30-November-2007: I had a dream that I was at my wife’s workplace, a large office building where thousands of people work, sneaking a peek at some graphic artwork. There was an illustration that described in detail, yet quite simply, how to draw a perfectly shaded and formed spherical cube using Corel Painter X. I felt certain it was doable when I woke up, but have since realized it doesn’t make any sense.
29-November-2007: I had a dream that I was in a new bar on Coney Street, in the town where I live in waking life, with a monkey and then later with a chimpanzee who was drinking heavily. Some drunken men came into the bar to tease the chimp and tell him that his kind weren’t welcome in our town. I told them to get lost but they wouldn’t so the chimp beat them up until they ran away, then collapsed himself in a drunken stupor on the dirty floor.
28-November-2007: I found an amazing antique shop in the basement of a large house that I apparently passed every day in my dreams but never noticed before. I was thrilled to find such a place full of treasure just around the corner from where I live, and surprised that I’d never seen it.
27-November-2007: I had a dream that I was suffering from amnesia and that I spent the whole night wandering around, not knowing where I was. As dawn broke I found myself in a massive, yellow stained sulphur mine on the outskirts of Los Angeles. I spent hours walking roughly in the direction of the city, crossing freeways and open scrubland, hoping that I would recognize something. At some point I went into a music store full of guitars and recognized a Scottish guy I’d met at a music fair in England only two days earlier (in the dream) and he was rather shocked to see me wandering about the suburbs of Los Angeles, and in fact seemed rather edgy about it when I jokingly told him that I was following him.
26-November-2007: I had a dream that Marcia bought me a Spider Man costume and that she couldn’t stop singing the old theme tune to Spider Man from the 1970s.
25-November-2007: I had a dream that I went to a pub near a horse racing track with my stepfather, who I haven’t seen in waking life this whole century. When we got inside the pub I said I needed to go to the toilet and asked him to buy us drinks and sit down to wait for me. Something happened in my head and I blanked out then found myself in a different pub in a different town, possibly Cawood, with two friends called Ché and Carl Sanderson. We sat down, started chatting and Ché asked me how my stepfather was doing and I said “oh my God, I left him in a pub by accident hours ago!”
24-November-2007:I had a dream that a young boy who is the son of an Australian soap opera character, Ned Parker, was kicking a football into a goal for charity.
23-November-2007: I had a really cool dream where I travelled back in time to the 1970s with my mother. We stole a car and drove around the streets, marvelling at how few cars there were and all the extra streets we could drive down because they hadn’t been blocked off, made one way or pedestrianised yet. At one point we drove past a Rover Maestro car and I said, “What the Hell’s that doing there, they weren’t made until the 1980s?” Later we went to my grandparent’s house to have a look and see if it was how I remembered. My mother wanted to go inside and have a look but I told her it was too dangerous and wondered what would happen if the two of us were in the house, me as a child and my mother as a young woman, and we saw our older selves come inside for a look… I wondered if we would suddenly remember ourselves coming to have a look and have the memory spontaneously resolve itself in that moment when the memory and realization collided. Anyway, my mother didn’t listen to my worries and went ahead and sneaked in the house for a look. We weren’t there, it was just my grandparents eating fish and chips and chatting as we spied them through the crack of the slightly open livingroom door. When we left the house I said “Isn’t it funny to see them just chatting like that?” because it’s something I never saw in waking life ever because we were always there with them.
22-November-2007: I had a dream that some reporters wanted to interview me regarding my time in the Dutch airforce.
21-November-2007: I often dream that the River Ouse, which runs through my hometown, ends near a field near my house (like the end of a canal) instead of going out to sea 60 miles away like it does in waking life. In last night’s dream I laid on my back on the river in town and floated the two miles to my dream version of the end of the river. I got out of the water and climbed some steps through water reeds and found a building that housed an art project where members of the public were allowed to go and paint or make pottery, only no one knew about it and I was the first to find the place.
20-November-2007: I had a dream that I was waiting for a bus in London just after World War Two, explaining to some old men, one possibly my granddad, how they would still recognise the street if they went forward in time to 2007 as it had hardly changed at all.
19-November-2007: I had a dream I was sitting at a dinner table looking at a girl called Nicky, who used to be the girlfriend of a psycho teenager I used to know called Mark Rowley, and thinking how much she looks like Cara Thrace, a character from the modern remake of Battlestar Galactica.
