I went for a walk through a chocolate box village with a girl I sometimes see in my dreams - she isn't someone I know in real life, although she reminds me of two 'friends' who betrayed me. She stopped me to show me some unusual architecture - it’s Masonic, she told me. That’s why there’s no windows on the outside. The owner was hanging out in the doorway, he overheard her and enthusiastically agreed that it was and would we like to see inside? He looked like a jumper-y, nerdy history dude so we hastily agreed and he showed us around.

In the cellar was a tunnel. COOL! We asked if we could explore it and he warned us it wasn’t a good idea. Why not?  We asked. Well, he said, no one knows where it ends. It’s very deep. But if you do go in, look out for long bones.

We nervously asked what he meant by such an ominous statement and he told us the story of how his brother went into the tunnel when they were younger, got confused in the dark, and believed he was walking out of the tunnel when in actuality he was walking deeper and deeper into the earth. He never came out, they assume he eventually starved and his bones are in the tunnel somewhere and if we see them he would like to know, so he would finally know what happened to his disappeared brother. So he could have peace.

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I dreamed I was running Wallingford youth club, so as I prepared the empty building I talked to my colleague, waiting for the kids to arrive.

My colleague then told me in no uncertain terms this was not a youth club any more.

I was outraged – what did he mean it wasn’t a youth club? That was my job. Youth worker. He said he’d had to change its purpose, given the circumstances (I was beginning to get an idea of why it was so empty).

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"What?" I asked. "What have you changed it to?"

"A nightclub" he replied, stupidly.

He’d changed the Youth Club into a fucking night club.

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I was watching a period drama on the tv but had the ability to zoom in and close up on what was happening in the background.  There was a Victorian character standing on the side of a hill and way behind her down in the valley I could see the grounds of a manor house. I zoomed in and realised there was a devil worshipping ritual happening (dead kids/ people in hoods). I was the only person in the country who noticed it and it ended up bringing down the whole of the Tory government because it turned out the manor house behind where they were filming was owned by a Tory peer. 

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The other day I dreamt that I knew two homosexual nazis in an intensely passionate relationship. They couldn't keep their hands off each other and I was their only confidante. Every now and then I'd walk around a corner or something and catch them and be like "GUYS BE CAREFUL. It's fine for me to catch you but what if Goebbels had!" We were all really afraid of Goebbels. But not like 'murderous dictator' scared, more like 'he's a mean teacher' scared.

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Jacqueline White from Kimmy Schmidt was a floating head – her body was walking around on its own and I was trying to convince her to get back together with it, but she wasn’t interested. Her perkiness was unsettling me more than her physical separation, which wasn’t gory in any way, it just was.

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The night before last I was definitely pregnant, I don't remember the rest of the dream but I was definitely looking after my bump and then last night I had a toddler -that I don't think was mine- that I was protecting from being captured and killed by some form of mafia. At one point I hid her behind me to sidle out a cafe, walking sideways so the bad guy in front of me didn't recognise her... then I was running through small Italian alleyways and streets with her getting away.

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I decided to go back to school. It wasn't any of my actual schools, but one of my imagination. It was built like a tower with a big spiral staircase in the middle, uncountable amount of floors and hundreds of classrooms circling the stairwell.

I took myself to the admin office and sat, thinking about what course I should do. I hadn't decided yet, but I knew that I wanted to do something different. I was stuck in a rut and felt like education was a good way out of it. I can't remember what I signed up for in the end - it turned out not to be that important.

I went to go to my first class and was shuffled into a small corridor outside the classroom. There were people there from my school days, years ago, that I haven't seen since childhood. We were packed in like sardines and it was making me anxious. I asked one of my old school friends to step back a bit, saying this was clearly NOT two metres, and he just smiled in that way people do when they think you're overreacting. It's fine, he said, don't worry. Besides, there wasn't any space for him to move back anyway.

I put my arm out in front of me to demonstrate how little space there was between us - my hand lay flat on his chest - and tried to step back away from him to increase the space to two metres. But there were students filing in from behind me, blocking me in. I started to panic. I didn't want to miss my first class, but the space was just getting smaller and smaller. We were all shoulder to shoulder, chest to chest. I could feel the collective breath in the room. Someone coughed at the far end and everyone shuffled, but there was nowhere to go.

I saw my sister in the crowd. She pushed through people to get to me, because she could see I was panicking. But she looked at me as if I was being dramatic, over emotional, silly. 'Don't worry,' she said. 'Schools are open and we'll be fine.' She's a nurse, she should know. 'No,' I told her, my voice an anxious squeak. 'You're wrong. This is wrong. We need more space. We need two metres. We shouldn't be here. Think of all the people. It's not safe.' 'We'll be fine,' she said, patting my arm. 'We're young, we're healthy. We'll be fine.' 'But think of all the other people,' I said. 'It's all lies,' I said. 'Why aren't we thinking of the other people? We're killing them,' I said. I tried to move away from her patting me. There was nowhere to go. Nowhere except the stairwell, which was crammed with students, all breathing on each other, not caring for the consequences. 'It's all lies,' I said.

So I climbed up onto the half-wall along one side of the corridor and jumped into the empty space in the centre of the stairwell. I fell through the air, from the top of the building all the way down to the bottom. And I felt like I'd been set free. The anxiety that was sitting heavy on my chest, stopping me breathe, had lifted. I spread my arms. I knew then that I was okay. I can fly in my dreams - it's how I get out of anxious situations - so I floated down through the air in my own speed, finally able to breathe.

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I seem to live in a university dormitory. I have various possessions spread thinly over the whole dorm.

At some point I venture out to see a show with an old school friend Peter Efstathiou, we express concerns about social distancing during this pandemic. The venue is very crowded and it is impossible to maintain the desired distance. When sat down it is so crowded that I am being squashed from both sides. I buy a china souvenir, of a cat and a person. I immediately drop it and break the head of one them. It creates good hearted humour to those around me.

I return to the dorm. There is a TV screen on a high up shelf which is playing caricatures of reactionary news. It has a percentage displayed at all times which is the 'health'. The game is that players have to beat the machine by getting its health to zero. Players tried various things like shouting 'trans rights' at the screen. I eventually start a chant of 'class war' which works more effectively than the other methods that were tried. The machine is defeated.

