colin firth

it was the end of the world again only this time with alien-like dinosaurs, all grey and about 4 foot tall, with teeth like velociraptors, and a couple of them were giant T-rex sized. we were in the safe place - the place in the film where you know "they could not possibly kill us here" and i know they're coming so we drive out as the t-rex one eats the movie theater. as we leave we pass my parents' house and i suddenly realise that we have to stop and go look for them, even though i know that they are dead, but i have to know and i have to see them dead so we go back but get distracted by a woman who i think has dogs.

some of it was in turkey.

crossing the carpark on my own to get to the factory and dad tells me not to cross the parking lot on my own. i ask him why and he says "because it's forbidden."

i had to go to london to post something, so i flew into heathrow, went to the post office and then tried to find my way back to the boarding gate. then i realised that actually bil's house in somerville was on the opposite side of the thames to the houses of parliament, and it was snowing, so i didn't need to fly anywhere. i thought i'd go and see my parents, but they weren't in woodbury any more so i hitched a ride with some random guy into topsham, and read my book on the way. i realised i was being rude and so looked up and pointed out some monkeys that were "oohing" and "aahing" on the roadside. one of them jumped at his window and he got a little scared.

cycling through london bump into robin who shows me leaflet of aberdeen fishing thing. he said he didn't care very much for perthshire. the queen is talking at a parade but i don't want to get stuck in the crowds so i try to cycle through a sidestreet instead.

then we're all being lifted off for some conference. jess is wearing a grey suit with a blue stripey shirt, trying to persuade me to only take t-shirts. i've lost my bag though, so i don't have anything. even though we're only going to oxford, the company wants to fly us. we all agree this is ridiculous.

and also there's one guy who's laying bear traps to try and get me. so i walk around and annoy him by missing them. i have to go to get something white so that i can play chess (the white piece is missing) and also get into the restaurant and the big round table you're allowed to smoke at.

then someone takes us for a walk along the canal and all the kids dive in and go swimming but we see all these upturned hands everywhere which mean we shouldn't go in. there are dead things in the water i think but the water is dark and clean and it feels like bradford upon avon. my feet are muddy and i go and change the kitchen roll holder for jess who's having some troubles in the kitchen.

i'm sailing and we set out to win the world. we capsize halfway through the race. i forget the rest.

sailing with dad in a loch at the very top of scotland. it's a barren wasteland and there are dead babies everywhere. the boats are getting bigger. there are abandoned castles on the hills surrounding the lake.

we kidnap some children, only it starts off by watching the fairy queen kidnap juliette binoche who is getting younger and is very happy about it. she's going to start it on two idiots.

we all prance around the house in a musical comedy while the kidnapped kids stay inside and outside in grandma's garden a father and son are moaning that they don't get to play enough together, not enough to make his feet hurt: "and my feet don't hurt" he sings, "no his feet don't hurt" his son sings. so we make them play together a lot more until: "Man, do my feet hurt" sings the father, "Yeah, do his feet hurt" sings the son.

this musical gets really tedious and the finale is a song that everyone sings: "we're not quite the same as before / but we're still not happy"

after everyone leaves i stack up the dishwasher with a psycho killer woman. she has lots of glasses but hasn't noticed a space so i say "there's room for one glass there". she looks at me like she's going to fucking kill me then and there. "fine" i think, and after she's done and has left, i reopen the dishwasher to remove my hairbrush that she put in there too.

on the moon. we're all wearing black leather - the girls have black leather length netball skirts with zippers on the side. i watch my boss go round to people with a visa card - once he inserts the card, that person loses their personality and becomes a drone. i'm scared about this, but as i run down the tunnels to try and tell the superhero, mars crashes into us.

or rather, it spontaneously disintegrates about 4 foot above everyone's heads and we all get covered in mars dust. but, you only get covered if you look at it. and i was too scared to look it straight in the face, so my boss tries to get me to watch it on action replay in an IMAX but i sneak away before it comes too close as i don't want to get covered in mars dust. i'm thinking something day of the triffids-esque.

i run away further to try and organise an underground but no one's interested. they all have credit cards.

everything started with the letter A

it started with a kid showing me a green and blue wax crayon drawing it had done, thinking i was its mother. i forget the middle bit, so i'll skip to the end: i killed a man with one shot to the chest, and i don't think that self-defence was my reasoning. a group of us were arrested, but i was going to get put on trial for murder. i escaped from jail with some guy, but then the police told my friends that they'd all get tried for murder if i wasn't there. so i went back and told the police to take me in so my friend could go. i was somewhere like texas, and i knew that i was guilty, and that they were going to execute me.

the trial was the very next day, in the T-station, and i was leant forward over the witness box like a kid and i made a terrible impression on the judge, who realised i was a stammering, nervous, idiotic wreck who was clearly guilty of first degree murder.

i went back to my cell, in the pub, and everyone had figured out that they weren't on death row any more and they were all glad, but unhappy for me. i had to await my sentencing, which would happen the next day, and i went to sleep knowing i would be killed in the morning.

then the next day i went back before the judge and she smiled and laughed at me - "you didn't really think you'd be put to death did you? you've got blonde hair, and you're a girl, and you're white! we'll never put you to death!" i smile and sit down in the T-station and start to cry.

zombies. coming into the house. two girls. they seem quite nice. they just want somewhere to sleep. but i know that really they just want to eat our flesh. why doesn't anyone else realise? they are confused by the zombies' kindness. so i repeatedly punch the one with blonde hair in the face to kill her, fogetting that of course you can't kill a zombie just by punching it in the face - i end up tying a towel around her head and punching her through that as i don't like her looking at me. but my arm is weak and in the end a boy has to finish her off for me. i forget what happened to the other one.

