Paul Taylor / theaardvark
I'm theaardvark. I've spent thirty-odd years moving between international tax law, local politics, electronic music, community tech, and a few other things that don't obviously go together. They do go together, it turns out — but I'll get to that. The short version: I know a lot of stuff, I understand a lot of stuff, and I can usually see through the complications to the thing that actually matters.
This page is the longer version.
Same person. Various configurations.
The day job
VAT, governance, and the art of the puzzle
I'm the Global VAT Senior Manager at Gap Inc., which means I spend my working days navigating the labyrinthine world of international tax law across multiple jurisdictions. My career started at HM Customs & Excise — the people who write the rules — moved through PwC, and eventually landed in a global corporate role. Three decades of VAT, and I still find it genuinely interesting. That probably tells you something about how my brain works.
The job is, at its core, puzzle-solving. Complex, high-stakes, cross-border puzzles. The bit I'm good at — and where the neurodivergence is a genuine asset — is translating the truly arcane into something a non-expert can actually act on. If you can see the underlying logic, you can explain it to anyone.
Alongside the day job, I'm a Labour councillor: Burntwood Town Council since 2021 and Lichfield District Council since 2023, where I'm the Shadow Cabinet member for Finance and Commissioning. Same instinct, different arena. Take the professional understanding of public finance, apply it to services that real people depend on, and try to make things work better. I describe myself as a councillor, a doer, and a connector — which is either three things or one thing, depending on how you look at it.
The project that lights my cognitive fires
AarDHD: music engineered for focus
This is the one I'm most excited about.
AarDHD creates ambient electronic music specifically engineered to help people focus and concentrate. Not background music. Not a playlist. Functional music, designed from the ground up to work with the way certain brains are wired.
It started as a personal problem. I'm AuDHD — more on that below — and medicated with dexamphetamine, and finding music that actually helped me focus rather than either boring me into distraction or overstimulating me was surprisingly hard. So I made some. The tracks merge ambient styles I've loved for years — The Orb, Moby, that territory — with neuroacoustic research: precisely calibrated binaural beats embedded in the mix to nudge the brain towards a state of relaxed alertness.
The result works for me. It also seems to work for a lot of other people: neurodivergent listeners, people with anxiety, anyone who needs to find a focus state and can't get there on their own. The audience is deliberately broad because the underlying problem is broader than the ADHD label suggests.
This is where music, technical curiosity, and the desire to make something that's actually useful all collide. It's a serious project with genuine research behind it. I say that not to be defensive about it, but because it needs saying: it's not a wellness gimmick.
Music, radio & doing things to see what happens
Thirty years in the mix
I ran a mobile disco and entertainment agency — aardvark.dj — with my wife for thirty years. We wrapped it up at the end of 2016. Three decades of weddings, corporate events, and the full spectrum of British social occasions gives you a very particular set of skills. Chief among them: the ability to read a room and connect with an audience, regardless of whether that audience is dancing to Abba at a golden wedding or sitting in a council chamber trying to follow a budget report.
I was also an online DJ and streamer for a while. Long COVID put that on hold. It's not abandoned — it's just resting, along with my previous life as a pickled onion influencer (a phase. A real one. Best not to dwell on it).
The new chapter for the broadcast side of things is Lichfield Radio — coming soon, and I'm looking forward to it.
There's a broader pattern here worth naming. I do things to learn and develop skills. I take on projects to see what happens. The AarDHD project, this website, the pickled onion era, this very page — they're all part of the same instinct. It's not restlessness. It's how I work out what I think.
Community
Turning up for people
My wife Sha founded Burntwood Spoonies Connect — a community support hub for people living with chronic illness and their carers. I handle all the technical development. It's a natural extension of who both of us are, and of what we know about navigating the NHS with a complex condition.
I'm also a trustee of a local community hall, where I run a monthly dementia-friendly Community Cinema. It requires care about the things that don't usually get thought about: lighting levels, sound volume, pace. Getting those details right is the difference between a film night that works for everyone and one that doesn't. Details matter.
None of this is separate from the rest of what I do. It's the same instinct applied to a different context: see what's needed, work out how to do it, and get on with it.
How my brain works
AuDHD, aphantasia, and the upside of being wired differently
I'm AuDHD — a combination of Autism Spectrum Condition and ADHD. I also have multi-sensory aphantasia (I don't have voluntary mental imagery — when you close your eyes and picture a beach, I get nothing) and Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory. I retain facts, not experiences. Ask me what I know about something and I can tell you. Ask me what it felt like to be there and I've got nothing.
These things shape how I think in ways I've come to see as more asset than obstacle. The pattern recognition. The tendency to question assumptions that other people treat as given. The ability to get to the underlying logic of something and ignore the noise around it. That's the neurodivergent brain doing what it does well.
I'm also medicated for ADHD, which is relevant to the AarDHD project: I know what it's like to need pharmaceutical help to function, and I built music that helps fill the gaps.
I live with depression and I'm open about it. Not because I particularly enjoy disclosing it, but because I think seeing other people be matter-of-fact about it is useful. It doesn't define what I do. It's just part of the inventory.
Long COVID is also in the picture. It's had an impact, particularly on the online DJ work. I manage it.
The most important part
Husband to Sha. Carer. Partner in most things.
The most important thing in my life is being Sha's husband. Full stop.
Sha — MrsVark — lives with Functional Neurological Disorder, ME/CFS, and Fibromyalgia. I'm her carer, which is a word that covers a lot of different things on different days. It's the role that has taught me more about resilience and empathy than anything else I've done, and I mean that without any sentimentality. It's hard. It also asks you to be better than you would otherwise bother to be.
There are real mental health costs to caring, and I don't pretend otherwise. I think it matters to say that clearly, partly because carers don't say it enough, and partly because — as with everything else on this page — I'd rather just be honest about it.
Together we run wheelyhappydays.uk, a weblog about our lives navigating disability, caring, and trying to find the good bits. Sha also founded Burntwood Spoonies Connect, which grew directly out of everything we've learned.
Other things
Food, film, and writing about both
I review food and film over on the blog — honestly, in the same register I use for everything else. No stars, no hedging, no obligation to be kind to a restaurant just because it's local. If you're looking for that, the blog is the place.
And if none of the above has given you a handle on what kind of person I am — well, I once spent a meaningful period of time as a pickled onion influencer. That probably fills in the gaps.
