There was a war going on in a bit of shattered Alaskan coast: there were small sand banks out at sea. Once again, missiles rained down. (I would have thought they moved faster than this, but my subconscious clearly wasn’t too bothered about technicalities, evidenced by the fact that the weather was warm.) However, I, a prince, was on holiday there, waterskiing.

Then the war ended, and everyone in the area - soldiers, locals and tourists - left their wallets on tables, on the various sand banks. I started going through them, in an attempt to find the most interesting 10p coin. When others questioned what I was doing, I told them - hey, no one will mind, and anyway, they left their wallets here unattended, what do they expect? - and about fifty people joined in this quest. In the process, I came across a fisherman and his brain-damaged son, who couldn’t say anything and was the size of a whale.

My parents told me Noj was going on holiday this summer - where was I going? Was I still going to New Zealand as planned? I said I’d go somewhere next year.

It was 9 o’clock in the evening, and I had just got home (my house in Canterbury with the interior of Anna and Stef’s) after a long and annoying walk, when I discovered that the sole of one of my New Rock boots had worn down to about an inch, and the other one had fallen off entirely. Luckily, there was a party going on, and much as I wasn’t in the mood, when Dale turned up, he returned my sole, which remained a resplendent 4” thick.

4 April 2003: Bryn In Love With Someone He's Never Met

I was in a large dark lecture theatre, with a lot of people. I sat near Bryn and Sharon who I went to primary school with. Bryn said he'd been in love with Sharon during November and December 2000. When I asked him, he said he'd been in love with me as well, but I was still hurt.

5 April 2003: Music, Music Everywhere

I had to choreograph half a long school musical in a very short space of time. I decided to go and seek the assistance of the games teacher whose job this usually was.

Noj and I were doing the same university courses, and we were in a studio, desperately trying to interest Dad in the work we'd done. We were doing a module about vampires (MA549, which is really about Discrete Maths), and I knew Noj's work looked better than mine, but I was determined to prove I'd done just as much, even though I was pretty sure I hadn't. Then I went into a nearby studio with Dad, where my half brother was going to record some music I'd written. I overheard Dad saying to his friends of his that my notation was terrible but he didn't dare say anything about it.

I was in a dark (non-existent) alcove of the school chapel, with Amy who I used to play clarinet duets with and my friend Klair. We were about to play a clarinet piece in a concert. Amy and I had played it millions of times, but not recently, and we were trying to remember how it went; there were lots of odd looking quavers. I also wasn't sure what line to play; it was a duet, so who played each line? I wanted to ask my clarinet teacher. We were trying to put the music stand at a sensible height (Amy being much taller than me and Klair), but it slipped down to be too low for any of us.

14 April 2003: Reprimanded For Anti-Social Behaviour

It was midnight on a Sunday and I had been in Eliot Computer room for the last six hours. The lights had gone off, so it was hard to see what I was doing, especially since my computer kept crashing, and the glow of the screen diminished as it reset itself. Yet all the computers were in use. I was typing a livejournal comment to my acquaintance Ducttape, who was sitting opposite me. Then my old French teacher and a man went round the computer room. I was scared they'd throw me out for eating in there, but my French teacher solely admonished me for spending so much time on the computer.

I was in an MA637 lecture, and the lecturer was presenting me with lots of confusing information, that made the course even harder than it already was. The MA591 lecturer came in, and told us something about the homework for that course, which I also found confusing.

Saturday 3 May 2003: An Inner Child, The Toilets In A Computer Game and a Latin Melody

My family was living south of London, and I had three online friends and their companions come to visit me. These were Libbet, who brought Leah; Jade, who brought what could best be described as an inner child, except he was external and a distinct body; and a fifteen year old girl, who was a kind of cross between my online friends Meaghan and Sarah Yoj (though they're now both seventeen), who had what I suppose was a semi-imaginary friend with her.

I met them all at Heathrow airport and travelled back to my house with them. It was an awkward journey, since none of them had anything in common, but in the evening, we watched a video - a film which was kind of a cross between "The Matrix" and "Labyrinth" - which went down well. They all only stayed for one night, on the wooden floorboards of the attic in my house; then went to stay with host families for three weeks, but I kept track of what they were up to.

