Trophy Cupboard

The objects in the cabinet are all someone else's emotional memories. They mean nothing to me.

What happens to the potency those objects once had for one man - can that energy somehow be transmitted to other people?

K Comes Back To Life Again

20 years after his death, K comes back to life again - it's all very real.

He always thought I was lazy and messy: 

he will start to spring clean, painting over old paintwork, cleaning out my drawers of rubbish and replacing it with his neatly folded socks. 

He will read my dream diary and see how he keeps coming back to life.  He will be disgusted at my lack of ambition.

Dangerous Assignation

After 20 years K has come back to life and has a romantic date with an Algerian soldier from the enemy camp.

K is nervous -  he knows it could also be a military trap.  He takes my mobile and a bottle of a substance called AMMO.   It is so thoughtless of him to take the mobile into such a risky environment. I am furious about it.

Dying Twins

I work as a teacher in a school in Nazi Germany. While I am there two male technicians in their mid 60s die one after the other, blood and clear liquid spurting from mysterious wounds.

Meat Beat

I have heard about this art installation where participants are encouraged to paint with raw meat. At the entrance of a dark labyrinthine warehouse you buy a big slab of meat and then whack it against the walls of the building. Some have a much more delicate approach but everyone is covered in blood. I didn't really want to get dirty but now I find myself slamming the meat against the wall leaving red and yellow marks- its revolting but sort of pretty.

A Lifeline

I have learnt to draw a lifetime using one line.

J has just died- her husband sinks into a state of depression.

How can I demonstrate that unravelling the life that has departed will draw in a lifeline, hauling her out of a slump?

Death Bed

Kev has come back to life again.  He has been pleasure seeking around the world and now has a new partner and wants to return home. He looks just as he did when I first met him twenty or so years ago. I am filled with a sense of dread.

Later an image of a death bed - cold and single.

Pink Lips and Dead Mice

I am stopped in the street by three straight lads, "Come to our party, come on, I'll kiss you on the lips, " one says jokingly.  

"OK," I challenge him and he does and his lips are pink and wet and lovely.

We step over piles of dead mice. So many mice everywhere.

Corpse In the Boot

We are on the run- this woman and I. A corpse is concealed in the boot of our car- not that we did anything wrong but it could all be so badly misconstrued. 

Our adventures take us from Surrey into Berlin, where the cops pull us over. We lose them in a noisy procession racing past orgiastic scenes from Hieronymous Bosch - it all looks very appealing but we have no time. Someone offers us a hiding place in South America. 

Life is exciting.

Dead Dog

A dog has been knocked down and and is lying dead in the middle of Streatham High Road.

Ed Shot In World War 1

I am in the midst of a battle in World War 1. All around me my colleagues are being shot at. The enemy seems to be far fewer in numbers now. This has to be the last battle before the end of the war but how would we know that? We don't have the luxury of hindsight. Suddenly Ed is shotand collapses to the ground. Surely it's just his leg, but no, he's been taken out. I weep for him singing that blue grass song "Will you miss me (miss me miss me) when I'm gone...?"

Death Of A Twin

Everyone else has left this modern low rise building but I remain. I look back at the death that I have caused but I am unable to really face it. This one man keeps on and on at me for help. I refuse - I don't know what I can do - he's beyond help. His twin screams at me and still I ignore him. Maybe I am even winding him up. Eventually he obviously dies and I wake up horrified, my heart pounding.

Coffin On The Move

A hearse has just picked us up to take us to my primary school headmaster's funeral. Inside the car I observe him in his underwear and black socks climbing into his death bed. The hearse is wide with perhaps 5 beds across- it is like a padded coffin itself but it is on the move. I speak to my college tutor and an old family friend who is in the role of the headmaster's wife. Is she already dead? Are we all tucking ourselves up into our death beds?

Young Boys Discovered With Heads Severed

J comes rushing into the crowded library/museum, her hair wild. "They've got him! They've got the second boy," she sobs and collapses in my arms.
A young boy of five has been found mutilated and despite his severed head, he was able to speak confirming how the last boy died. There is a huge commotion in the hall. I don't seem that bothered - I am searching for my jacket, a heavy puffed brown thing - ugly - so I can go for a walk with the family.

Sporty Spice's Dog

Three dog owners - one of them Sporty Spice - take their untrained dogs for a walk on Streatham Common. Sporty Spice lets hers off the leash and he dashes down a foxhole dragging out ten snails. He then heads down another hole and fishes out a freshly killed plucked bird with pale spots on its skin.



