I’ve lived alone at the castle since Poppy moved out back in 2013. That isn’t to say I’ve been completely on my own because a different support worker stays with me each night – I used to say this was like having a rolling flatmate.…

Disclaimer: I’m not writing this post alone. There’s a heavy weight lurking on my chest, vibrating relentlessly, and occasionally batting my face for asnmyu,uuuuu attention. My vibrating companion also keeps stepping on the keyboard…

Introducing Monkey the cat. Monkey is Chopin’s cat and he’s come to stay for a bit.…

From my bedroom window I can see three majestic trees, their silhouettes looming large in my familiar and treasured view. Right now it’s the very end of dusk and they’ve almost vanished into the darkness.

But while they might be out of sight, they’re certainly not out of mind because my tics have unexpectedly gone on a tree-based rant:

“Expert-trees or Board of Trust Trees?…

I’ve written a lot about the view from my bedroom window. Yesterday evening at dusk I rolled into my room to grab something but I was stopped in my tracks by a beautiful sight.

The sky was huge with the fading sun spreading across the building.…

This morning I woke up in a leisurely way, opened my blind and let the light from the grey day fill my room. I felt much more cheerful than I had when I went to sleep last night, and I greeted the lamppost enthusiastically.…

Having Tourettes means I’m sensitive to certain sounds. Some noises are uncomfortable for me to hear and make me overreact. There are others that I find really exciting, which make my tics go wild.

One such noise is the sound of people rolling their ‘r’s!…

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’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.…

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.…