i always forget how lucid i can be when i haven't been drinking the night before...

we're cleaning up after ross's party, which happened in the whole of new york city, but with the same number of people as actually went and no one else. the streets are a bit messy. ross is looking weird, chain-smoking under a tree staring at us until the poker game starts, and then kieron starts giggling and is very bad at cheating. (i think he's playing "cheat" while the others are playing poker) i decide to live in new york so i try to steal a car. 'C'mon Billy' is being piped through the empty apartment buildings and the streets echo. i decide this would be my theme song if i am a stripper but i have too many winter clothes on now so i can't be arsed.

8am
wait for jim-rich with tim. there are 4 ways for people to kill me. i get mugged. i walk up coniston and see jungle snakes and rapids. they're all dead. i want to find a different kind of way to eat cake.

8.30pm
going for commissioning editor job. a chef makes us draw dot to dots on a whiteboard and if the picture is good enough you get the job. i drew a pig that wasn't very good so i turned it into a dog with a smile and a hitler moustache. i keep having to leave the room and drive to exmouth with the sun in my eyes, and i almost hit a traffic warden.

bit more bitsy than normal, but it's all true:

all the books have to be the same size to avoid ghosts but i can't breathe anyway

an invitation from the wild kids

kieron is going to take me out on a yacht that belongs to the oil rig kids to cheer me up. i go to my locker to get stuff.

key

WHAT ABOUT THE CHILD I LOST?

mum records stuff for dad into a dictaphone about swiss things. i am looking at her over my dad's shoulder. i go to the second hand shop and she's left me a box of memories.

mum is nagging me so hard about everything in my life that she fails to tell me i'm late for work. i leapt out of bed into the car and found a short cut into work. but the hill was too steep for my car to take so i got out and walked. a little kid helped me and i gave him a drag of my cigarette to say thanks.

next thing i know we're all in this big house throwing ourselves out of the windows.

i pick up and go to a snow-covered hill next to a lake. we chase the evil swans away, and a couple of golden-goose-sized geese. there are lots of smaller ducks here too. i stroke a lemur that looks more like a cat than a lemur. they come in all weird sizes, exactly like the three bears but with more sizes.

then i'm suddenly in bed again and dom comes in, wearing my blue t-shirt, saying everyone else is awake because i've kept them up all night long with mumbled high-pitched singing, and sleep-recording into my 4-track.

i am mortified.

water level. dom is taking people outside and eating them. no one else has realised water level in the river exe has dropped. people have beach umbrellas in the mud near an island. people are sitting outside and it's my old house.

my cousin giorgia is with a blanket making noises in the nighttime. i'm having to watch the intros to all my dvds to work out the lengths in order to catch dom out and stop him eating people.

look screen doors. there's a man on the balcony

----

getting the dairy from the chalky lake in a little tender with an outboard motor. i wanted to fish but the men say this lake is for dairy - i go back up the canal but have to pull over to make way for a rolls.

rich boys and girls are betting back in the castle. the boys say "he is now the youngest doctor in the country". the girls say "but she's about to be made a professor we win". they do win and the boys hand over a cheque for 105 thousand pounds.

i get dressed upstairs in the castle. it's not a real place, but i've dreamt in there before.

sunday

they're making us eat eels. tiny little baby eels writhing around the bowl with faces. mum eats them. hers are fried in batter. i go and climb the roof when it's her turn

tuesday

all that running away through the castle looking for shoes back to cumbria for a party but doing though...

this morning

i woke up feeling rested. looked at alarm. it was 10am. a thousand bells ringing in my head killed whatever dream i had been having dead. REALLY dead.

yesterday

i've got off the plane at dublin. there are lots of men with silky shirts. we go through. every time someone wants to go to the toilet them are routed through an interface. people throw bottles at us and there's a riot. a man grabs me by the neck and shoves a large automatic gun in my face. then the UN troops come. the barrier goes down and we are allowed to escape. there is a school next door. kids are totally oblivious to any of this, playing on the rope bridge. i am crying harder than at any other time in my life. we get back to the bar and people try to make us go to a pottery class. my mum is there making a picture of a man. she tells me to memorise his face because it's very important but it's all blacked out and i'm trying to break it down to the original photo and i destroy the whole thing. i go down a corridor to dye my hair and a man asks me for change but i have none. he asks someone else instead. he's going to give this man an extra something special later on. i will miss out.

random scribbled this morning:

going swimming. walk back along paragon in my underwear under hospital robe. i have bright blue pants. through a country park and the weather is bad. nobody knows whose fault it is. christmas story christmas books climbing out of windows i want to see. how christmassy the world is. no one likes her so i sit.

Last night in my old life so i climbed the roof to look at the stars. so many shooting stars, so bright, looping and curling round the sky. picked me up, smiling and gasp-sighing, and took me up high. then they dropped me. i was scared at first but then i saw something very very beautiful on the way down which made me happy, and when i landed it was in a lake, and i didn't drown, i was okay.

but the rest of the dream was horrible. we moved. i couldn't smoke anywhere in the new house. it was just daylight. other people's shoes were lying around everywhere. no magic whatsoever.