A film director plays back the last scenes of some footage she has put together showing what appears to be a busy Californian road. In fact the film is an illusion, a carefully constructed model. An earlier scene shows two sets of high divers, male and female, and although the setting is pasted in, the diving is for real. I am one of the male divers- I'm not the best but I'm ok at it. I climb a steep bank removing my clothes, and in front of an uninterested crowd I look for the male diving stump. Although I have made this dive a few times in the dream I cannot recall the actual diving sensation.
Yet another bomb attack somewhere in the Middle East. Each day more blood is shed. It's like a wave rolling over that unhappy part of the world growing in size swallowing its victims leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. This is World War 3, Mum says, and it will keep growing until it engulfs the whole world. I see an image of the word SURGE as the wave moves back over Europe in years to come. I know that now is the time for us to intervene and stop it from happening.
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...?"
I have just joined an experimental theatre company famous for its naked productions. I am quite excited about it. In the initial encounter session some performers are role playing and whisper to me so that I can scarcely hear them. When I answer back their voices become even softer. I understand this is an exercise and I sit back passively observing. As the workshop develops I realise that although certain rules apply to the company nobody has instructed me so I can (and perhaps should) react exactly as I choose. I speak loudly and mock their actions. I don't need a script. The session flies by - it is very enjoyable. I tell them I would like to be challenged further.
This is told like a great nineteenth century Russian novel, so it's a bit longer than usual. The protagonist (occasionally me) is a professor in his early 50's. As the last of his students leaves his dark study, one young beautiful man, Dmitri, remains. The professor gazes at him and somehow they end up making love. This of course is totally illegal. Outside in the snow, a massive bearded man with an impossibly wide back, his head tiny in proportion, returns to his apartment - for this study is his room. Strange, he thinks, he can hear no music from within: Dmitri must be sleeping. Quietly he unlocks the front door with its folding inner panel, and then enters his flat. We next hear such shouting and then cut to an interior view where Dmitri, an older and darker man, hurls the professor from the bedroom into the cold. The poor man stands in -20 degrees with no shoes and socks on. "How can I travel to my conference tomorrow?" he sobs.There is some confusion in the narrative here because he is now standing on the booted feet of young Dmitri, his arms around him. "I love you, Dmitri. You can never love me, but I just want you to be my fancy man."After the commotion the author, a sensitive woman, appears in a walk-on role as a waitress. She leaves a small bill in neat handwriting for the flan that was consumed, adding as an aside, "Here I used one of my favourite french flans."
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.
The family are in a French or Italian city. Mum has wandered off down a side street to a market and as the time passes and she still hasn't returned we begin to worry. I try texting her to tell her where we are but when I look around I realise we are inside a huge bank so there are no street signs anywhere. I run outside and find her just round the corner. Later we are in a big dining hall where the plates have run out. A friend gets us all to line up and spoonfeeds each of us a mouthful of blackberry crumble. "There must be a better way," I suggest, "find some saucers." But they are all covered in candle wax.
Thora Hird is recounting all the episodes of her life for a video. She talks us through the loves and disappointments behind the plays she performed in . It is an Everyman story in a way. She relates it calmly, and occasionally the tears well up in her eyes. "I won't cry ," she says, "I just want to tell the story as it is." But a few tears escape as she narrates the last chapter.
Just by the Old Kent Road roundabout near Currys is a massive wood and glass structure, maybe 100 metres high. It is a gothic rocket embedded in the soil leaning at an uneasy angle, it makes me think of the Tower of Babel.
I am playing Puck in A Midsummer's Night Dream. It is the final act of the dress run where I have just one line. I am hoping that the line will come to me at the right moment, but as it is I am not even able to get onstage. I try climbing through a tiny window but the drop below is too great. In the dressing room I fail to find my glittery leggings.
