A few days ago I woke in the early hours of the morning having a ‘ticcing fit’. Poppy was doing my overnight support and quickly came to help me.

After five minutes or so my speech returned, or to be more accurate my vocal tics returned.…

I’ve written before about the importance of language in relation to disability, particularly about out-dated words that still sometimes crop up – words like ‘handicapped.’

But today my tics put a new spin on this unpleasant term:

“Handy-Cats”
“Am I handy-cats?”…

The other night as I got ready for bed my vocal tics were distracted from their usual focus. The lamp-post I normally chat to as part of my bedtime routine was let off the hook for a change, to be replaced by a bold new subject – Will’s testicles.…

Fifty-eight years ago Jack Kerouac wrote On The Road on a single roll of paper and it became the bible of the Beat Generation. Yesterday evening I went to the Post Office with Will and on the way composed my own great Beat poem:

I scattered the stars like hundreds and thousands,
on Forest Gump’s bum.…

Last night I stayed with Fat Sister and King Russell. While we were having breakfast this morning King Russell suggested that Fat Sister was in fact part cat. My tics happily took up the challenge of listing her other ingredients, before moving onto his.…

Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson has been all over Twitter today after it emerged that he may have punched one of the show’s producers in the face. Leftwing Idiot and I were talking about it for a while earlier and eventually he got round to asking me what my tics had to say about it.…

Fat Sister was on the phone to my dad earlier, discussing the on-going work on her bathroom. She had to go next door because every time she started a sentence with ‘I’ll…’ my tics made an inappropriate suggestion about what she’d be doing:

“I’ll… be fucking myself with a pair of shoes.”…

Poppy and I have been hanging out today and a while ago she had an exchange with my tics that had her in stitches. Here’s how it went:

TH: You know Peter?
Poppy: Peter who?
TH: Peter-borough. He sexed a horse.…

For no obvious reason my tics love Aladdin, so when we decided to take Backstage in Biscuit Land to Edinburgh last year, I kept saying that’s what we were going to do it wasn’t out of character. At our first meeting with the people from running the venue were, Leftwing Idiot had to point out to the person taking notes that we weren’t actually doing Aladdin when he saw her writing it down!…

When I took my midnight medication as yesterday turned into today I shouted:

“Happy New Sheep!”

My tics are rarely in context but on this occasion my timing was perfect – today is Chinese New Year. Each year is represented by an animal, though not everyone agrees which one it is.…