Tom Shakespeare @TommyShakes Twitter profile

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

2 years

I plan to use the Oxford comma relentlessly, now it has become a revolutionary act, and non-violent to boot.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

4 years

A reason to celebrate, amidst the encircling gloom. Granddaughter Ruby born today. Mother & baby doing well.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

4 years

Thanks Rishi, I've donated the money I've saved by your ludicrous Eat Out To Help Out scheme to the Trussell Trust to support the people so screwed by your government that they are unable to eat at all.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

11 months

What happens to disabled people who are not able to go online, if ticket offices are closed? How do they book assistance? Where do they find staff to help? Only the biggest stations have disability assistance offices.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

6 years

Stephen Hawking showed that you could make strides, even if you couldn't walk; that you could have a powerful voice, even if you couldn't talk; that you could be disabled and change the world. RIP.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

5 years

Hi, I'm a disabled person in a movie. I struggle to come to terms with my impairment, but in the end, a saintly able-bodied person inspires me to overcome my fears. I have desires, but never get to have sex. And I'm played by a non-disabled actor.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

3 years

You may not need to hear this, but today, I managed to walk across our yard for the first time in a week. Unsteady, exhausting & I'm now horizontal with vital coffee & chocolate supplies. But I didn't fall over!

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

2 years

95 years ago, my late father William was born at 103 Sloane Street, Chelsea. It was a shock to his parents to have a baby with achondroplasia. But he grew to be a renowned GP, husband and father. Remembering him today.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

3 years

Very sorry that Chris Whitty harrassed by mindless yobs demanding a selfie. It felt familar, because this is also what happens every day to a restricted growth person somewhere in Britain.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

4 years

I'm on the train! Off to Newcastle to meet 3 month-old granddaughter Ruby

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

2 years

When I am in charge, the phrase "going forward" is going to be banned by law.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

3 years

I don't think there should be a Down Syndrome Act, or any diagnosis specific legislation. All disabled people are people. All people should receive all the services & supports they need. All people are entitled to choices.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

3 years

At Prospect Cottage.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

3 years

International Day of Persons with Disabilities should be a day off for me, where non-disabled people bring me treats...Well, I am expecting a cheese delivery, I guess that counts. Anyway: Happy Day to the other billion disabled folk. May you face no barriers, & have much cheese.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

2 years

After Archbishop Welby's Sermon today, the whole Canterbury congregation burst into spontaneous applause. He is a prophetic leader, on message.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

3 years

Why are waste bins in hospital accessible toilets only operable with foot pedals? I became paralysed on August 20th 2008, and this question continues to amaze me.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

3 years

My dad, a GP, used to explain to everyone that I, PhD, was a proper Doctor and his title was only honorary. This used to worry his patients.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

2 years

Immensely sad to wake up to death of Desmond Tutu, uncompromising critic of Apartheid, later critical of failures of 'Rainbow nation', pioneer of Ubuntu theology. More of our leaders need his bravery, and sense of humour.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

2 years

Please remember my dad, Dr Bill Shakespeare, died far too early this day in 1996. Made a difference to so many lives, family & patients.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

7 months

Guess what I just received!

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

2 years

None of the things you hold dear - NHS, BBC, Channel 4, UK offering a welcome to refugees, decency, democracy and the rule of law - are safe in the hands of most of these candidates for PM.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

3 years

The main advantage that crumpets have over toast is three-dimensional butter.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

3 years

25 years ago today, my father, William (Bill) Shakespeare died, aged only 68. We have all missed him very much. He blazed a trail for doctors with disabilities as a paediatrician and a GP: "No legacy is so rich as honesty".

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

3 months

Uneven pavements are bad for your health.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

5 years

Happy International Day of Disabled People! I am off to Department for Transport to promote disability rights. We want to go where you go!

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

4 years

Came a cropper by wheeling too fast and hitting kerb in Windmill Row. Landed upside down in puddle while still strapped in. Car screeched to a halt, two big guys leapt out, came and lifted me back to vertical. Thanks to you folks - have a good Sunday! Battered but not broken.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

3 years

Very pleased for Lucy Jones, a fine painter, personally rather embarrassed, but very pleasantly so.