A Buddhist teacher monitors the contestants at the start of a new reality TV show. The first entrants are a mainly female pop band . I practise with them but am always behind with the dance moves. They are alarmed when they are told that they will be expected to sing live. Next on is a successful male singer, a political agitator, media savvy and far too sure of himself. Last on is an ordinary man , a non celebrity. He stands before the monk aware that he may speak only when asked. He is presented with a Buddhist HOAN written in large black ink. Keep reading he is instructed or you get hit. (HOAN = something to do with hone, haiku and possibly inchoate- also found the Chinese word huan from the I-Ching which means dispersion)
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?
I am running an evening class. I have set a non figurative mark making exercise but the students have not understood my instructions. One young woman has brought some expensive paper and is unwilling to use it for what she regards as a scribbling exercise. She finds a small corner of her notepad to doodle on. I instruct her to use her good paper. She reluctantly does as she is bid but draws an immaculate but stilted image of a candle on a grand piano.
I have just joined an all male jazz band, playing the banjo. We rehearse a set. I am ok-ish although the others keep asking me to tune my instrument. I pretend to fiddle with the tuning pegs but don't have a clue what I am doing. After the session I confess that tuning the banjo will take me a long time and that I might need a little help to begin with from the others when we go live.
The Spice Girls are performing in the garden using an overhead projector. The image shows a view looking down on a wooden floor with a hole cut in the seat of a tatty chair revealing the floor of the room underneath. The focus is such that the two levels cleverly appear as one. It has been designed by some guy with dreads and a red nose-piercing. Posh Spice dominates the performance.
I am painting from a photograph of somewhere I have been on holiday. In the manner of the painter Peter Doig, I carefully reproduce the splashes that the photo has accumulated.
It is a cold grey day in Scunthorpe and a friend and I have been dropped off from a bus at the top of a long slide that descends to the sea. It is too cold to swim so we wander around and end up having a blazing row. He tells me that all I do is witter on and on. I retort that perhaps it is about time we stopped our friendship. We pack our bags at the hotel in grim silence. We are told there is a room upstairs where we can wait for a cab back to the station. Can we drink tea there? I ask. No. Then I'm going to find a cafe in town. I go down the path and look back . My friend is laughing now - looks like we are going to make up.
Our book is complete. We are in an open foreign city. There are currently no signposts pointing to the book but I know it is planned to direct people to King's College Hospital grounds.
Our book is almost finished. I cycle along the roads of a country like Switzerland pleased with the results. Every now and then I turn off into a side road leading to a little square. There are still a few sections that need to be edited here and there.
Repair work is being carried out along 18 metres of the District Line.
No dream recalled.
The last exercise is being written for our book. It shows how to create a life size drawing of an elephant from lots of sheets of paper.
We are dropping by June's huge mansion. She isn't in, or at least she doesn't answer the door. I explain that that is normal because it takes so long to get to the front door. Well, she doesn't show up so we assume she has gone on already.
I am addressing a hall of people who work with adults with learning disabilities. "The new staff member for our group is..." I pause dramatically,"...is..." (The long wait is actually because we haven't worked out who it is) "...is...Christine is going to tell us now..." Christine looks flummoxed but announces someone's name who isn't present. I continue, "No...not them...the new staff member is...the new team member who will link up with Batman and Robin to confront every possible foe...(here a cartoon graphic is provided)...is..." (we never get to find out.)
Alice is sleeping in my flat. M has set up a portable TV/computer very close to her head and is watching some vintage performance art accompanied by music with an annoying insistent beat - lots of bleeps and clicks. When she asks him to turn the sound down he raises his eyebrows and just pretends to alter the volume. "Can't you watch with subtitles?" she suggests.
On a gay pride march through Carrick I am wearing a green nose and clown's outfit. I am dragged into some silly performance art nonsense where something like a giant skewer is pushed through a passerby. My friend reprimands me saying it is all thoughtless and why am I getting involved? She tells me about a major robbery that has taken place where she works. I haven't heard anything about it. "God don't you ever pay any attention to the news?" she asks tetchily, "we have just had 1000's of binoculars stolen." She is very disappointed at my lack of serious commitment to daily news events.