We become aware that local fascists have armed themselves and are hiding in holes in the street. The government can quickly find them and shoot them dead. I go around untying friends of mine who are imprisoned. I reach one person who seems to be tied differently, his arms bound in an orange strap with plastic slide release buckles. It turns out he is a nazi and has a gun, so I run away. I tell everyone I can at the dorm. A woman in the dorm gives me a hug which I think lasts slightly too long. I take a risk and kiss her on the neck. She likes it and kisses me on the mouth. We agree to go to bed together. I ask her to wait a few moments while I go to a neighbours house and collect some possessions.

I become aware that the nazi is close so I am forced to hide in small spaces with implausible secret cupboards. I am aware of friends of mine who have taken more proactive approaches to taking this guy out, assuming other identities to be out in the open. I am forced to run from the house I am in, I hide underneath a thick tree, hoping I won't be seen. A wild animal is in the area and comes to me.

At first I am not sure if it is safe or dangerous. It appears to be a bear but maybe a furry elephant. It appears harmless but I am worried that it sniffing around me will alert the nazi to my presence.

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Lots of little boys were running in a circle all with candles. They kept going out so they were helping each other relight them. They were practicing for some kind of performance I think. A few kids were falling over and it was a bit chaotic.

One beautiful little boy fell on his face and about 7 of his bloody teeth fell out, along with some of his equipment - they were all carrying a little makeup palette with 2-3 colours of sparkly eyeshadow - I think they were storing them with their teeth...
 

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My friend Laura came over to visit my new student house. It was an utter shit tip, so much worse than the student houses I lived in in my past.

My new housemates were impressed with Laura’s cool-girl credentials and she talked to them about obscure bands whilst they pulled bits of the wall off - inside the walls were rotten and filled with silverfish and (weirdly) live shrimp. I was repulsed and wanted to get out but first I had to retrieve a red fishing net from the basement, which was down an ominous flight of stairs.

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Grabbing the net I began to climb the stairs, dredging the air behind me, catching shrimp. The net kept getting caught on the banisters but the idea of going down to free it filed me with dread so I would pull at it from above, trying to dislodge it and drag it up. I couldn’t find the door I had come through anymore, and assuming I had missed it I continued to climb but it soon became clear the door had disappeared and I was stuck in some kind of Escher-esque nightmare where the stairs went on forever.

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I was lying across the back seat in a red Robin Reliant, just minding my business.

My friends Jim, Tom and Sophie approach the motor and start banging with open palms on the window. They've all given themselves quarantine haircuts that mimic male pattern baldness, like, they've all given themselves what Seinfeld's Jason Alexander has got. And they want me to join their new religion.

And an interesting wrinkle here is that the only thing I'm wearing is a bath towel, so I try to shout to them, "I'm sorry, I can't get my hair cut right now, I've just come out of the shower." And either they don't hear me or they don't care because they keep calling for me and banging harder and harder on the side of the car until I wake up.

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Maybe I got bitten by a sheep tick but last night I dreamt I was a giant mechanical baby that could spew solid gas holograms out of his joints. Stranger still was that I had to run a restaurant and some navy guys were fighting with kids from a frat house in the dining area. Best dream I've ever had not gonna lie.

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I have just got a new puppy (like everyone else in lockdown) and I dreamed that my childhood best friend (who I am no longer in contact with) had got a puppy at the same time.

In my dream we still did everything together, including this, but our puppies were ill and my friend decided to put her dog down, but because we did everything the same, she expected me to put my dog down too. I was naturally horrified – no, I said,  I love my puppy! I’m not putting her down!

Even though I refused to let her die, I knew my puppy was still sick, so I took her to the vet for major surgery. The vet opened her ribcage to do heart surgery with a strong metal clamp that held the ribs apart and her heart exposed then let her come home with me, except the clamp was still in place. I had to be EXTREMELY careful as her heart had to be now open to the elements until it healed, and I was worried she could injure her heart and die. So I did the only thing I could think of to keep her safe.

I turned her into a silver charm.

Even this seemed a bit sketchy, what if the metal got caught on something? So I decided she would be even safer if I turned her into a salt shaker. So I turned her into a salt shaker and put her in my pocket for safekeeping.

Then we met Russel Brand on the street, busking. No one would talk to him anymore because he has said something controversial and has become a pariah, but I thought this was a bit extreme and maybe cancel culture has gone too far so I stopped and had a chat. We talked about philosophy and feminism and society, and seemed to get on quite well. I asked him if he would look after my suitcase whilst I went to the loo and I’d be back shortly.

When I came back Russel was gone. I thought I could hear him though so I followed the sound round the corner and saw him performing for a bunch of oxford students. He was singing rock songs like in the film Get Him To The Greek and was strutting around performing for all the students, which surprised me as I thought literally no one was giving him the time of day, but I was assured the students had “absolutely no morals” and didn’t care what Russel had or had not said.

The cheeky bastard was parading about in MY JACKET AND SHIRT which he had taken out of my suitcase. I asked him to give them back and he turned it into a weird dance like it was part of the performance and gave it back immediately which made me wonder why he had bothered to take it in the first place if he intended to give it straight back.

I wanted to watch the performance but knew I had to get back for the saltshaker dog. 

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I got a puppy in lockdown. I know I know, so cliche, but in my dream there was something not quite right about her. Sometimes she only had one eye - it would open, wink at me, then disappear, and I couldn't find it in her fur. It was like she had never had two.

And her mouth. There was something wrong with her mouth. When I opened it to check her teeth were still there I found she had only a piece of brass -that reminded me of a metal handbag clasp- instead. The metal ran all around the inside of her jaw, screwed into her jaw through her gums and into the bone. And it snapped at me, trapping my fingers playfully. I was filled with a sense of unease at her uncanny alterations, but the dog did not seem unhappy, she acted the same as before, playfully biting with her metal clasp jaws.

I was thoroughly creeped out.

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So my sister and I are buying a ticket for our youngest sister, who died 2 years ago [in real life she died 3 years ago]. However, it appears since her death she has been studying at a university in Brazil and is about to graduate. As a gift for graduation, we have said we will pay for a ticket for her to go on holiday.

My sister and I arrive at my deceased sister's graduation ceremony, the university she has attended have a special degree just for the dead. She comes out to greet us. She is very thin and pale and wearing a long black velvet sleeveless gown.