Lucy Jones' Tom Shakespeare: Intellect, with Wheels | acquired by the National Portrait Gallery

Lucy Jones' painting Tom Shakespeare: Intellect, with Wheels , 2017, which depicts social scientist and bioethicist Tom Shakespeare, has been accepted...

www.flowersgallery.com

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

4 months

I just spent half my annual income on making my flat fully wheelchair-accessible, including new loo & wetroom and better ramp (and no, I didn't qualify for an adaptation grant). I've never been thrilled by a basin before!

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

4 years

I don't want you to underestimate the difficulty of changing sheets & double duvet cover when you are a) 4'5" and b) paraplegic. If I can do this on my lunch hour, then expect a solution to the Middle Ease crisis by dinner time.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

3 years

My hand is on Jerry, the very dark dog who came for a snuggle this morning: colleague Calum, who rescued him from Mallorca and drove him all the way home, is behind the camera.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

3 years

Terrible statistic: 70% of care workers are paid less than £10 per hour. In 2008, when I was first paralysed, I employed Personal Assistants & paid Council rates of £10.50 an hour. In 13 years, rates have gone DOWN. No wonder care recipients are sometimes treated without dignity.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

3 years

I need breakfast. I have unaccountably missed out on breakfast. However, I have written 5,000 evidence-based words on the impact of the C-19 pandemic on disabled people in Britain, so that's a result. Paper coming soon.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

3 years

Back to work after sick leave (but still bed-bound and still in pain). Life as a disabled person is very tough sometimes, thanks to impairment. I am lucky to be in a job that can be done from bed (for all these reasons, the social model is a very poor explanation of disability).

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

3 years

I don't really care that someone in 10 Downing Street has been watching West Wing box sets and wants a better press briefing and situation room. But I would very much like them to be accessible to disabled people. As with no BSL at 5pm briefings, it sends a bad message.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

7 years

George Michael was a steadfast, discreet funder of disability rights organisations. RIP

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

3 years

In case there's any doubt about it, I am steaming furious angry. This Goverment has done so much harm, at home and abroad, is directly responsible for tens of thousands of deaths, has hugely damaged the economy, will destroy the Union, and is led by liars, frauds & incompetents.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

3 years

Thanks dear friends for kind words And thanks to colleagues in Newcastle, Geneva, Norwich, London, Sydney, Melbourne, Kampala, Lusaka, Nairobi, Glasgow, with whom I've researched and published about disability. And to thousands of research participants: your voice counts!

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

5 years

My partner's 6 y.o. son asked me why I had a big head. I told him it had to be big to keep all my brains in. Later, I heard him solemnly repeating this explanation to a young friend who was round and had obviously asked why I looked different. Now under pressure to be clever.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

7 months

You may know that my first novel, The Ha-ha, will be published in March 2024. It's funny, with a disabled protagonist, a stolen pig, and a disastrous dinner. It would be wonderful for me & the publishers if you felt like pre-ordering your copy. Thank you!

Tom Shakespeare | Twitter | Linktree

Author of 'The Ha-Ha'. Coming March 2024.

linktr.ee

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

3 years

Johnson has said the illegal tactic of turning migrant boats back is 'what the public wants'. #NotInMyName

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

5 years

I wonder if this is what the first stages of the English Civil War felt like?

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

2 years

(I can't face moving anywhere. So will be staying here & welcoming all inoffensive souls who sail by this timeline. I don't think Twitter will crash & burn, and if it does, I will simply spend more time writing. Bon voyage).

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

5 years

Please, friends, hold me in the Light, in your thoughts, in your prayers or wish me luck, for Friday morning Quebec time, when I am testifying about medical assistance in dying, with evidence about positive quality of life of disabled people in the Supreme Court of Canada.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

4 years

Jingoistic nonsense. We're killing the generation in care homes we're claiming to venerate. I'm working on a paper today.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

5 years

I'd pay good money for a tee shirt with the faces of Brenda Hale, Gina Miller and Greta Thunberg on it.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

2 years

It's going to be very hot in England today, because we've actually become an outer suburb of Hell.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

6 months

My mother was an immigrant to the UK from Sri Lanka in 1956. Her mother brought her & her sister, having been offered a social care job and later worked in catering. My mother and aunt trained as nurses. None of them would have earned the required salary.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

2 years

That is the first time ever I have got on a mainline UK train without a ramp! Glory shone around @greateranglia level access Norwich service.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

4 years

What he said!

