yesterday:

came to US for a long weekend then straight home again to uncover the mystery. trying to find a 7-11 was proving impossible. share hotel with tim. how the hell did i get this many clothes? and who was watching the tv with his head in the lap of the girl sat next to me?

today:

lock stock guy who likes the guns wants to be of huge prolific value to the world. there's a party upstairs - get there through liv's flat. i don't need a key. we row around a queue of immigrants on the pontoon at ellis island. it is flat calm. i don't have enough cash on me to buy a $10 picture of a freak wave hitting the shore.

big epic dream but i only remember one snapshot - forcing someone to listen to "hot topic" by le tigre and them not liking it and me not understanding.

end of the world. but everyone's helping. in a car and i don't know which side of the road to be on. we park in highschool and when we get out of the car it's shrunk to the size of a large dog.

the guy in the liquor store was flirting with me and i think he was going to ask me out but then someone else came up to buy cigarettes he didn't own so i just left quietly.

go to see the von bondies. i realise i know the lead singer from uni. we flirt. i'm wandering around bars a lot on my own that night.

when i go to work cath is trying to "reach out to the city's dirty" and is trying to fundraise. i go down to the basement and catch alice meeting her boyfriend, wearing a pink sheeny slip. he makes a move and she just says "no. this isn't right" and she goes back upstairs. when i rejoin everyone, cath is really pissed off that alice wouldn't sleep with her boyfriend for money. she doesn't understand.

then i'm walking through a tunnel with chris. actually we're also diving, all wearing what look like bright yellow evil Moonraker costumes, with helmet and all. it's like the training pools on tombraider, and we're trying to have a conversation along the way. we keep diving and diving and i can't see any indicators on screen so i have no idea how long i'm going to be able to hold my breath for. when we get out of the water we realise that nuclear bombs have been fired. one is destroyed. there are three more on their way and i wake up.

everyone in prison coming in and out "where were you when we got out we needed you" "i had my own shit to deal with". julianne moore crying to me that her mother always thought Magnolia was too ambitious for her.

pixies are playing. it's housemate karaoke. and the devil is 6 and the devil is 6... i'm being kidnapped by a gangster. i'm held but jess helps me. the houses are all over the place.

paul lives right next door to me in somerville. i see him in the basement next door - he's called me on his cell phone - and he's watching me, waving. how much of a coincidence is this? i run straight over there to say hello but he's eating thanksgiving dinner with his housemates and doesn't get up. i am going for a meal with my parents and joanna lumley, so i leave and go with them to the restaurant, but then i immediately make an excuse and come to the house my parents lived in 10 years ago - the house i hit puberty in. i don't go back to the restaurant.

finally i feel pretty guilty at having run away and go to find my mum at joanna lumley's house. mum yells at me saying "the mixtape was a mistake". i scream at her "you're not even allowed to say his name". joanna lets me smoke in her kitchen which has terracotta floor tiles. straight afterwards i go back to university to clear out all my old stuff i realised i still have stored there . the kitchen there is bigger and better. everything is newer and shinier than when i lived there. i run through the empty halls, shouting incredulously. then i box my stuff up and bring it right here.

this is very annoying. i can't remember hardly any dreams. must be a hangover from the jetlag. it feels very odd to not be able to remember dreams - sleeping is definitely not the opposite of life, though it's starting to feel like that at the moment.

must try harder. hmmm....

i'm in a circus tent with all the gracious people and i flip the switch to start the chocolate pouring out. from pipes and tubes all over the big-top come massive sprays of chocolate. most people exit screaming. the rest of us get chocolate all over our heads and our faces and i see one girl just standing under the system with her mouth open.

practising for the battle. i'm following my team up out of the rabbit-hole but all the stormtroopers keep dropping down it and on to my head. i cannot get out.

all i dreamt about last night was work and all the tedious shit i'm going to show my boss today. i hate that...

my friend and i go into this shop to spend the night. we realise there's still someone locking up. it's a boy, about 16. like the boy i always used to fancy when i was 16. not a specific one - just... the ones i was too scared to make eye contact with. so he finishes locking up and sits on the sofa i'm on to put his shoes on. i sit up behind him, and wrap my legs around him, and he's not sure. he looks at my friend. my friend says "it's okay. it's allowed" and his expression changes and so he turns around and we screw. straight after we're done he says he has to go because his mum's picking him up.

later in the night somehow my friend and i are in the car and we notice 16 messages of faith hidden on the cover of the nick cave "best of" album. this is our guide for everyone who got lost when they were 16. there are no sleeve notes and nothing written on the spine.

(if there is a moral, it's to not read bukowski right before going to sleep)

moving into an attic. i can see into it from outside. all my friends sleeping in another room. ed is kept awake by yo la tengo. i read someone else's dream diary. it's very impressive - red leather hardbound, and inside it, all of the recent dreams have me saving the world. "well what did you expect?" he asks me, and i know the dreams aren't meant to have anything to do with me.

walking round some kind of mall. but in england. looked very out of place. people in all the shops all looked at me suspiciously. i kept tripping around the mall. there was lots of glass. then i went to a film screening in my old school and there was a bunch of 5 or 6 guys on the roof singing along to a guitar. i walked passed and tried to sing but tripped and my voice fell out wrong, and so i walked on. then i stopped, turned back, and said, "i can sing normally you know" and we made friends. one of the guys looked south american and told me all about this band that only he was in. and he could play. and he was really good. and he was going to keep on finding gigs, but his last one was 6 years ago. he got me to write down my phone number, and i couldn't remember how to write my name next to it. it came out with 6s and %s and $s instead.

the walls are rippling unsettlingly. jim wants me to stay in and watch "muppet babies". leaving party. stuart's organised it. there's one person there, who keeps changing into someone else. every time she changes i realise that it's been this new person i was talking to all along. "do you want to dance?"

