I woke up in a bad mood – it was probably a mixture of tiredness and post-Shambala blues. Throughout the morning I got increasingly frustrated with my lack of independence and I was taking every opportunity to feel sorry for myself.…

I did my first ever festival gig this morning with Captain Hotknives in the Shambala Radio tent. It’d been quickly arranged following our impromptu performance in the camping field yesterday. I enjoyed letting my tics take to the stage, and amongst the many odd ideas they came up with, three key themes emerged:

1) We were a campaigning political party – ‘The Bipolar Tourettes Alliance’ – and our manifesto included giving “Every fourth person a chandelier,” and “Everyone with lungs a biscuit.”…

I made a dramatic entrance to the Shambala Festival earlier, with an ambulance escorting me right onto the site. While we were queuing to get in I had a ‘ticcing fit’ in the car and by the time the stewards checked our tickets it’d been going on for quite a while.…

Tonight’s been a strange mix of frantic packing and sticky-backed creativity.

The reason for both is Shambala where I’m heading tomorrow. It’s likely to rain, so there’ll be lots of mud, and I’ve tried to pack sensibly with this in mind.…

I’m feeling much better and am back at work after a week off. I’ll only be there for a couple of days though because on Thursday I’m off to another festival. I’m really excited about this one because so many of my friends are going.…

At first glance, today didn’t look summery ¬– it looked grim. The grey cloud with rain coming out I could see from my bedroom window looked all too familiar. I’d been obsessively checking the forecast for the last week so it wasn’t an unexpected sight.…

This time two years ago I made a resolution – to look for ways to acknowledge and celebrate my tics rather than ignore them and the increasing impact they were having on my life.

I’m proud to say that this is a resolution I’ve kept.…

Once again, and for one day a year only, my “Happy Christmas” tic is in context so, Happy Christmas! Fat Sister’s gift from her employer, the NHS, is three fourteen hour shifts – including one today. Despite this she’s in good spirits.…

Tonight’s the first night in my new lair – affectionately known as the Castle because it used to be a pub with that name. For the last few months I’ve been staying at Leftwing Idiot’s after I’d had to leave my old lair because of the stairs – there were so many of them it’d become completely inaccessible to me because of my leg tics.…

It’s November the 5th, so the sky’s lit up with fireworks. Like millions of others across the city, we went off to a big organised display to celebrate Guy Fawkes Night.

“Guy Fawkes in my pants. Bang.”
“Roman Catholic Catherine wheels.”…