Bryn and I were in a living room, exploring an old Acorn laptop (not that such things exist, as far as I know). Bryn stumbled across a game, which he said he'd spent a lot of time playing in his youth, even though it was really difficult. He loaded it; it was a first person shooter, set in a castle used as site for an evil company, with terrible graphics that kept breaking up into streaks of BBC colour, but the movement was really smooth, considering it was pre-Dume. It was difficult, in that you had to know what to do; an action that seemed fine to the player would turn out to be disastrous. But Bryn remembered the necessary method. You had to spend a while sitting on the floor of a giant unisex bathroom, waiting for a woman to flush a toilet. But the sound of the flush wasn't evident, so we missed it, thus ruining our progress.

Then the place turned into a prison that me, Libbet, Leah, Meaghan Yoj and her semi-imaginary friend were in. It had loads of insane rules, along the lines of, 'You must pick up a chicken every nine and a half hours'. I wasn't too worried, though, since it was only a game. I left it, and Jade commented to me, "Libbet and Meaghan Yoj must be sprinters, judging by how fast they keep running from the guards." I smiled knowingly, since both Libbet and Meaghan Yoj were athletes at their respective educational establishments (in the dream anyway).

I got to examine Jade's thoughts; which took the form of three side-by-side rectangles of shimmering multicoloured viscous liquid. I knew that when the liquid was blue, Jade was deeply troubled. I poked at the liquid in the left rectangle with a stick, and at once, a large streak of blue was visible. I stirred at the liquid furiously, until it returned to a swirl of red, green and yellow once more.

I was on a university campus in the middle of a town, though it only had one building. I couldn't work out how to get into it at first; all I knew was that the walls of the kitchen area were painted bright purple. However, I managed it, and in a primary school-stylee tray, I found some of my old schoolwork. I was disappointed by some of the grades I'd got, but I'd written a paragraph-long story called "Pills" which received 3/5 - none too shabby. Then I remembered a story I'd written at the end of a Christmas holiday, and had laid along a very long wall on the edge of the school/university grounds, beside a river. I remembered being pleased it hadn't rained before the teacher marked it.

I went to check it out again, except the wall was now in a big dark hall, in which a poorly attended rock night was being held. I read it - it was about Smill and featured lots of amusing puns, based on names of UKC places. It was also written in Latin, but accompanied by an English translation and a melody. It ended sooner than I expected - the wall had gone up onto a stage - but there, Gordon (o Christchurch University) expressed a great interest in reading it and learning to play the melody. I didn't think I could help him with the second part, as he was completely unmusical, but I didn't like to say so.

Then "Stayin' Alive" was played, and everyone present, including myself, flocked onto the dancefloor. But as soon as it had filled, it emptied, apart from me any my university friends Klair and Ickle Helen. We decided to keep running back and forth across the dancefloor for a while. Then, leaving my New Rocks in the hall, I left the campus. Just outside, there was a six storey cross between a soft play area and an amusement arcade / casino. It was still open, even though it was 10 o'clock in the evening, so I went in, for free, feeling free and rebellious since my parents didn't know where I was. I entered on the top floor, and began to make my way down to the bottom, though I didn't stop on any floor except to acknowledge what could be done on each. On one, you could play "Pass The Pigs". I struggled to go down the staircases in my socks, especially since the top stair was always missing. When I reached the bottom floor, someone who worked there told me how to get out, so I left and returned to the campus. I couldn't find my way back to the hall at first, but then I noticed some guys moving sound equipment out of it. I hurried to get in before it was locked, so I could retrieve my New Rocks, but progress was slow.

Judy (a UKC-going acquaintance) had started a livejournal, but instead of being able to read her entries, you had to watch her reciting them, in a large hall. Most of the first one, she said without referring to any notes, but she had a huge stack of pages of them. It began with her saying a long-winded hello to her livejournal friends, especially Ducttape, who she claimed hailed from London, and she kept insulting me for living in Carlisle.

As usual (lately) shortly before the end of the dream, I dreamed woke up, looked at my watch, saw that it was 11.20, but decided to stay in bed anyway. As always, when I actually woke up I saw that it was only 9 o'clock.

9 May 2003: Freud's Wet-Dream

Led by my Dad, my family had started killing people, on the grounds that they were annoying. On the first killing spree, our third stop was a greasy spoon, in which a plump couple, seemingly in their fifties, were eating. My family started to talk to the guy, and he told us that he was 120 years old and started telling us about his family. Apparently, this was annoying, so we killed him. We knocked him to the floor, and I pinned his shoulders and head to the ground, while others laid into him.

