I was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease in December 2016 at the age of 47. After scraping my jaw off the neurologist's office floor, I went home, told the family and did next to nothing for a year. Actually, that's not true - I watched a lot of cricket. Eventually a few chums suggested I get off my gorgeous arse and write a blog about living with Parkinson's. I thought 'Yes, why should I have all the fun when I could share with you lovely people all the joys of painful rigidity, ever-diminishing motor skills, depression and shaking your way towards the peace and solitude of the cold, cold grave.

I live with my wife and eight year old son in a delightful suburb of London called Manchester. Although I am an uber-atheist, I am a catholic. Contradiction in terms? Nah, anybody brought up as a catholic will tell you that not believing in God need necessarily hinder your career in Catholicism. Anyhoo...after my diagnosis, the first thing I did was to make a deal with God (Yes, I know, the one I don't believe in). I basically said let me stay healthy, long enough to get my son through university. So, with a bit of luck my son, Boy Wonder will shun academia until he is a middle aged, mature student thus giving me another thirty or forty years. The perfect crime.

If I manage to get this blog up and running (it took me two hours and about 57 uses of the word fuck to set up the front page or whatever the fuck it is called and I still couldn't figure it out, then the wife looked over my shoulder, pressed a couple of keys and it all appeared. Ich bin ein Luddite) I will try to explain the implications of Parkinson's. Apart from the physical symptoms, there are all sorts of other crap to go through. Telling the wider family, the extra costs, a change of lifestyle, challenges at work and most importantly, managing what we tell Boy Wonder.

Boy Wonder.

Boy Wonder is my eight year old mini-me. I love him more than aeroplanes. He's the reason I'm writing this blog - not for any noble reasons. He came into this world around the time I joined Facebook. I thought I'd loathe Facebook and only used it to begin with as a Friends Reunited tool but I soon realised that it just what I needed. My FB page is basically me making shit jokes, me ranting about politics, me moaning about Everton's latest disaster (Sam Allardice for fuck's sake!) but the vast majority of it is Boy Wonder and my good self messing about, making crazy stuff and generally doing everything all you other parents do without thinking because you're not a self-absorbed prick like me. We have a strong family dynamic at Norris Towers. My wife, Sharon takes care of the essential, grown up side of family life such as paying bills, budgeting, making sure the mortgage is being paid etc. whilst I make Boy Wonder laugh. It's important to have a plan.

Unwittingly, I have made an electronic diary for Boy Wonder to look at in the future. We've probably all done this but just imagine what it would be like for your kids to be able to look back at the thousands of posts you have put on FB over the years. Actually you probably haven't put thousands of posts on FB because you probably have a life.

Incidentally, he isn't called Boy Wonder because of any of that comic book shite. A shiny penny to the first person who can tell me what indie band his name is lifted from.

You may have noticed that I've hardly mentioned Parkinson's disease yet. Well, this post is an introduction and for the first forty odd years of my life I didn't have it. Even now, it doesn't dominate my life (he lied). Don't expect this blog to be uplifting. This recent media campaign along the lines of "Cancer, I'm coming to get you" is very well intentioned with all the fundraising but not for me. I'll do all the exercises, take all the drugs but I'm not going to beat it. What I am going to do however is take the piss out of it.

Please give my blog a read and if you like sign up and show it to others. Please feel free to leave a comment. Until next time when hopefully I will have found an appropriate nickname for Parkinson's cos I'm already sick of typing it. I was thinking of something along the lines of 'Twatty, fuckpanted bollocks disease'. 

Tara for a bit.

Norris.