It was Tuesday 1 January and I was starting at a new school. I arrived at eleven o'clock, half way through an informal General Studies lesson.

At lunch time, I explored the grounds. I walked around the enormous main building. There were swings and climbing frames behind it and as I returned to the front, I passed some boys playing football on a grassy slope. One of them said, "She's gay" and I was most upset.

I went to my next lesson, General Studies again. My friend Marion complained about having to do a seminar. A parent asked me to show them the epilogue of Verbal Voodoo (the story), and my PE teacher asked for the first two parts to read to prospective parents and put in the school magazine.

There was a quarter-size pool table build into the wall. My friend Chris kept attempting to place twenty balls (yellow and turquoise) on it, but a few always fell down the holes.

When I got home that night, I looked at my timetable and found out I was doing Maths, History and Classics and panicked. I asked my parents' advice but they were no use.

3 January 1999

Marion was giving a seminar about music, but she'd only written a few pages. I suggested we extended it by singing some songs, and I promised to get their lyrics and music written out with my brother's assistance. However, on the day of the seminar, I only had one set of lyrics and some scribbled music.

On the way to the seminar, I was waylaid by some second years. When I got there, Marion had finished talking and people were asking qustions. We started singing the first song, but it was interrupted half way through. When the interruption was over, Marion had disappeared and some other girl was finishing it, singing all the wrong notes.

The second song I'd written, but I'd forgotten how it went. I improvised as Chris played accompanying chords on the organ. After eight bars, my former music teacher interrupted. "No, no, no!" she cried, "you've got a beat too many! Let me see your score!"

"I don't have it with me," I said. "And I knew that, but I couldn't remember the original."

"Oh," she said. "Oh well, in that case it's very good."

4 January 1999

Reality: it was 8.50am and my mother said, "I'm going to work now, but I'll come back and pick you up at 9.25." I had a dental appointment at 9.30.

"Ok," I said. Just a few more minutes, I told myself...

Dream: It was the first day of my mock exams, and I had hardly done any revision. But I had no exams that day, so I just had lessons, the last of which was Games.

That evening, I knew I should be revising, but instead I watched Disney films with my family. The first one was good; I missed the first hour of the second one and the plot was slow and there was no dialogue. Towards the end, I found myself in the film. I said, "Come on, let's make friends" as I collected all the characters together.

We found ourselves in the middle of a busy road. I knew that as soon as the traffic lights changed, it would be a matter of life or death. But when they changed, the cars whizzed passed us and the film ended.

I found myself back in reality in our car in the same location. It was 8.35am on the day of exams. I complained about them to my parents, but they had no practical advice.

Yet when the car pulled up outside school, I found myself thinking, "Hey, Mum and me are getting along really well these days."

And the next thing I knew was a scream of "OH, ZED! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"

The dream ended in a flash. It was 9.25, my mother was back, and I had five minutes to get to the dentist's.

6 January 1999

New fish were born, but I couldn't work out how because I only had two fish of completely different varieties, and the babies resembled neither of them. They were beige and large and I couldn't count them. They escaped from the tank and travelled to the ceiling, drawn to the light.

22 January 1999

I was taking Biology as an A Level, on top of my other subjects and I couldn't believe it. I also went to a Geography lesson, in which I discovered I didn't know a thing, and the teacher told me to brush up on my knowledge.

31 January 1999

I was driving the car and all my family were in it. I had to travel to my uncle's house fifty miles away, and do loads of scary reversing. I pressed the brake pedal to slow the car down, but it wasn't responding. I managed to stop just before I hit the (non-existent) garage door of my uncle's house, though. Still, my family kept yelling at me.

I was supposed to take the bus from school to central Carlisle with my friend Katrina, but she was too scared. We went into a heauge circus tent and found a timetable. She understood it, but I couldn't.

The circus had been there the previous day, but several weird animals and insects from it were still there. They started rampaging throughout my school, and the whole situation had the air of a Simpsons Hallowe'en special.

2 February 1999

I got three nice birthday cards with red and blue badges saying "17" and a yellow one saying "18". Marion was in my bedroom and criticised my books, cards, noticeboard and airing cupboard.