She's almost translucent but she’s sweating. I make a comment about it and she says 'Of course I am pale, I am dead!' I ask her why she is sweating if she is dead, she says because it's bloody hot in Brazil... So I ask her why is she is wearing a long black velvet dress? She says again it's because she's dead. In fact, any question gets the same answer, ‘Because I’m dead!’ Then she says that she does not want the ticket for the holiday we have bought her, she wants one somewhere else. The holiday we have bought her is travelling around South America. She says she wanted to go to South Africa. She becomes very angry with us and calls us 'Stupid...' and tells us her death is our fault.

My other sister is very upset and is doing everything she can to keep my youngest sister happy. I ask her why and she says she feels guilty? She says it's because we weren’t at our youngest sister's bedside when she died. I pointed out we were there for most of it, and that our youngest sister sent us away as she didn't want us there. [This is guilt my sister carries in real life sadly].

The conversation between me and my living sister is private and our younger dead sister can't hear us. The more I look at my youngest sister, the odder it feels. Something is not quite right. In fact, her teeth are all wrong. My sister had straight teeth and this woman's teeth are all crooked and pointed. They remind me of rats' teeth. My deceased sister also had dreads, this woman has long straight grey hair. A few other things don't add up, but I can't put my finger on it. When I try to tell my other sister of my suspicions, she brushes it off. So I bring up the subject of her actual death and the deceased sister says, 'Of course, I knew you were there. Thank you for holding my hand till the end. ' That's when my other sister looks at me, and I say ‘See I told you.’

I challenge this thing that it is not my youngest sister and it goes crazy. It starts running around, screaming and shouting at us. I laugh at it as it gets madder and madder then suddenly it goes pouf and disappears. I wake up.

I was not distressed by it, it was just all strange.

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We went on a school trip to visit a boat in the olden days.

A door was open so we snuck down into the belly of the metal ship. Down there was a bunch of loud, metallic, windowless rooms as you would expect on a ship but as we buried deeper into the belly of the boat we passed through an art room full of battered old furniture (all huge and oversize like in school art rooms) and it was also full of cargo. I wanted to take a picture on my phone but couldn’t get it out I’m in time. There was a huge abstract painting in the room, in the dream we called it a 'Tembrant' but it looked more like a Joan Miro. It too was large. I knew it was probably very expensive just by looking at it. But there was no time to pause, as we reapplied we were being chased by an angry school mistress or shipowner, who was dressed like it was the late Victorian early Edwardian period. We had to find somewhere to hide!

In the next room we found ourselves in was kind of dark room and as we looked up we saw we were in a verdant garden (inside a ship, with no windows, which even in my dream state seemed wrong). A crumbling Victorian greenhouse caught my attention, it was so beautiful in it's decay. We all took advantage of the gloaming to hide in a yew tree/bush. We hid and desperately hoped the poor light would hide us. Three of us hid under the yew hedge and another girl hid elsewhere. The woman looked for us but we stayed safely hidden. The other girl got caught and they took her off - we hoped she wouldn’t be tortured into revealing our hiding spot.

As we hid we began to notice a group of men were acting strangely. At first we thought they gardeners or staff members. They seemed to be fixing a door on one of the large art cupboard. Hammering, unscrewing, painting. As I listened to their chatter I began to realise they were art thieves! With a plan to steal the painting. Their youngest member sported a blonde moustache and as he was painting I realised he was a forger (dream logic). We came out from my hiding place and explained our predicament to the art thieves, and they seemed very accepting although they asked us to keep any secrets we witnessed to ourselves. We watched as the young lad transformed the "Tembrant” painting into a fully functioning cupboard door and replace the door of one of the large art cupboards. By the time he was done you honestly couldn’t tell it wasnt old antique wood. It was stunning work. I was excited to have witnessed such talent, and I kissed him. He pulled this moustache off and said “You probably shouldn’t kiss me. I’m just a kid.” But I pulled off my moustache and said “don’t worry, me too” so it wasn't weird. I watched police come down and try to find the painting but it had been too well hidden. I felt privileged to have witnessed such an important art theft. I snuck back out of the impossible garden as the boat docked and my dad picked me up to take me home.

On the way home I bragged that I knew where the missing painting was. My dad insisted that I didn’t and if I did that would be very dangerous because I was a witness and therefore might need be eliminated. As we walked home he warned me I was in danger but I just took free chocolates from the winter market stalls, carefree and unconcerned.

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I dreamed that I was going to make high end jelly a thing and I thought I would get rich off this idea because jelly and ice cream was a millennial childhood staple and they are a nostalgic generation.
 

I stood in line at one of those small M&S stores waiting to buy a few things - pizza and a trifle, and I also wanted a tub of ice cream but I was worried I would lose my place in the queue. I tried to balance my shopping on the edge of a fridge so I could leave it there and quickly grab the ice cream (I wasn’t sure where the freezer was in this tiny shop) but nothing would balance. The card in the pizza box was soggy and nothing was going according to plan.

A sudden power cut gave me the opportunity to duck out and grab the ice cream but instead I began to chop coriander - trying to fill in the face of a faceless man who lay nearby. I wasn’t scared by this, the man with no face didn’t seem threatening, it was simply my job to cut the herbs.

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I wake up with 'The Ballad of Cursed Anna' by Jonathan Kelly stuck in my head.

It's a song from my childhood, my dad and I used to play it on the record player on Sundays when I was a kid. He lent it to someone years ago, and the record was lost, but we'd still sing along to the song. It's been years since I heard that tune.

You know how sometimes dreams are just music? Or a phrase? I wake with the lyrics winding through my brain and an urgent need to listen to the Jonathan Kelly song. I get up, forgo my morning cup of tea and put the song on, dancing round my living room in a state of undress.

Later on, I find out Jonathan Kelly had passed away - on that exact day. Spooky af.

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I was an old lady (in my 60s) and was having a passionate and secret affair with Meryl Streep (who was the same age as she is now).

We wore slightly frumpy clothes. She was hot in bed. We shagged and snogged a lot. We went on an 8 week trekking trip to the mountains of Quebec. She would sometimes be recognised (like on the airport bus) and it made me really secretly proud. She had packed one small check in bag but I was travelling too light. I had a very small wheelie carpet bag but all I seem to have packed was an old camera - like a Polaroid camera but it was an empty black cube box. And three small antique knives. Really tiny and really tiny blades. Different colour handles. Two were almost like cuticle pushers and one was a mini foldable penknife. I thought they wouldn’t go through in the hold and wondered why I packed them. Then I realised I could put them in Meryl’s check-in luggage.

