people ask me "what's it like being blind?" is it like nothing? no, it's not. i imagine everything in me head. i live in a fantasy world, you know? and it's not a conscious thing, i don't try to conjure it up in me head, it's like a unconscious thing. i summon this imagination around me at all times. maybe i did used to be able to see in my brain tries to function visually, i try to picture it, but i'm wrong about everything. i'm wrong about everything all the time. the world in my head, i mean first of all, it is built on assumptions and deductions based on what i can tell and hear and feel and then all the gaps are filled in with pure flights of abstract imagination. i'm wrong about everything. i'm wrong about what people look like. and you will do this yourselves to an extent. you know?

you be at home, you'll have the radio, someone will be on. and then you see a photograph of what they look like and you will be wrong, because people don't sound bald or hairy, do they? my wife said to me if you got your site back tomorrow what is the first thing you would want to see? i've because it's my daughter sophie. because it's notjust what she looks like that i'm missing out on, it's all the wonderful, interesting and amazing things that she's been doing and she does. it started with the crawling of the walking on the jumping and dancing in the dressing up, the drawing, the smiles, all the smells, of course it sophie. my wife said "good." "and i would be second, would i?" i said "yeah, yeah, you can be second." and she said "second?" i said it depends. we counting mohamed salah in this? he's doing things i can't imagine.

every day of my life i was a good see my daughter, every week of my life i could wish i could see mohamed salah. she said "i can't believe you love salah more than me, i said no, i love you the same." it's hard to keep up the innovations, the inventions, it's all getting more and more. there are still a few things you can't get, can't do where's wally, that's not an audio book. "not wally, not wally, not wally not wally." "a bloke that looks like wally, but no, he's not wally."

moving down to row two, not wally, not wally... wally! not wally, not wally... he was in the top left, just because you find him early doesn't mean you don't have to listen to the rest of the picture. we have a series of storytellers today who each have a disability or a mental health difficulty. some of these guys have never been on stage before. the theme this year is lost and found and we've let them interpret that however they want. the only criteria is that the stories are all true. so guys, let me ask, are you ready for your first storyteller of the show? all: yes! please welcome janine hammond! applause. you're going to have to brace yourselves for this one. i've lost my nipples. it's really annoying because nipples are really great, aren't they? they feed your babies, their little leisure domes, and they warn you when you need

to wear a coat. i mean, it's not all bad, is it? because the flashy bits of the breast are surely the best bit, aren't they? except i've lost those as well, i'm so careless. i have got something going on here, those at the front might notice it, it's not my socks in my bra just to let you know, i haven't got prosthetic breasts or anything or implants, hold on for this one, i've got flaps. yeah, i've got flaps. now the reason i say that is i'm a next nurse and in the world of medicine, we love abbreviations, we love acronyms, we love all that sort of things, we haven't got times to say the big words. so i've got tram flaps, nothing to do with trams. that would be weird, isn't it? they are tram, because they are for your transrectal abdominus muscle, so you've got two,

that's like your sixpack, i don't know if many of you have seen a sixpack, but anyway, it's part of your sixpack. i've only got a four pack because two of my muscles are in my chest. weird, i know. and it basically takes two surgical teams to do the operation. so i single—handedly drained the nhs in my local area. basically, the top team take your breasts off and the cancer, that is the key bit, and then the other team split you from hip to hip and take the whole front flap of your abdomen off. it's a lovely, gory operation and they basically pull the muscles up with all their blood supply and nerve endings and then a just pad you out and make breasts. it's amazing. now, the first time i had breast cancer it was triple negative, but in those days it wasn't even called triple negative, theyjust called it invasive cancer. so i was 32, my kids were little, ijust started a newjob, and of course life's

like that, isn't it? fast forward 15 years, and i find myself in my local hospital, a different surgeon walks in this time, it's been 15 years. he bounces inand he goes "well, it's back." and i thought, well, he's got a nice bedside manner, doesn't he? thanks, mate. so i knew what i wanted him to do because i'd have 15 years to think about it. i said can you do the operation in one go? and he said yeah, i can do that. 12 years under anaesthetic i woke up and i tell you, that operation stings. so takes a long time to get over that and weird things happen to your body after this operation that they don't tell you about. so it feels like i've got a bowling ball in my stomach. it looks like i've got a bowling ball in my stomach but i've had scans and i definitely

haven't got it. it's just crisps. weird! this time i had a different chemo, we like a selection. i had fuc. it's easy to say that. it also left me bloated like a sumo wrestler. i know, it's fun to say. i had to go to the pain clinic and i had a lot of medication, but they suggested why don't we do mindfulness, and i thought oh, that will be good. i'll give that a go, that will but somehow, trying to meditate with ten other people in what was effectively a storeroom, itjust didn't work for me. so i said to the psychologist, this mindfulness doesn't work for me and she said oh,

