Almost a decade ago I had a conversation that changed my life – I was sitting in Leftwing Idiot’s kitchen talking about my intensifying tics and he described my Tourettes as a “language-generating machine” and told me that not doing something creative with my tics would be wasteful.…

I spend very little time on my own. To live an independent, happy, safe, creative life I need other people’s support and a team of personal assistants and support workers help me at work, at home and overnight.

When my tics started to limit what I could do I was quite slow to realise I needed more help, and struggled on for ages, leading an increasingly restricted life.…

I’ve loved drawing for as long as I can remember. In fact when I was learning to write and finding it difficult I used to imagine each letter as a drawing. When I left school I studied art and went on to university to study drawing.…

When I was a kid the soles of my feet were often covered in scratches. I wasn’t a big fan of wearing shoes and I didn’t have the most sensitive of soles either.

Nowadays my leg tics mean I’m not very good at standing up – if I try I immediately fall down.…

My grandad kept a diary for most of his life. In some ways it was very detailed and in others, very general. He noted the wildlife that had visited his garden, the miles the car had done, and who he’d met and chatted to that day.…

My niece Bean loves animals but as a Londoner she doesn’t get loads of opportunities to see them, apart from on TV and the kitty that hangs out in her garden. She’s also much more into looking at them than touching them – but she is very into looking at them.…

Last month I wrote excitedly about my new legs, not my actual legs but the new shock-absorbing frog legs that NHS wheelchair services were testing on my chair.

They’re brilliant and make for a much more comfortable ride, and since they’ve been fitted I’ve had fewer spikes in pain too.…

I’ve been back in the UK for a couple of days, long enough to notice one big difference between here and the US.

It’s not in portion size, or car size or even political-lie size. In fact it’s not something I’d ever noticed before, mainly because last time we visited the States there wasn’t a difference – but there definitely is now!…

There was something about the light in my kitchen just now that triggered a wave of contentment in me. My flat feels still, calm, and easy to be in.

It’s just before 8am and I’ve had an unsettled night’s sleep but I’ve got a day off so I feel no stress about this, safe in the knowledge that I’ve got the whole day to rest and catch up.…

I realised in the cab on the way back from Heathrow that there aren’t many flights that I’ve done without Leftwing Idiot. On most journeys I’ve had a dedicated support worker too, but Leftwing Idiot’s almost always been there calmly organising and advocating for me.…