*wake up - go to bathroom - have glass of water*

it's an alternative ending to 28 days later and i'm being played by meryl streep. all the rage-infected people are dead, and we go to Christopher Eccleston's manor house to celebrate. there are lots of people in wheelchairs and i'm relieved when no one asks me to wear a special dress. i see blood on the floor though and i know that the rage-infected people are coming. we get back on the bus. we drive out through greece and someone cuts us up and suddenly we're out of the set and the film's over.

the kid from donnie darko (watched pleasantville last night) is nailing me and mary to crosses and i'm calling 911 screaming into the phone as he grabs my ankle, drags me accross the shiny kitchen floor and hammers a nail right through the bones into the wood. somehow we talk him down and he rips the nails out and lets us off. so then i turn back time and he doesn't hurt us and everything's fixed.

then we're in a big house somewhere but i'm not sure where and i can't remember anything. something about wolves, perhaps, or a big dog?

(by the way, mary is a character from this long poem i've been working on for the past 6 months or so that i finished yesterday. i didn't really know what she would look like, but she was in my dream with me. that makes me happy. although the fact that we were both being crucified is somewhat disturbing, for a variety of different reasons.)

meeting john in a coffeeshop but it's raining and he arrives via the back and i see him through the window shake himself like a dog to get the water off his back.

what the fuck were we talking about?

can't remember how i ditched my parents but there were these lions roaming loose around the hotel complex. i had a towel round my waist and faced the wall of the building. it sort of ignored me but i knew it was just waiting for me to move before it pounced. i made a run for the big glass doors of the hotel and managed to get inside and the lion slammed into the door. i called the two security guards who were cretins from east anglia and they somehow managed to let the lion into the hotel. it ran straight into two tourists and ate their golden labrador. some old guy, jane horrocks and i scramble and manage to get into this glass lift, but then i fall out of it halfway up the building and have to cling on til we get to the top floor - it wasn't glass it was no just walls. we don't know which floor the lion is on now and i realise a lift is a really stupid idea because if the doors open and the lion's right there, we won't be able to shut the doors in time before it pounces.

the cow in the cage was tremendously important and symbolic for some reason. we were all trying to get it out. john was getting in a fight with these japanese kids who were throwing basketballs at his face. other people were in the house. we're on Mass Ave in a different dimension and my boss pops up to say "the promises of a million children, sold to another world" before vanishing.

very strange things

what do you get if you cross akira with eastenders? a lot of japanese people on motorbikes with cockney accents getting killed. and ooh the baby with the big head. then i dreamt that boston was actually in aberdeenshire, and so it wasn't really very far away at all...

end of the world - nazis coming onto the island. mum dad and i rush to set the dynamite in the cake shop. we get it in but i think we're going to die anyway.

scott took me swimming around a fictional island where there was a beautiful sunken temple that magnetically attracts fish. i said i wanted to scuba dive so we were going to buy then i had to meet my dad in a basement bar. the water in the sea was so warm and clear, and the sand was perfect white.

okay here it is, from the other night:

flight in plane bus over city of boston just hang on - all the boats on the water it's in the summer - then go over an invisible rollercoaster, tracing it from above. i have really bad vertigo. we get dropped onto other side. i can't go back up. i find a staircase. "i'll be fine, but i don't know where we're staying or how to get there" then superman is there. he walks down the stairs (but with yellow boots, not red) and he picks me up. i put my arms up around his neck and give him a kiss on the cheek. "i thought it was about time" he says and i realise that i'm clark kent.

so he flies me to this carpark, drops me off, in the middle of a massive fight. everyone has baseball bats - people of all ages. everyone eventually pauses, scared. i say "here's what you do, you go around twatting everything until you don't feel like hitting anymore." and they all stop. then for some reason we watch a biology class of girls watching guinea pigs mating in a model city. i wake up just as one of the guinea pigs jumps onto my face.

dammit i forgot to bring my notebook to work.

last night all i remember is being sarcastic at the girls i work with when one of them said "why would you be hungover?", but on SATURDAY night i had a dream about SUPERMAN! he came and flew me away and i kissed him on the cheek. it was WONDERFUL. more of that when i get home and find my notebook.

dammit.

i went to the cinema by myself to watch wizard of oz - different edit. lots of people there with their families. interval - all leave. not wanting to be alone i go smoke a cigarette and sunbathe. when i get back i've lost my trousers. can't go back in. then suddenly i'm trying to get into my grandmother's house with no trousers and there's a woman called jane who says she's a new member of our family.

