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.