What the thunder said

all the different types of thunder and lightning arguing. i catch it all in my cup. but who made it? i dreamt i woke up but i didn't. karen o there and all the people in the room saying "ohhhh" repeatedly.

taking grandma shopping to M&S and going off by myself to look for something - can't recall what. i had to get across town to meet her, but the centre was flooded with clear water so i had to swim. but i couldn't swim. i just floated round in circles. so i ended up wading over and all the teenagers laughed at me.

finally get there and grandma's already left. i catch up with her and look at a cuban rhythm cd. then suddenly i'm in mexico arguing with a man about how he could allow his roses to go on sale, knowing that they're posionous. they cause pretend death, like in romeo and juliet.

i talk to a priest. even the slightest cut can get infected by the roses. he's just been infected and will die soon. he says "it's a culture of fear."

there's more. there's a whole new sense that i can't get at.

"He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it."

Douglas Adams

stuart is trying to write something. jon and i are trying to cook the same half of pizza at the same time. someone slides down my foot and breaks my red shoe.

i was out meeting jane in a tower block and i showed her my new red coat. she liked it but she was still laughing anyway. i couldn't go out with her because i had to meet my mother in a bar.

mum teaching me how to abseil and travel the animal tracks in the jungle. high wires and she's flying. she looks so cool.

trying to get somewhere before the explosion. homer simpson is the one who brought the ultimate evil from the fifth element into being. he's been playing the wrong board game. i'm walking around a familiar dream town where all the windy roads are like labyrinth corners with cottages. i leave someone and can't find him again. we have three minutes to get away from ground zero before the detonation.

sunday:

i was sitting on a cliff-top indian jewelled garden looking down at a normal road when i saw my kick-boxing instructor walking around in the dark, trying to find his car. so i started barking at him.

monday:

futuristic invasive society controlled by one man. we all wear collars like battle royale but they're like mood rings. if it goes one colour, he's sweet and nice and encouraging. if it goes another colour, he starts to hit you, and smack you, and kill you. so they're like mood rings - if you are fitting in and having the same thoughts as everyone else (i think we're at a gig, so "i love this"), then it's a good colour. the bad colour and the smacking and the killing comes when you don't agree with what the majority think. no one was allowed to dislike a band that most people liked. no one could like a band if hardly anyone had heard of them. my world was clearly thrown into chaos. can't remember how the dream ends. i suspect there may have been kissing. there's also a vague intimation of cattle prods. who knows...

today:

trying to get somewhere and describe the difference between poetry and punk-rock outside a church. i borrow jim's computer to try and do this, and i spill mini-disks that he was building a lego house with all over his keyboard. i run away to hide in shame.

we're moving a whole poem in the car. dad is driving. i am holding the duck. the duck goes for my neck even though i am trying to be nice to it so i wrestle it off and its beak breaks. i am mortified. dad says "show me" so i give it and he eats it right in front of the duck. the beak has the same texture as frazzles. the duck just stares at dad.

so we go to park and get a ticket to let us in to the huge car park, only we get stuck in the zone reserved for loading and unloading of penguins. this doesn't make sense. the duck is no substitute for a penguin so we end up reversing out. we get home and i fill the bath with water and there are little bugs everywhere. no sign of the duck.

about trying to find an open mic night and always getting moved to different ends of the pub but i kept asking questions so felt comfortable that i wouldn't miss it. but my friends got bored and kept coming and going, then eventually i left with them half way through my lunch, (big sunday roast in yorkshire pudding with gravy) and when i came back later it had been tidied away. and i thought "i was eating that" but then thought that on reflection i was quite full anyway. i have no idea whether we missed the open mic night or made it or what.

there were lots of car journeys everywhere and moving house and all sorts of things - haircuts - laughter - but the only thing i can recall with any certainty is that Jim lived in a dark attic and had pictures of Mae West and Jean Arthur on his wall.

friday:

me and jon millership crawling around the go-kart track on our elbows and knees. some sort of big lion sounds wonderful but (my handwriting is unintelligible here) why we have a party at g's house and he keeps ushering us to different random rooms. someone wants to borrow a Cast tape and can't find it so gill picks up tortoise and shellac and talked about how cute shellac are and i punch her in the face.

saturday:

penny and me got in to her house late, totally hammered. "you're still up" to sue and mark who don't live there - james has been kidnapped. suddenly we're sober and real. ransom. we go to the park. these kids sail in on a boat and sue tells me to clear out before they kill him. i am waiting to one side smoking when the kids come along and try to steal my wallet. so i do some kicking and they get bored and leave.

sunday:

waiting for annie lennox outside a bar in new york, opposite my father's new farm where he is watering plants. i am on a double decker bus. annie jumps on and we just go round and round.

all the people sleeping in the mud so we break into a big house. they say mud is warm to sleep in but i think it must actually be very wet and unpleasant. i'm looking at jess as she's comparing the sizes of machine guns.

