I’m quite house-proud and like to keep the castle clean and tidy, but my tics make it hard for me to do most of this myself.

Every Saturday morning, my carer stays a bit longer to do some cleaning and help me with other household tasks. But this evening I noticed that the toilet smelt bad, so I lifted the lid and saw my carer had missed a bit when she’d cleaned it, so I decided to try and tackle it myself.

I thought I’d be able to manage putting a bit of toilet cleaner round the rim on my own, but obviously if I’d achieved this without incident it’s unlikely I’d be sharing the grubby secrets of my loo with you now. Needless to say it didn’t go according to plan. I took the lid off, turned the bottle upside down and started to squirt it round the rim. Almost immediately I lost control of both my arm and my hand. My arm flew up in the air and my hand squeezed the bottle hard. Jets of thick, lemon-fresh cleaner squirted forth all over me and all over the floor.

My Tourettes, as it usually does in this sort of situation, overrode my natural instinct to put the bottle down. Instead, my hand continued to squeeze and I got covered in toilet cleaner.

Once I’d gained control I had to set about clearing up the mess.

A job that should’ve taken only a few moments resulted in a load of extra cleaning, clothes needing to be washed and me needing a shower.

I’ve learnt my lesson and will make sure I don’t take risks like this again. This is the last time I’ll be ducking a toilet duck.