I went to The Beercart Arms. Nisha had decided not to wear her corset after all, since she wouldn’t be able to headbang while wearing it.

Bryn and I were playing a two-player version of the old computer game, Chuckie Egg. The first level was similar in design to the third in the actual game. I had to make my way round the screen collecting eggs, while Bryn had to stop me. I found it difficult anyway - I told Bryn I remembered the one-player version being difficult - but since it was 3D, the shifting camera angles made me feel nauseous and worried. Platforms buckled under Chuckie’s weight as he moved across them, and at times I was unable to see what was ahead of me, due to not being able to adjust the camera angle. At one point in the level, I realised an army of High Elf Warriors stood where I was about to fall, but I wasn’t allowed to attack them first.

All the platforms gradually got destroyed, until our characters were flying about the screen, trying to kill the other. Bryn’s had the advantage as it was allowed to fly off the top, bottom and sides of the screen, whereas mine wasn’t. I had trouble controlling mine, and Bryn’s collected a weapon that let it spray fatal radioactive waves towards mine. In the end, I gave up. We were leaving the computer, when Bryn made a snide comment about his victory. Infuriated, I said I’d play him again, just to show him I could win.

5 June 2002: Xeno's Road

I was cycling through the back of beyond in Cumbria. My journey was supposed to be eleven miles long - half along flat roads, half through gentle hills. I'd reached the hill part, and found it much easier than the flat bit. But miles and miles went by, and I still didn't reach my destination.

I was moving out of my house, but it was a cross between a hotel and a circus, and there were a load of other people moving out too, including a family of ghosts. My parents were trying to make room for everything in their Landrover, but some stuff had to be left behind. Then I realised we hadn't emptied the kitchen yet. I consulted my mother over which cutlery to take. She wanted to take all sorts of different things, but I protested that 1) I wouldn't use half of it and 2) it wasn't mine for the taking.

17 June 2002: le sanguine bonus!

I had a Warhammer unit of size thirty. Then it turned into really people - re-enactors. Bryn was the veteran and I was the musician. It was Friday morning and we were in Lanercost school field, about to go march around the wilds of north Cumbria. I looked at the map, and the distance until what appeared to be where we'd camp for the night was very off-putting, never mind the prospect of walking there. Bryn was being very bossy, and people were causing problems: someone had a fit in the cricket club toilets.

I was in room fifteen at school, where I was taking an exam. It went well. At the end, Roe asked me, "How did it go?" "le sanguine bonus," I replied, trying to say "bloody good" in Latin, but getting mixed up with French. "Grr," he said, and left the room. After that there was only me and Will the autistic boy left in there, so I said, "Well, I'm off." I went to the toilets.

20 June 2002: I Want To Be The Gothest, Damnit!

Marilyn Manson was eleven years old and told Trent Reznor that he needed to get more of a suntan.

There was also a county south of Kent called "Fish".

22 June 2002: I Hate The Orange Game!

I was at a supermarket in a Yorkshire town with my family. We had to wait ages to get served. When we were, Dad went outside to unlock the car. The rest of us started loading the groceries into it as they got bleeped. Noj paid for them with his debit card, and looked smug. When he, Mum and I left the supermarket, we couldn't find the car anywhere. We walked along the road a bit - it was mainly residential - looking for it. Then Mum realized that Dad wasn't able to park permanently on this road. He'd driven to the town centre, and we had to get a bus there.

We went to a museum, which on UKC's campus where Cinema 3 was. As we were leaving, our path was blocked by two students who wanted to play the orange game (where you pass an orange from under your chin to under someone else's), but needed us to hold something for them while they did. We complied, and the girl thanked us profusely. Every time I said something to her, she giggled cruelly.

Once we got out, we headed towards the computing department, which was a café, with a huge glass container of churning orange juice on display. Noj thought we were eating there, and Mum and Dad agreed, as long as they served something besides that horrendous orange juice.

I'd bought a book in the supermarket, a paperback with a mainly black cover. I read the first three pages. It was a mystery / thriller set in London. The Thames had burst its banks and the streets were about a foot deep with water. I remembered it being like that when I saw Shed 7. The main characters went into a bar. Then it declared, "In the next second, several things happened at once. Write to say what you think they are, and the best answer will get made into my new novel." I flicked through the pages of the book - only about half of it was actual story, the rest was promotions for forthcoming writing. On top of one of the doors in the café, there was a scrolling message, displaying words from the author. It changed every time I read it though. At first, it gave an obscure clue as to what had happened. I asked my parents if they'd noticed this message; they had and were also transfixed by it. A little after that though, the writer's habits were mentioned. "Sometimes I stop at eleven, but sometimes I have to keep writing all night." This inspired me to be as productive, so I woke up.

23 June 2002: The Gothic Baseball Experiment

I had sex with Dale, twice, in my bed. It was nice, but I felt terrible about it.

My brother drove me to the school in Brampton, where there was a rock event taking place in the gym. In order to enter, you had to climb onto a five-foot-high ledge, squeeze through a tiny gap then jump down again. I found this difficult to accomplish in my PVC dress, pink tights and fishnets and New Rock boots. There was a guy wanting to get in behind me, and I knew I was holding him up.

I sat on my own for a while. Then a guy asked me if I'd help out with an experiment. Some blokes were taking in turns to hit a ping pong ball with a baseball bat, so that it struck a silver spherical ball with lots of lights on it, held by a woman. I was given an identical silver sphere - it was my job to record the angles at which the woman's sphere was hit.

The first guy to bat told me his name was Jamie (surname beginning with D). He said he was really gothic. I recognised the name - he used to go to primary school with me - so I said, "And he used to be such a nice little boy too." I tried to write his name down, but couldn't spell it - everyone who'd kept records before me had written a different variation of it.

Suddenly, something brought the experiment to a halt. The woman asked me, "How do you do your make up?"

"Badly," I said.

She started telling me about all the problems she had with hers. She had blonde hair, was wearing patchy whiteface, and instead of a nose, she had a clear plastic pocket containing six lipsticks.

I started wandering around, and random gothic people introduced themselves to me. I saw a guy who looked just like Nick, accompanied by someone who bore some resemblance to Simon (who spends a worrying amount of time with Nick). Nick-clone said hello, and I told him of the similarity.

Everyone ended up standing around the edge of the gym. My leg was being hugged by some goth guy. I wanted to speak to him, but no one was talking, and I didn't want to interrupt the silence. Eventually we spoke a bit and shared some chocolate and what looked like a bar of chocolate, but was made out of fruit-flavoured sweets instead. He tried to kiss me; I ended up licking his lips, but pulled away, realising I'd already gone too far.

