I was about twelve when I first saw the film Alien (I obviously shouldn’t have been watching it all, but I managed to see it in secret at a friends house) In fact parts of it I saw only from behind my fingers and I found the scene in which an Alien hugs the face of its victim particularly scary.

This afternoon, out of the blue, I suddenly grabbed my own face, stretching my fingers over it like the creature in the film, and shouting “Alien face!” Then I released my grip, only to repeat the same move again a moment later.

This shocked me and it made me overreact a bit. It wasn’t so much because I’d grabbed my own face, more that just thinking about the film made me as tense and excited as when I’d first seen it.

It’s incredible what Tourettes draws on. I hadn’t been thinking about Alien, in fact I haven’t thought about it for years, and I wasn’t even talking or thinking about anything space- or film-related. I was just minding my own business when… whack, a stray 1980s memory hits me in the face. However much I learn about Tourettes it still mystifies me.