i bump into glen on the street. he has been living homeless and he is filthy. he says he thinks it might be to do with when we lived together and he was only allowed to stay for a short time. i don't remember him even staying with me. he wants to come back and stay in my house. he follows me home. my guilt keeps me silent, but even though i feel bad i suspect he is just picking on me as an arbitrary source of hope. he understands, and says he won't come in. i go into the house and don't turn any of the lights on. then it's time to go to some sort of carnival, where all the women are belly dancing.

we're on an island somewhere in what feels like the albany road house, and the next door neighbours have a miniature pony that's small enough to use the catflap. i go to a class where we learn to make musical instruments only i come late and have to shake a wooden rice shaker. we make music that is experiementally not very good.

we are on a boat, holidaying at an island owned by people who organise the entertainments for most of the UK's universities. some strange creatures on the island have been stealing children from the humans there, in the hope that we will purchase some while we are visiting. we usher them back into the jungle, chanting "take it back, take it back, take it back"

there's a maze on the island made of doors and the key to the centre is looking down, not up, and sliding down a rope slide to get the the basement centre. down there, some of the owners of the island are very happy to see me when i get there, as are two or three of the boys who have made it. then, suddenly, we realise that the centre holds many large containers with entertainments hardware and software - karaoke, dance dance revolution, something with drinks and something with chickens.

a distant memory occurs of being told that ddr is so expensive, the owners ploughed all their money into buying as many units of it as they could. I realise there is only one container there. immediately i realise it's a scam for money laundering, and, suddenly, it also strikes me that the owners now have something of the mobster about them. maybe it's because one of them is Tony Soprano. we realise they're drug traffickers, so we all scatter and start to run, but they start shooting and one of the boys is killed.

we find places to hide, but once the air clears and we return, the mobsters, the entertainments canisters, the maze, are all gone. the only person we see getting into her car is Joan Cusack, with two children. refusing to give us a lift after we imply she has stolen or bought someone else's children (I don't know why they couldn't have just been hers), she drives away at full speed. we must find the boat.

jess and i have gone swimming. rich is there too, alternating taking work phonecalls with doing butterfly strokes. in the corner of the shallow end of the pool is The Greek from season 2 of The Wire, eating an omelette with fennel in it. i am translating the season into Italian for the producers, and his next line is meant to be "look what they put in my omelette - why do they put fennel in an omelette?" and I am shocked. "Do you mean to say the writers have presumed that an elderly gentleman of European origin such as yourself would not like Fennel? How absurd!" we decide to change the line for the Italian dubbers, knowing that such a thing would entirely destroy the whole series' credibility in the Italians' eyes.

I'm doing stretches in my flat, getting funny looks from the teenagers stood outside the gym opposite. They're all looking down, watching some sort of gladiatorial fight, but the odd person keeps glancing over at me, unnerving me. I decide to get away, so I go on holiday for two weeks with the girls, somewhere warm. We go diving underwater and are obsessed with one tall creature, about 20 metres high, that spits venom and looks a little like an anemone dandelion. We keep swimming round it in circles to poke it with our diving equipment. On leaving the water, everyone is obsessed with finding out what it's called. After much discussion with our diving instructor we realise that it is a mythical being, and should not exist. We decide to return the next day with cameras. Bianca makes an excel photodiary of our pictures, and, right at the end, Kate has trouble locating the lightswitch in the utility room.