24 June 2002: My Brother Becomes A Socialite While I Remain Superslut

Me and Noj were planning a party for my parents. All the guests would take part in a play. We also bought a load of cards that each guest could give to them. We chose the ones containing computer-related humour.

I was a bit worried, since I'd broken up with Bryn (as he was moving away) and since then I'd slept with Nick, and both were invited. Noj invited everyone he could think of or ran into, including a Greek guy I know and his family, who'd moved into the house where Katrina used to live.

26 June 2002: The Dungeons Of Lanercost Priory

I was in the game of Angband, except it wasn't real - all the monsters were acted by people. The dungeon was actually a dark, rearranged version of my local church. I was on level 91 and all the monsters were going to attack me. I was shown a variety of re-enactment weapons and armour, including a cork shield. I took a wooden mallet - the surface at one end was shaped like pyramids and their tips were really painful. I stood on the a balcony, watching the monsters swirl below me.

I knew I had to get out of there, so I ran to the exit. The monsters swarmed after me. The guy playing Morgoth (the big bad) approached me slowly, clearly understanding that I didn't want to play the game anymore, but a bunch of children playing lesser creatures didn't realise, and chased me. I ran through the door, but an old woman said, "Stay back a moment. I need to talk to you about the game, which I can't do outside the building." I was about to step back into the foyer, when a phonecall woke me up.

28 June 2002: Freshers' Fair

Noj and I went to Freshers' Fair, but I couldn't find any stalls of interest. Noj was really interested in this stall advertising sailing (or something). He talked to the bloke running it at length and picked up a brochure and a couple of t-shirts from it. So I didn't seem uninterested, I did the same. Then the guy told us the stuff would cost £25 between us. I started to get my money out, but before I could hand it over, there was a big disruption, and the guy ended up having everything off his stall stolen.

I started wandering around. The place was divided into rooms and corridors. I found a stall advertising a TV society. Cartoons were showing on a large projector screen, which several people flocked to see. I watched for a couple of minutes, but grew bored.

It was then that I realised why there was so little here - it was the evening, and most stalls would have closed. I wandered round, and found a cross between a werebear and Ibid sitting in a corner. I helped it / her to its feet, and walked with her to the bigger room. On the way, we passed Soppygit and Sleeve. Ibid was in a foul mood; in the room, we saw people on her courses, who she yelled at for being idiots.

29 June 2002: Jay And Silent Bob Prescribed For Four Year Olds

I was taking a tube through London, to meet Daine, but it looked more like a double decker bus. When I sat in a certain seat, a buzzing sound began. I got the idea that the seat was only available to the conductor, so I sat down on a seat between a couple of people, one of whom was Alison who I was at primary school with. She asked why I'd changed seats: "Is this one more comfortable?" It wasn't, so I said, "No, but I kind of like seats that way."

Then I was back at Lanercost School - aged twenty. Alice, who was in my year at school, was also there, sitting a few places away from me. The teacher - female and in her twenties - was writing the potential plans for the term on a blackboard. We had to decide which ones to go along with. It was prescribed that the kids should watch either "Jay And Silent Bob" or a film called "Le Maison De Round", which were by the same director, apparently. I said, "I think you should watch 'The House Of Round', whatever that is. 'Jay And Silent Bob' is great, but totally unsuitable." She thanked me for the advice. I sat beside Alison, who kept expressing her admiration for me.

I kept changing my shoes, between New Rocks and a pair of plimsolls. When break came, I struggled to put on the New Rocks in time. Break took place in what was the workshop at Naworth Castle, where rock music was playing and the kids were moshing. I threw myself at Adam, who was in my brother's year at secondary school, and he said a couple of boys wanted a word with me. They spoke to me, and I was suddenly aware that I didn't like it these people, or being here. I went back into the classroom.

I'd had some text messages from Bryn's brother, Zarya and Syl: it seemed that they were hiding something from me, and I was worried. In the classroom, when I checked my phone, about twelve pictures of envelopes were displayed, indicating that I had that many text messages. I began to read them, but got distracted and started looking at a load of digital camera photos I'd taken instead, many of them showing crashing waterfalls. When skimmed through quickly enough, they made a dramatic film.

30 June 2002: Marion, Matthew and Natalie at UKC

A new term had started. On the first day, I had lectures at nine and ten o'clock, then another at one, in a distant part of Keynes College. The lecturer demonstrated a simple calculation in the board, then told us to try some exercises using it, but I couldn't get to grips with the process. When the lecture ended, I had to hurry to my next lecture, but I hung back, wanting to ask the lecturer's advice. A few other people also wanted to speak to him. Including Matthew who was in my year at school, who told him he had another lecture on at this hour, which would be more beneficial for him to go to. When I finally spoke to the lecturer, the process became clear. Marion was waiting for me, impatient to leave, so we hurried off. She started running through Keynes rapidly, catching up with even Natalie, who was considered one of the most athletic people in our year. "This always happens when I'm in Keynes," Marion said.

Gee and I had produced a newspaper about the Canterbury rock scene. It was a bit pants. On the front page, there was a blank space, and I asked Gee if I could write a message "From the Zeditor" in it, before we distributed it around Brampton. (?) He agreed.

I was going to the cinema (also in Brampton, where there isn't one) with my parents. I wanted to use a sweet machine first, but it was really slow about processing the change. I said I'd leave it, and finish using it after the film. On the way into the cinema, though, Dad lost part of one of his feet, and then made a big fuss over trying to put his shoes on.

2 July 2002: Dream-Schools Are So Much Cooler Than Real Ones. Now They Teach "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" Slashiness!

I was at my uncle David's house, where there was a party going on. I was in the sitting room, making out passionately with Bryn. My mother could see us, but I barely cared. Eventually, I took off my trousers and we set off upstairs to my uncle's bedroom to do the dodgy. There were some girls sitting on the stairs, that tried to grab at my bare arse. One of them caught hold of an old sanitary towel, and gave it to me. I disposed of it in the bin in the upstairs bathroom.

Upstairs, I realised 1) it wasn't Bryn I was going to have sex with, but my uncle and 2) whichever of them it was, he was nowhere to be seen. The whole house was full of writhing couples. Some girls spoke to me, and offered to set me up with male friends of theirs. I said, "No, I'm a one-man woman." They jeered in disapproval, and I realised it wasn't true.