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I dreamt I was in a french renaissance style castle that was also a sex cult. I was talking to a lady with lilac hair that was piled on top of her head. If was fancy AF. 

Sadly I didn’t orgasm or have sex in the dream, legit disappointing.

But later on it all turned into a brewery and I remember trying to liberate/hide from an angry prostitute who was also a yorkshirewoman who liked to smoke. Pretty sure there was also a musical going on at the same time.

Lots of mixed emotions. 

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I dreamt that a sinister enemy had trapped me and my local friends in a dark maze, and they were making us fight each other to the death to save our children, who they were holding captive.

I kept seeing glimpses of my babies under glass in the floor whenever I beat someone.

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I was on a bus with my sister, the driver had no idea where he was going and kept driving the wrong way up roads and through multi-story car parks. We're driving along the main road (I think it's supposed to be Southampton where I live.) You can see cruise ships etc next to the road. There is a huge cruise ship in the sea, and a smaller boat but with about 50 - 70 people in it. But the smaller boat is on a very high platform about to launch into the sea. I poke my sister as it starts to launch so she can watch as well. But the smaller boat just falls straight onto the cruise ship and breaks over the ship like a water-balloon - no one would survive. The impact tips the cruise ship over and sinks. It's chaos! We're screaming and I'm about to call 999 then I wake up. 

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I was at a fancy dinner where I was sitting with Boris Johnson. Tony Blair was at the next table talking loudly. Boris insisted on filling my wine glass, but instead of using a bottle he was using a bowl and the wine was splashing everywhere. I asked why he was using a bowl when decanting it from the bottle would be much more efficient, but he didn't answer my question and kept pouring. Then he began to talk to me with his face so close to mine I could feel his lips grazing my cheek and his hot breath as he spoke. Later, I went on to a club (minus Johnson) but I couldn't get in because I couldn't remember my address. I mixed up the first line of my current address with my mum's postcode. 'Don't you know where you live?' the doorman asked, looking at me sternly. I woke up feeling confused and unsure which postcode I was in.

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In my dream, I went in to the school where I work to collect some things. I met Adam, an ex pupil, who was really tall and wearing, what I can only describe as, ‘an art suit’ - somewhat unusual, with lapels and zig zag patterns on it. After a really nice chat, I came out of the building and set off to find my car. However, whilst I’d been inside, a big street  market had set up and I couldn’t see it anywhere. I walked through the middle, looking from side to side, with no luck.

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Then I heard someone calling me. It was Sue, our secretary. I’d apparently left my rose gold scooter behind! (I do not own a scooter) She held it up to show me, then scooted on it through the market, despite the handlebars not being set up!

We laughed together and she wished me well with my garden shed(!?)

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I set off again to find my car. I still couldn’t find it and decided it must have been towed away. 

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I had a dream last night where my dick had fallen off. I was just sitting on the stairs looking down at it. And I was thinking to myself that I obviously didn't want to be going into any hospital with all this going on, so I eventually went down and tried to see about reattaching it.

I was peering at it, turning it over, and I realised, the way you do in dreams, that if I just pressed it back into place it would reconnect on its own. Only it looked exactly the same at each end, like there was a helmet and a urethral meatus (don't have a go, that's what it's called) at each end, and I was there trying to suss which end was which. Knowing intuitively that if I reattached it at the wrong end it would start feeding my piss back into my body and I'd drown.

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My girlfriend and I were in my sitting room when water started rising up through the floorboards. I ran downstairs in a panic, grabbing my neighbour Gareth -who shares the basement- assuming the cellar must be flooded but when we got down there the water was floating at the ceiling. It was dripping the wrong way, defying gravity, pooling upwards through my floorboards. There were neon lights everywhere and the dripping was just getting more and more intense, until it was all I could think about.

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I woke up suddenly, and realised man, I really need the loo.

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There is a house near my childhood home that is owned by an elderly man. All of his furniture is the original Art Deco of his youth, and sometimes he leaves an item in his front garden or in his porch. I don’t know why he does it, maybe it’s to repair it. It sometimes looks abandoned, or like he’s leaving it out for someone to take. Once, when I was a kid, there was a tiny little angry note on the dresser ‘NOT being given away’

It’s pretty clear he’s one of those old dudes who lives in a time warp. Nothing has been changed or done to the house in decades. It even has its original garage, when everyone else sold that extra land years ago. Chipped red brown paint flaking off. He doesn’t care.

I dreamed I was allowed in, that I had been given a job caring for the old man. My dad encouraged me to take it. He said the guy didn’t have relatives and we might be able to make an offer on the house, first dibs, after he passed, if I was his chosen carer. The house smelled like old person, dirt and mould. It was a mess, layers of dirt and disrepair cling to it. Everything was a little broken, or a lot broken. Patterned carpets were tainted with dark damp patches, worn away areas and out back a few of the windows were long smashed out. It didn’t seem very secure. 

My dad has shown me the holes in the roof. When it rained water poured in and I had been anxiously getting hold of some camera tape so I could mark the offending areas up whilst wet. Prepping them for fixing them. My parents had been repairing the roof in anticipation of this guy’s imminent death. They wanted me to buy the house so they were trying to save it. Mum was less invested than dad, who thought it was a marvelous project. He put hours into lovingly restoring the roof.

When we were alone with the man who owned the house he would sometimes set us two carers against each other. The other girl had been a carer longer and one day he sat us down on old mouldering furniture to tell us he would only hire one of us “at the end”. We both wanted to be picked, both wanted a chance to buy the house first, and he knew that. He dragged the moment out as if expecting us to put forward our case, then smiled and chose me. The other carer was indignant and upset, I didn’t have any experience, why would he do that ? I felt obliged to go over and kneel at his feet. I peered into his eyes, was he sure he wanted me? I said “You should pick the other carer, she is more experienced than me.” He paused for a long while, to the point we started fidgeting, and I regretted saying anything. I’d never wanted anything more and I'd basically given it up.

“I will stick with you. I think you are more romantic” said the man.

He meant romantic as in a romantic nature, but it sounded creepy. Maybe it was because I picked pink roses from the garden and chucked in a jug on the window. In the dream, the roses felt like me. Romantic and pink and girlish. I am not like that in waking life.