Although I enjoyed the feeling of power, afterwards I felt terrible and decided I wouldn't kill anyone else. Later that day, I told my Dad I was going to CSS (the computer shop near my parents' business) and he said that if I saw any seven year olds, I should kill them. He said that if I failed to, he would kill me. I didn't care.

I took a bath, in a bathroom which was like that at Naworth Castle, only without the hideous colour scheme (orange and brown tiles and a green shower). My Mum came in during it, because she needed to go to the toilet. It was then that she had to confess that . . . she had a penis! I tried to ask her about life as a hermaphrodite, but she was unwilling to talk about it.

I couldn't wait to tell Bryn, because he likes to speculate about how many times my parents have had sex - he reckons two - hang on, where had I come from? Did my mother have a womb as well, or was I the child of someone else? I realised I didn't care.

9 June 2003: The Wrath Of Soppygit

I was in a warped version of "my" church, with my Mum - the pews had been turned round by 90 degrees. Before the service began, I was complaining to her about my friend Soppygit - only for Soppygit to come in and overhear. Her mother was there too and Soppygit started shouting at me from where she sat. I felt terrible and afterwards, I volunteered to try and sort things out. Her anger had subsided, and she said couldn't we leave it until later?

10 June 2003: Not Much Of A Suitcase Kid

My parents were supposed to move house together, but instead they got divorced. Mum moved into a house on the opposite side of my street. They both adjusted to the situation very easily.

19 June 2003: The Acid Of Resonance Experiment

I was in a cross between Bryn's house and a hotel, with various males. One of them was a gay celebrity and he asked me and Noj's old classmate Graham to accompany him to the nearest airport. We agreed. But before we got there, we turned around and went to the hotel; Graham said he'd rather spend the evening playing Diablo.

Me and some other people were running through a warped version of Ramsgate, trying to escape from some other people. I followed a girl to the town limits: there were a couple of bus stops there, but no buses. We were aware that a woman pursuing us would arrive soon, but we hid behind a rocky outcrop. We were on a bridge, and below it was a small beach, with orange sand and gentle dark blue waves. I told my companion that I'd been told how to get down to it, but we probably couldn't do it in safety. I asked her why we were on the run; she explained.

I had just arrived at York University and I immediately decided that I wanted to leave at the first possible opportunity and return a year later to do a different postgraduate course. However, before I could, I went on a trip to London. The railway station in York was just across the road from the building I was living in and on the four-hour train journey, which seemed to take forever, I sat beside my old classmate Katie, with other classamates Natalie and Liz in front of me. When we arrived, we went to a rock festival, but before long, we started to sit behind the stage. It began to rain, so we sat in plastic seats beneath a marquee, from which we couldn't hear the music. Will was there, and so was one of my old English teachers.

We arrived back in York at 4am, but now I couldn't remember why I'd wanted to leave, so I went to my first class - yes, at 4am. It was a chemistry practical, that took place what looked like the junior science lab at school. My university friends Sleeve and Tall John were doing it, so I asked if I could work with them, since I hadn't done any Chemistry since I was thirteen. They were working with another girl too, but they agreed.

We'd been told to find two substances, one of which contained the words "acid of resonance". It was difficult to find anything, because on all sides of the room, cardboard boxes filled with various substances were piled high. But I found it and took a small box back to our experiment.

By this point, the other members of my group had already done the first stage of the experiment, and produced a lot of doughlike substance in a binbag hooked onto the desk. The teacher insisted that I - "her with the big boots" - performed the next stage. There was a leaflet giving instructions on the other side of a desk from where I stood, trapped partially under a bucket. I complained that I couldn't read it from this position, on account of my lack of height and tiredness, but the teacher insisted I must learn to deal with less than ideal circumstances.

I read through a lot of comments on the experiment by famous scientists, before getting to what I had to do: add the acid and stir the concoction until a bell sounded. It sounded easy enough, but the binbag kept slipping off the desk and it was difficult to get it back on, even with the girl helping me. By the time I was ready to add the acid, all the stuff in the binbag had gone. I added it anyway, and with a little stirring formed a similar concoction - but the bell never sounded. Around me, people started packing up and leaving, but only at the end of the session did the lecturer tell me I hadn't acted quickly enough. He assured me that another group had done worse - they'd acted when there was only a small amount of the initial substance left. I looked around and saw an amazing sculpture formed with a glassy multicoloured substance. Was that what our experiment was supposed to look like?