I started to feel really bad. There was nowhere I wanted to be. I went into the bathroom, but it was full of old women waiting to use the toilet. Eventually, my uncle turned up. We went into his bedroom, but I was now totally not in the mood. "Want to play Warhammer?" he asked.

"I don't know if I've got my army," I said, but then I remembered it was in the bottom of my backpack. I got my backpack out of his wardrobe.

I was in sixth form again (after two years of university) and doing English and History. I was assigned essays in both of them, and had many other things to do, including a seminar to write about football. I kept complaining to everyone that I was out of the habit of writing essays. For English, there had been a list of eleven possible essays: I had asked Sleeve, who was in my English group, to choose one for me. He picked: "Give examples of Ryan being dominant to Greg in 'Whose Line Is It Anyway?'" Everyone in our English group complained about the difficulty of the essays. The group consisted of thirteen people, and we sat in on squashy chairs in a semi-rectangle (like a semi-circle, only with three straight edges), watching an episode of 'Whose Line Is It Anyway?' By the end, I'd only noted to examples of dominance, and I wasn't sure if they were particularly good ones. However, I later looked at the list of essays, and saw that other ones on it ere much easier.

My seminar about football mainly dealt with young people playing it. But I attended four other seminars about it, and everyone started off by explaining how the game worked. Although I'd initially thought this irrelevant, I decided to include it in mine too.

The girls in my year were putting on a play in the lecture theatre, where we all had to say the same lines at the same time, so we'd turn into witches. Lizzie was playing dramatic chords on the piano in the next room (which doesn't really exist) for us. However, we tried to say these lines over and over again, and couldn't ever get them together. Eventually, Lizzie came through to see if we still needed her to play the chords.

3 July 2002: What A Sad Foolface I Am!

I was playing Snake on my mobile phone. The snake moved really fast, but I discovered it was ok to pass through your own tail. I still died very quickly, though.

4 July 2002: They Think Marion's Dead . . . She Is Now!

It was the December of my second year at university (except it operated more like a school), and Marion had committed suicide. I was responsible for cleaning out her desk.

26 July 2002: York University = Heaven For Faghags

The girls in my year at school were recreating my twelfth birthday party, on which we'd been to a multi-storey shopping centre in Carlisle. (This isn't really true, not least because no such entity exists.) When it was time for us to leave, Helen Wo said she and I should stay there longer. I agreed - we hadn't bought anything yet, which rendered the mission somewhat futile. We got in a lift. There wasn't a ground floor button, so I pressed the one beside "1" which said "P". Helen was concerned that this would take us to the basement, but we managed to find our destination, Marks And Spencers, ok.

Shortly after that, we decided to rollerblade to our respective homes. It took me quite a while, but was fairly enjoyable. The next day, we recreated my birthday party again, and Helen insisted she and I rollerbladed home once more. I grumbled - it took a lot less time to get to her house than mine - but remembered it hadn't been too bad, so I agreed.

I'd decided to transfer to York University, which meant I had to restart my second year there. I got there in mid-September. It looked nothing like it really does; there was one building, with four towers in which all the students were housed. All the communal and administrative parts were downstairs.

In one of these communal areas, I ran into Belle And Sebastian fan John, with a female friend of his. They were annoyed, because they'd accidentally got on the wrong National Express coaches, and had ended up travelling around the south of the country. They were going to talk to someone in the National Express office about it.

I discovered a computer room - seemingly, a long time after everyone else had. On one of the desks, I found a piece of paper, on which one of the students had written the details of all the users who were accidentally doing silly things with the system. One of the e-mail addresses listed was david@diarist.net. So there was someone at York with an online journal? I logged on, to try to track him down.

I needed to ask someone a question about how to use the computers, so I asked the bloke sitting across the desk from me. It turned out he was David of diarist.net himself. We talked a while. He was very sarcastic. He used a word I didn't recognise. "How can anyone not know the meaning of it?" he asked. "I'm from Cumbria," I said. "I'm from Cumbria too," he said. He gave a town name, which sounded like it was somewhere in Scotland, but come to think of it, I had heard of the place, and it wasn't far from where I lived.

Suddenly, we were naked beneath a blanket (still in the computer room), and he was kissing me. It felt good, but I broke away, knowing I must not. He spoke to me some more, now more gently, which pleased me - it gave me time to work out how to let him know I was otherwise involved. Before I could, though, some blonde girl said, "Get a room."

I was on my way to the dining hall, when the blonde girl told me that I should go to the National Express office, in case they were trying to con me as well. I did, and the woman working there sold me a return ticket to Sittingbourne. I wondered why she thought I wanted to go there - oh yes, I was supposed to be visiting Bryn the following weekend. I wished it was a single ticket, though.

When I got to the dining hall, from outside I could hear the chancellor making a speech. I slipped inside. It was dark, and there were several long mahogany tables. The chancellor announced which ones we were meant to sit at - we had to sit with our year groups - but I wasn't clear which ones he meant. However, I saw Sleeve, who was also a second year, heading towards a table so I followed him. As I did, I noticed quite a few people wearing spiky dog collars. Maybe I'd find friends here.

Before we could eat anything, "Paradise City" started playing from a sound system at one end of the hall. The spiky people and rocker types got up to dance, and I did to. Towards the end of the song, it went quiet - they'd switched off the recorded music, and a woman was singing the vocals instead. Another familiar rock song began. A rocker bloke headed towards the end of the hall, so he could hear it better. I followed, as did five other people.

When we got there, the rocker bloke offered us all mobile phones. Apparently, they were very hard to operate; brushing a finger tip against a button would activate it. We also discovered that the "ok" button was very very small, and chances were that when trying to press it you'd hit "cancel" instead.

The following day, I befriended a somewhat pathetic girl, but I was glad of it. She suggested we went into town at 1.30 on Wednesday, and met in the Eliot College car park (what that was doing in York, I don't know), by the huts. I'd never seen any huts there, but reasoned that it should be simple enough. As we parted company (she insisted on saying goodbye dozens of times), I remembered that I'd arranged to meet Marion at exactly the same time. Oh well, I could rearrange that and meet her in the morning instead, if I didn't have any lectures then.

I kept running into or hearing about blokes who were either gay or had some gay experience. This included Craig, before he was thirteen, who I used to go to school with. I also heard about a farmer, whose wife had just given birth to nontuplets (five boys, four girls), who got a blow job off some bloke.

