring every tiny aspect of your own behaviour.
Eye contact? Adjusted.
Tone? Checked.
Facial expression? Calibrated.
Volume? Sensible.
Response time? Natural enough to avoid suspicion.
Internal panic? Well hidden, hopefully.
The result is not always elegant, but it is functional.. barely.
NAT Traversal
Trying to socialise at parties is also very much like NAT traversal.
You know there is a connection somewhere in there.
You know the other person is a perfectly ordinary human being.
You know you are supposed to be able to reach them.
And yet the routing is somehow wrong, the ports are blocked, and everyone is standing in awkward little clusters pretending not to notice that all communication has become mysteriously more difficult than it should be.
And when you do get into a cluster, the least said about the actual handshaking the better. (Especially Dave with the sweaty palms!)
So Why Does Small Talk Exist At All?
Because it is doing a job.
A very human job.
Small talk reduces uncertainty.
It establishes connection.
It signals intent.
It gives both parties a safe place to stand before deciding whether to move into more meaningful territory.
It is a social compatibility check.
A “yes, we can talk” exchange.
A way of saying:
I am friendly.
You are safe.
We may proceed.
That is actually rather beautiful, when you think about it.
Even if the words themselves are often about absolutely nothing of consequence.
Why It Feels So Hard
For many neurodivergent people, the difficulty is not that small talk is meaningless.
The difficulty is that its meaning is often indirect.
It is a social ritual disguised as conversation.
A lot of the work is happening in the subtext.
And subtext is a slippery little creature.
If your brain prefers clarity, precision, and explicit information, small talk can feel like being asked to decode a message written in invisible ink.
Which, admittedly, is not very helpful.
The Human Side of the Protocol
And yet…
And yet, for all my cantankerous grumbling, I do think there is something lovely about it.
We are, after all, social animals operating a remarkably fragile but surprisingly effective communication system. Small talk is one of the tiny pieces of software that keeps the whole thing from crashing immediately.
It is how we ease into each other’s company.
It is how we test for warmth.
It is how we say, with minimal risk and maximum politeness, that we are willing to share a moment. You’re lowering your shields and allowing the Klingons to beam aboard.
That is not nothing.
In Closing
So yes, perhaps small talk is the human equivalent of a TCP handshake.
A few neat little exchanges whose real purpose is not the content, but the connection.
Sometimes it works perfectly.
Sometimes it fails immediately.
Sometimes the packets arrive out of order.
Sometimes somebody starts talking about medieval bridge taxation or python programming before the connection is even established.
But when it does work, it lets two strangers become, very briefly, not strangers at all.
And really, that is quite a clever trick for a few essentially meaningless words and a friendly look over a cup of coffee.
Growing older is inevitable. We can’t escape time’s relentless arrow.
Becoming dull, joyless and terminally serious, however, is entirely optional.
Somewhere along the journey into adulthood society quietly slips us a secret rulebook explaining which activities are considered acceptable and which are not. Which hobbies are “appropriate” and which enthusiasms should probably be packed away in the loft next to your old Action Men and abandoned dreams.
Apparently the rules are something like this:
Assembling obscure collections = eccentric
Getting excited about games or toys = immature
Watching cartoons as an adult = deeply concerning
Discussing Discworld or Hitchhiker’s Guide lore at length = suspicious
I appear to have misplaced my copy of the rulebook.
But really… what is an adult?
As children we assume adults understand life. We imagine they possess confidence, competence and secret knowledge unavailable to younger minds. Adults seem unfazed by everything. They understand taxes voluntarily. They know how insurance works. They probably even enjoy shopping for furniture in IKEA.
You assume that one day a hidden switch in your brain will flip from Child Mode to Fully Operational Adult™ and suddenly the mysteries of existence will reveal themselves.
Except that day never comes.
Instead there’s just a gradual realisation that you’re no longer young. One day you’re racing down hills on a bicycle pretending to be a fighter pilot and the next you’re comparing broadband tariffs and wondering why your knee sounds like a creaky floorboard.