there was so much to this dream. a whole thing. maybe i'll remember more later on... this hasn't happened for ages. i'm appalled.

everyone in this room has a broken leg. they've all got a broken leg in plaster. and it occurs to me in the dream that i can't figure out if it's a genuine gesture of good luck, or whether everyone in the room is just clumsy.

raising ghosts by the sea in oz. jess is. ghosts become visible after her spell, flickering like a video image superimposed on my dream, walking around like normal. i talk to one. they watch me all the time. they watch us all the time. ross cheers me up by giving me a tin with a bunch of joints in it. there's a bag of coke too. i smile for some reason. looking at the stars then, i need to find the one who started it all but he's not there.

wake everybody up. they're coming. we're down here. we need to get upstairs. don't use the hose. the water only makes the marshmallows bigger.

oh. i wrote it yesterday.

so i'm travelling around the country in this big family type car which has big windows with alec, becky and someone else. someone else - boy. some kind of boy. he sits between me and becky. someone else drives. past the childrens' slide that daz built and it makes me feel sad. we stop to pick up becky's gran and alec warns her i'm going to be smoking in the car. the windows open outwards at base kind of like old windows in my flat and becky's gran feigns horror as i light up. i give her my best teenage "whatEVER" look and glower out of the window looking cool.

there was something yesterday too. wrote it down somewhere else...

yesterday:

misillusion is always stronger than i like. ghost ship under us in the water there are corpses swimming around us, sliding past my feet like mud. there are tuna and barracuda which are not biting. the boy i like - his friends are there. we walk on the land and there are glass cages under every footstep.

today

queequeg sits on my bed - misconceptions - anyone can sit at this table. lots of films. edward norton is trying to escape in his wheelchair. he knows some pretty good moves. i try and find a toilet - i am being chased - but i start bleeding everywhere and suddenly i'm on an old-fashioned train carriage in full view of the platform, these guys are assessing my blood flow, so i hurridly pull all the clothes from the cupboard across the window to try and hide myself.

of course mum and dad are arguing. i want to stay and go to church with my grandma for a very important reason that i don't know but dad won't let us. but, i talk to the lady vicar and she just smiles so it's okay. then the whole family starts discussing money and all my mum can do is slice up the ciabatta and ask "who was having the fish." everyone is annoyed by her attitude.

not enough time. go to scotland. can't get on boat come straight home. not enough time. in cornwall everyone stares in to our house. the others won't let me close the curtains. out of village in car and i keep asking clark kent but he won't stop driving my car up the lane in reverse.

Zoe from first year is going to manage the writers. In return for letting her do this, she tells me i can have all her old design jobs off the man with two broken legs. i am ironing. craig is italian and comes to stay for a week but all the days are wrong. kieron will be a jedi tomorrow.

Thea wants me to go walking to Iceland with her I want to go sailing. We go to sea and turn everything off "listen this is why" just listening to the water brushing the side of the boat carries our foetus. look up and the seagulls are all hovering in mid-air outside in a strong wind. amazing to see. the big ones are giving piggy backs to the little ones and most have quiffs.

we get to an island with an enormous long manor house. some people are getting married. i think one is al pacino's daughter from Godfather III. we're in a car now, just driving around the house and father of the bride teases us not to park in the wedding car space.

we get out and a girl (i know her but can't remember who it was) gossips to me while a boy fixes something under the table we sit on. she doesn't know he's there. after a bit i interject. he has gone to sleep, not having wanted us to feel awkward about his eavesdropping. she leaves and i talk to him. he has lived in so many places - polar north south harsh. he is very interesting. i want to point at the map all the oceans i've sailed and countries i've seen but i don't get the chance. we all fall through the bottom of the manor house in to a cave where all the railway lines intersect.

instantly all the trains thunder in. no chance to get out of the way. people who miss death by one are killed by another. but some are saved. i get a shot into the guy standing in the narrowest place between two tracks. the trains graze him/me as the pass but he/me doesn't die.

people are scared. doors shoot to the ground from above - emergency exits with staircases leading up to the light. "there's bodies buried down here for 50 years they've never found" we know the doors are put there by bad people so the boy and i yell that we are hiking through the tomb-corridor to get out (with rucksacks). a couple of other guys join us.

so we get out fine and we're walking through Bath in some kind of rom-com/john hughes cut. for some reason i'm hanging back - a police officer talks to them - to my boys - at the traffic lights outside the station - and a car comes round the road the wrong way and i know it's bad can feel it but i can't stop it - and they are all gunned down right in front of me. now, i KNOW the film doesn't end like this but my alarm wakes me up anyway and i feel like shit.

i'm a researcher finding guests for my show. i have to find someone who will talk about the Project. andy's house is a pub and we're all up and down out of windows. housetrap - it's three supervillains and me one guy fights with kitchenware (i particularly remember a fish slice) and he's the one who steals the guns.

we're up in the snowy clean mountains in a cabin, not the one i'm thinking of, but we're in italy. we see the Celebrities are coming and because we are all in love with them we know we have to throw things at them. We launch snowball army at them then get in to the car and drive away. My aunt is driving. The roads are Italian. The sunrise is beautiful and we are all content. We are all clutching copies of our contracts to give to the Celebrities. Each one reads "I pelted you with 40cc snowball" repeated hundreds of times just like "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" in The Shining, except that our papers use a combination of really tacky fonts with headers in bright blue.