5 February 1999

Stanley and Moira (characters from my novels) were acting strangely. They went to a Chinese restaurant that looked like a shopping centre and didn't sell Chinese food.

23 February 1999

The Chemistry lab was burning down. My friend Smill and I ran away from it as quickly as possible across the playing fields, jumping in puddles. I was scared Smill would die, but she didn't.

I met my online friend Syl. It was my seventeen-and-a-halfth birthday, everyone was celebrating and three people gave me Valentine's cards.

28 February 1999

My brother Noj had just passed his driving test, and he was taking Mum and me home from Carlisle, the nearby city. Mum told him to go to a Spar in the middle of nowhere. It had a roof but only three walls.

Mum went in, and Noj and I decided to leave her there for a laugh. We drove to Naworth Castle, where we used to live. I went into my old bedroom. The furnishing was exactly as it once was, and my fish tank was still there containing six fish, but they didn't look too healthy. It turned out Mum and Dad had divorced when we moved, and Dad had stayed at Naworth.
When Mum got back from the petrol station, she was not happy. Worse still, it was the early hours of the morning and I started my mock exams the following day, which I hadn't revised for. But Mum wouldn't take me home: she talked to Dad in private. By the end of the night, Dad had decided to move back in with us.

It was New Year's Eve and my family and some others were in the living room at Naworth playing a complicated cross between Monopoly and The Game Of Life. The board was a jigsaw puzzle that hadn't been fully constructed.

Then we were in the game and I was winning. I found a frog and took it to a princess. She started shooting me with a machine gun. Talking to her failed, so I started shooting her. Eventually, she turned into a flaming brand. I was most annoyed because I could no longer win the game, so I picked up the brand and started burning all the houses. When I ran out of things to burn, we left the game, and Mum told me to find some crumpled biscuits and pieces of bread in the kitchen.

I couldn't find any crumpled biscuits or bread, so I returned to the living room empty-handed. Noj and Dad were still playing the game, both with loads of money. When Noj landed on Coventry Street, he didn't buy it, but suggested he and Dad battled it out. So Dad drove his car back from Mayfair and they started ramming their vehicles against each other. Dad's was better - it was a BMW.

I was lying on the bed in my parents' old room at Naworth Castle. Two girls I knew were there dressed as Christmas trees, performing ballet steps. I was envious, but one collapsed on the bed. I said, "The dance of the dying Christmas tree," and she found this hilarious, then stopped laughing abruptly.

I was walking through a department store, following a sales assistant, trying to find a Christmas tree. They were all very small. Natalie, a girl in my year at school, had chosen one in a blue pot standing in a fire place, and really liked it. I didn't, but eventually the sales assistant found one to suit me.

I was watching "Blue Peter", standing in the studio. Some weird-looking blokes came in, said they were Terrorvision and started playing "Tequila". Chris's brother was a roadie for them.

The rest of the dream took place in an Italian city.

There was a C-shaped downward-sloping ice-skating thing. I went down it once, and at the bottom, I got my photo taken with Jimmy Krankie (local celebrity in the early 90s).

Loads of people had been to see some sort of performance at the top of the slope, and now had to skate down it. I was near the beginning of the queue, but in front of me was a hesitant cross between Alice's mother and Katrina's mother.

When I was half way round, I got a bit stuck. Smill whizzed past me and everyone cheered for her. I made it to the bottom, but no one cheered.

A little boy approached me, talking rubbish, and put my ice skates in a hand bag. Then he said, "You're not my mother" and took them out again. His mother appeared, then mine did. I complained about the skating, but she said, "At least we've got the picture of you and Jimmy Krankie."

I had to do a seminar about Africa in a long thin room. Only my friends Alice and Roe and two teachers, Mr Heywood and Mr Bulman, came to see it, but they sat in an alcove and couldn't see me. I was running out of things to say, but Alice started disputing some of the borders I'd mentioned. I said, "Borders change all the time", but then she asked, "Why is that country called Freedom?"