let's think of something else that might help. and i noticed that i like to make up stories, i've got a weird imagination, and i ended up starting to write stuff. and that was really nice, so i put a player not long ago and i have some stuff coming up in manchester, which is lovely... but, let's go back to my nipples because... i am not happy about something here. i said to my surgeon, what about nipples? and he said "oh, they're a faff." a faff?! that's what he said, they are a faff. you spent 12 hours slicing and dicing me like the bridge of chucky you put me together and then you say it's a faff? that's not right, is it? he said well, you know, i can do them but, you know. the registrar said, janine,

there's one thing you need to know. when you make nipples, they have to really stick out, when we make them, because they do shrink back. so you're always like, pointy? i was like "oh, god, i can't be pointy!" so was given some prosthetic nipples. they're just stick on nipples. that's what they are. and i thought, you know what, i can't wear them. what if they came unstuck and worked their way up and i was talking to someone and they were all "you've got a nipple on your neck!" it would be even worse if you were single and it got stuck someone else. the only time i've worn my nipples is i wore one nipple on the middle of my forehead and i did my david bowie ziggy stardust impression to cheer myself up and they do it quite regularly, if i'm honest. so when i wrote this little play,

there a method my madness, i thought i'm going to write for the first time about a female who has had my operation but she is single and has to reveal herself every time a relationship fails, and she would have to start again, so that was awful but... in the middle of the place he has to stick the nipple on her forehead and does her best ziggy. now, most theatres don't stock prosthetic nipples, in fact they don't stock them at all. so my nipples get supplied for my actresses to do this, which has meant a very exciting chapter in my life because i get e—mails now saying "janine, please can i have your nipples?" yeah, i like to open those e—mails on a packed train when i know someone is reading over my shoulder. i'lljust say, today, someone is coming to collect my nipples, no,

i've got them with me, and they then taken to manchester so they can appear on another actress‘ head for another three day run, i'm kind of resentful. my nipples are appearing in theatres without me. they're having a life of their own. they are neglecting me. i think they are going to get an agent and they are going to dump me, i really do. so, when i said to you i've lost my nipples, i have. i've lost them to cancer, and i've lost them to the fickle world of show business. thank you. applause well, ladies and gentlemen, janine hammond!

i am a comedian, and my ability is so new it hurts like new shoes. the attachments to my ears are called shoes. they do cost a fortune. they do pinch like hell, but it is worth it, they make me feel amazing, and confident. the first time i noticed anything was wrong, i am on stage, what happened is, i am a performer and i am on stage, and i am being hilarious, absolutely bloody hilarious, but didn't have a clue why, right? i was not intending to be. it turns out that when i was talking to people in the audience i was repeating back completely the wrong thing, i would be like, "hey sir, how did you meet your wife?" "you met her in a cuban trans club, did you?" turns out he had met

her in transit in cuba. my hearing had gone to my left ear and it was quite simple, and i was told it was just the one ear, and you can adapt, i got a hearing aid, it was fine, it was all cool, it is pretty easy with one hearing aid for moderate to medium hearing loss. two years ago, i took on a commission, it was for a play to be written over four months. and during those four months my right ear hearing started to go, my right ear. the good ear. and i went back to the emt and they told me that obviously the hearing is now going, it will be permanent, but they can't tell me how long i have got. they have no explanation of why the hearing is going. i get fitted for a new set of hearing aids. these hearing aids are horrendous, they are awful. they have wires sticking out of them, i look like an ood from doctor who. the silence is deafening if i take them out. on the other hand if i put them in, oh my god, when did the world get so scary and loud and tinny? it is so loud and horrible.

they told me they don't know how long i have got with my hearing. over the course of those four months my hearing went day by day by day, as i wrote my play. and i am now profoundly deaf. and it is horrendous, i am alone in my own head, right? and i can't hear anything. and people are starting to treat me like an idiot. basically they are starting to treat me like i was when i was an immigrant, when i came to this country. six years old i got earaches all the time, but they stopped when i arrived here. and they are treating me like an immigrant now. i had just come out of a gig, and this guy comes over and started to have a conversation with us. and i think he must have come from my show, and judging by his smiling face, clearly love the show, oh, the ego of the performer. and the thing is, i think, what a lovely, sweet, friendly man.