caroline mockford's son and i go to sort out our contracts. we have to pare them down to their bare essentials and key parts. i'm scared and i don't want to. he convinces me so in the end we go and i strip mine to what is important. there's a basement and a stuffed animal toy and i feel like a child and safe for a moment. then i get back and someone tells me caroline mockford's son has committed suicide. "some people just aren't ready"

yesterday

living in paris but the buildings are bath-coloured. very tall. on a boat going up and down. climbing in and out of buildings.

today

on the boat. want to sleep. tim and julie's wedding. can't finally get to bed and everyone's in their bunks already and apparently i've been sleeping for 6 hours. my mum ends up sleeping in the dog's basket. i nav us delicately back through the concrete. getting off the boat scott is in bed with his little new girlfriend. i've been sleeping?

they are trying to scare us with phonecalls. i am not afraid. walk around hills with japanese girl talking about magic, getting chased by scottish black ducks, over grassy swamp lands streaming with fresh water.

willow's the main character. i'm not scared. we're being kept prisoners on island by tv magician. but it's not reality tv. have to do magic in order to escape. she doesn't want to be evil. i climb to top of mast, not fixed to anything, and have to stop bell from ringing and climb down while the boat moves but the mast's not fixed to anything. it's scary but easy when i start going down. it's a piece of cake. willow is now me and we try to escape the barbed wire by pulling it down with a slinky hooked-on. suddenly realise we're not on an island we're on a hilly cross-channel ferry with traffic lights.

end of the world, dog sick, dad phones in tears, dancing to stop the house from falling down. no one can tell me why.

we were packaging up little bombs of good luck and powdery things people need everyday and firing them at people with big slingshots. the little bombs were the size of tennis balls and they burst on people's shoulders like floury fireworks. we are doing good.

sunday

jess's leaving do - round bed - ginge has the stallholder handbook. walking dogs outside gran's house. can't get the labrador off my back.

tues

mum yelling at me about my hair. she storms off. i never speak to her again. we drive off and leave her behind. oh well better go back and the car breaks down on a big hill. i feel very upset.

the others were all about boats

kieron and alec look ridiculously sheepish after the new barmaid at the Garricks catches them comparing pubic back-hair. this is the funniest thing that i have EVER SEEN. we watch an episode of thunderbirds where all the oceans are drained by a foreign power. "you have to hand it to those boys, they never do anything by halves" i go on to my band rehearsal with blondie and i kiss debbie harry twice. she's not into it and goes home early. i think we'd also tried to hire a boat at some point but i don't remember why we didn't.

i'm on the boat already and someone is holding up a rat cage with a koala asleep in the bottom of it. no one seems able to see it without my help and the koala doesn't seem too happy about this. we all share a bottle of wine but we can't drink from the neck so i construct a big straw made out of two macdonalds small ones - the way we used to - fold it in and push it down. it worked better in my dream than when i really did it.

all in a big hotel trying to go to the toilet - so many movie stars - audrey hepburn, daryl hannah, john goodman are the only ones i remember - there are no real rooms the hotel is all made up of toilets - john goodman turns the light on in one of the bathrooms for me only it's the bathroom from there's something about mary and i know people will be able to look down from across the way so i go to find another toilet which has curtains. someone tries to take a family photo but it doesn't work as all the movie stars are sultry and sarcastic teenagers

my master stole bicycles from the centre but i know he got the symbols wrong. but i haven't learnt them yet so i don't know how i know that i need to correct him. i force myself to wake up because i don't know the answer. this confusion comes into my next dream and remains unresolved.

then

we go to the beach. there's a door in the cliff wall that leads onto a beach in Yugoslavia. we go through. i get pushed into the elevator which is an arcade game. me and this transformer robot are pushed a mile straight up into the sky on the platform and nothing holds us in place. we must balance. i look at the sky, and catch glimpses of land out of the corners. i keep moving my head to avoid thinking about how high up i am and eventually it's a miracle when we return to ground level without dying. i fall out of the lift and simon little finds me in a heap on the floor not-breathing. he asks me what's wrong and i can't talk.

because i've been sick i've been sleeping with a towel over my face which is the only explanation i can think of as to why almost everything i dreamt last night was in a ninja-type framework and happened really quickly. so this all happened, but too quickly, and with shutters coming down between each part, where i woke up, coughed, replaced towel, passed out again...:

everyone yelling at a girl in my class

try to walk over big hills but cows get in way. i jump into cowshed to shift them. doesn't work. jump out. we decide to take car. an old lady has already hitched a ride. she looks evil and walks much more slowly than anybody else.

buying scripts for movies. i make one of my very own which i stroke.

someone tries to sell me a sit-com with rick astley theme song.

i get arrested after drinking with kieron in the star and he dares me to beat up strangers. i jump about and shout and punch one woman in the head not very convincingly i think, and instantly the police arrive and arrest me.
then
i am looking through the prison door at myself, like the final scene of psycho, and i can hear the officers saying about me "poor thing, she wouldn't hurt a fly as long as you hold her hand" and something about only responding to human contact. and me in the cell is smiling towards the window and the camera. i can remember this more vividly wondering "why the fuck am i smiling?"

friday

kieron was handing round his blog - it was split into brown rice paper bits on a stick. sort of crispy. everyone was nibbling at it. he sent my poems off to a schoolteacher as if they were from a schoolgirl. she was very impressed. i wasn't happy though. we ran to a very cold place where ice was falling from the trees and a boy was guarding an enclosure of dead christmas trees.