(What's with all these dogs??!)

Collapse Of The London I

One huge yellow ring springs off the London Eye into the Thames. From a flat on the opposite side of the river Ra's sister (although she is not) and I clutch hands and watch with horror. People leap off in an attempt to save themselves. I am shouting "Jump jump!" although they can't hear me. As the construction (it is made up of concentric circles so looks nothing like the actual Eye) collapses further, there are electric sparks. The people are carried away by the now fast flowing water.
I know this was always going to happen. It was such a crazy thing to build it by the water.



This was such an extraordinary dream I think I have to write a little about it. I had the dream on the last night at the conference for Dreams and Culture in Lincoln and was fortunate to be able to tell it to a group there.

It was a very frightening dream and left me quite troubled. Recently I have been feeling positive and happy, convinced that connecting to my dreamlife is a way of building some kind of inner strength and that it is something our society needs to embrace. A real way of learning more about who we are.
One of the main thoughts going through my mind following this terrifying dream was a questioning of this whole business of looking into my dream life. Had it got too intense? Is it, as one man had suggested, like opening a can of worms? Should it all be left well alone?

I really wanted to understand this dream. I am convinced we can use dreams to help us, and that when the dream is so urgent then we need to heed it. There were two psychoanalysts running the group workshop. They used what is known as the Montagu-Ullman technique, which does not aim to interpret the dream, more asks the other members of the group to imagine the dream was their own and to PROJECT their own feelings and understanding of the dream back to the dreamer. So treating it like a story if you like.

I won't go into everything that came up as the session lasted for an hour and a half . Just to say firstly that it was the most amazing experience and I walked out on cloud nine.

The group suggested meanings within the dream. Some didn't seem quite right but the majority clicked and I was able to see the dream clearly and realise the extraordinary complexity within it.

To give a couple of examples: one person recognised from the start the double meaning of the "Eye" and "I". This had completely missed me, but immediately it was said I realised of course yes that feels right.
"Ra" is actually the name of a good friend of mine, but someone suggested that there is also an EGYPTIAN SUNGOD by the name of Ra and could that have any significance?! It felt right again- so weird - I know very little about the sungod but have read something about him in my past. And the yellow rings somehow seemed to tie in with that. And the sun is a symbol for the self. These are not just academic notes but things that felt emotionally right.

The "London I" now made a bit more sense. I had this dream on the night of the day I was returning to my home in London after having been away in Ireland for two and a bit months. I was anxious about returning. I feel I have learnt so much from a concentrated time there exploring my and other peoples' dreams that I was scared about returning to my old humdrum life in the city.
One person suggested that because the woman I was with in the dream was someone I scarcely knew I was getting very little support in the face of this tragedy happening before me. She suggested that's what I needed - more support in London. And that just really hit home. I had so much wonderful support in Carrick in Ireland whereas in London my friends are all dotted about and we see each other too seldom.
There was a lot more to it. But suffice to say I felt something lift and was invigorated by the whole thing. So I will heed this dream. I want to set up a regular dream group in London as a starter. So if you are interested let me know.

Woman's Death Is Predicted

We know this woman is destined to die by the end of the dream. Everything seems loaded with significance: the two strange men following her ; the unsettling mirror in the motel ; the strawberry crumble placed on her back as a poultice. All innocuous - we are reading signs when nothing is there. A young baker says he will make her another cake if she is worried - "It should be sweeter," he says , adding a Mars bar and loads of sugar.
We don't see her dying - just a chart showing she was diabetic.

Visit From The Dead

Kev (who died almost fifteen years ago) brings some fizzy orange to me in bed. I didn't want it but I am touched by the gesture. He pours it into a plastic flannel bag. "Don't worry," I say not wanting to hurt his feelings, "I'll drink it out of that. By the way, I don't really drink fizzy orange any more. Water will do next time."

Sleeping In The Ruins

I am sleeping in the ruins of an old abbey. I have to get up to turn off the music blasting from the sound system. My friend Keith (who died thirteen years ago) is trying to sleep in the next room. Another young man, lying on a crumbling ledge, has been woken by the noise. As I return to bed I notice air is being pumped through an ancient air conditioning system buried amongst the rubble.

Firm Discipline

We are all sitting watching an old Nazi propaganda film showing Hitler acting as a teacher. His twelve year old pupil sits in an armchair. Hitler treats him roughly, explaining that you must exercise firm discipline or the boy will become disfigured and grow a swollen turnip head. With each crude edit the boy looks worse for wear until eventually he is a corpse in the chair.