The displeased other carer hissed in my ear “It gets hard at the end. You have no idea, you’ve never done this”

She was right but I placated her with

“well maybe it’s a two man job, we don’t have to do what he says, you don’t have to leave now.” although I knew I would let her go before the end. I had to. She wanted what I wanted.

I was going to get a chance. It felt like winning the lottery. But we had to keep the house from falling in first. A noise drew us to the kitchen out back. A burglar? But it was just a huge black cat, sneaking in through broken windows. It seemed like a security risk so we checked out back - a tiny garden was filled with trash. Old bits of bike and an old trailer with the windows smashed in. A dumping ground. But something caught my eye... a puppy? It has long hair over its face but it ran up to us with the excitement of any young dog, all licky and exuberant. We realised the area was full of dogs and huge black cats. I was a little nervous of the dogs but also very distressed. I swore the get them all safely adopted by good owners. They were skittish but friendly. This project was starting to look bigger than I had imagined.

I went walked round to the front of the house, checking out just how unsafe and in-security focussed the man was. Out front a girl with a blonde bib walked down the hill. She didn’t look at me but she seemed to be talking to me.

“Is it done?” She asked

“What are you talking about? No”

Is it done? She asked again, again not looking at me, which was bothering me.

No had elicited no response and I wanted her to look at me. So I tried the only other answer I could think of. I leaned in close to her and said simply “Yes.”

She raised a pair of scissors over her chest and without flinching stabbed them to her chest. I intercepted with a horrified "No!" She struggled against me, never looking at me, trying to bury them into her chest. I gabbled that I didn’t know what she was talking about, I’d just said yes but didn’t mean it, no, I meant no, but nothing stopped her. We struggled. I called for help but although there were onlookers no one moved to help. An eery group of people with bowed heads and black hats had appeared behind her. Somehow I knew they were her "band". They didn’t move to help. They didn’t move at all. I wasn’t sure where they’d come from, but they weren’t interfering. It was more like they were there to witness. I couldn’t hold her off much longer, and as the scissors finally plunged deep into her chest I woke up

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Trump was on TV making an announcement that "a pejorative amount of people would be selected" based on some random algorithm, to only flush their toilets 3 times a day. This was somehow going to help stop the spread of coronavirus.

What has started as a press conference morphed into a variety TV show, with models in bikinis dancing around Trump, who kept emphasising the word "pejorative" as if this would make it clearer (and as if pejorative meant a small amount).

One of the models stopped as she twirled past and asked "what if someone needs to go more than 3 times?" Trump, now wearing a wig and a boiler suit, turned straight to camera and said "that's why I said perjorative. And like my buddy always says..." then it changed to a voiceover from the OxyClean commercials while Trump mouthed along, very over the top, but I couldn't hear what he was saying.

I woke up, still hearing Trump's voice in my head clearly and thought "that's not the right word, is it? Pejorative wouldn't be used like that," and had to look the word up to be certain.

While I think the word is appropriate to describe how Trump feels about the American people, and how I feel about him, the words of Inigo Montoya spring to mind: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

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I went to Morrisson's and Keir Starmer was the checkout guy. It was some publicity thing to show he was still in touch with working people, but I was the last customer of the day and he'd lost his enthusiasm (he'd also been dealing with some Labour scandal since that morning).

I decided to be gentle and was all like "what a day you've had!" but really he was quite dismissive, and assumed that my shopping had been pre-paid for by my parents who were waiting in a car outside (actually they lived in California).

When he refused to scan my items and broke one of my baguettes I had to appeal to the store manager for help. He was very nice about it - I think he'd had a long day as well - and then Keir Starmer ripped up a gold bit of paper and signed it for me, and I said "I will genuinely treasure this".

I'm not sure if the Starmer of my dreams is somebody I could vote for, but if he does a day's work experience in Morrison's in 2025 I guess I have to now?

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I dreamed I was going to a brand event (Why brain? WHY). Everything was chrome and blue lights and intense music, and every few minutes silver ticker tape was shot up into the air.

The event was being held for a hardware store (of which I know nothing about) and the finale of the event was a game where the walls moved towards you (and then away from you) like they were going to crush you, but to music, like a darkly adult version of musical chairs. When the music stopped you had to stop by one of the products on the floor (they were all different types of nail and screw) and read of the name of the item as quickly as possible. Whoever took the longest to read out the product was out, and they all had names like “DBH1003”.

Various ex-colleagues were there and I was convinced I was going to lose because I didn’t know what any of the products were. It was a horrible game, but after I was out, I got to sledge down a summery hill. The plastic sledge slid like it was on snow but it was on grass and I could feel the sun on my face, and all the colours looked like the art work of Matt Callaby (mrcallaby on ig), ochre yellows and pale pinks and bright blues and I felt my stomach lifting up into my throat, as if I really were shooting down a hill, it was awesome, like a fantastically gentle fairground ride, sledging into summer.

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I dreamt that I was in an unfamiliar house with unfamiliar people, and I seemed to have several romantic relationships going on at the same time.

Greg Davies (the massively tall comedian) was there and we kept bumping into each other in and around the house, and at one point he put his arms around me, and I put my arms around his neck, and we were tightly packed in an epicentre of people, and I felt like I wanted to melt into him. I whispered this into his ear.

Then everyone I was with started finding out about one another and that I’d made a promise to Greg. And then I woke up.

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Me and all my friends from Uni are back in school and Boris Johnson is the headmaster.

The night I had the vaccine I had a very vivid dream.

I woke in a large library. A huge hallway that went on and on in different directions and I didn’t know why I was there but there was a sense of danger, of impending doom. There were three of us in the library, all confused, all armed with a metal dart on a piece of fishing line so we could throw it and retrieve it. We didn’t know why that would be useful.

The men with me were middle aged and they started to run. I observed a few places I could have hidden, round tables with leather bound books surrounding them that I probably could have used to hide myself, but I didn’t know what I was hiding from and I didn’t want the men to know where I was hiding so my only choice was to run, like them.

We all ran down these echoing halls of leather and pleather bound books. They didn’t seem old, but the covers were made to look old. The books were packed together around the occasional sofa or table and as we ran the books seemed to be packed together closer and closer until you could run on a floor of tightly packed books. They have a little and you felt you might twist your ankle but none of us did. Eventually we reached the end of the hall but rather than ending we simply had to choose a path - left or right to continue on.

