I’ve written about swimming quite a lot recently, but please forgive one more watery anecdote – I realised last night I haven’t ever written about the reasonable adjustments the lifeguards at the pool make for my disability.

‘Reasonable adjustment’ is the term used to describe an adaptation or change to an environment, service, procedure or policy that allows equal access for a disabled person.…

I went to Leftwing Idiot’s for dinner tonight and he cooked us a lovely meal. While I was waiting I sat in his kitchen where he keeps his geranium. Regular readers will know about my tics’ strange compulsion to be rude to this plant ever since its arrival almost three years ago, and it won’t be any surprise to hear that as usual I started shouting at it.…

At the end of last year I found myself ticcing about ‘Brian’ so often that we decided to hold a surprise party in his honour. Fortunately I don’t actually know any ‘Brians’ so the tic didn’t create any confusion.

But somewhere between then and now, ‘Brian’ has mutated into ‘Alan’ – and this is where it gets more complicated.…

The other day I wrote about my new snowboarding boots. They’ve made a big difference to my mobility and for the last few days I’ve been enjoying being more active both at home and at work.

My office is in a new building and up to now I’ve always been in my wheelchair there.…

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about going to watch a film in public for the first time in years. That time it was in the back room of a pub with about thirty other people. Tonight I scaled up a bit and watched an amazing documentary at SOAS, along with about a hundred others.…

I’ve just bought some disabling boots – they’re the snowboarding pair mentioned the other day – and it’s my ankle tics they’re disabling, not me.

They arrived yesterday and so far I’m happy to report, they’re incredible. They’re so rigid, when I’m wearing them my ankles can’t move or turn over at all.…

Among the items I keep in my red emergency bag is an information sheet for my support workers describing what to do when I’m having a ‘ticcing fit’. Much of it’s about what they need to do to keep themselves safe rather than me.…

Three years ago I wrote about how I’d lost a wooden meerkat that I’d bought from a toymaker running a temporary stall outside the South Bank Centre. I’d bought it to keep in my pocket to fiddle with, in the hope that it’d help me control my tics.…

I’ve talked about the benefits of going swimming plenty of times before, about how much I enjoy feeling tired because of something other than my tics, and about how much easier it is having a ‘ticcing fit’ in the water than on dry land.…

I woke up this morning after a long and comfortable sleep in a very smart Dublin hotel. Leftwing Idiot and I are planning to take it easy this morning after a busy but enjoyable day yesterday.

I’ll fill you in on what happened after I popped my post up in the early hours of yesterday morning.…