It’s 4.27am.
The castle is still.
I am not.
But I never am.

The room is gently lit by my bedside lamp, and now by the glow of my computer screen as I type.

The garden outside is lit by the lamp-post’s orange emanation.…

As a child I used to have a bath every night. We didn’t have a shower when I was little so soaking in the tub was a regular part of my bedtime routine.

But I don’t often have baths any more.…

There are some tough things about having Tourettes, and for me one of them is disrupted sleep.

At 5:30 this morning I woke up having a ‘ticcing fit’. At first I wasn’t too worried about dropping off again, but it went on for a while and then, despite trying a variety of strategies, I couldn’t get back to sleep.…

Lying in bed last night I was exceptionally tired but finding it hard to sleep because of my wriggly body. My blind was open a little and the orange light from the lamp-post outside was creeping in through the gap.

Tired of shouting at the lamp-post I turned over and faced the wall.…

Yesterday morning I woke up after a much-needed sleep. It was 10am and I was really impressed that I’d slept so late, something I never normally do. The sun was pouring through a crack in my blind and my tics began happily chatting to the light, complimenting it on its good work:

“Light, you’re more dazzling than a thousand rainbows in sequin pyjamas.”…

I’m in the process of learning lines for a new project. In my usual way I’ve written them out on big sheets of paper and stuck them round the walls in the castle.

There’s one such sheet above my bed and during the night, it started to peel slowly off the wall.…

The last few nights have felt a bit like time-travel for me, but it’s a sort of time-travel that I’m not particularly excited about.

Until four years ago I used to tic in my sleep. According to Fat Sister and a number of my friends, sleeping tics were very similar to those I had during the day, but gentler.…

Yesterday evening I hit the wall – a physical wall and a wall of tiredness.

It’d been a busy day and by 11pm I felt my body giving up. I moved from feeling fine to being overtaken by the discomfort of constant tics.…

Everyone who’s ever met me knows I move about a lot! My motor tics (involuntary movements) are frequent, varied and for the most part very obvious. You can’t miss my constant chest banging, erratic head movements, wiggly spine, and my arms and legs that shoot out dramatically in all directions.…

I’ve written about dreams quite a bit recently, and I wrote last month about a new Inclusive Technology Prize I’m helping to judge that’s looking for enabling innovations for disabled people. The other day these two things merged in a dream I had about coming up with new inventions to submit for the Prize.…