My gran played a big role in my life throughout my childhood and I spent a while living with her in Blackpool when I was small. Later, she moved from Lancashire to Milton Keynes so she could be closer to us in London.…

I have two regular agency carers who help me out at home, each doing different days of the week. One of them has just started a university course in Health and Social Care and so can’t always come, and the other isn’t very well at the moment.…

Four months ago I wrote about Poppy waking me up in the early hours of the morning to talk about penguins.

Actually, my tics had said Poppy did that, straight after I’d had a long ‘ticcing fit’, and they followed on with a whole stream of penguin-related tics.…

When I woke up yesterday morning my tics, as usual, woke up too. But unusually I couldn’t hear them – I’d pretty much completely lost my voice.

“Biscuits” and “Hedgehogs” came out as strangled squeaks and completing a sentence was almost impossible.…

I haven’t been very well for the last few days so yesterday morning I went to the doctor, supported by Poppy. We’d only been in the waiting room for a minute or so when a boy, aged about two and a half, made a beeline for us.…

I’m going to keep this short because I’m still not very well and concentrating on anything for more than a few moments is a struggle.

My ‘ticcing fits’ have increased dramatically, as they always do when I’m ill. It’s just before 6am and so far today I’ve had at least one fit an hour.…

Yesterday afternoon a very familiar feeling slowly crept over me, and it wasn’t one I was pleased to experience.

My throat began to sting, and it got slowly worse over the course of the evening until it became a sustained throb.…

A month ago I came across the Trekinetic wheelchair at the Mobility Road Show in Telford, which I went to with Fat Sister and my dad.

The Trekinetic’s designed as an all-terrain chair and can go over ground that no conventional wheelchair could ever manage.…

It’s Poppy’s birthday in a couple of days so Zoë and I have planned a surprise. We’ve made her a spectacular and gaudy cake.

Poppy’s a costume designer and has spent a lot of time recently hand-carving some foam into a pair of breasts for a costume for Cassetteboy.…

Yesterday I woke early, as did my friend Nez who’d stayed at the castle last night. By 8.00am we were on our way to Paddington Station and from there we were soon speeding through the countryside towards Penryn.

I’m in Cornwall for a couple of days to run a workshop and give a talk as part of the Penryn Arts Festival.…