at my grandparents' house with alec and beccy watching a johnny depp film. we've all seen it before. "would anyone like to go, to the pub?" alec asks tentatively. i shoot him an evil look - we're about to eat, and i know my mum and my grandmother have been cooking, and it would be very rude of us to leave now. but i kinda want to go to the pub. but, as beccy and i don't respond, we just sit and watch johnny depp running through telephone boxes. "johnny depp can run through ANYthing"

neighbours something looking with me at all these little green frogs, all with arms by sides, legs pointed, as though they'd been gun-shot, heads stabled into a wooden plank. there were 25 - 30 of them.

then i'm inside on the phone to dom when this penguin chick flies into the garden outside. flies. and it lands neatly and i'm like "i didn't know penguins could fly" then he takes off by springing up really high - maybe 10 feet, with real momentum like he's just going to rocket up into the air, but then just falls straight back down again and lands really heavily on his feet. it really hurts him. he falls over and rolls around on the ground hugging his feet with his flippers in agony. "i guess they can't."

mary b driving me backwards up to this house, at top speed, where i lived in another dream one time. we go in and she's turned into a boy. i regret not having walked around this dream garden more often, so we walk around it now. pink flowers everywhere - so beautiful. there are lots of wild animals, strange looking blue birds. i try to touch one and a loud voice booming out over speakers says "you have five minutes remaining."

on holiday in japan get followed home by odd japanese boy with red hair and foot-long fingernails. i walk away even though he likes me.

war is coming and those of us who didn't get out fast enough get put into a japanese POW camp. i think about the certain people i know who certainly saw this coming and who got away in time. not me, though.

as i realise the end is coming i go back to find this japanese boy who has changed, but it is still him. a mutual friend of ours arranges it and i go help this boy push a ladder-shelf into the wall. he stares at me. we go back to my block. he brings the girl he is sleeping with. luckily i don't think anyone else notices how foolish i am, so he then leaves with her with little embarassment on my part.

war is here and they drop the bombs. three little nuclear bombs right in the POW camp. we have no idea if this is the japanese revenge or if it is the americans missing again. they go off right behind us, but we can almost outrun them. we try to dive behind furniture to hide, and i find the door to a bedroom in my parents' old house to hide behind.

after it's over, i'm shaken by the sound of pebbles being thrown at our bathroom window. it's julie andrews looking for her boyfriend. he's from coronation street. i point her in the right direction.

i go to look for the survivors. everything is in ruins. i am so glad to see the faces i recognise. but i don't see jane and kieron. they went somewhere to die together and i don't see them anywhere. jim ran just before the bombs hit, and i don't know if he was running away, or running into the actual blast. i don't see him anywhere either.

i look for them in this other house, a northern house, where miss.popoff is nagging her husband about the mess of the ruined house. "well, we have just had a fooking nuclear war, pet..." he says. everyone laughs.

some of us find our way up north. we think it must be morecambe bay. "clear white sand" people are saying as they go outside, but i can't leave the house, so i just stay indoors.

showing me around her house and the fountain stopped working. this was a very long dream and, disappointingly, all i can rememeber really is that the fountain stopped working but my mum would have liked it. if i remember any more i'll update later...

kimya dawson doesn't sing her own songs - there's a third girl. she makes us sing first though and i swear she changes the lyrics. i am wearing a pair of long boots. i like zipping them up and down in the club.

i go to this hotel at the top of a city like a james bond film and this little kid won't let me out on the balcony to smoke. i know his parents aren't about so i start swearing at him. he tears up my cigarettes, which are very long and thin, and leaves the tobacco all over the desk. then his mum comes in.

she takes me down to the lizard room where she tries to get me to handle two lizards she is pouring into a large tank. "they don't bite you know..." but i don't want to. they go in the water and their default setting is sleep. but you can wake them by smacking your lips together. she then leaves me in there, and i enjoy letting them sleep, then waking them.

then i notice that they're waking up more alertly each time, and that they are growing in size. or at least that my awareness of them is growing in size. they follow me, from below then above the water mark, and there's nothing between them and me. i start to back up to the door, but then one of them puts an elbow on the tank's edge and says "oh i wouldn't worry, HE's only got one leg and a fin - i'm QUITE all right..." we talk for a bit, then i leave to go to the beach.

everyone stopped sorting books out in the office because of the invisible bugs. screaming like girls and only zoe and i carried on working, rolling our eyes at the "girls".

watching a scary film with my mum. her telling people she is going to buy me a vibrator. "what? what?" me. she runs me a bath - a beautiful blue lagoon like bath. i tell her to get out.

yesterday:

keep trying to cross the fence. go upstairs to a psychadelic bar-b-q. kelly osbourne's dogs have become giraffes. i don't recognise mark and neil but go to marks and spencers after ripping a big hole in my tights. then have big odd sleepover with jess, a crying girl and some guys, where Yahoo provides us with modern art. my dad tells my friend's mum, "to think that the most i'll ever know about poetry is stuff i learned in school when i was 16. what a waste..."

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.