“Calm down Christmas time.”

“Do you think I’m a Christmas tree?”

“God hates Christmas.”

“Runner, runner, runner, runner, Christmas bean.”

….it’s July.

I’m very excited. I’ve just bought birthday presents for Laura and Leftwing Idiot. Laura’s birthday is next week but there are still two months before Leftwing Idiot’s. I suspect this will mean the “I’ve bought you a hat” scenario is likely to happen again.…

A letter’s just flopped through the door from my local Primary Health Trust (PCT). It’s about my request for Habit Reversal Therapy (HRT) which I’ve talked about before. HRT could help me develop strategies to turn some of my more damaging tics, like chest banging, into ones with less impact.…

I was talking to Laura on the phone on my way to work about the cuts to public services.

She asked if I was in the cab that Access to Work provides. I said, “Yeah, although I expect it’ll get slashed by 25% like everything else.”…

I have a new regular tic which I’ve been saying all this week. It’s, “I’m a baby”. I say this in the same husky voice as my, “Bye, bye” tics but with the addition of a slight northern accent. I’m not normally very good at doing accents but I seem to do them better if they’re involuntary.…

I’ve spent the day creating a sand and water-play area for one of the projects I work at. This involved digging a hole and then filling it with rubble, using a JCB.

The therapeutic benefits of JCB driving might not be immediately apparent, but I found it surprisingly calming.…

When Leftwing Idiot and I were on our way home from Jamie’s studio in May, where we’d been recording my tics so they could be made into the Touretteshero Theme, we got chatting to a man on the bus about Tourettes and whether the tics could be turned into music.…

A letter arrived this morning to say that I’ve been awarded Disability Living Allowance. DLA is a benefit that helps cover the additional costs of having a disability. I’ll get a backdated payment from when I applied in April and I’ve worked out that this pretty much matches what I’ve spent since then on things to limit the impact of the tics, like gloves and plastic cutlery.…

I’m sporting a new motor tic that’s pretty subtle compared with some of the other movements I make. This new tic involves my wrist suddenly flicking back and up a number of times. This looks a bit like a hyperactive cousin of the royal wave.

I’m always interested in how children react to and understand my tics. I’m very aware when explaining Tourettes that I need to be clear and accurate without worrying or confusing them. This afternoon at work, I spent a lot of time playing with a boy of about three who was visiting the project with his mum and siblings.…