saturday

have to go underground to get what we want - in to the earth - we can fly under the earth and we have ropes and lasso things. we get caught though, and get taken to head office. queue waiting to see the headmaster - it is a game. he is Hitler, and it's a staring match. if you manage to make him look away first then it is like WW2 never happened. i see the woman who was infront of me days ago get dragged out of his office screaming. all i know is that everyone is counting on me to suceed, then i wake up.

today

so many long dreams. i know i wrote a poem in my dream and it was pretty good. but i have no idea what it was. all i can remember, vividly, was standing somewhere in the lake district, watching all the forests ignite in a circle around me and the fire spread.

we're setting fire to my car so i can claim the insurance. i grab all the stuff out of it - tapes, poetry books, my dictionary, some antifreeze. i cover it in something flammable. someone else wheels it down the lane and lights it. "don't worry," he tells me, "everyone does it."

sunday:

puffin sitting on egg the right way round - balance. alec's rats keep escaping. prepare for catherine's party with a big house. someone (whose name i can't read) lights his cigarette.

today:

pirate ship. haunted. people come and eat in the cellar restaurant. twins were born here who got sucked into the wall. people get lost in here. a map to the cellars is evil. the doors all bang in, shutting you in, and you won't get out - can't scream, but i manage to nudge the door open enough to see someone. we get out. ghosts pull the masts down. we slowly drift into the marina and are saved. he says he always feels safe when i am on board. i know he's being nice so i buy him a train ticket then have to ask for it back when some other fucker steals mine and gives me a fake one.

Friday Morning:

it's the end of the world and everyone's trying to watch the same cable show. there's a virus spreading over the whole world, turning it into a wasteland. ade cooper comes back home and i'm trying to get to a safehouse. everyone's wearing black. the house is all dark. there are a million words and it's the end of the world.

This Morning:

the woman in our old house told me my dog had cancer.

although, on reflection, i'm not sure that bastardly dream-manifestations of my over-exaggerated memories actually check email

There's no need to write this up from my notes.

I saw him - for the first time in AGES - and he was doing really well, working with words, and making things. And I managed to figure out his email password and checked his email, and told him, and he said he didn't mind - all that account has in it are emails from me anyway. Then I told him my password, and now I'm terrified that he will use it to send bad things to people in my name.

What else? The house we met in was huge. It was like a supermarket. I couldn't find anything I wanted. Um. Cat Deeley had gone feral and she jumped out of the window in to the woods. Whenever I tried to warn people they wouldn't listen to me but kept eating nachos.

I have this vague feeling that he was a bastard. But I also think he smiled a few times, and those eyes forgive everything. Just wish I hadn't told him my password...

baby james was climbing a 15 ft white wall with his palms, lightly. he sat on top of it for a while. he looked like a baby-gap humpty-dumpty but i wasn't scared.

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.

this morning:

i woke up not knowing which room is my real one - this one or the other one. the other one is a very big ballroom-sized room, with high ceilings and white walls except i can't see any of them. the windows look out onto nothingess, and i sleep in a double bed with my head under a waterfall. the rest of the room is empty, though i see unidentifyable people meandering round the edges. i am asked to move my bed to a more healthy position. it is beautiful but it is confinement. or else there's this room that i just woke up in. i woke up genuinely not knowing which is my real room.

sat 30 aug

someone is trying to make me think that there's a ghost in the house. the box of pink and blue feathers that we keep in the kitchen is empty now, because the breeze sweeps them around the air in my house all day long. tonight i see feathers blow around again from a freshly-filled box. i know it's the FBI, because only americans would be that stupid as to think this will trick me.

weds 27 aug

there's been a murder. the man inside the sun saw everything. me and the old lady scamming to buy all the alcohol put everyone in prison. meg came to stay and she smelt of doctors and sick people. we are celebrating because the war is over.

thurs 28 aug

came out of the shop and watched mars rushing round and round the sky like superman, colours bleeding into the moon. then i saw the little kid up the tree behind me with the planet attached to a very long piece of string attached to a stick. everyone laughed at me as soon as i figured it out so i got in my car and left.

fri 29 aug

i was sleeping in the back seat. mym's driving. the severn bridge is actually a jungle. i open my eyes and we've crashed on side. wheel spinning. mum is unconscious on the railway tracks. i move everything out of the way. other people come and take her away. it's the last day of the century. then jon takes me to buckingham palace for dinner. all my old school aquaintances are there. i have to sit on a table with brand new people. i take my knickers off and put them on the table. this is a protest and i am sulking. they are peach coloured.

Sun 24 Aug

i've sought out copyright details already. a 15-page poem about trout / other fish. i know it's murkym gloomy. people know me as a novelist already. i write under an assumed name. i'm really good and i've been to stay with a strange girl in what looks like a lunatic asylum. the family in the house next door's trees keep on bursting into flames. "do you think they've noticed."

i'm in my own band and we're playing a gig. we're giant cockroaches. i just have to wipe away the footprints that link me to the murder.

who cares about writing poems. i just want to dance.

these are from sat 16:

we're visiting jess in hospital. it's a hospital combined with a museum and an ikea. it's all i can do to stop the others from tearing up the exhibits to take the roman art home. we get to jess's room an hour later and she's really fucked off because she's had to entertain my parents for the past hour. i apologise and go back down to find jane and kieron ripping a pair of ancient skies off the wall.