24 August 2002: To Die In Your Car Is Such A Horrible Way To Die

There was a football match between Tottenham and Chelsea, but the players were replaced by various not-very-sporty types - including me. I was playing for Tottenham, and the game was more of a cross between football, netball and table tennis. It took place on a football pitch, and the aim was to get the ball in the opposite goal, but you couldn't run with the ball: it was a ping pong ball, and to move it around, you hit it with ping pong paddles. Most people played rather half-heartedly, but I charged around the pitch, marking people, and did very well.

Half time occurred after thirty minutes. On a screen, various other football results of the day were being displayed, and I wondered if the outcome of this match was going to count towards the future in the Premiership of the two teams involved.

It was a Tuesday morning and according to my family, the world was going to end that day, due to global warming. "It rained for six hours last night," Mum said, by way of explanation. She went to work, and Dad and Noj went for a drive somewhere.

I decided to go online to find out more about the impending doom - despite it being expensive to go online during the day, I figured it didn't matter if the world was going to end before we got our next phone bill. In the meantime, I got dressed. I was to go for a ride in Chris's car somewhere. I looked around for my tartan mini-skirt, since it was very short and he'd be driven demented because he couldn't have me. But I realised it was quite cold and put on my black jeans instead.

25 August 2002: Devil In Your Shoes

I was in the dungeons of Angband, fighting alongside a bunch of kids. We struggled to kill various monsters. Then we were told that in order to make the game more difficult, all the types of monsters we had already killed would become eight times more vicious.

A bunch of monsters were put in my two pairs of New Rocks. I managed to empty the small New Rocks and kill the creatures easily, by stamping on them. But I couldn't empty the big New Rocks and I did not look forward to putting them on, which I would have to do soon, for my uncle's wedding. (?) I kept complaining to anyone who'd listen about this fate.

It was the evening, and I was walking through a place that looked like a cross between Carlisle and Sittingbourne, except there weren't so many chavs about. I was accompanied by five other people, and we had to complete a quest that involved us travelling through time quite a bit. We walked past a sign saying, "This is 1750", and laughed that the getting through time bit hadn't been too difficult. Shortly after that, we came across a small group of people with a big black dog. "Hello, Sirius," I said to the dog, and it started to follow us.

It was just before the wedding, and I was in my uncle's sitting room with him and some other people. In my backpack were two gifts for a little girl who was there - one was a small teddy bear - but she didn't want them. Last time I'd seen her, I'd given her a very similar teddy bear, but it occurred to me that she'd aged quite a bit since then. I also had a travel Monopoly set with me, and my uncle suddenly asked, "Does anyone want to play Monopoly?"

I agreed to play with him, but quickly became frustrated because some of the properties on the board had got into a mixed up order - the light blue ones were mingled with the yellow ones, where the red ones should have been. I owned the light blue ones and bought £1200 worth of houses. My uncle landed on various places that were in the Low Countries, which were squeezed into the board where the Water Works should have been.

The game turned into a cross between Bantumi (that "put the beans in the pots" game commonly found on mobile phones) and Barrage (a game for BBC masters where judging by the wind speed, you had to angle a gun in such a way that the enemy gun was hit), which resembled Lemmings in appearance. I won level 10, which was normal Bantumi. On level 11, the beans were arranged in a different fashion, that made it very easy for me to get most of them in the scoring pot in my first move. But then there was a fiery blast which destroyed my scoring pot.

I started the level again, and someone informed me that I had to start a fire in another part of the landscape, and if it burnt out, I'd be safe to do the moves. I did just this, and won the level, although I wasn't quite sure how; there was a meter showing what percentage of the beans me and my uncle had secured; I had 46%, he had 48%, but perhaps the speed at which I'd secured mine counted in my favour. We moved onto level 12, which appeared to be the biggest challenge yet.

27 August 2002: Camgoths

Ibid and I were on the first XV rugby pitch at school, bitching about Soppygit. She overheard us. The other two disappeared, back to their own parts of the country, but we continued to talk, by taking it in turns to record messages onto a cassette that we could all hear through tape players. Ibid and I tried to explain we'd meant no harm.

Bryn and I were at his house in Sittingbourne and we were going to catch a train to London where we'd see Rammstein. We set off towards the station, but on the way, we stopped at a big stationery shop where Bryn bought me a notebook. Then we got a taxi back to his house, only to realise there were only ten minutes before the train left - we'd never make it to the station. Then I remembered there was a later train we could take, and still arrive just about on time.

Once in London, we went to a pub.

I'd started at Cambridge University, studying for a postgraduate degree. My room was very beige. My first few days there were boring, but on the first Saturday night, there was a meeting of the goth society in a pub. I went along, with Bryn and Ibid and a bunch of other newcomers to it. We went down into the pub's basement, where about a dozen other people in black were gathered, and instantly, a fishnet-clad girl started talking to me. She was called Nadia or something similar, and I gathered she was the president. I guessed this was because I was wearing my fishnet top. While we spoke, I noticed Bryn and Ibid had sat down, opposite each other at a fairly long table. He was telling her how much he liked her.

Then everyone had to sit down, while the committee made us vote for the officers we wanted. It seemed fairly silly to me, since none of us newcomers knew who any of the society were.

28 August 2002: Cape Town Rocks!

There was an event organised by Lemony Snicket in the school library. He was signing books, but he also told us to go into rooms in accordance to the month we were born in. I went into the September one - although my birthday's in August, I got the feeling we were being divided up by star signs instead. (Although my starsign is Leo, which covers July and August, not August and September.) There were about three other people in the September room, including Nine Inch Nails bloke. Then I realised my error, and went into the August room instead, where I saw Alice. (Although she was born in March.)

Each room had different tasks to fulfil, for together, we were taking part in a murder mystery. Alice told me to look up two Latin phrases in the dictionary. I was very lazy about doing so.

I walked past a bunch of kids doing a questionnaire. Some asked me for advice: there was a question asking, "Which bands do you think are popular in South Africa?" They had come up with Oasis, and I started to suggest bands I knew were liked in Brazil, such as Sepultura (as they come from there) and Iron Maiden (on account of Rock In Rio).

31 August 2002: More Incest And A Magic E-mail

Mum, Noj and I lived on a riverboat. Noj and I were so isolated from the rest of the world that it led us to begin an incestuous relationship. (EW!) Eventually, we moved to a mobile home outside the school in Brampton, where Mum became a teacher. (Note: Mum was a teacher there, before I was born.) The mobile home had two beds and a mattress, but it took the three of us didn't seem to notice this, and we argued over who should share a bed with who.