18-November-2007: I had a dream that Marcia and I had bought a house in a place called Hartoft Street where I used to live with my previous wife many years ago. It was odd being in there again and I spent a lot of time looking in cupboards and drawers to see if there was any sign of me from the last time I lived there 10 years ago. Later my mother dropped by to say sorry, that the estate agent told her that the house had gone, but I pointed out that it was us that had bought it.
17-November-2007: I had a dream that someone said we could use their flat in Cambridge whilst they were away on a holiday. As we were settling in two gay men showed up and wanted to know what we were doing there, they said it was their house and the people who’d told us we could use it had only borrowed it from them. I tried to argue with them but they ignored me and started playing Gloria Gaynor’s I will Survive and hanging rainbow cloth all over the walls.
16-November-2007: I had a dream that I was with a friend called Phil Benton in London and that he, in his usual waking life style, was dressed like a 1970’s pimp and showing me the new décor outside a strip club. Later in the dream Phil became involved in a radioactive experiment that turned him into Gemini Man from a 1970s TV show about a guy who was sometimes invisible.
15-November-2007: I had a dream that I was in a swimming pool and gorging myself on delicious cakes.
14-November-2007: I had a dream that I was a professional go kart racer, speeding through streets in an Alpine town.
13-November-2007: I had a dream that I was shooting a guy with airsoft pellets really slowly, which was having little effect so I pushed him into a hole instead.
12-November-2007: I had a dream that a young woman on an outdoor market stall would not give me a t-shirt that I paid for, and went to a lot of trouble to make sure I never got it.
11-November-2007: I had a dream that I took some LSD, acid, and went to see one of my waking life clients while I was tripping. I was trying very hard to be normal when I got there, trying to say and think normal things, but it was very difficult because I over analysed everything I did and said to the point where I wasn’t sure if I was making myself look crazy or not.
10-November-2007: I had a dream that I was shooting tanks with a rocket launcher, as if I was in the computer game, Battlefield 2.
9-November-2007: I had a dream that I went back in time to the 1970s in my modern day Volvo to compare TV sets. I had a thought that it would be fun to do something illegal and get the police to chase me in their old, slower cars.
8-November-2007: I had a dream about a really slummy house like the one I used to live in, and love, when I was an art student in waking life many years ago. There was some problem with the internet and someone gave me an illegal red telephone that I used on a junction box in the street to talk directly to the phone company engineers for free. I somehow did a perfect rendition of the Queen of England’s voice and told the phone company that some hippies were abusing the palace’s broadband connection.
7-November-2007: There is a street in York where I live called Swinegate that has a few New Age and hippy type shops in waking life, but in my dreams it is much more complex with Moroccan style bazaars and market stalls in hundreds of little alleys and nooks. In last night’s dream I was with my mother searching the many dream stores of Swinegate, looking at Persian carpets and Alladin lamps and searching for the best patchouli oil.
6-November-2007: I had a sexy dream about kanoodling with my wife Marcia.
5-November-2007: I had a dream that my mother and a friend I haven’t seen in years, Sean Suckling, were racing sports cars along a country road and eventually crashed on a sharp bend. I can’t remember if they were killed or not.
4-November-2007: In waking life I used to drink every day, not get drunk but just have a drink late at night before bed, but last October (2006) I decided to stop for a year. So I stopped for a year and one week then had two beers at a party and haven’t had a drink again since… in last night’s dream I was getting properly drunk with a friend called Phil Benton and another friend called Suzie. Then later, still in the dream, I lay awake in bed with a hangover wondering if getting drunk would make me want to start drinking every night again, if I would become re-addicted.
3-November-2007: I had a dream that I was sitting in a tree with an autistic boy I know in waking life. We were watching soldiers in speedboats swiftly skimming across swamps and flooded fields below us.
2-November-2007: I had a dream that I was with a man who had Down’s Syndrome in a very rough, working class pub in some rundown town I never saw before in waking life. Some really stupid, and ugly, women were supping beer and whispering to each other about retards, until one of them spit their drink out in shock as the DS man took all his clothes off and danced around, which made me laugh hysterically.
1-November-2007: I dreamed that I returned to my hometown after an absence of many decades and found my friend Carl Sanderson living on a new street. I went into Carl’s new house and he was playing a guitar. I played a tin whistle and thought wistfully about “The Call of the Fairies” as if it was many years ago when, in waking life, it is something my wife and I joke about whenever I play the flute.