A rack of clothes was for hire, with historical garments hanging, and you had to pick an outfit to carry on. I chose a padded waist doughnut bustle support thing and placed a heavy satin skirt over it - like a crinoline but shorter, and a girl appeared begging me to let her corset me properly. I agreed and she attached all my historical undergarments properly, lacing me in to my new outfit. I thought I could hear the 1920s to my left (what?) so I chose that pathway, whilst I pondered what I was supposed to do about the black rectangles I was supposed to be preparing for work. I couldn’t tell the difference between any of them, and I didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing with them but I knew I had a meeting about them the next morning. I was so tired, and wanted to sleep but I didn’t know how I would manage to fix it before my 8.30 meeting.

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In my dream I was back at uni. Not the uni I actually went to, a big grand old building in the countryside. Walking past a beautiful old antique window I glanced in to see a party mid swing. I thought I caught sight of Yannis, an old friend, at this party and I wanted to say hi, but I couldn’t quite make the geography work. the rooms weren't where they should have been and I couldn't find the party. 

My friends were reticent but agreed to help and, although I was aware I was dressed way too casually for such a party (black skirt, black T-shirt) I really wanted to go. We managed to find the room, but it was weirdly empty. Like everyone had left in a hurry, mid party, and we saw them all streaming down the lawn where we had just been to a string of waiting taxis. The party was on the move, we were going to miss them!

We ran out full pelt trying to catch the dwindling tail of the taxi queue, but the cars were all in motion, driving just out of reach, and they wouldn’t wait for me. As the last car drove off (and the final stragglers left into a waiting police car) we realised it was no use, and we began walking back up the hill. My friend offered me conciliatory swig of orange squash and an overly officious police officer demanded to try it, convinced it was alcohol. Eye roll. As we walked back up up to the uni we spotted a collection of porter cabins, with the windows papered up. Very curious. Info on the door said is was a social experiment, funded by the university, where they closed 5 people in and recorded their progress. It had pictures of the volunteers on the door - one was my friend Yannis.

The cabins glowed from behind the papered out windows making them almost translucent and as I walked up and put a hand on the window - a hand on the other side met mine. It was a moment of weird connection. I didn’t know whose hand was almost touching mine but it felt important. Another shadow hand appeared on the glass, joining the first, this time a smaller, woman’s hand, and I laid my hand on the glass for her too. I could hear commotion behind the glass as the others came over and could faintly hear them arguing over who I was - they all wanted it to be their own loved one, and whilst I was hidden, I could be anyone. But I was looking for one person, I called his name. “Yannis”?
 

“It’s for me! I heard my name it's definitely for me.” he sounded excited.

He opened a window a crack (it was one of those security windows that opens a sliver but no more) but it was wide enough to show his disappointment. I could tell he’d been hoping I would be someone else.
 

We began to chat. He may have wanted someone else but he was pleased to be talking to anyone. I could peek at the interior of the cabin - it was covered in crystals, they seemed to be growing out of a stream that somehow ran through the cabin. Green and purple points of amethyst. I marvelled and he broke a piece of green amethyst off for me. He said it was sacred to the Egyptian goddess of sleep and death, didn’t I know that? The one with the animal head. Wasn’t I into that witchy stuff? I was delighted with the gift but I didn’t know about the goddess, and I felt I should.

Yannis asked me to pay someone £450. I asked why he couldn’t pay her himself but he said he couldn’t as he was in the cabin and it was urgent. He wouldn’t explain any more but gave me a pink and silver embossed business card with the bank details on it. I felt pressured to agree, even though I knew nothing about the circumstances and £450 is a lot of money - maybe not for him but for me it was - and I left feeling guilty and conflicted, knowing I would eventually pay it.

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(When I wake I google Egyptain goddesses but can't find a goddess of dreams and death. Two days after this dream I get an email about Wenet, the hare headed Egyptian goddess of pleasant dreams who is sometimes partnered with Osiris, god of the dead. I had not heard of her until that email.)

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I was living in an eery room with my old school friend, Hannah. I thought the lamp was haunted because it turned itself on and off by itself and sometimes fell from the top of the wardrobe. She thought the painting of a ship (owned in part by Edvard Munch - this was VERY IMPORTANT in the dream) was haunted because sometimes in the morning there was a damp patch in front of it, like sea water has spilled from the frame onto the carpet.

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I had a dream that the government put in a place a law where by you needed a licence to open your windows. I learnt about said law by opening up my french windows, and my housemate coming in being like "what are you doing?", and then went on to explain. The last thing I remember happening in the dream was feeling outraged and saying "This is utterly ridiculous, I can't even open them a crack? It's too hot!".

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In real life, I had read articles and looked at photos about how clean Delhi is right now under lockdown. In my deam, I  decided that it would be incredible to go to Delhi to see it pristine and with blue skies. My entire family packed our bags and went there. It was under lockdown but somehow that didn't apply to us and we strolled around the gates of Delhi and Red Fort (without another soul around) seeing the beautiful India that my parents only remember from childhood. It was pure magic and in my dream I was so deeply emotional to be with my parents and sisters. We ended up at the Taj Mahal. No one else was there and my dad had beers packed in a bag, my mom unfolded a kitchen tile that had a stack of warm rotis in it. We sat with our feet in the water in front of the palace and just stared at it as elephants walked by in the distance.

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I am in London, with an actress I met once. We are on our way to the top of The Shard to meet with the government.

A previously dormant volcano under London is active and ready to blow. The rest of the world is worrying that if it does there’ll be catastrophic consequences for everyone, so they’re planning on just blowing up London (there’s not much logic behind this). The actress and I are at the top of the shard when we hear a deafening boom, and the ground shakes beneath our feet. Out the window, we see a billowing mushroom cloud, but it’s not a bomb. It’s the volcano.

We all rush downstairs and to the tube station. There’s panic everywhere. Another activist runs towards us and tells us that the next train isn’t for ten minutes. I turn and see a cloud of rubble and debris rushing towards us, and brace myself against the wall, hoping it’ll shield me. I have a pillow strapped to my head. The cloud hits, and I feel its full force against my body. I can’t see anything. But I’m surprised I’m not dead. Suddenly I feel three nails digging into my wrist. The activist shouts out to me, “I’ve booked us all rooms at the Fiancé Hotel. The Black Dress room is yours. Get there when you can.” I nod, and everything goes black. 

