I woke up naturally this morning, with no alarm bursting into my dreams and jump-starting my day.

I opened the blind so I could see what the weather had in store. The sky was dull grey with a tiny flash of blue on the horizon. But, as my tics very quickly pointed out, this was not a patch of blue sky:

“Who let you stand there, lettings board?”
“’To let’ sign, what happens when you need the ‘Toilet’?”
“Lettings board, are you the new lamp-post monitor?”
“’To let’ sign, you’ve let us down – you could have been a protest placard, but you went more domestic.”

The newly-arrived ‘To let’ sign didn’t flinch in the face of this barrage of tics. It just stood there, slightly to the right of the lamp-post.

These unexpected responses to the world around me are among the things I enjoy about having Tourettes. And when it comes to the view from my bedroom window my tics seem to possess particularly expert knowledge and to notice instantly every change, even when I’m half asleep.