Falling Babies

Last Night I Dreamt... That I was visiting a very old friend's parents' house. I was very nervous in the car journey over and was staring out of the window watching countryside scenerey flow past. It was strange, because this view was so familiar to me in my dream, but in waking life I cannot place it.

I arrived at the house, which they were about to sell, so I wanted to look around every nook and cranny to absorb it before it went. I have no idea whose house it was - their parents (who I also did not recognise) showed me round. There was lots of babies and small children playing in the large gardens - it was a really hot summers day. My friends mother, father & I climbed to the top of this podium which had a sort of terrace on top. We were talking and eating and playing with the babies, but noone was paying the children enough attention and they kept crawling really close to the edge. I was so scared they would fall, but felt that it would be rude for me to grab out and save them in front of my friends parents. In the end a baby fell and noone batted an eye-lid. Another one looked like it was going to go and I grabbed its leg but it slipped from my grasp.

I escaped from the terrace and ran into the house. The dream started to feel really sinister and it felt like I was running away from something or being followed as I wondered through the house. The house became a castle, where there was some kind of battle going on and I was with a young child of about 7 years old (who I also did not recognise) and we were running and hiding and trying to escape the building and the people in it for the rest of the dream.

I am not sure exactly what happened after that, but my last vision is being back in the car being driven away, looking at the same view with a feeling like I had been trapped in a Narnia-esque world of which I could talk to nooone about.

Radio

Last night I dreamt... That I was at the home of one of my best friends. It was an unusual house, built into a hillside and arranged with the bedrooms downstairs and the living space upstairs. A true product of 1970s experimental architecture - at least, about as experimental as it could be in rural Cheshire. We used to talk about how when we grew up we would buy it from his mother, clear-out her old furniture and turn it into a vision of future living, all clean, white lines and minimalist design.

In life the house overlooks a peaceful valley and, more immediately, a small brook. In my dream it was somewhat different. Outside sat an enormous hall that was being built; a vast sarcophagus of a building that stretched out for miles. My friend's house was on a hillside above, so we were looking out on the workers placing black marble tiles on its roof. I think they were Chinese workers.

An American family now lived in the house, and I was discussing with them what they might do to the decoration. But there was something else, from earlier in the dream that I can't quite recall - to do with my friend and I and the kids of the American family - killing someone. At that point the police arrived at the house, and everyone quietly slipped away.

And there, in the back of the house, I found my old childhood cat, Radio, sitting in a washing basket and licking her leg, just like she used to. Radio's been dead for six years, but she was so vivid, so real, in my mind. I picked her up and held her, spoke to her, stroked her. She was as solid and fiery as in life. Then, just as in life, she twisted and jumped down and ran off, and I ran after, calling her back. She became a dark blur, running back and forth. And I called her again.

Then I woke, and cried.

Hot rodding

Last night I dreamt... That I was at an auction of wrecked cars. Wandering among the smashed remains of the various automobiles was like being in an art gallery: the roof vaulted high above and the place had a hushed, reverent feel. The cars were braced in the outline of a cage, with steel bars marking the outline of the cages' corners. They reminded me of Hirst's sharks.

But I wasn't there to buy a whole car - just an engine and gearbox - and those were racked at the back of the hall. I picked out a large automatic gearbox and a small engine, but changed my mind and swapped the engine for a big V6.

I carried the parts through to a workshop behind the hall, where I met a really friendly mechanic. It turned out that I was building a new car, a hot rod or a beach buggy - I'm not really sure which - and that he was my girlfriend's father. Except he looked nothing like E's father.

The mechanic proceeded to dissemble the gearbox, checking each element meticulously with an engineering ruler, to make sure it was safe. We talked about the covering for the gearbox and about the things that I was going to build into it that his daughter would like - a mirror and a lipstick holder. Slightly sexist, I know, and slightly strange.

Children

Last night I dreamt ... that we visited C and E in Beijing. They had two baby girls. Gaya was a newborn, just a few days old. O-Tong was two, she whispered because she was afraid of the sound of her own voice.

Rooftop Bathing

Last night I dreamt... That I was taking a bath, in a bath built on the rooftop of a house in the country. It was a beautiful, cloudless day, with sun beating down. Everything was bright and clean and fresh. The fields around had a lurid quality to their colour - the green was almost too bright - hot and hazy, like in the very depths of summer.

Next to the bath was a shower, also built on a high platform on the rooftop. A man who was an old family friend, now deceased, climbed up to take a shower but couldn't get it running hot enough. My mother shouted up from downstairs that the setting was wrong, that 'eight is twelve'. I looked down and noticed that the bath had been placed on an angle to the platform it was on. Bright chrome railings surrounded it - I felt safe.

I think the house belonged to another set of old family friends who we don't see often these days; but I'm not sure.

Time steps at a port

Last night I dreamt... That I was visiting an old port town, with three and four storey buildings teetering around a harbour, and cliffs rising up steeply on all sides. It was picturesque and tumbledown all at once.

I went to one of those visitor's centres that old towns often have. In there I was transported back to various moments in the town's history, chief among which was a kind of Roman-era time. The harbour was packed with boats, and dozens of people were going about their business on the quayside. There was some kind of money-lender in one building, high-up in a window, and he had a slave girl working for him. She stole a large gold coin and hid it behind a piece of furniture, but he and I both saw her do it.

Then the dream flicked to a fierce battle, fought on the cliffs around the town. Time blended between me, today, climbing the cliffs, and the battle that had been fought there.

And then the dream flicked to the town flooding - but an old car-crazy friend of mine was driving up the road in a classic Mini, racing away from the flood water. It caught him, but he didn't seem phased. The dream ended with a vision of him sitting in this cream-coloured Mini, smiling to himself as the water swept him along.

Encounter with The Hulk

Last night I dreamt... I was in a bar with Hulk Hogan of WWF fame. We were talking very intensely, he was comforting me and I felt very safe and secure in his presence. He then leaned forward and tried to kiss me, but before I could chide him (as I was not happy about his advance) an elderly man stumbled by us towards the top of a large windy stair case. He then lent over the edge and toppled over. I saw it happening and jumped up, but could not stop him. An elderly woman then approached the top of the staircase and started throwing old school chairs after him. Hogan & I stood up, passing the scene, and walked into another room with a dance floor. An old school friend of mine - with whom I have lost contact - was dancing on a table in the middle. She starting ushering for me to join her, but I couldn't because the whole room was watching. Hogan had disappeared - I felt panicky and suddenly very alone.

Killing Field

Last night I dreamt... That I was sent to a gathering of white supremacists to assassinate them, one-by-one. It was somewhere in the English countryside. But my mission wasn't clear until I'd been there for some time: then I had the slow and gruesome task of killing them and stacking the bodies in the woods.