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.