Day 4 Tourettes Awareness Challenge

Day 4 – Canterbury – Brighton – Chichester – Portsmouth – Southampton Another great day meeting interesting and interested decision-makers in cities along the South coast of England. We set off in bright sunshine from Rochester and the pretty boats on The Medway, with the Tourettesmobile appropriately blaring out Cher’s “not enough love and understanding”. We quickly arrived in the beautiful city of Canterbury.

Walking from the car to our meeting with the Lord Mayor we experienced our first abuse - from a group of young idiots who saw our T-shirts and started swearing and doing mock tics and laughing at their incredible wit. Many Touretters will have had to ensure this sort of abuse and worse all too often. Happily throughout the rest of today we were able to use this event as an example of a minority but still common attitude to Tourettes. You will also be pleased to know that the young men involved were put swiftly in their places by Liz and Donna. The Lord Mayor, and Lady Mayoress welcomed us in the historic Tower House, and were really keen to hear all about our mission. The Lord Mayor was genuinely keen to support us, and in the first instance undertook to spread awareness within the local authority – and also to ensure that a press release was issued after our visit to promote public understanding. Before leaving, with hugs all round, there was great excitement when we were allowed to touch some of the civic hardware. Donna posed with the very grand Mace, made of solid silver and gilt in 1681. As Jac drove out of Canterbury the rain began and stayed with us most of the way to Brighton. We were only able to manage a loo stop en route, but were still twenty minutes late to meet the Mayor of Brighton & Hove at the Indian Gate in the Royal Pavilion Gardens.

Mostly because we had to locate parking and leg it down to our appointment. The Mayor, Cllr Denise Cobb, was waiting for us with Director of Public Health Mr Alistair Hill, and we were delighted to be joined for the presentation and photographs by Eileen’s son Mark and grandson Jamie, and Donna’s cousin Dylan. After an all-too-brief visit, it was back into the car and time for a strategic decision. In liaison with Chichester we agreed that, being ten miles away we had “visited” Chichester. The Mayor, Cllr Alan Chaplin, wished us well, urged us to get cracking on to Portsmouth and to post the Information Pack to him – which he guaranteed to disseminate. Thank you Mayor Chaplin! So we were back on track to Portsmouth. We were amazed at some of the iconic buildings in the city, and were honoured to be meeting the Lord Mayor, Cllr Lynne Stagg on the steps in front of the magnificent Guildhall in the City Square.

More photographs, then Liz drove us through heavy traffic into Southampton for our last visit of the day. We met Cllr Dave Shields, Cabinet Member for Health and Adult Social Care, and Carol Valentine, Head of Personalisation and Safeguarding, in the Civic Centre, and had an excellent meeting. Cllr Shields is keen to work with neighbouring local authorities on trying to secure additional support for people with TS, and he did a few quick sums to try to work out the likely level of need for support in the City.

That got us into conversations about heredity and clusters, and once again it was hard to leave when we were really going places in our discussions. Eileen did point out afterwards that it’s always best to leave people wanting more … And so to bed. We all needed to rest and recover from a busy day – and so we did.