I didn't know, but Mr Heywood answered for me. While they talked, I walked away, and when I returned the seminar was nearly over.

Natalie was trying to play an Angband-ish computer game without much success. I told her where to go in it, but we found ourselves on an island and she wanted to cross the sea. The island was actually the keypad of a computer, and she wanted to get to the rest of the keys. We met a Maths teacher, and he started talking about the keyboard.

I watched Noj play Angband. He went into a shop and bought several items, including a camera and film. There was a camera called a Jon Camera. This made me laugh, but he didn't find it funny and he couldn't afford it. As he left the shop, I asked if we could have a two player game of this sometime, and he answered "Next time" irritably.

7 March 1999

I climbed onto a big busy stage in the New Hall at school and stood at one side, in a very small concert band, playing first clarinet. The piece was easy, but I got all the notes wrong. I sounded awful, but no one mentioned it to me afterwards.

There was no way down from the stage but to jump. It was about two metres high and was surrounded in people's bags and junk, so I was too scared to leave it.

I was sitting at a table just inside the school building. A lesson ended and loads of people pushed past me. I folded up the table and went outside. A taxi arrived; I put the table in the boot, and myself and some others got into the vehicle.

We were taken to Tullie House, a nearby museum. We were directed to a room where a woman gave us name badges. Then I realised I'd left the table in the taxi.

The following day, we left. We were to go skiing at a nearby resort. I saw the taxi outside and tried to get my table back, but failed.

8 March 1999

The alarm clock kept sounding between sections of this dream. I was chatting to my online friend Meaghan by writing on this special piece of paper. I ran out of space on the paper, and didn't know how to tell her what had happened. Some old woman was shouting at me to go to school. However, Meaghan and myself managed to keep communicating, and at 7.50am I got up.

11 March 1999

I was reading the online journal of a man in his seventies, staying in a Home in the hills. The entries were written in mid-July and I read them in reverse order. In the last one, he said enough was enough. Before that, he revealed his feelings towards another bloke at the home. One day, they had played a board game, in which he got to do various dodgy things to the guy in question.

Me and my family were living an apartment. A man and a woman were renting two of the rooms and both paid over a million pounds a week nonchalently. I didn't trust either of them.

I went to a seminar in a long thin room in a city. There was no one there except the girl giving it, who was talking about woollen hats. My dream camera started to explore the city, showing people in these hats. One youth put a snake-shaped thing on his head. The rest of his gang beat him up.

There were power balls bouncing around. I found a corridor where a door kept opening and shutting, letting them bounce out. This was where the woman staying in the apartment had once lived. Struggling against some unseen force, I entered the room. I picked up the only two objects inside - a large book and an envelope - with some difficulty.

I went into a living room. Some people, including my mother, were there, talking. I overheard the words "Turin Shroud". When they saw me, they shut up. "Please tell me," I said, "I know about the Turin Shroud." So they started talking again...

...but then the alarm clock went off. I reached out to press the snooze button, but when I stuck my arm back under the covers, the book and envelope had dematerialised. I had known it was too easy to be true. I had no success in getting to the bottom of the mystery.

27 March 1999

Smill and I had arranged to meet Marion at 8pm, but we didn't and she was most annoyed. The following night, the same thing happened. Everyone was struggling to finish GCSE courswork; my online friend Heather was in it; Roe had written a story; and I was trying to do some Biology.

8 April 1999

I was in Alice's basement at a party. Katrina and a friend of hers were playing pool on a vertical table. The balls were stuck to it with blu-tack and the aim was to detach them. Some people were playing horizontal pool, but there were brown balls on the table and I couldn't work out the rules.

I suddenly realised I was doing A Level Geography and hadn't been to a single lesson. I went to one and no one could answer any of the questions that were asked. I panicked.

I was sitting on Helen Wo's carrel having a fight with Chris in which we were trying to break each other's fingers. It didn't hurt at all.

12 April 1999

I wandered round London, meeting my online friend Twi over and over again and making phonecall after phonecall.

18 April 1999

I was being persecuted by some boys and ran for a mile and hid in a hotel room. I phoned my mother asking for help, but she didn't rescue me.