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(In the morning I found out Krakatoa had just re-erupted)

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I ran away to South Africa with a pregnant mommy friend, my own mom, and my previous client, stayed in a plush velvety airbnb, and climbed to a mountain top to observe the covid-y cruise ship offshore that couldn't dock.

I've never been to South Africa.

In this first dream, I’m at a library, the part with rows and rows of tall bookshelves like a labyrinth. There are some other people around, shuffling. Suddenly they’re ducking and crawling on all fours, looking for places to hide. I ask someone what’s up and they say, ominously, “oh, it’s the joy thief. He’s coming”.

I jolt awake and think, ah, that’s today’s nightmares out of the way then, and fall back to sleep.

In this other dream, I have an older husband who’s a just faint silhouette in the background, and a daughter of 5-6 (played by Modern Family’s Aubrey Anderson-Emmons). We’re buying a house with some elegant moulding and a pissing cherub fountain in the garden (it’s going for WAY below market price, so we’d be idiots not to). In a couple of days, the ghost of said cherub comes to me at night, saying I have to attend three scheduled playdates with it or it will have to take my daughter. The very next day, my daughter falls ill. So, naturally, I play hide and seek with the cherub ghost with empty eye sockets as it giggles and frolics around its haunt that is my house. We get along, and I genuinely look forward to our next playdates.

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The school I work at has closed down and the local education authority gives everyone a new job at a local college. A lot of the dream involved the induction process of working in a new place. One of my students -who finished school last year- was there either working or volunteering. The college seemed to move between being for people who had finished school and primary school children.

I am in a town that reminds me of where I went to university. I am sat in a bar with a mixture of friends and colleagues although the atmosphere feels closer to student life than my current situation.

I know that I am in a love triangle with one of the men -I'll call him Hugh- at the table and a beautiful woman that I'll call Emma. I desperately want to spend time with Emma, but when she arrives every time I attempt to speak with her I am interrupted by someone else on the table. Eventually, I go to the toilet, and once I return head to the bar to buy drinks.

At the bar there is a man there older than me that won't leave me alone. He blocks my attempts to return to the table, gets into my personal space, the final straw he touches me inappropriately. I am incensed by this and shove him away. As I do this he theatrically dives into a table of drinks spreading broken glass and beer across the venue. The bar staff insist I leave. as I do I realise the man has been paid to cause this drama. I assume by Hugh.

There is a passage of time and I am now in another venue. unfortunately, I now can't remember the details (if there ever were any) but I once again have been asked to leave. I am understandably pissed off.

I now find myself in a third venue, which is the sort of club I have always hated; it is pretentious with shit music, white plastic everywhere. All the patrons are vain and self-important. A goofy man named Neil (that I used to work with) plants drugs on me. I am searched by the bouncers and once again forced to leave. I now realise it has been Neil that has been sabotaging my evening. I have no idea why.

I find myself back at home pissed off and rejected. I walk into the bathroom to find Hugh, my rival, in the shower. His body looks weak. He is frail and skeletal, I can see all his ribs. After a short strained awkward conversation, I leave. I am now in a dormitory-style bedroom with my housemates. I tell them about Neil's behaviour - at one point singing a song about how much of a cunt he is. I vow to kick his goofy teeth in. As a group, my friends and I decided it would be crueller to leave his massive teeth untouched. I am now in bed. Suddenly Emma is there. She comes over to talk to me. I ask where she is going. She says she is going to see someone she used to sleep with for some no strings fun. She tells me not to be weird about it and leaves. I am not sure if it is Hugh. She doesn't say.

I now find myself walking down the street where I grew up, heading towards my childhood home (I assume it is the next morning). I am angry and frustrated about everything that has happened. In my frustration, I stamp on a low wall. I then hear shouting. An old man is leaning out of his bedroom window shouting at me for kicking his wall. I jump on the wall and scream back at him. swearing and making V signs at him. 

I wake up as a neighbour is intervening. I am pissed off, I turn to Emma who is sat beside me (not in bed), I tell her I've been barred from several bars because of Neil. She seems confused. I am certain all this has happened. I wake up (for real this time) still pissed off, but also relieved as it wasn't real. It is 5:30am. I can't get back to sleep.

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I had been working at an art gallery, under my old boss Ray. The exhibition had gone well and they had left us a bottle of champagne to celebrate before we closed up. It was warm and there were no glasses so the others weren’t too impressed but I thought it was generous - it was only a small gallery, in east Oxford, not London or anything. As we began to disperse, I walked out onto the Cowley Road to get a cab home but ended up wandering into a model village. It was a tourist attraction - full sized and set up to run like a Victorian village, but when you got up close things weren’t quite right. The walls were clearly made a paper mache, the decorations a little ostentatious, some shops were manned by staff I. Costume and some by some pretty ropey looking vintage mannequins.

To my surprise, the village was still open (it was late, and the gallery had closed for the night) and I figured I had about 20 mins to explore as they started to close. I rushed around trying to cram in as much as possible, including a larger than life furrier that had a huge overbearing bear statue with blood dripping from its mouth and furs dripping from the walls ready to prepare you for a Victorian expedition to Canada or the arctic. The first went all the way up incredibly high walls and it was. Why intimidating until you looked closer at the fact that everything was paper mache.

As I left a staff member in costume approached. He began speaking in elaborate and affected Victorian language. Comparing the tartan of his costume to my clothes. Admiring how the colours matched. As we hit closing time he slipped into ordinary modern language. He seemed nice and rather interesting. He wanted to show me his “genuine Victorian car” which turned out to be an ornate antique sofa that had a motor and could drive around on its own. He wanted to take me for a drive. I knew I should not say yes as he was a stranger, but it was too weird and brilliant and tempting so I agreed, whilst trying to attract the attention of people from my work who kept walking by. They all agreed it was a crazy thing to do but that I would regret it if I did not go for a ride with a stranger on his Victorian sofa car. I felt nervous and excited and still unsure if I was about to be killed by this charming and strange man when I woke up.

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We kept rescuing increasingly tiny newborn kittens. Some hadn’t even opened their small eyes. We often had to give them mouth to mouth resuscitation or they wouldn’t survive.

