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