---

trying to cross a massive ice flow with mum and dad and fred astaire. we are indoors. i want to rush on ahead but i realise fred has a better eye for the thing patches than me. he and dad are pushing all the ice forwards, so that there are no thin bits left. i slip off the end but manage to catch hold of a ringbinder which takes my weight. mum sits on top of the mountain and i realise that the whole ice flow is made of ringbinders.

---

everyone drives past this big old cathedral in town and undoes the top button of their blouses. no one wants to seem too conservative.

we're in a place where they're giving away rows of buildings to people who want to humiliate their enemies. there's a little kid who grabs me and lines me up against the streetlights. he's making me eat worms in front of everyone. why do you want me to eat worms you fucker?

needing to leave the country. go to david charrington's. he fixes drinks while i'm not there and jess realises something very important. Conran and Aikin sit around drinking beer and vodka before emigrating. they're not worried.

before i go i bring my lover back home to meet my dad and my brother, who i know will not approve of him because he is a circus clown and performer, and this is the 1940s. we are under our stall in the street; it is raining, we're under a big umbrella. my brother almost walks straight past but we make eye contact. he smiles. i burst into tears. we haven't met in years. then he sees my lover, who says nothing, but smiles shyly. all my brother says, sternly, is "you have to leave the country now. it's time."

the little girl beckons to me. she wants to ask me a question but she's scared of the company i'm in. i excuse myself from the journalists. "yes janet?" i smile. "have you lost my letter?" no. i reassure her. i haven't lost her letter. but i suddenly realise i've lost a beermat that kieron wanted me to show to someone. i feel very guilty and john walker is not helping. he is nodding.

we're watching a show about how extreme sports affects the numbers of trout in our waters. after it's finished i take everyone to my parents' home, in New York, for Christmas. my parents have turned into REAL italians. mum has jewellery, big handbags, fur coat. dad wears a brown overcoat and he has a moustache again. they have adopted a new son to replace me. my old poetry tutor is there. he's put on a little weight, which suits him. he starts to bang a big metal tray with his right hand. we just stare at him but he says he's happy. if water flows into a village, somewhere it has to flow out.

end of something party. i was walking home. sidled down the sheer side of a hill, neatly dropping onto tree roots halfway down like a pro. make eye contact with a guy who happened to be watching. i smile and run away.

i go into the bar that is between me and the way home. it's a nature park too. there are lots of fluffy border collies everywhere with signs saying "this dog needs a new heart".

i need to get out so i can get home. i can hear all the big brother vips lining up behind me.

i find a door and go out, have to walk through the beer garden to reach the footpath - tables are being cleared by staff. i step around onto a stack of chairs on the floor, and put my foot straight through the face of a corpse that is stacked there too. "oh - he's dead" giggles one of the staff. "ah" i say and leave for the footpath.

we were leaving Trinidad by plane but none of the windows would work, and a bit of the wing fell off and i was like "no way am i flying anywhere on this thing" so we go for a ferry instead. as it's leaving it scrapes past the cliffs and we uproot half a tree. it's kind of stuck between the deck and the waterline. "no" i say and dive into the water and swim to shore. the ferry takes off and no one knows what to do. they fly too.

i'm ashore now, relieved, and looking for a sweetshop. i need sugar. liquorish strings. and sour cola bottles. i think charlie is in charge of the shop, and she's still 16.

i leave and join my mum in a villa carved out of rock. it's sicily, but it looks like we're on mars. the rocks are red, the villa, the sky everything is red. huge stones tumble down infront of us to the sea. i climb up and sit on the roof and wait.

some tiny kid keeps bringing me an old telephone, so he can transfer all the calls the germans are making to me. all the kid ever says when he brings me the phone is "bye". i don't speak german so i never accept the charges. the landscape is just stopped there and i'm waiting.

i'm up to date now.

at last.

and i have free internet.

no new dreams last night. so this is from a wednesday after 11th November 2001:

teacher hates me says i'm a troublemaker is going to give me a one-to-one with the doctor. no one has a one-to-one with the doctor. like a comic strip. the one-to-one will be a dream within a dream that i can see now before it happens it will be a post-mortem while i'm still alive. they'll clamp my ribcage and snap my chest open while i'm still conscious.

i run away but everyone's on the streets looking for me with shotguns. no one knows what i look like so i dodge them. i have 2 friends with rifles who walk with me, protecting me. one is loveday kitto. there's no freedom without guns.

i see no god so i make up my own commandments like not using public toilets and never answering the phone when entertaining.

yesterday:

jon kept asking me to dye his hair orange and i said you do realise it will be orange don't you and he said no it won't and told me to shut up and just dye it.

mon 21? july

we're all studying in a group at the hospital. after it's our turn i go to find cigarettes and look up people's health records. i have a lot of problems getting the lights on and off and the office looks like the girls' toilets. when i'm finally done i go outside and see mark. he was new. "you're coming in here every night, stealing people's drug supplies - i've been watching you." "no - no i'm not on drugs - no" i scream and he says he won't tell anyone tonight. he'll see me tomorrow. i go back to my flat in the tower block. the next day, i am a little late for the lesson. everone leaves except me and mark. he smiles and says he won't tell this time - everyone deserves a second chance. i begin to cry and he strokes my hair and i know everything will be okay.