I was living in a hut by a lake. I didn't like it much. An eleven-year-old girl was living in a neighbouring hut and we sent letters to each other. My online friends Twi and Ven came there and we cooked our own ribs. I felt hopelessly inadequate compared to them.

24 April 1999

Smill and myself went to New Zealand to visit my online friend Flink. My mother was there and we caught some tubes to go to an opera. All three of them were getting on my nerves.

25 April 1999

A new world had opened. My parents were very involved in it and I opposed it strongly. There were green road signs pointing to it all the way along the road from Brampton (where I live) to Carlisle (nearby city).

My parents asked me what I wanted to do to celebrate my eighteenth birthday. A woman lost her five children in this new world and eventually they all came back to them. I went to a religious exhibition where there were some spectacular expensive ornaments made by Asian people.

27 April 1999

I kept thinking about an equation. I couldn't solve it and kept asking myself, "Can't I just go to sleep and think about it tomorrow?" but without success.

Noj and Mum and I went to a shopping centre in the middle of nowhere. I ate an alarm clock and it gave me stomach cramps. We wandered around for hours, then at 3.30, Mum went psycho for no apparent reason.

Mum drove along this road in America, and on either side, there were buildings and each one was a domain. This was cyberspace.

Mum and I were at a seminar given by three members of the lower sixth. It was about a historical event and everyone had to jump on some lily pads crossing a room containing a pool of water on numerous occasions. Mum and I survived for a while, then both fell in the water at once.

I was waiting to get into a nightclub with Smill and some older people. I saw two people I know, both called Lucy. I noticed the bouncer checking IDs and panicked since Smill and I were underage. Smill wasn't worried though.

28 April 1999

I was driving along pants little roads around Lanercost (a nearby village) with Chris in the passenger seat.

29 April 1999

I was in the shop across the road from school buying aevil shoes and a china piggy bank. I couldn't afford the shoes, so I put them on my feet and walked away. I was worried about the piggy bank getting broken.

My history class were having French in the small carrels. Everyone was cheating on a test and Katie asked me about the problems I was having with my boat. (Exactly, what boat?)

30 April 1999

I was on holiday with Smill in France.

1 May 1999

I climbed up millions of steps in a building in Cambridge and when I was nearly at the top, I came to some heauge ones which I couldn't climb. I found myself dangling over the banister, exhausted, and the people at the top of the steps were scared senseless and desperate to drag me to safety. I wasn't bothered by it in the slightest.

I was putting on a play / musical in the school chapel with some other people. I was supposed to play the clarinet, but I had left it at home. No one minded, but I couldn't remember my lines either. I just hoped they'd come to me naturally, and they did. The play became reality : a group of people were living in a house around Christmas time with much conflict.

2 May 1999

A long complex inner-city murder mystery took place. It concerned a television presenter who everyone was criticising, stuff about Naworth Castle (where I used to live) and driving lessons.

It was 2 August and all the sixth form were sitting in a big carpetted room with comfy chairs all the way around it. Some teachers / parents standing in the middle announced that I was going to have an 18th birthday party on 10th August (a day before my actual birthday) in the school field. It would be a funfair and we had to suggest rides.

5 May 1999

A balloon flew over Canada and I desperately wanted it to come to Britain. It did, except it flew under Britain in a tunnel. It was to enter the tunnel right outside my school, so there was a "school closed" notice outside the door when I went there that day. I tried to get back into the car, but I ended up staying there.

9 May 1999

I was in Cambridge having a group interview. The trick was to interrupt so that the interviewer paid attention to you. He was talking to me, but then he asked, "What is the psychological difference between men and women?" I started to answer, but another girl interrupted.

After a slight break, the interviewer told us we'd be playing psychological tennis. It was on a small indoor court with a high net and you hit a small plastic disc instead of a ball. When I tried to serve I couldn't get it over the net, and I spent the next few games crying on the sidelines. When I had to play again, I did better because you could let the object bounce more than once.