While Mum taught, I spent time in a classroom full of people doing Maths homework, while I surfed the Internet. I'd been given the Maths homework too, and done most of it, but got stuck with some questions. People asked me for help, but when they asked an assistant for advice, I strained to hear the wisdom dealt out. By the end of the week, when we were supposed to hand the homework in, I hadn't added anything to my script, but I didn't care too much.

As I left the classroom, I discovered that the rest of the school had been without Internet access for a week. I ran into Ibid, and said to her, "I'll just check my e-mail one last time." She accompanied me back to the computer, and I had 43 new e-mails. I opened the most recent one, which transported us to a forest filled with huge stomping dinosaurs.

1 September 2002: Tourette's Syndrome

I was spending a week in a ski resort, where arthouse films were showed nearly all the time. I kept wandering from the cinema to the slopes, with a couple of other people.

I was living in Naworth Castle, and my uncle and two business men came to stay on a sofa in the corridor for a night. Three business men had been staying with my uncle, but one of them had been killed, so my uncle had come to stay with us, and since neither of the business men could afford the £150,000 it would cost to stay in one of the two cabins on either side of the castle, they stayed with us too.

I swore at some figure of authority who was most distraught and at Mrs Woodward (my former English teacher). Mr Greaves (a former form teacher) was telling me to go into some rushes, and although I knew he meant well, I swore at him as well.

2 September 2002: What Is It With Mr Greaves?

It was my birthday, a Thursday, and the first day of a new school year. My year had to repeat fourth form, because there wasn't space for us in a higher year. Our form room was room 16 and Mr Greaves was our form teacher. Marion and I had two adjacent seats in the middle on the back row, and Andrew Inch (who wasn't in our year), sat beside us.

We were waiting for registration, but no one turned up. Then we realised it was mass period. Bored, Marion insisted that we left. We went into the corridor, and on the landing, we ran into someone carrying a bundle of small multi coloured objects. I returned to the classroom; Marion went downstairs.

Shortly after getting back to the form room, Mr Greaves came in and started taking the register, but rather than just saying what time you were going home, you had to answer a series of questions. I said I was going home at five; when he called Marion's name, I said she was at school, just not in the room, and he had to tick a special box for that.

Suddenly I realised that the multi coloured stuff was very dangerous drugs that put you into a permanent state of hallucination just by looking at them. I hadn't been affected, but Marion had.

There was a seven year old girl, who had two brothers, who encountered a veritable mound of these drugs, and spent the rest of her (very short) life absolutely terrified.

Mum was taking a piano and my possessions to Canterbury in a van, and Noj and I were travelling in a car just behind it. Just as we reached a town in South Cumbria (whose name I couldn't remember), I suddenly realised that all my stuff was still at home. Mum stopped in the town - it had a really old cathedral which she started to look round. Noj and I caught up with her, and told her of the problem. She didn't think it was fatal, and that I'd able to be get by in Canterbury for a few days without any of my belongings.

3 September 2002: An Incredibly Boring Dream By My Standards

I was giving Tony a lift to The Twisted Wheel. Half way there, I said, "Wasn't I supposed to give Rue a lift as well?" He said she'd decided not to come.

7 September 2002: The Virgins In The Dungeon

I'd moved back into my student house, and Ibid was there, as well as Soppygit and Jo. They were all trying to talk to me at once, and I was trying to talk to all of them at once. Jo had had her hair cut short, and she said she barely recognised me, although I couldn't figure out why not. I asked Soppygit if she'd got my copy of "Nevermind", a Madness album of mine, and my "Ultimate Eighties" album. She said yes. I said, "Didn't you notice them when you were packing up your stuff?"

She said, "Yes, but I like them too much."

"You have no right to take them without my asking, though. If you'd asked, I would have burnt you copies. Or you could have bought copies yourself."

"Not with my wages-" she started, but agreed that I was right.

Dad was fiddling around with the electrics in the kitchen, and we were all supposed to move out of the room for one operation.

I was in a castle - possibly Naworth, but rather than living there, I was exploring the dungeons with some younger girls. One was about seventeen, the others were nine and ten. The ten year old asked me, "Are you a virgin?"

"No," I said.

"You're not?" She was really taken aback, and annoyed, because she wanted to go into part of the dungeon, about which it was rumoured that if two virginal girls went down there together, something cool would happen. The nine year old and the seventeen year old had already gone down together, and she was feeling left out.

Then she asked, "Why do you get to be not a virgin, while I still am?"

"You're only young. You'll lose your virginity when you're maybe seventeen or so," I said, quoting the statistic.

25 September 2002: British Gods

I was alternating between reading "American Gods" by Neil Gaiman, watching and starring in a film version of it, and playing / involved in a point-and-click adventure game of it.

Firstly, I was a teenage boy, at an outdoor rock concert / fireworks display at Carlisle College. Another teenage boy who I knew was trying to persuade me to do daring things I didn't want to do. I tried to run away, but got lost in an impressive array of new locations.

Then it was the 12th century, and I was a nun. My order travelled round the country singing songs to people, the choice of song depending on the occasion. We went to Naworth Castle. I was like, "Cool, there's only the castle and the cathedral there, just like it would have been back then." (Disregard the fact that in this day and age, there is no cathedral, nor anything else. For some strange reason - bearing in mind I lived there for thirteen years - I thought Naworth Castle was in Carlisle.)

We crammed into the passageway outside my apartment to wait to be allowed in. The passageway was filled with racks of guitars. "Cool, my parents must live here!" I thought, although I was confused: if the film had been made while my family was living there, why didn't I know about it?

Then one nun, who didn't like me, accidentally knocked a guitar to the floor, and tried to blame me for it. I ran down the corridor and tried to hide in a cupboard. When I got there, I took out the book of "American Gods", and tried to find out what the castle had been named in it. It wasn't Naworth, but close enough, so I was pretty sure it must be one of the so-called "obscured locations". Or had it just being filmed at Naworth Castle, rather than originally set there? Nevertheless, I made up my mind to write to Neil Gaiman, telling him that one or the other was set at my old home. I was very annoyed when I woke up, and realised that it hadn't been after all.

7 November 2002: Wishful Thinking: Sheppey Is Further From Canterbury Than I Previously Believed

Brighton promenade stuck out from a town a few miles east of Brighton, and at the end of it was The Isle Of Sheppey, which was shaped like a crushed ring; most of the circumference was just a single road, but there was a wider bit containing the towns. I thought, "Ben used to come to university all the way from here? Poor thing." I told my parents I wanted to visit Sheppey, because it was so interestingly shaped and looked quite pretty in the brochures, but they said no, as it was skank and pants.