thurs 24

my husband is dead and i can't bear to give away any of his shirts. i keep looking at views. i'm on trial suddenly to see if i've ever changed. i say i haven't changed here because here is home, but i changed somewhere else, somewhere different, as soon as i'd gone away from this place. then an old man in the audience stands up and says that he could never move away from anywhere unless he'd felt like he'd changed. i say, "but i have changed", but they condemn me anyway. they say that always behaving the same in one particular place is like never having changed in any place at all.

have been slack. time is money. something. so here are the fragments i half scribbled from the last few weeks:

sat

i left my books in a bookshop for storage. i was afraid people in the shop might think they were for sale on the shelves, so i checked with the guy and told him no that's fine sell them for £15.

tues

i was being hunted so i went to cumbria to hide. alec parked my car for me. he parked over a bug and it was trapped in his footrest or the rear door. then miles came and read me his film script which he knew off by heart. he goes swimming with mum and dad. miles writes me a letter about how not talking to people and having too much space is fine. we are closer. questions questions and i feel reassured.

sat 5th

welcome to the doll house

mon 7th

what were we doing in auschwitz? i was making cakes. the old men said they'd had enough. then we walked up hills and there were bogs everywhere and motorways. and i was at work.

weds

the poor black lab with the flies weeping out of the sore under his eye. i go to help the man more and he tells me i can help in the kitchen. all the boys came. claire nodded to me, turned and went upstairs. she didn't want to disturb me.

sun 13

we were prisoners we were slaves we are going to be executed then the boss a kind silverhaired old man says no, and set us free. i fell asleep with joel in my arms we were saved. enormous halls all shiny and silver. we drive away through the snow slides and susie never got the chance to embroider the lace on the front of the nightgown she made me.

tues 15

they came round to play with me in my head. i finally played a song and they left because my amp was too small. so i went mad at the boy. he backed down. i am okay.

today

Ben's leaving do in topsham/Los Angeles. everyone was worried about how the different people would get on - topsham folk, boyz from the hood and ramblers in gators who would win? i went to the last pub first and worked my way backwards to find them. mum was making cucumber sandwiches.


will try to update regliar-like soon...

this was the following friday...:

we're going to the opera only we're ten minutes late so we have to wait by the doors for one of the songs to finish. lauren bacall is late too. she arrives by helicopter which lets her out in the middle of the actual stage. she doesn't understand what's going on. silly lauren. everyone knows she's old.

house above beach. dog in garden with bird. big snake - dad ran out to save the dog and bring him in. seeing lots of fish on bicycles. tiny. maybe an inch in height each. i'm trying to take their photos.

lots of toys and silly games being launched into the sea. i'm going to sail the atlantic with bryan.

jess uncovers a mystery about a shed where a man used to gas people to death. they think i'm jewish and lock me up in the attic with all the others.

it's all good fun and games.





that was tuesday last week. i'll catch up on the rest soon...

this was found on the morning of friday 13th:

staying up in the mountains with tim julie claire and 2 other people. i go out for a cigarette and look down at the town. the centre is a little hilly, and i see a ring around the rest of it. i see things flying past in the air. it's lots of ash, and molten lava. the volcano is exploding. the town is slowly being covered with molten lava, down in the basin at the bottom of the mountains. "come here" i struggle to say, "come here." gradually people come up and look. no one knows what to do. i say we have to leave now because i know the lava will continue to rise and, anyway, the eruption might get bigger, so we have to get away. i have my car, but tim julie and claire decide to walk. the other two and i drive away. winding up the hills opposite the volcano i look down and can see the three of them on the road below, like pilgrims, ash and lava drifting past them all the time, their heads down, walking one behind the other, striking a path through the rich brown rock and soil. i become certain that the town below was in hell, and that we have done well to get away while we can.

jess asks me to help her mind. she asks me to help her find the right sized hat, as all the ones she finds are too small. "it's to keep the brains in," she explains i think. i wake up not knowing where i am or what day it is.

i was eating prawn sandwiches

julie and i came back to my house for lunch but it was in exeter. we slept through lunch which meant we'd overslept and would be late back to work. we walked towards work for five minutes before i realised my car was still outside my house - if we didn't take it then it meant another twenty minutes walking. i sent julie back to the car (for some reason even though i was the one with the keys) and while she was gone i went and checked myself into the lunatic asylum behind me. they gave me some paperwork to do but i couldn't fill it in because i'd forgotten how to write. i was clutching the pen in my fist, stabbing the pages with it, getting more and more irate that i couldn't get my name onto the paper. anyway they took the papers away and when they came back i was lifting my bag up and saying "well anyway, i'm just off to work then". "oh no" they said, "it doesn't work like that here." "can't i just go to work and come back to the asylum at night?" i asked. "oh no" they said and went off to try and do my paperwork for me. so i ran away.

there was a nurse shark in the water with us and my best friend who i've never met before was holding its nose shut calmly. she told me to dive down and hold my breath - find somewhere to hide under the rocks - and the shark would get bored and go away. it worked. so we clambered out of the water into a glass pagoda. 360 degrees of flat calm ocean views. then i saw some dolphins and we watched the dawn. after that we got to the jungle and i was telling everyone that david seamen was going to man city but no one would believe me. i was quite drunk at this point and dad said i was talking rubbish so i called him a cunt. then i was upset and looked into the mirror. sam orchard came and put his hand on my shoulder and said "you just have to be who you are". i woke up very upset.

