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.…

I’m going to bed this evening full of excitement, and unusually it’s got nothing to do with the lamp-post outside my bedroom window. No, this time it’s because tomorrow morning Leftwing Idiot and I are flying to Toronto. We’re going because I’ve been invited to give a talk about the intriguingly titled Republic of Inclusion at the Theatre Centre.…

I spend a fair bit of time involuntarily chatting to trees, mainly the those outside my bedroom window who, along with the lamp-post, the TV aerial and the moon, get a lot of attention from my tics. Today though they chatted to a different tree, an indoor tree, and a tree in a theatre – and to be more precise – a tree with a man in it performing to an enthralled audience.…

“Your mother was a testicle,
Your father was a bear,
Between them they had a lot of flowing facial hair.”

“Electrical testicle, tearing up the night,
Glowing brighter than a lamp-post in a knight’s 10-denier tights.”

“Imagine playing Tetris with the testis of an ant,
a soundscape made of rhinos and Satsumas for a glove.”

I’ve just re-read the post I wrote on New Year’s Eve exactly a year ago and it reminded me what a decidedly rocky start I’d had to 2014. On Boxing Day last year the muscles in my hands unexpectedly and very suddenly seized up.…

We arrived in Scotland as the sun was setting. The snowy mountains we could see from the plane were mesmerising, with pools of bright light on seemingly untouched snow contrasting with patches of dark dense forest. From above, paths cutting confidently through the trees looked easily accessible.…

It’s Christmas morning at the castle. There’s a cheerful clattering coming from the kitchen and a sizzling sound as Fat Sister makes bacon sandwiches. And I can hear the rustle of King Russell packing Christmas presents into bags, ready to go into the car.…

Happy Halloween! It’s late but we’ve still a few hours left before the plastic bats and fake cobwebs get put away for another year. As I write, at home in my warm bed, I’m getting occasional glimpses of the big trees outside my bedroom window.…

Today is National Poetry Day, a day that aims to celebrate poetry and engage people with it. I enjoyed studying poetry at school but I didn’t think about it a great deal after that, at least not until my vocal tics began to get more noticeable and complex.…

I came back from a well-earned trip to the pub this evening – it was dark already so all the all the streetlights were on. I was chatting to the lamp-posts sporadically as I often do, saying goodnight by touching each of them as I went by.…