Coral wrote in her Livejournal that she was 133, which I took to mean she was 33. This seemed strange, but also made sense.

Bryn told me that he'd found out Gill's fiancé's surname was something different to what we'd always thought it was. This also made sense.

22 November 2002: Dark City

The world got restarted and I was in control of how it looked and worked. Without making any conscious decision, I found myself in a dark cyberpunk city; every time you encountered someone, you had a vicious fencing dual with them. During my second match, I thought, “This is scary.” Then I remembered I was in control, so I yelled, “Truce!” and my assailant walked on past.

A few metres down the road, I decided I should come across a computer and a mobile phone, so I did. I wrote two brief entries in my livejournal and wrote on my website that two updates had been made. The livejournal posts didn’t appear, but I decided not to alter the message on my website because it just said updates, and I’d modified two pages of my site as well. But Twi sent an e-mail asking where the updates were.

I got loads of messages on my mobile phone. I had to press loads of buttons to read each one and most of them were from Jo, and her sister who wished to communicate with her through me.

It was an afternoon and Mum and I were standing at the top of the hill leading to school and were debating the best way to get there. I said, just for a change, we should go straight down the hill so we did. It was taking a surprisingly short length of time.

My family was living in Naworth and one afternoon Bryn and his Mum came to visit us. I painted Bryn’s face green. When the time came for them to go (5.30), Bryn’s Mum implied that she expected Bryn to stay longer into the evening. I hoped he agreed as I wanted dodginess.

23 November 2002: Christchurch Isn't That Far Away!

After The Beercart Arms one Monday night, a few UKC people - including me and Anna The Goth - decided to spend the night at Christchurch University. Except it was on the west coast of Ireland. The next morning, I was quite worried about getting back in time for my ten o’clock lecture, but the journey - by train across Ireland, by ferry, and then by train through England - took all of two minutes.

I went to a formal dinner my school was holding. Sarah The Vice Goth came along too. In the dream, there was a girl in the year below mine at school, who looked very similar to Sarah, and was from Wales as well. I wanted to introduce them to one another, but didn’t get the chance.

25 November 2002: The Cyberpolice: Freud Would Have A Field Day

Bryn's ex Gill had invited the rock society to a party, where everyone had to dress as trad gothly or as cyberly as possible. So I went to Oxford Street with Anna, Sarah, Matt and James to search for cyber clothes. On the train there, I was sitting opposite my former history teacher. He had a lot of essays to mark, but was happily feeling malicious, because he’d just assigned me and my classmates a huge essay.

This reminded me that my former English teacher had asked my class to write an essay on a poem called “The Parrot”. This was the fourth essay she’d told us to write about it (the first occurred in a previous dream) and I hadn’t done any of them, but she hadn’t asked for them in

When we got to Oxford Street, we made our way down it, strutting like we were in “The Matrix” and attempting to break dance. I saw this policeman wielding a huge metallic truncheon, and so I steered clear of him, but Matt started pretending to dual with him, with a similar object, and I realised the policeman was actually James in cyber-policeman garb.

At the end of Oxford Street, we had to hack our way through a lot of foliage in order to get to this other street where cyber clothes were sold. While making our way through it, we ran into Ben, who told us there was a shop selling cyber clothes in Camden tube station, but Anna said, “That shut a while ago.”

The foliage got thicker; Anna - who had turned into Jenny - and Matt carried on through, but the rest of us waited until they shouted that we could actually get through. They did this - “Carry on forwards and up” - and explained how to navigate the street. By my feet was a carrier bag containing two long flowing multi-coloured skirts; I asked who they belonged to, and Matt said he’d bought them as a Christmas present for “Melly”. He and Jenny shouted where they were going to go - to a comic shop, also on behalf of “Melly” - and the cyber clothing shop.

When I got out of the foliage, I’d become separated from everyone else. The street went in two directions; I went in one, and found a piece of paper saying that anyone who went in this direction was a sad old fogey.

I was also driving from Carlisle to Brampton, with my Mum and brother as passengers. There was a traffic jam, and then a very sharp diversion through some fields. It was very scary, and at the first possible opportunity, I let someone else drive.

15 December 2002: David Malcolm Invades My Sleeping Life Too. No!

I was wearing my Motorhead shirt, long black skirt and black tights, and was crossing the playground at school from the main school building to the Science block, to get to a Physics lesson. But in the playground, loads of teenage boys - some of whom were metallers - were playing a very violent game of cricket. I managed to dodge between the players and the fast moving ball, with difficulty, until I got to the other side of the playground, where I found a rolled up pillow. This was from the Physics department, and we would need it for our class, so I picked it up. But one of the boys noticed and tried to seize it from my hands. We both held on tightly, and he managed to lift me up, which I was surprised by, as he was quite short and shrimpy. I felt ridiculous and girly, up in the air, my tight-clad legs pedalling furiously, but he gave up and I proceeded to the science block.

But when I got inside, it was the toilets in the Beercart Arms - the people in the playground were actually causing riots in the streets. Nisha and Emma were there, along with a girl - who looked a bit like Lesley Ann - who was upset because she wasn’t going to be able to get a train home that night, due to the riots. I considered offering to let her stay at mine; then I thought I’d better get to know her first. She went on to complain that she’d failed her Eurostar driving test.

I was carried two large boxes to Omega Music where I was shown lots of photos of someone’s family holiday. Then I had to set off back to school (by foot - I think I was at William Howard school) to collect a third box. I picked up the boxes, but they were heavy, and decided to ask the warehouse people if I could leave them there until I returned. They agreed.

I was in a huge exam hall, sitting at the front at the second desk from the left. Everyone appeared to be given an exam paper except for me - they were A5 size, glossy and had a multi-coloured front, so they looked more like pamphlets. David Malcolm (the student societies bloke), who was the invigilator, started to ramble on about the papers. I assumed Big Vicky, who was taking the same course as me and was sitting two places behind me, didn’t have a paper either. But when I looked turned around to check, I found she was actually four places behind me, and my question paper and answer book were on the desk of the girl behind me. I picked them up.

