Kelvin MacKenzie and a seductive female teacher are on the verge of trying to kill me and my female counterpart. The woman is so good at concealing her violent nature, that there is no chance for us to kick her. Mackenzie is leaving the building but he wants to get us both first. He has already had a heart attack so we thought he was about to die but no he picks himself up and his renewed assault becomes more deadly. Now he is spraying me with poisonous purple car paint. So much hate and stupidity. I will have to escape into the dark forest outside.
We are standing along a narrow ridge just covered by the sea somewhere in Ireland. Small eruptions like temporary geysers appear close to us in the water. They are miniature volcanoes we are told - we are at the top of Everest and this happens for five minutes each day. I realise that one of our group is missing. Nobody has seen R since yesterday. Should we phone home and tell his mother we have lost him?
In a stuffy museum looking at the work of the garden designer Gandalf, recently played by Leonardo di Caprio in a film. Gandalf was particularly famous for his colourful lighting. Penny is very curious as she says they used to have an Australian tent at school designed by him. The garden we are looking is lit in oranges and greens - very 50's.
Hardly remember anything. I know there was some kind of adventure, but all I am left with are two cards with cartoon characters of pears.
My family are making commemorative sculptures for a still-born child from history. Most of us have worked on tiny clay heads on the end of ornate hairpins. Mine hasn't turned out very well, it's a bit flippant. I dust it with talcum powder as a kind of "slacker" Brit Art gesture. It is ignored because Monica has come up with these great little finger chopines (- those strange Venetian platform shoes worn in the 17th century) - they really look like legs walking along a busy street.
I am preparing to give a talk on someone like Samuel Palmer or Thomas Bewick. I have a number of female assistants who are going to compress each image for me. I need to do some research. The main thing I know is that he used to take a long time to produce his theatre sets which eventually got him into trouble. Luckily I have plenty of time to read his biography. I am encouraged when three young children tell me they loved the book.
A storm rumbles in the distance. A giant windball is picking up all kinds of things. "If you want to, you can add something sticky," a Japanese friend tells me, "although by the time it reaches us it will probably have calmed down because not enough people will glue things to it."
I am keen to see it and want to attach a sticky bun. "The windball will eventually divide into new ones like rivulets from a river," my friend says.
B is on the phone. "Listen," she says, "Something terrible has happened." She can barely speak and I can hardly hear her. "America has attacked Japan!""No that's nonsense," I say, "Why would they? Surely Bush wouldn't be that mad.""Yes yes my sister heard it on Sky news."We hang up - eventually I hear a report on the radio about an unscrupulous journalist cooking up the story out of nothing. What had actually happened was an American tourist had made a complaint about the lack of hygiene on a Japanese plane.
I am touched that Mum has spent so much time knitting me a cardigan. I put it on. It has a high collar, ridiculously wide shoulders and leg of mutton sleeves. On the outside it is scrambled egg yellow (my favourite colour I tell her), inside is a separate wool lining in greys and pastel shades. It is huge and misshapen. I'll never be able to wear it. I try it on inside out discovering that I am already wearing a waistcoat, two beige cardigans and a scarlet sequinned shirt, so it looks even bulkier when I remove all those. "It's great, Mum," I say, "a perfect fit."
Neil's "Skin Show" is advertised on a stylish linocut poster. Although I had nothing to do with this work I am very touched to read in the credits "Robin Whitmore Thanks His Mum". The show begins. A line of young women walk in along a catwalk. They are not professional models but are conventionally attractive, all from very different class backgrounds. They kneel down in front of us and on their hands and knees, their heads almost upside down, they eat single lettuce leaves from plates on the floor.
I am in Venice (in Spain) for three days with C. He stays outside in the hills but I am keen to visit the galleries. The pictures I look at are gorgeous: sparkling mosaics of religious scenes dripping with blood and set against refined architectural detail. C will be mad to have missed this stuff. I am upset when I somehow realise that I am only looking at reproductions in artbooks and that I do not actually have the time to see the work in the flesh.
A group of us are swimming a long distance race down the Thames. I am near the front. A rope to our right guides us forwards. After a few hours it leads us out of the river into a house, through holes in walls to a bedroom where Hazel and I take a rest. When I start up again I can just make out an old metal fire escape under the surface of the water. I am expected to leap down onto it but instead I lower myself gingerly. The great swim continues.
Andy Warhol and a friend are down on their luck. They have both moved into a room in my flat. A large vat of candlewax has been left to burn in my hall. When I come home it has exploded leaving the place caked in mud and wax. I can tell things are not going to improve despite the friend insisting Andy will start earning money again very soon. I doubt it and give them until the weekend to leave.
20 years ago a man was jailed for a brutal murder and then beaten to death by the investigating police. We all assumed the man's guilt and although we did not condone the police violence we seemed to enjoy it at the time. Now questions are being asked. A journalist smuggles herself into jail as a washerwoman to uncover the truth. Another man becomes an undercover prisoner for 10 years. Meanwhile the prison guards carry out random searches. Everybody runs away in panic. It is impossible to distinguish the innocent from the guilty. Maybe the players have forgotten themselves.
We have been warned that a young autistic man in our care has started approaching total strangers in an excessively intimate manner. He believes he has to snog people on the mouth to get his air. I greet him warily when he arrives.
Chris winks lewdly as she tells the old Mae West joke about a Russian spy who shows a map revealing the whereabouts of some important documents. The spy was half blind. The map was actually a pornographic photograph of a man's penis.
Like a line of birds we are perched up high on a wall along a small ridge. There is a long desktop shelf in front of us. To get down we need to break the emergency seals on some coloured thermometers. One good looking young man has them all but is not keen to surrender any. I lean against his body perhaps too heavily for his comfort and break into them. They can serve no purpose here otherwise.
It's breakfast time. Nic and I are in a sweet shop in France. He picks up one of the expensive chocolates from the counter and bites into it. I am expecting him to pay for it but instead he blatantly replaces it in full gaze of the shop assistant.
I am alarmed to find my garden transformed into rows of raised beds built out of brick and slate. Wild seashore plants have been set in the soil, the kind of plants that Derek Jarman would find for his garden in Dungeness. Tony tells me that our new neighbour Steve had apparently decided to dig it over. He had no right to. So is this how it is going to be from now on? When I wake I have a strong sense that this situation is familiar and strangely invigorating.
I kept very tightly to the brief and have produced a dull series of drawings. Another artist shows his work: drawings from his bus journeys. The fine detail of the first images starts to dissolve and becomes an animated stream of consciousness. Lines in ink grow into fragments of paper and plastic chugging through a model of a warehouse. Everything is alive. "I began working to the brief but it just took off of its own accord," he explains. I can't believe how much work he has created. It's almost too much, too abstract.