13 May 1999

I was rollerblading down a tunnel and became a character in a text adventure. I reached a castle where it was dangerous. I tried to get back into the tunnel, but couldn't get through the gap. I died and another text adventure started. I was in a kitchen full of objects. I picked them all up, even though one of them was a four-person tent.

15 May 1999

I met my online friends Heather and Megan an apartment in New York, and we talked about music and exchanged tapes. I received a letter from my penpal Sabine and it turned out that she was actually a creation of my penpal Julia. I was most annoyed.

We were having a school photo taken, as if it was the 1890s. Everyone had to sit upsidedown on poles. It was most uncomfortable and I looked up to the cerulean sky where the sun was a swimming creature. When the photo was over, we were all turned the right way up again. I crossed the yard with paint on my shoes, making blue and green footprints, which would still be there in the 1990s.

16 May 1999

I was sitting with some first years, second years and sixth formers on the benches in the computer room at school. A religion teacher started playing the piano, telling us to sing this really pants hymn. A second year boy started playing with his radio controlled car, and the teacher turned around and went psycho. She started playing the hymn again and the same thing happened. When it happened for the third time, she went so berserk that the vehicle from "The Lost World" fell from the sky and crushed Sarah, a girl in my year.

I went down to the common room, where some people were playing pool, then went to the refs with some girls in my year. None of us ate anything, and my tutor said, "I trust you ate something?" We all said we did, and she was satisfied, but I was worried she'd discover the truth.

Marion and I went for a walk in the yard until we came to a small bedroom. Chris came in and lifted me up a few times. Then we sat on the bed and watched TV and Marion got annoyed.

17 May 1999

My brother Noj and I were on our own at the shop with the landrover. He started to drive it and I tried to stop him, since neither of us had passed our tests, but without success.

I was backstage in this giant hall where I was about to perform in "Macbeth". I had a fairly big part, but couldn't remember any of my lines. I desperately looked around for a script, but couldn't find one and no one would help me. They were too busy talking about all the people they knew called Chris.

22 May 1999

I was at a cricket ground in London with Chris. He handed me Sarah's orange yearbook, which she'd misplaced (in reality).

May 1999

I went to Dumfries Ice Bowl where I met one of my penpals, Emma. We went for a walk on this muddy track and she asked me for a lift home.

4 June 1999

I was at a cross between Tesco and Alice's house with my mother, eating Fruit Pastilles. We ran into Chris and his mother by the frozen food. Chris and I had a non-conversation about Smill.

I went to meet Smill and her v. rich v. funchie cousin (who doesn't exist in reality) who was typing on a computer. She had a small spherical security camera floating around her. She let me play with it, but I couldn't get it to float around me.

There was an emergency and the supermarket had to be evacuated. Mum got very involved, but I was more interested in playing a Skirmish variant. However, I reached a stage where I needed to phone someone called Steve.

Eventually, we left and I tried to drive the car with my legs crossed which annoyed my mother. Then I sat on a busy train headed for Newcastle with my online friend Ven sitting on my knee. I was very worried that the arrival time on the monitor at the station was wrong.

June 1999

A group of kids were standing outside the garden gate of an author's house as he told them stories. I recalled that I had worshipped this author when I was young, so I listened. The stories weren't very good though.

Later, he was to play "Midnight Summer Dream" by The Stranglers on the bassoon in a concert, and I was to turn the pages for him. He was wearing a white shirt and being very quiet and some people were afraid he was going to commit suicide. I wasn't, though. I knew that he was just nervous and wanted to be alone.

13 June 1999

Millions of people featured in it this dream, which concerned school and assemblies by fourth years and castles and parties. I was playing a game for five people: if you stood up, people were entitled to shoot at you. If you were hit, you had to play dead for the rest of the game. The winner was the person who didn't get shot. Even in the dream, I realised how stupid it was.

16 June 1999

My penpal Nicky was desperately trying to get in touch with me. I corresponded with this man for a while, who turned out to be the leader/dictator of Germany. I visited his home which consisted of three sheds. He wasn't there; the walls were dark blue, and there were trophies everywhere. I got onto a new level in Lemmings, but my brother Noj came into the room and I couldn't finish it.