this morning:

"we've time travelled and noone wants to touch anything and we don't know what to do. "is this the past or the future it all looks the same" i say "it's okay i've seen back to the future" and we're okay. we sit there."

it was quite boring. i don't remember any details. it all looked grey to me.

the short bald man looks at me weirdly and says "is this how you kill people in your country? in my home we do it much more quickly." the only thing else i know is that the lightning was super-thick and on fire.

it's the end of the world. we're the last humans alive. i'm an advisor to someone. i have two very important duties. i can't remember what they are. we live in the foreground of a nuclear power station. how does it end?

new year's eve. huw asks me out. my mum is left in alone. dad's just absent. we go with some friends to a christian church do thing. it's downstairs. i don't want to be here. i think about my mum. so i go and other people follow me out.

we don't go to george square, we go to a big manor house and break in. i find a way to keep the door from locking us in using elastic bands and a plaster (i think).

eventually the alarm does go off because huw and his friends have made a machine explode by trying to scan someone's head whilst wearing white lab coats. but we get out. but the machine sets fire to things.

i go back to the manor house the next day because they offer me a job.

the boss (who is offering me a job) is the richest man in town - he also wants me to marry his son. the son is cute but i'm not sure. it feels wrong to me. we all go outside to clear our heads. everyone suddenly has a dog. the morning is early, green, misty and brisk. i don't have a dog.

i realise that i'm selling my soul, and then i suddenly notice that i'm dr jekyll and mr hyde.

6:59 am thursday morning

"swimming instructor in a pool in a desert in nowhere. this little girl comes and is scared but i reassure her. i tell her how i wasn't a strong swimmer in school, but now i'm strong enough to save people, and i lead a good life. it's cool actually - i'm not baywatch bikini babe woman - i'm me, and it feels good."

snow fire

there are three of us trying to get to sleep in sleeping bags, in a trench that's been dug for us in the snow. my sleeping bag is going to catch fire if i stay in this position - i'm lower down than the others, so i put the fire out to protect myself. "well done" they sneer, and i have to relight it with my lighter.

but, it was only burning off of the snow, so i'm hunched in my sleeping bag with a 59p refillable lighter trying to spark up the snow. little bits catch. maybe a couple of square inches here and there, and it looks like magic to me, but the little bits all go out. the others are angry. so i go back to the library.

stephen is reading about the life of dreams from a big brown cartoon book. then jess comes in and says that the toilets on that level are shut and please can we all use the ones on the top floor. she and stephen argue over who gets to use the ladies'. i go home and try to stop my flat from getting burgled by the monster who lit our snow fire, and i realise it was a set-up all along.

i'm going out with tom/marc (he's one person). we go to the beach for the day with tom/marc's family. they don't like me as they see i am too neurotic. marc's mother chooses to ignore me entirely and at the end of the day says "we keep passing that girl in blue - could someone please tell me who she is?" marc says "that's my girlfriend and i love her".

so he and i go back to his flat and spend the next day in bed inventing board games. tom/marc's friend is cynical and very attractive. he seems more realistic to me. they have a party tonight in their attic. i get bored and go and hang out of tom's bedroom window.

it's 6am in london and 2 boys have fallen asleep on the pavement across the road, flat on their backs, with their t-shirts pulled up over their heads, revealing their chests, both non-furry. they wake up and go and sit by the wall, pulling their t-shirts back down, looking confused. they don't know where they are. i am definitely bored by now and decide i should have gone out with the cynical boy after all.

so i woke up then went back to sleep for 20 minutes and it all ends badly. some of us end up together and some of us are killed in the stampede.

a saturday in april 2001:

Village of the suicides. they are all smiling. some of them can't be suicides — they're too elaborate, yet I know they all are, even the ones with blood patterns like frost on a window. I think the river is running red, and all the rooms have aquariums below them with hungry sharks snapping at our ankles. Everyone is chain smoking and trying to drink alcohol. But they are all doing it quite cheerfully. On the outside, no one seems perturbed by the suicides. I only came to find somewhere to eat.

it was this huge ridiculous rambling time and i was trying to sleep and a black bony demony thing was choking me. i actually couldn't breathe. kind of like in an approaching death way. then i snapped out of it and sarah michelle gellar was sitting on my bed and she said "maybe i should tell buffy". then i realised that i wasn't really me, only the outer shell of me, and that the strong brave me was inside somewhere else and i had absolutely no idea how to get hold of her. then i thought things were bad. and then life was beautiful for a minute because i knew that at least i had a strong person inside somewhere. then buffy wandered off. that's about it.

great.

i want to go out on the water in a rowboat, but caroline won't let me. she says it's too dangerous and as i look down at the bay i can see all the men coming back. they carry their rowing boats on their backs in sixes, and they rush past wearing flat-caps like a bbc dramatisation. i look at the waves and they're getting bigger and bigger. getting bigger and swamping the beach, and the houses at the bottom of the hill. we all press back into the hillside, trying to get into a house that's been carved into the earth, but we can't get in. now the wave is of relentlessly increasing tidal wave proportions. it is high above us and the sky turns black. it smashes against the edge of the hill before us, which soaks up the impact, but then all the crest bounces over us, only now it's picked up loads of mud and grime from the ground. we are drenched. we are all soaked. the wave recedes. i am covered in thick blck mud. i am not impressed.