as a performer, i am a tad needy. so a man, right, who is smiling at me, literally has me at hello. my friend saw the guy, walking behind me from the street, not from the gig as i had assumed, she sees me walking behind me and she comes up and heard him say "look at you two, look at you two! why don't you go back to where you came from?". wow, there is one bonus out of all of this, which is that i don't actually have to hear racist bigots outside comedy clubs anymore. all i have to do is just turn my hearing aids off and smile at them. thank you. applause ladies and gentlemen, shajila kershie! keep the enthusiasm going and welcome to the stage, thomas leeds!

my name is thomas and i am a writer, which is something i never thought i would be able to do. what i love about writing is that i can give my stories a beginning, middle and end. they make sense. they feel complete. unlike my own life story. surprise, i have a brain injury. i like to keep my brain on the inside... i survived a nasty road accident when i was 19. i was very luckyjust to wake up, i had broken my back, but though it was painful i could walk and talk, which was amazing. but a lot was missing. i was alive, but not the boy who had crossed the road that night. he was gone. i had lost my childhood memories. nowadays, you might not know i have a disability. when i am having a good brain day, which is how i keep managing to blagging my way through life as if i have a clue what everyone

is going on about. but other days it can be hard. the scar tissue a brain caused me to have seizures, and i can no longer recognise people. i struggle with noises and smells, and i get very tired. but it is not all bad, i have a very cool scar which my three—year—old loves to poke. it has affected my long—term memory but my short—term memory is temperamental too. my wife now that i have a catchphrase, when i have forgotten something, i often insist "i would think i would remember that". apparently when i have set it on the morning that i am convinced that someone else has eat my breakfast, even though ijust made it for myself. i say it on mornings when i have gone through half a bottle of shower gel even though i am pretty sure i haven't even washed my face yet. and she is still laughing about the day i called her into the room with great excitement because our two—year—old had somehow dressed herself perfectly. my daughter was make little face "silly daddy, you just dressed me!" yeah, i think i would remember that!

i have come a long way since my accident, but i will take you back 16 years to the start of my search for all those lost memories. there was 2003, there was a lot going on and so much to learn. i was learning so much about trying very hard to remember and it took me a while to realise just how much i had lost. it is the thing about amnesia, you don't really know how much you have forgotten until people start telling you the things you should know. and i kept telling them, i think i'd remember that. i started my journey with a lot of hope. i was trying to catch up to everybody else who was born in the 80s and 90s in london, that something or someone or someplace might unlock some of those memories. i went to all the places i have been to as a child, all the parks and shopsand my old schools, but nothing was coming back to me. i went to places we had been doing holiday, and travelled the tube and all the routes are used to take

in my teens, still nothing. i went through all the pictures i had drawn, letters i had written, and went through every hilarious photograph of me in my adolescence and various phases and styles, and still nothing. and even in all the time i was being retrained as a fully acceptable british adult, nothing was ringing any bells. nothing, when i was schooled in the essential english custom of beginning and ending every conversation with "sorry." nothing when learning thatjohn lennon and lenin were not the same person. i knewjohn lennon was political but i had to wonder. my family was teaching me that as a fully grown british adult i didn't need to hug people so much or cry so much or be quite so excited on christmas eve. my family have been so supportive, and they tried everything to help me regain those early years. but as time was going on,

the boy with my name in so many stories and in photographs remained another person in another world. the first few years it did not really bother me so much, all my siblings and friends were so young, and everything was about the present. but as our 20s ticked by, things started to change. with our parents pushing 70, suddenly childhood was everything, and soon i could not go a day without hearing "remember that summer", and "remember those holidays", and it started to feel very unfair. i had lost so much of ourfamily life, those early years that make us who we are. i'm going to stop, sorry... sorry. applause it is really weird that i am so forgetful today. i'm doing better than i thought i would.

0n the eve of my 30th birthday, and the decade of searching my brain drew to a close, i decided tojust try and accept that it was gone forever. i had a bright future ahead of me, about to marry the girl i loved, so i decided to focus on that, and face the big 30 with optimism. we were planning a 1980s themed birthday party, because i was born in 1983, and i started to put together a playlist of suitably abysmal 80s music. i started going through all the tracks, it was late, i went to bed i put my headphones in and shut my eyes. i started going through the music, track by track. adding each song to the playlist. after ten years of radio, i knew each track by heart, but then i pressed skip one more time, and that is when it happened. the most surreal moment of my life. a song i had somehow not heard in all that time, "the whole of the moon" by the waterboys began to play.

song plays and i was transported. suddenly i was sitting on a strange blue floor staring at a silver stereo, then suddenly i was in another place, and walking in bright sunshine holding a giant man's hand behind the fence. and in a flash i was in another curious place, and another, and another, until i suddenly saw some coloured glass light and an enormous christmas tree. near the tree, standing in the doorway, there was a woman. she was young, she was smiling, and she didn't have grey hair. she was my mum. and i was her little boy. and it was real. i was finally there with her at last. it's such a short moment and nothing much was said, but it is mine, and that changed everything for me. since then, a few more early memories have come back, not many, but at least now i can face the rest of my story with something ofa beginning in my mind.