The front cover had an acrostic - with some rather sarcastic clues - on the front. I wondered if I should be trying to solve it in my head, as some of the other candidates doubtless were. At the bottom of it were some rather confusing instructions over which question to do - it seemed to imply you just had to do one of the four questions, but question two was out of bounds. My answer book was the one I’d done last year’s exam in - I flipped to the back page, and found that I’d written on it. On the front cover were some details my tutor had written about me, including totally irrelevant information, like the code on my gas bills, which I’d had to give him as proof of identity.

When David Malcolm asked if anyone had any questions regarding the exam, I put my hand up, and I asked him to interpret the instructions on the front. As he looked at them, I realised there was more to them: to me, they implied that for the first question you could do anything but question two, and then you had to pick two more questions from the three remaining ones. But after telling me he thought the acrostic was just for a bit of fun if you finished the exam earlier, he said he thought I could do question 1 or 2 for my first question, then choose two from the remaining questions. He pointed out that question one was designed for people who preferred pure Maths, and question four was for those who preferred something more applied. I didn’t particularly like pure Maths - but I hadn’t learnt any applied maths this year, much less revised it! I prayed the other questions were ok.

I flicked through the answer book, and found plenty of clean pages before the end, so I didn’t ask for a new one.

16 December 2002: Sarah The Vice Goth, Usually Such A Good Swimming Companion, Is A Rapist!

It was two o’clock in the afternoon before a Pit. John found an office in Keynes from which we could sell tickets, and about five rock society people hung around inside there. Then Melanie came in, and said Sarah The Vice Goth had sexually assaulted Alex. (In the dream, I assumed this meant Fear Factory hoodie Alex.) I expressed my surprise, and she said she was confused too - her family took four different sets of people, swimming, one of which was Sarah. Of the other sets of people, they had complaints, one was a family with many small boys who took forever to get ready, and another was Trevor - someone in the office asked who Trevor was - but they’d never had a problem with Sarah.

John shut the office at four - I was surprised, because we hadn’t sold many tickets through it. Then many of us began to play a weird but fascinating version of Lemmings, involving lots of bubbles. Sarah really enjoyed it. One girl complained to me that she didn’t like the team she was on, because she didn’t know anyone else in it.

17 December 2002: I'd Better Fight For My Right To Partay!

After the Beercart Arms, I brought back a few people for a party at my house, but Zak and some of his friends (invented by my subconscious) gatescrashed it, and Nisha and Christchurch Emma and their crowd turned up too. Zak's friends kept trying to smoke, and I kept throwing their cigarettes outside, because I didn't want the fire alarm to go off, as I didn't want to wake up Soppygit who was asleep upstairs. But I couldn't keep an eye on everyone. I got stressed and walked up the road with someone - possibly Jen - who liked to speak to Nina (a character in "The Last Virgin") in times of trouble. I called her, apologised for waking her at 2.45am, and asked what I should do.

She said to call the pigs, so I dialled 999 - I was impressed, because my phone made the call without me saying "yes" - but it turned out the police were on strike. But Jen and I saw a police car coming down the road, so I hailed it. The police officer said that because I'd started the party, I'd have to hang on the gallows all night like the rest of the attendees. I was really scared, but the people supposed to be at the party managed to slip away to Sarah's house, leaving the police to deal with the rest.

The next day, I was walking through some park, where I saw Nisha, who gave me an earful about what I'd done. I apologised profusely, then she forgave me. For the following day, I arranged to play chess with Iain at midday and to meet Anna The Goth on my school field at 4pm. But when I woke up, it was 3.50pm - this bit felt scarily realistic. Then I spoke to Bryn via e-mail about our failed attempts to chat online with each other with each other, due to our messed up sleeping patterns.

18 December 2002: Me? Wanting Yellow Clothes? My Dreams Get Scarier!

I was in sacred music at school. Everyone sang lustily, but we sounded terrible.

It was 10.30 on a Wednesday morning, and I was standing on a platform, below a station, with my parents. We were taking it in turns to play the bits of a piece of classical music on a piano that we could manage. Dad was overjoyed, because the three penultimate chords were produced by sending the soundwaves through a piece of electronics equipment. We produced these several times.

I had a doctor's appointment in the station building, which doubled as a rather nasty comprehensive school. I had to go up some stairs, which were full of pupils, trying to whack anyone who made their way up the stairs with their school bags. But they left me alone. Upstairs, I realised it was a dormitory where the school's ten foreign students stayed. I made my way to the doctor's office. I was over twenty minutes late for my appointment, but I was allowed in, only to be told I'd come on the wrong day.

It was about 5pm on a sunny weekday evening, and I was in a New Look. Soppygit worked there and kept rambling on to me about the stuff available. For sale was a lilac box for £5 that claimed to contain five different types of fashionable shoe. This seemed like a good deal, but inside were just the insoles needed for such shoes.

I found a velvet cape which was black on the outside, purple on the inside; a yellow blouses; a yellow and red tie; and something else. I took towards the dressing room, and Soppygit came after me with a tag that said "3" on it. I was going to point out that there were four items, when she clicked the tag and the number changed. She cycled it through the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 10 and 60 - but they didn't come up in order, and it never stayed on 4 for very long. I saw how the device worked - the numbers were on different sides of a cube. I tried to offer my advice, but then it started displaying weird stuff, like a pair of breasts torn open. Soppygit was horrified.

I was in a supermarket, trying to find some toffees for my Dad. I scanned an idea aisle of boxes of chocolates, but couldn't see any. My brother came along, so I asked him for advice. He instantly pointed some out on the aisle behind me, which contained less typical boxes of chocolates. They were £9.27 though, and there weren't any smaller boxes, so I decided against buying them.

21 December 2002: Smiths Lyrics Take A Turn For The More Nonsensical

I went to a concert that took place in a theatre with the goth contingent. We sat in the back row. Afterwards, Fav offered to go and get my stuff from the cloakroom, if I looked after his stuff. I agreed, only to discover that his “stuff”, which he’d left on some of the seats, consisting of three large sweet jars filled with multicoloured pills. Then I realised I hadn’t given him my cloakroom ticket. Luckily, he came back before anyone noticed me guarding the pills, and I remembered that I hadn’t put anything in the cloakroom in the first place.

Without any planning, I went to see Suede supporting the Manic Street Preachers in a large hall deep in the French countryside, along with Soppygit. Inside, we tried to find a good place to watch from. I got caught up in a moshpit in one corner of the room, which contained various goths. But I managed to get out, and noticed a girl I knew (in the dream) sitting in the second . . . well, it was a pew, so I sat down in front of her. Soppygit, meanwhile, wanted to go over to stand by the orchestra pit, and when I looked over to it a bit later, she was playing something.

