The ‘H’ in ADHD stands for hyperactivity and it’s what most people associate with the brain disorder particularly in kids. This hyperactivity was almost a bipolar-like mania for me when I was a kid. My memories arent’ the greatest, but I’m sure I mustt have exhausted the patience of every teacher I ever had and I didn’t have a great reputation by the time I left primary school at the age of 10.

In my last year at that primary school I would constantly muck about in class, giggling like an idiot at any word that had any possible connotations with sex and generally dragging the whole class down with my constant interruptions. It got so much for Mr Sharp, my year 7 teacher, that he would regularly relocate my desk around the corner next to the class toilets. Whenever this happened I missed out on all of the classwork from that point on and to be honest, I couldn’t have been happier about it.

I was just as bad during my teenage years at secondary school. By the time I was 16 I think I hit peak-hyperactivity. Those years studying for my advanced level exams are a bit of a blur because I did nothing except piss about. On one occasion I ran into the sixth form common room (a reserved area for students aged 16–18), noticed that a load of my peers were playing a kind of round-the-clock version of table tennis, ran into the room screaming “pitch invasion!”, jumped into the middle of the table and had the whole thing close up around me like a sandwich, breaking the table in the process. Obviously I was well-liked by my peers.

Over the years the physical hyperactivity mellowed somewhat, but inside I am just as restless. It manifests itself as more of a fidget these days, a tapping foot, a wobbling knee or drumming a pen on the table.