Internally though?
You still feel remarkably similar.
You still have the same interests, fears, fascinations, anxieties and bizarre little enthusiasms. There’s a strange disconnect between your physical age and your internal self-image. In your head you’re still basically you, just with slightly more back pain and stronger opinions about kitchen appliances.
Perhaps more worryingly, you eventually realise you’re now expected to be the responsible adult.
You may even have children of your own who look up at you with the same wide-eyed certainty you once directed at your parents. They assume you know what you’re doing.
Meanwhile internally you’re thinking:
“I’m improvising wildly and hoping nobody notices here Kid!.”
I still occasionally feel like three children in a trench coat trying very hard to pretend they understand mortgages.
Although we don’t change much internally, society expects us to change externally. We’re expected to become relentlessly sensible. Calm. Productive. Emotionally stable. Proper grown-ups.
Enthusiasm becomes embarrassing.
Silliness becomes socially risky.
Wonder becomes suspicious.
Stoic calm and maturity becomes the norm.
Personally, I think locking away curiosity, humour and joy in the name of adulthood does nobody any favours.
Let’s talk about collections for a moment.
You’re at a dinner party and someone asks what you do for fun.
You explain that you collect slide rules, Rubik’s Cubes, fossils, cravats and old books.
At this point you can actually watch them mentally powering down.
You see the unspoken question slowly forming behind their eyes:
“…why?”
What they often don’t see is the curiosity behind it. The tactile pleasure. The fascination. The sense of continuity. The joy of holding strange little fragments of human creativity and history in your hands.
To them it’s clutter.
To you it’s wonder.
Some people collect watches, paintings, cars or increasingly expensive kitchen gadgets. Depending on your social circle they may even collect spouses.
But somewhere along the line adulthood collectively decided that joy should justify itself economically.
I respectfully disagree.
In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Mike Teevee complains that everything in the titular factory is pointless.
Charlie replies:
“Candy doesn’t have to have a point. That’s why it’s candy.”
Exactly.
Joy should exist for joy’s sake.
Not everything meaningful has to be monetised, optimised or transformed into a side hustle for LinkedIn.
As children our worries were relatively small. Did we have enough pocket money for sweets? Did we finish our homework? Would our Tamagotchi survive the weekend?
Your body also starts developing what can only be described as “design quirks”.
Your eyesight deteriorates. Your waistline expands despite eating approximately the same foods you survived on perfectly well at twenty. Your hair either turns grey, disappears entirely or relocates mysteriously to your ears.
And through all of this you’re still expected to project the calm, controlled demeanour of Proper Adulthood.
But humour and joy are forms of resilience.
They’re coping mechanisms that provide perspective on what actually matters.
That isn’t avoidance.
Sometimes humour is how humans carry heavy things without collapsing under the weight.
There is, however, an important distinction between being childish and being childlike.
Childishness is selfishness, irresponsibility and emotional immaturity.
Childlikeness is curiosity, imagination, enthusiasm, creativity, playfulness and wonder.
Unfortunately society confuses the two constantly.
Push back against this whenever possible.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with remaining curious about the world.
At fifty-six years of age I’ve realised a few things:
Impressing everyone is impossible.
Fitting in is seriously overrated.
Most social rules were invented by people no wiser than you.
Life is finite and you only get one go at it.
Once you realise this, something rather liberating happens.
You give yourself permission to enjoy things openly.
To dress oddly if it makes you happy.
To collect weird objects, even if they are Spores, Moulds and Fungus. (Thanks Egon.)
To laugh more.
To stop pretending.
To become more authentically yourself.
So yes, I’m getting older.
My knees occasionally produce noises worthy of a haunted mansion and I now make involuntary sound effects whenever standing up from a chair.
But I still love puzzles.
I still laugh at terrible jokes.
I still make even worse puns.
I still derive immense joy from simple things.
I can still freewheel down a hill on a bicycle grinning like an idiot.
And I may occasionally become unreasonably excited upon discovering an old bookshop or toyshop.
