This afternoon I got a glimpse of what life would be like in a boy band.

It happened on my way to lunch with Bunny when I dropped to the ground with a ‘ticcing fit’ in a back road near my office.…

Since I started having ‘ticcing fits’ back in October I’ve been recording how many I’ve had each day and how long each one’s lasted. Every night I enter the numbers onto a spreadsheet. The other day Leftwing Idiot suggested it would be possible to generate some random lottery numbers from all that data and I really liked his idea.…

Sorting out who was going to provide my support this evening proved a little tricky because most of my regular team had romantic plans.

Thankfully I have a sibling who a) isn’t fussed about Valentine’s Day, b) lives nearby and c) had the good sense to marry a kind and thoughtful man.…

Yesterday I had one of my regular hospital appointments with my consultant neurologist. This time it was dominated by a discussion of something that I haven’t yet written about yet – it’s what I call ‘locking up’.

Since I started taking a new muscle relaxant drug – baclofen – my ticcing fits have generally been a bit less frequent and much less intense.…

Accessible toilets always stink of shit.

I’ll let that settle for a moment.

In the mean time, you might have noticed that I’m referring to accessible toilets rather than disabled toilets. This isn’t just me being super PC, it’s a question of accuracy – a toilet can only be disabled if the flush is missing or something.…

I went swimming with Claire and Poppy this evening at the local hydrotherapy pool as I do most weeks. During our swim, and somewhat predictably, I had a ticcing fit. But despite the fit I felt incredibly peaceful, floating on my back in the warm water and staring up at the bright moon through the glass ceiling.…

This afternoon I had a meeting at Tate Modern and after it I decided I’d like to have a quick look at some of the exhibits there. I was tired and struggling to walk so Fran got me one of the Tate’s wheelchairs which they have for people to borrow.…

I’ve written a lot about my ‘ticcing fits’ but I realise I haven’t mentioned one of their crucial phases. It’s the bit between my speech returning and the fit actually finishing. My friends refer to this affectionately as the ‘lying zone.’…

I’ve spent the day at Leftwing Idiot’s because there was no-one to stay with me at the castle. Leftwing Idiot had a lot of urgent work to do, so we sat in the same room and I went through my ‘to do’ list.…

I’ve described the new muscle-relaxing drug, baclofen, that I’ve just started taking, and how it’s making a big difference to the ferocity of my ‘ticcing fits’. But I’ve also noticed that since I started taking it some of my movements have become floppier.…