Last summer my tics suddenly took against Leftwing Idiot’s geranium for no apparent reason.

This season they have a different target and my night time routine goes something like this:

Brush my teeth, take my melatonin, get into bed, start verbally abusing the lamp-post:

“Lamp-post, stop glowing ostentatiously.”…

Yesterday I talked about my epic cry. This evening I laughed as I ticced about yesterday’s troubles, not mine though. Leftwing Idiot and Poppy were having a dance in the kitchen and I spontaneously accompanied them with a Tourettes version of a well-known song:

“Yesterday, all the shits in Bournemouth said hello to you.”…

For the second Sunday in a row I’ve ended up in floods of tears. I upset Leftwing Idiot at the end of last week and we didn’t sort things out until this evening. While we were talking things over I started to cry and once I’d started I found I couldn’t stop.…

Yesterday evening I went with Bunny, Fran and Keir to a fundraising night for a local play project. There was an incredible line up of live music and I had an amazing time. I took my wheelchair which, after some initial technical difficulties – getting in up some small steps – proved to have been a very good idea.…

This afternoon I had a meeting at Tate Modern and after it I decided I’d like to have a quick look at some of the exhibits there. I was tired and struggling to walk so Fran got me one of the Tate’s wheelchairs which they have for people to borrow.…

This morning while Fran was helping me get ready for work I started ticcing about the skills my support workers have to have. It began to sound like a very unusual job description.

My support worker needs to:

“Run around the room with sheep.”…

When I phoned the bank earlier I explained to the person who answered that I had Tourettes and she said: “That’s OK I don’t mind, don’t worry about it.”

Although she meant this to sound positive, whenever anyone says something like that it gives me a jolt.…

Living with Poppy has brought a lot of sparkle into my life, mainly because she’s so lovely but also because of her huge collections of sequins. Poppy’s a costume designer and a big sequin lover. This has inevitably meant that the castle is constantly covered with a thin layer of sparkly plastic disks.…

I’ve written a lot about my ‘ticcing fits’ but I realise I haven’t mentioned one of their crucial phases. It’s the bit between my speech returning and the fit actually finishing. My friends refer to this affectionately as the ‘lying zone.’…

I’ve spent the day at Leftwing Idiot’s because there was no-one to stay with me at the castle. Leftwing Idiot had a lot of urgent work to do, so we sat in the same room and I went through my ‘to do’ list.…