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

7 years

If you have time on your hands, stop tweeting & browse instead. Disability, bioethics, art, politics...dogs

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

5 months

So is this (bookshops, March). Pre-orders welcome!

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

4 years

25 years since the Disability Discrimination Act (30 years since Americans with Disabilities Act): much has changed, but so much is left to achieve. Thank you for the work of generations of activists. The struggle continues.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

4 years

The Immigration Bill being discussed today says that people should have to have a job paying £25,600 before they can come here. The average salary of an NHS nurse is under £25,000, that of a care worker a lot less. So much for valuing health & social care workers post-Covid.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

3 years

Physiotherapy has saved my life, yet again. Several times in my life it has enabled me to overcome pain & maximise my functioning. This time, I paid for it. Sad that for many people it is out of reach, because so rationed in NHS.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

3 years

Realize with horror that the pills I collected from the Pharmacy yesterday don't come with days of the week marked on blister pack. Not only was it my only way of knowing whether or not I'd taken the dose, it was my last remaining clue as to what day of the week it was.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

3 years

The money we are cutting from overseas direct assistance is funding 40% more nuclear warheads. Never seen more blatant, and utterly pointless, turning of ploughshares into swords. Nasty party, vile leader, shameful country.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

2 years

Well, that's a first. Been on London buses almost every day for four years, and that was first time an ambulant person didn't move out of wheelchair space when asked politely (did move when told impolitely what to do with himself).

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

1 year

Luckily Kew has café & glasshouses to shield from rain.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

2 years

Happy International Day of Persons with Disabilities! (Wish my body would stop hurting).

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

3 years

Not quite covered with glory...

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

1 year

Brilliant! Bus driver just stopped bus, went upstairs & told a bunch of French school students that they had to pay their fares. In French.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

3 years

Discussion with partner in early hours as to whether I was the height of an Emperor penguin. Turns out I'm taller - could rest my chin on its head. Discussion ensues about penguins as possible mobility aids.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

2 years

Very sad if Twitter falls apart. Friends, lovers, jokes, work, books, pets, activism, it was so good for 15 years. Births, weddings and deaths marked. All gone too soon. I have books to promote which aren't even published yet!

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

3 years

My daughter has just sent me video of my granddaughter saying her first word. Quite recognisably she says "Cheese." #chipofftheoldblock #proudgrandfather

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

3 years

Feel free to ring me, so I can loudly announce "I'm on the train!": (the speed! The people!) first since July 2020, and taking me to see GRAND DAUGHTER. I've never felt more normal, oddly.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

2 years

Making my day's achievements look more impressive by adding, and crossing off, items such as "drink coffee" and "eat apple".

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

2 years

Let's educate medical, nursing & all health professional students about disability - human rights, diagnostic overshadowing, QL etc. I hope this will be a recommendation into mishandling of Pandemic.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

6 years

Before I went to Australia on work, I left my walking sticks in Norwich taxi. Very frustrating. Came home last night, discovered they were propped up in usual place. ABC taxi driver had taken the trouble to bring them round to my house. Human goodness at work. Thanks!

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

1 year

Just went to send brother's birthday present only to find closed for strike. Could someone turn UK off & on again at wall? With reasonable pay & conditions for all key workers & higher tax on richest?

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

3 years

Remind me, next time someone non-disabled tries to tell me that impairment is merely a social construction, to run over their toe and when they shriek, say: "Oh, I'm sorry! Are you experiencing what is commonly labelled as 'pain'? Just as well it's only cultural!"