That night my boyfriend came back to the house really drunk. I was scared the kittens would die because they needed a lot of mouth to mouth, and I thought he was too drunk to look after them. It was a two person job! I was annoyed so -with true drunk-logic- he insisted on sleeping on the bare floor next to them.

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After he lay down we could hear a weird noise. He asked me what it was…? And I cast around trying to locate the origins of the strange crumbly sound. When I looked closely I could see a crack in the wall near his head. It got bigger and darker and seemed to be pulling the wall into the crack, little bits caving in like water until there was just a big hole. When we peered inside the hole was filled with white corrugated cardboard, but my boyfriend refused to look at it because he has a fear of things with holes in them and he kept “thinking it was a bees nest”.

I woke with the strongest feeling that we just wanted a set of kittens to survive.

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We were all at my friend Sally's house for her birthday, and she was unwrapping a present I'd bought for her... which happened to be...

A teenage mutant ninja turtle sticker book

and as she was unwrapping it I was looking at it and doubting my choice of gift 

but Sally very politely said she liked it, even though she didn't. 

Then we all had to go upstairs because a plug was sparking and there was water everywhere, and my other friend told me he was a cross-dresser.

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My dream begins with me on a skype date.

I'm chatting to a guy through an ipad, but before I know it I blink and he's in the room, shirtless. It's also at this point that I notice I'm not wearing very much either. I turn to ask him where he came from and why is he shirtless to which he simply responds "don't worry about it". It's around here things start to get a little uncomfortable.

He begins touching me and I have to keep gently refusing his advances. They don't stop though, he keeps staring at me and touching me. He then pulls a whip from under my pillow and suggests I need a spanking. I'm beginning to feel that something is wrong and I start to move away. He seems to notice and becomes threatening. He draws a large jagged edged serving spoon and starts implying that he doesn't need my consent to do what he wants with me.

Now I run.

As fast as I can, jumping over the bannister and down a flight of stairs. I wind up screaming in a darkened kitchen where my parents and grandparents stand casually having a dinner party.

I run around the island counter to shake my mums shoulders and warn her. But before I can stop him the man is behind her with the jagged serving spoon and slashes at her back. I grab anything sharp I can get and advance towards him.

Before I can get close he manages to get a cut on my nana's wrist. Now I'm really pissed, and audibly scream "No one touches my nana". I stab him with whatever tool I have and he falls to the floor becoming a pile of sticky wet spaghetti.

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Aliens were invading the earth. Their appearance wasn’t something humans could comprehend so they would merely appear as a shimmer in the air until they took the form of something they observed on arrival, something earth bound that we could comprehend. 

My family and I were in my childhood home during the invasion. One looked through our window, taking on the form of my long-dead cat, but getting it eerily wrong. They were not bound by the physics of our world so windows didn’t stop them, but nor did they break through the window – the window simply wasn’t a barrier – and so a giant cat’s head, (Cheshire-cat -ike in the fact that it appeared to have no body) was moving through our window into the study upstairs. We were afraid and we didn’t know what the aliens wanted. They had no demands. But we could no longer function as we had before.

There was only one thing for it. We had to become archaeologists (dream logic. I don’t know why.) I sat in a field with my friends from university who were also all trying to get jobs as archaeologists. The sky was a bright but oppressive grey and we all sat under a black wool rug. I leaned over to my friend who sat next to me and kissed him. He was horrified and recoiled with some disgust. “Yuk”, he said “why?” but I didn’t have an answer. I wasn’t sad at the rejection, the kiss didn’t feel romantic to me. It just was what it was. A kiss. It meant nothing in this mad world. I thought his reaction was weirdly OTT.

We tried to be archaeologists but didn’t know how. At the end of the day I hid in the toilet because I wasn’t sure what else to do. The people in charge gathered us up and told us we all had passed the test – because everyone wanted to be an archaeologist in a post-alien-invasion-world only people with a genuine interest in archaeology were let in, so the first day was always a test. That’s why there was nothing to do. We had (somehow) all passed and the next day would be taken to a real dig, to begin in earnest. I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing and did not anticipate an improvement tomorrow, but somehow, against all odds, I had become an archaeologist. 

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I actually had this dream when I had coronavirus in the beginning of April, right at the start of lockdown. I was suffering with a really bad fever all night and the dream has stuck with me because it's probably been the most vivid dream I have ever had.

So, do you remember at the start of lockdown when Tiger King was all over social media and it was all anyone was talking about?

My dream was about me working for Joe Exotic in his tiger "sanctuary". He was just as horrible and deluded in my dream as he appears in the documentary. At one point in the dream, all the tigers escape and Joe Exotic puts it in my duty to find all the tigers and shoot them with a number of unusual weapons. I just remember Joe Exotic screaming at me, and me running away from the tigers because I refused to kill them.

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I dreamed I had an accident and when I came to I was living back at home with my family, but they had moved house. The house I woke up in was alien. Modern, boxy, and few windows. A far cry from their real house which is old, detached and victorian. This new place didn't feel very them at all.

Dad said that mum had it and there was no going back now.

I didn’t like the house.

There was a cupboard in one of the many white, windowless stairwells. Inside was full of fog, with some food, water, and a pipe. Something about it disturbed me but I couldn't figure out exactly what.

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I went to a posh restaurant. The people next to us were playing poker and a man was trying to talk to me but I didn’t understand him because he had a very thick accent so I nervously laughed and then made my apologies and left because I felt so bad about it.

The next time I went to the restaurant I was given a letter saying the man was suing me for laughing at him. This seemed outrageous, but I had a court summons.

We had to do a mock trial in advance.

I was trying to get the poker playing table's daughter to vouch for me because it turned out she went to my school and I had been her mentor. I was hoping she would be my star witness. I arranged to meet her in Oxford by Carfax tower and she agreed to help me but wasn’t sure how helpful she would be. She explained that she was in a rush and I was still trying to talk to her after she got into a taxi and drove off. I was running alongside the car and talking through the window until I could not longer keep up.

Then I walked down Cornmarket with no shoes on. Jack Nicholson and his girlfriend walked past dressed entirely in white, waving at the crowds. I asked if they had just got married or if they simply liked the style. They said they didn’t believe in marriage. I went into a dress shop but I was worried they wouldn’t serve me because I had no shoes on. I couldn’t remember why I had no shoes but I was aware it didn’t look good. Luckily they just wanted to know where my red coat was from.

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