My garden is a mound of soil piled up against one wall. Running around are three rats.
There are actually six rats. A live squirrel is playing with a dead squirrel.
I am trying to find the contents of last night's dream. I look for clues from my niece and nephew - we take three steps through a gateway. It's all gone.
Nothing remembered. I know it was a good one though.
A white page showing a winter tree growing out of a circular patch of deep blue earth with red and green flecks. The tree is delicate but young and healthy, its soil rich.
Someone has sabotaged the overflow outpipe of the cistern containing the life blood of this building. When I climb up to the loft to investigate I see the ball cock has been removed. The pipe has been deliberately severed and water is seeping down through the ceiling. Not only that but the rich life blood supply for the building has been cut and is dripping slowly from a kind of battery. This is the equivalent of a terrorist attack. I work out how to repair the damage by getting others to help, connecting the blood battery to the water supply. We find a scrap of paper left by the saboteur- he hated change and anything that didn't fit in with the norm.
I am walking my (long dead) Jack Russell, Dilwyn, along a country lane. In the distance I see two terrifying black dogs rushing towards us. I run into the porch of a house calling to Tor to get in quickly. I close the glass panelled outer door behind me knocking on the main front door. Tor Tor hurry up. As she approaches I can see the dogs through the mottled glass. "Open up,"she laughs, "look." Behind her are two soppy black spaniels.
Sal and I are visiting Richard Briers in his old house on an island, but the route is treacherous. I climb steep rocky steps and squeeze through a tiny window feet first pulling myself up into an odd metal contraption where I am held Houdini style. Now I am hopping from rock to rock across the island. At one point I am in a bed in an open wing of the house. The bed sits at the edge of the shore. I am told that if I sleep here at full moon all kinds of birds will appear and swim around me. It's a lovely image although I am a bit nervous the tide will rise and the bed will be swept away. I am assured there is no problem.
Everyone keeps changing sex in this dream. A young man is having an affair behind his wife's back. The mother-in-law I notice freezes for a second as she obviously twigs what is happening. At one point near the end the male cuckold (or is it a woman?) needs paper for some drawing and the still unknowing wife offers him some. "No," the cuckold says, "Use mine." He is beginning to feel guilty. Now they are discussing using something like Mortadella to draw on. "Heavy!" I say and the cuckold withdraws. I find myself filling cracks in the wall with the wife's money but can't bring myself to do it.
I have clambered down through a tiny doorway over worn grey leather seats into a court room. Seated in rows are various people I half recognise- all here to decide the future of my flat. The council has offered me £3000 to move. I know it is not enough. I can't work out who is supporting me. An old scout is there - I think on my side - but two fat women who I thought friendly are making snide remarks. My helpful solicitor I realise is opposing me and wants me out of my flat. I don't really understand the case. Am I even on the right side myself?
I am in a room full of middleaged women wearing cheap Elizabeth 1 style dresses, over primped hair spun like Elizabeth 2. Some of these women are men in drag. The prettiest woman has deep red lips filling half of her face. Amongst these creatures I find a boy of about 12, maybe older. He has been keeping a diary and occasionally records his dreams. I tell him to use his dreams to find out what he needs to do. "You can continue working on your dreams when you are awake," I tell him, "It's called active imagination." I brush two long strands of hair from his otherwise short hair and recognise that he is of course me.
At last I have completed cataloging information for inclusion in our book on bicycle maintenance. Now I find that the bike doesn't tally with the details on the page. I search for the data on the page again and still the bike does not match. I carry on regardless.
In this kitchen, on this day, England is seen in an idealised form. Russian soldiers are being released and there is a sense that we have all been liberated. But the soldiers must all be supplied with sunflower or sunshine tea and for this, I, a teenage boy, am responsible. I have been waiting months or years for this moment and now I rush at top speed to fill the kettle with boiling water. We gather 100's of bags of the sunshine tea. Everything relies on my producing the full pot.