0k! it was that magical night that inspired me to start writing. i always leave blank pages in my books, not just because i am lazy, but because the hero has epilepsy and a brain injury like me, and when he forgets a part of his life, it doesn't stop him being the hero on the next page. he is still in the adventure, he is not lost. i am still on my adventure, and i am now even more obsessed with all things 80s and 90s. my wife has very mixed feelings about this, particularly the music. but it is a new chapter and we are now making new happy memories with our little girls who now play in the same parks i am told i played in at their age. i am still going to have seizures and get frustrated with my dodgy memory, including today. but at least now i can put my thoughts down on paper and know they will still be there for me tomorrow. this has been amazing,

sharing my story with all of you here at fringe on the bbc, a truly unforgettable experience. next week, when i have forgotten it... laughs please think of my wife as i am telling her "i think i would remember that." what an amazing story, make some noise for thomas leeds. applause make some noise for everyone you have seen today! you have seenjanine hammond, shajila kershie, thomas leeds, thank you for being an amazing audience, good night, thank you! applause hello.

last weekend it felt like the height of summer, temperatures reaching into the upper 20s in scotland, the low 30s in the hottest parts of england. fast forward a week and for this sunday, 2! celsius at best. i am for the arrival of september and the three months meteorologists say make up autumn. what a difference from one week to the next. a cooler air mass is in across the british isles. last weekend it was warm continental air. this weekend, it is the coming from the atlantic and from a north—westerly direction, never a particularly warm direction. at least there is a lot of sunshine to come, to start sunday. showers in scotland. some moving further south and east. may be heavy and possibly thundery. much of south wales and southern england are going to stay dry. 2! at best in south—east england but as you can see most of us are going to fall well short of that. out of the sunshine, in the breeze, you might even think it feels quite chilly.

this is monday, high—pressure to the south, weather systems and fronts running over northern parts of the uk. it starts really quite chilly, sunday night into monday morning, temperatures widely into single figures. some spots in the scottish glens may not be far away from freezing. a fair amount of sunshine to begin monday. weather fronts making an impact in scotland. northern ireland, some rain moving through. you may see some patchy rain towards western hills in wales and western england as well. more cloud arriving across the rest of the uk although eastern and south—east england will stay mostly dry. from monday to tuesday, the weather fronts are moving through, meaning a deal of cloud around. 0ccasional rain from that. yet again, closer to high—pressure further south and south—east, you may see very little rain. the chance of heavier bursts to the north and west of scotland. temperatures as we go into the first part of the week are recovering, 23 in norwich and london. they are about to come down again, a cold front moving south going into wednesday,

whose weather is a repeat of sunday. a bit of sunshine, north—westerly breeze, some showers, maybe heavy. for most of us, temperatures in the mid to upper teens. the picture as we go into thursday shows a large area of high pressure in the atlantic trying to move in over us. whenever you see that you know that things are inclined to be settled and that case for many of us on thursday but there is a weather front close to scotland, so there will be showers around, some rain. warm fronts in north—west scotland and northern ireland later in the day with cloud and outbreaks of rain. much of england and wales staying dry. at the end of the week, high—pressure is poised to move in for the weekend but if anything, even cooler on friday. if you been watching for a while you'll know that we're interested in developments with hurricane dorian on the other side of the atlantic. this is how it looked on a satellite picture, steaming towards the bahamas

and maybe florida. latest forecasts take it up eastern side of the us, so a lot to play for in what dorian is going to do in usa. and any potential impact in the uk because as we follow the forecast forward in time, and this is what's left of hurricane dorian, it may be caught in the jet stream and come across the atlantic and by a week on monday, be close the british isles, probably the north. the exact position, any impact is a long way off. we'll keep you updated.

this is bbc news. i'm rachel schofield. the headlines at ten: thousands take to the streets across the uk — to condemn borisjohnson's decision to suspend parliament. in hong kong, police storm an underground train, using pepper spray and batons — as the city sees some of the worst street battles yet. it's the very centre of hong kong — and look at it. they warned them not to protest today. the government building under siege, and it's complete mayhem. more than 50 migrants have been detained as they tried to cross the english channel to reach kent — several boats have been intercepted. formula 2 driver, anthoine hubert, has been killed in a crash at the belgian grand prix. and we'll be taking an in—depth look at the papers with our reviewers — city am's comment and features editor, rachel cunliffe,