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

3 years

If you don't engage you don't get anywhere. If you do engage, you might be ignored. So engage again. Shout louder. Change public attitudes. Use people's own words to hold them to account. Kiss no a***s. Speak truth to power. Repeat ad infinitum.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

4 years

Never let it be said I have wasted lockdown: I can now speak Welsh with all the confidence of a 5 year old. Although most children cannot say "I am an unemployed electrician and house husband" with quite my fluency.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

2 years

What are the chances of that happening? Ahead of me in the queue at Nisa was a lady with restricted growth! We're about 1 in every 20,000 prevalence, so that would be a very rare encounter (and no, I didn't know her). Feeling a trifle less unusual today.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

3 years

May have to talk about disabled people & Covid for BBC Breakfast News, which is on TV apparently. This means I definitely have to put on trousers tomorrow.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

2 years

Gone outside for a breather wearing my Christmas scarf. Looking for sunshine.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

4 years

I devoutly hope the Prime Minister gets through this, returns to full health, and is roundly defeated at the next election.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

4 years

@CandiceMajewski I talk to folk, here and in the South, whose mind or legs or eyes or ears do not work well - but the world is what stops them most. They need to be heard, and the world must change. My work helps that.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

1 year

Snow & wheelchairs don't mix.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

1 year

A writer friend comes to mine about once a week, and we each write in separate rooms & come together for tea and soup and laughter. It's marvellously productive and companionate.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

4 years

Today's the day my aunt died by suicide in 1949. Remembering Judith Shakespeare & sending love to all stressed, depressed & confused teenagers: you can have great things ahead of you!

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

2 years

No Mirza did not resign on principle: she led that 'war on woke' nonsense, hardly the high ground. Seeing how it was going, she went, writing an apparently deeply felt & elegant resignation so as to get her next job, presumably as a right wing columnist.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

3 years

Supermarket offering me "Chocolate hot cross buns made with dates, sultanas, and coffee". This is a taste nightmare (as well as a liturgical one). HCBs are *not* the new pesto or hummus, a platform for all marketing and flavour mistakes. Hands off our HCBs!

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

1 month

My friend & I have just had our morning conversation & put the world to rights. You'll find it runs much better now.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

2 years

I'm here to say MS Teams is a rubbish App. It's rubbish on laptop & phone for many people. It's awful for our African collaborators. I hate it. Give me Zoom any day.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

3 years

Today is Holocaust Memorial Day. The deliberate, inhuman elimination of difference: people who were Jewish, disabled, gay, Roma and Sinti, Jehovah's Witnesses or on a different political side. This is what fascism does. Never forget.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

3 years

Being in bed with a good book at 8pm is a win, whichever way you look at it.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

3 years

Partner been vaccinated! Wonderful news. Once mother & aunt safe too, will breathe normally. I♥️Science.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

2 years

My old friend Vicky Bowman, released last week from Incheon Prison, Myanmar, is coming to supper. Was about to make rice, realised she'll have eaten little else. Time for the pasta cookbook she gave me 35 years ago!

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

4 years

I have online meetings today at 8am, 9am, 930am, 11am, 12pm, 2pm. At one stage, I think I will have to run simultaneously on two computers & use strategic muting. I plan to start drinking at 4pm.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

6 years

@paraicodonnell What about 'darkly comic'?

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

4 years

My grandkid is coming to stay today. Conveniently packaged in my daughter. No need to buy Werther's for another month.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

2 years

In loving memory of my aunt, Judith Shakespeare, who died by suicide this day in 1949.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

5 years

One of my children once told her classmate that her dad "talks bollocks for money"... I would maintain that I talk an expertly-curated combination of facts, values and opinions, on a wide variety of topics, usually for peanuts.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

2 years

I was hosting a public event this week, & was surprised when a retired healthworker came up to me in the break & apropropros of absolutely nothing asked what my medical condition was. And then asked why I was in a wheelchair. I was too shocked to ask her to mind her own business.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

4 years

Disabled people and older people are part of society. We have support workers, friends, lovers, children, neighbours and it's very hard to keep isolated. Donne had it right: "No man is an island, we are all part of the main, ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee".

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

3 months

Knock at the door. Manage to transfer from bed to chair without falling. Man at the door gives me a box, and in the box is my BOOK: the hardback of The Ha-ha, launching on Thursday 28th March.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

5 years

IMHO there are only three permissible toppings on a crumpet, beside butter (Note: NOT margarine). Jam; Marmalade; Cheese. (I realise this last claim is unorthodox, but this is a hill on which I am prepared to die). Now, back to my books.

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Tom Shakespeare

@TommyShakes

5 years

I sense a children's book being written as we speak...