The girl behind me introduced me to the bloke sitting beside her. He was French, and I couldn’t work out what he was saying. He held out his hand for me to shake; I took it awkwardly in my most readily available hand, and the girl admonished me for doing a wrong-handed handshake. I explained myself, she started snogging the boy, and I felt jealous.

It kept occurring to me that I’d gone to see Suede for a second time, and hadn’t even considered this before the concert. But the only they Suede played that I knew was “Jumble Sale Mums” and something that went “na na na na na” sounded familiar. The Manics were no better - their only recognisable song was a cover of “Ask” by The Smiths, in which they turned into The Smiths. Morrissey fluffed “Sending frightening verse” by singing “Sending birds . . . birds.” He laughed at his own expense, though.

Afterwards, a DJ played a song by The Farm. I had heard the song many times before, and liked it, and I’d been told that it was by The Farm, but forgotten.

Outside the concert hall, there were two large grassy knolls. Anna The Goth came over to me, and snogged me. We had a difficult time separating our tongues. I told her how happy I was that I’d identified the band responsible for that song. She said, “What? The Manic Street Preachers were big fans of The Farm between 86 and 91.” I replied, “Just because I’m a Manics fan doesn’t mean I listen to all *their* favourite bands. Although some fans do. You know the line, ‘I spat out Plath and Pinter’? Lots of fans starting reading Plath and Pinter after hearing that.”

She went off to the toilet (presumably to repair her lipstick) and when she returned, I noticed she sat on the other knoll, as far away from me as possible. I thought I’d bored her.

I was to travel home with my family; our car was parked at the top of one slope. I told them I’d been put off Suede by the last album I’d heard. My brother argued that the new one was better - I’d enjoyed the songs, hadn’t I?

A lot of old and middle aged people were trying to walk through the area. Before setting off, we gave them time to move. One woman, blonde and in her fifties, set off down the slope and ended up breaking into a run. She ended it by running straight at the concert hall; she managed to come to a graceful halt.

I was driving home, but I couldn’t see much from where I sat, and suddenly realised I was about to head into a mass of closely tessellated cars. I managed to navigate through a small gap between diagonally parked cars, then asked my parents for directions. Mum said, “You should know them.”

I came to the junction to turn onto the main road unexpectedly, and shot out a long way into it. I managed to manipulate the car round onto it, but noticed a vehicle coming straight towards me; I inched out of its path. “You drive on the other side of the road here,” Mum said.

“Oops,” I said, because until now, I’d been driving on the left. “I’ll try.”

“You’d better,” Mum said.

“Don’t worry, I do it all the time,” Dad said.

I drove into a curving mountain path, and the car kept going up the sides of the cliff. Mum continually criticised my driving, and I argued with her. She wasn’t one to talk, she was the one who’d let her son drive illegally in France last time we’d been here rather than doing it legally herself. Yes, she said, he was a better driver. Tears streaming down my cheeks, I accused her of sexism and giving in too easily. I had only been meant to drive the French portion of the journey, but I became determined to drive through England too.

24 December 2002: Dad The Surrealist Decorator

I was trying to get in touch with Smill on my mobile phone, but was having great difficulty.

One day, I woke up in a room in a forest.

There was a room, not unlike mine in Canterbury, which contained loads of mismatched curtains. Dad was repainting them with strokes of a paint roller that went from the top of them to the bottom. His pattern in painting them seemed wholly random though; he'd paint half of a curtain then move onto another, and I didn't want to say anything since he was doing me a big favour. Eventually, he said, "Which other ones are there left to do?" and I told him. I said something about not wanting to keep a desk - I wanted to replace it with another - and he suggested stacking a smaller desk on top of a big one. I thought this was a silly idea, but again, didn't like to say anything.

He told me that my brother Noj wasn't getting a certain set up consisting of all the system and software necessary for making music on one's computer, which was called Audioslave (heh), since he already had all the component parts separately.

25 December 2002: A Not Very Merry Christmas

I was in the Beercart Arms. In the early part of the evening, I drank a couple of glasses of water, followed by a glass of something red and vodka-y, and then a glass of red wine. But even as I ordered the latter, my head drooped and filled with mucus. I clearly wasn't cut out for even moderate alcoholism.

I made my way through the pub - it was very empty; entire tables were deserted. Ahead of me, I saw familiar faces, but through the corner of my eye, I saw someone beckoning me. It was ickle Helen. She told me that a few weeks ago she'd pulled some horrible bloke, and now every time the DJ played "Poison", he expected to get off with her. Thinking "Poison" meant "I Hate Everything About You", I considered assuring her that it wasn't played that often. But a few minutes later, I realised what she'd said, and was glad I hadn't spoken, for "Poison" is played every week.

26 December 2002: Indecent Exposure And The Confusing Timetable

I went to South Africa.

I was in the upper sixth at school, and missed loads of lessons. One afternoon, I was in the gymnasium. There were a line of people taking an exam, but also people doing some form of sport. Amongst them, I was putting on clothes, very slowly and very dramatically. I had on a pair of tights and a lot of big t-shirts, but couldn't find a skirt or trousers. I didn't mind walking around as I was, but thought other people might object, and asked Sleeve, who was present, if he had any trousers I could borrow. He looked through a sports bag, and handed me a Sex Pistols t-shirt (black with red and white on) and a Queens Of The Stone Age t-shirt, which looked like the cover of their second album, but no trousers. Eventually, I came across a short skirt. I put that on.

It was 2.25 and consequently about half way through a lesson, for each ran for an hour and started on the hour. I'd misplaced my timetable, but a girl a few years below me told me, "It's Geography." I had my doubts, though; I'd not been to many of the term's lessons, but recalled having a computing lesson one afternoon. Also, that morning, I had a double session of humanities, and that surely had to incorporate Geography. And surely I wouldn't have it twice in one day?

Upon entering the school, I had to go up some stairs that took me to the first floor. I went into room 8, which was a computing lab. My old science teacher was the teacher; there were only three pupils in the class, and Sarah Yoj was one of them. She voiced the opinion that this was a Social Computing lesson - a course I wasn't taking - and the work seemed too much fun to belong to my actual Computing course. But the teacher didn't know, and I was hesitant to leave the room until I found out for sure. There were partial timetables on the wall, but none of them confirmed whether I was in the right place or not.

I was in a double bed with Tony, who'd told me he was having second thoughts over whether or not he was gay. We were being somewhat dodgy.