19 June 1999

There was no real imagery, only feelings. Everything I touched melted and I enjoyed that. If I couldn't melt something, it was a threat. I was desperately trying to sweep aside all my difficulties, and I was trying to get rid of all negative emotions by writing them down as fast as I could. Time kept slipping away and I seemed to be losing the entire day.

21 June 1999

My family and another family with three kids went to an African country. It was discovered that young people could get loads of diseases, so us five teenagers went to a doctor to be immunised. The immunisation was a series of operations in which springs were inserted into our palms and feet, and metal hoops were put into our eyes and ears. We picked up the springs and hoops from plastic boxes and they all looked rusty.

The doctor inserted my springs, but he went home before my hoops could be put in, which worried me. However, a nurse came along to do it instead. Her name was K0-OD (pronounced Codi). I was worried it would hurt, so she started telling me her medical history as far back as 1959. She mentioned something with a Greek name and I said, "Yes, I know about him from Greek mythology." She got really annoyed, walked away, and didn't come back.

I was standing in the corridor at school with my classmates Marion, Katie and Chris. Marion asked Chris, "Have you phoned Zed twice in the last twenty four hours but hung up before she answered?" and he said, "Yes." Marion and Katie were really happy, but I was confused since the phone hadn't rung at all in the last day.

23 June 1999

I was standing on our drive painting our car. I painted the back red and the part-where-the-back-doors-would-be-if-it-had-any yellow. I was going to paint the front doors green and the bonnet a darker shade of blue, but I had to go into the house to get the paint, and I never went back outside. My parents were in a bad mood and they went for a drive. When they came back, nearly all the yellow paint had come off, and they were well annoyed. I didn't know what to do.

I was in a car showroom watching a woman I knew test drive a car. She was doing loads of stunts, but as she tried to do a really simple manoeuvre, she crashed into something. She was having a bad time in this dream as it was, and was very reluctant to discuss the accident with the bloke who ran the showroom (who only spoke Italian) and his interpreter.

26 June 1999

My grandparents stayed at my house for a week. My grandmother wrote a novel and sold it to a publisher for three hundred million pounds. My immediate family and I were playing a pants board game, but Noj got fed up and called Asp (an online friend of his) on a mobile phone. Asp was travelling with his parents to Naworth Castle, my old home, and Noj gave him directions. But they were wrong, and Mum snatched the phone off him. Mum and Dad sat down in the living room to drink, and I was annoyed because we hadn't finished the game.

I travelled through Europe, meeting up with my online friends Twi, Flink, Syl, Heather and Sam in various locations. (Twi in London, Flink in Germany.) We spent three days in a house in Germany with my cousin, her husband, Smill and Duran Duran. On the final night, we went to Buskers nightclub where Heather started talking to some fifth years. The following morning, everyone left without saying goodbye, except Twi. I was waiting for her in this courtyard where people in fancy dress were dancing around.

I saw Smill. I asked her if she'd seen Twi and she replied, "She's probably still asleep, but never mind that, we have to go to the supermarket." So we went to it. It was on the third storey of a building and about ten feet long and five feet wide. Smill had taken a trolley up there, but when we finished shopping, neither of us wanted to take it back down the stairs. I suggested leaving it there, but she said, "You'll get into trouble" and pointed at a sign on it that said, "Failure to leave trolley in correct place could get you an 18-month prison sentence."

29 June 1999

Me and seven other people were in a van outside a bank, and we kept going in and stealing long pieces of wood. As we returned to the van, a man in the shadows shot at us. Eventually, I was hit.

I was writing a story about an idiotic fifteen year old girl sleeping with Robbie Williams, back in 1995, when he was still in Take That. I kept thinking, "I'm writing this really well, I'll have to put this to paper when I wake up." I didn't, needless to say.

30 June 1999

My brother Noj and myself were in a computer game in which we had to find the holy grail. The final scene of the game took place in this enormous church. Dogs kept trying to attack us, as did swords (on their own accord), but Noj succeeded in feeding the grail to a gargoyle high up on one of the walls, thus winning the game.