The (Crabtree and Evelyn) soap Marlene gave me yesterday in my waking life is transformed in my dream when I wet it. Instead of being round and opaque it becomes oblong and translucent like Pear's soap.
Rupert Bear and I are discussing my lovely new mattress. He is concerned that there is no direct train to Rotherhithe but I assure him there are ways round these problems.
Chris and I have discovered that Maggie is getting married and has invited loads of friends but only mentioned it to us at the last minute. Everyone arrives in smart black outfits with Maggie in a long elegant black dress and her hair recently "done". Feeling underdressed, we go through the formalities of saying how gorgeous she looks, although Chris particularly is really upset not to have been asked beforehand. We head off to another appointment.
I am forced to send my lover, or a small girl, through the post. It is the only way to get her out of the country. We package her up in white paper and I watch as she is bundled into a post office sorting bag and hurled to the back of a lorry. We calculated that she should be ok for the estimated 3 days delivery time but I realise that with the postal strike there is the likelihood of delays. Can she survive long enough?
I am running a keep fit class for a group of women in an old church hall. One of the women informs me that Vinnie Jones was doing the job before me. "Yes, Vinnie was VERY good. Maybe you could get him in for a couple of sessions," she suggests. The idea is daunting- he will see through me straight away as I am not particularly athletically fit. "What would be useful," she adds, "is if you could let us have an 8 year plan showing how you intend to develop this course." I have an idea that the women like me teaching them but I just think I am not the best person for this job.
I am putting together a book and cataloging each page. Everything has been completed but my computer brain has to check the page numbers and it seems that each time I tick off a listed item I produce a ginormous snort which immediately wakes me up. I manage to wake myself up about four or five times in one hour.
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.
A wealthy Chinese man has had a clone made of himself. The clone however is shrivelled and ugly, a deformed twin. Despite his proclaimed heterosexuality, the man describes their sex as fantastic because his twin knows him inside out. I am disgusted by the idea and can't understand how he can find pleasure in this way. I meet him in a bar in China where he works - he seems now like a conventional English gay man and as he talks I wonder which twin's voice I have been listening to.
We are discussing something about thinking patterns. I have a disagreement with one of the women who thinks the only good decisions about the future must contain a negative rule - like "Don't do ..." I don't think negative statements help anyone but she stops me from getting too argumentative. Enclosed within transparent flaps of a box we clink glasses. June shows us the drawing she has just quietly made depicting us walking out of a circular pathway. On the exit path are the words "JUNG, WILL, ME , I."
I am playing a part in a Greek tragedy. As usual there I am on stage and it is my turn to speak and I have forgotten what to say. After a long pause, I whisper to the rest of the cast, "It's ME - does anyone know my lines?" No-one does so I just sing da-da-da-da-da. I get everyone else to join in with me and the play is in chaos. Afterwards the director is furious with me -this is the last time I will be employed as an actor. I am so ashamed. X tells me that he would never forget his lines or that if he did he would just make them up. "Yeh but its easy to make up your words when you're playing in a porn film," I retort.
Stacey from Eastenders and I are working on our dreams. She is not that interested. We journey together on the underground, through festival crowds, now manoevering out of a high window into a busy crater. Stacey gets me to lower her and her pram first, but how am I supposed to get down? "Look," she says , "if we do this a few times they throw money at us." I am unimpressed but jump down onto a plastic water wheel. Then I'm up to my waist in thick mud while everyone else seems to be getting through fine. And I've lost my bag with my camcorder. "If we get enough money to buy this place, Stace, the first thing I am going to do is put in some stairs!...That's the punchline," I add.
I am staying over in Tor's grand old English farm set in hilly terrain. The sun is shining and it is a beautiful summer's day. A school party of primary kids are descending the hill. We hear a big crash from the courtyard and go to investigate. The snow has melted and slid off the roof flooding the yard. Bulbous icicles hang from the trees. You'll have to go round the back, I tell them, its too dangerous here.