I was about to head for the exit, when I noticed a group of people, one of whom was a super industrial-punk bloke; his hair was spiked about a foot off his head, and he radiated UV light. That reminded me - I'd taken off my boots during the experiment - I should put them back on. I located them - only to realise there was a pair already on my feet - identical, only the ones I wore were splattered with chemicals and had Kerrang badges pinned to them. This scared me so much that I woke up.

29 June 2003: Ang And Her D&D-Playing UKC-Attending Friends

My online friend Ang came to stay at UKC for a few days. Together with a lot of people she knew, we went to see an action film on campus, in a hall with no seats. We arrived late, and it was bad so we all left half way through. As well as me, she was visiting various people she knew there, who she'd played D&D over the Internet with. I gave her £25, for some reason. For one of her university courses, she had to keep a diary for a month. She complained that it was difficult - I couldn't understand why, but I realised that it was supposed to comprise of essays on various topics. But towards the end of the month she got into it, and wrote in her livejournal how much she was enjoying it.

30 June 2003: Not Going Out With Sleeve

I was in my bed at my house in Canterbury, when Sleeve came round. He acted like he wanted to shag me; he wasn't open about it, or persistent, or scary, but I acted cautiously. We decided to go somewhere, if he gave me a chance to get ready. But getting ready ended up involving moving a large quantity of my possessions, such as schoolbooks and clothes down some stairs. I found my missing beloved orange-and-black stripy arm-tights, but otherwise the exercise was quite stressful.

1 July 2003: Born In 76

I was in a computer game I'd played before, with my family. We were on level three which was simple: you had to make your way down some large rocky steps beside a waterfall, before reaching a dark harbour and waiting for a boat, which took you to the level conclusion. At the harbour, Dad remarked that if he hadn't stood in this exact spot many years ago, I would have been born in 1976 and I would have driven on the motorway in the 70s. At this point, the dream entered an alternate reality in which this really had happened; I felt very proud of myself.

My extended family and some others had to go on various easy missions. After setting off on one, I realised I hadn't dressed yet - but I saw that Mum had brought along clothes for everyone. I tried to assemble an outfit out of those she had for me, and when I failed - all their colours clashed - I asked her for advice. She recommended I wore a turquoise fishnet top and matching pants. I realised these were far too revealing, but from there, I managed to assemble an outfit that looked ok.

I was in the downstairs bathroom in my house in Canterbury. Lately, in reality, whenever you switch on the light, the switch doesn't quite click into place and consequently the light comes on after a delayed reaction. In the dream it didn't work at all. I realised I should change the lightbulb, but it appeared to be a screw-in one, and I wasn't sure where any replacements were.

I was living in the same place on the Downs Road estate, except it was in either Scandanavia or Russia. Ibid was temporarily living in the Headcorn Drive area - in order to get across the estate, she had learnt to ride a bike.

2 July 2003: The Evil Door Handles

I was reading the website of Maddy Prior's (presumably non-existent) half sister. (Maddy Prior being the former singer of Steeleye Span and a family friend.) It had long essays about her youth, which had been full of abuse and depression. She lived in a town slightly south east of London, where even the door handles, which were rusty nails, could give you all sorts of STDs. My Dad and uncle spent a little while there in the seventies; they stayed in a flat on the main street, and all night long, they could hear cars and shrieking.

I was in Canterbury High Street, hanging around with a teenage boy, whose family owned a grotty pub where The Beercart Arms is. He went to a school just off the high street, but he was skiving, since he hated it.

I was witness to another teenage boy acting suspiciously. Apparently, this influenced my brother. Mum took me to Carlisle, and into a soft toy shop. She pointed at two types of fluffy silky teddy bears. One was light brown and cost £33. The other was black and suspended from the ceiling. Mum, who wanted a birthday present, asked the cashier for a black one, and I had to pay. I didn't mind though, especially when I found out it was £55 - I had thought it would be more expensive.

Then Mum suggested we go to The Twisted Wheel, which was a dingy café in daylight hours. She seems furious and I suspected this was because my brother had turned gay, and she thought it was my fault.

4 July 2003: How Optimistic!

In the first part of the dream, I was staying in a large hotel overnight with Bryn. He had to leave before me, and I realised I had the hassle of settling the bill - that is, if I could find my way out of the hotel in the first place. In trying to do this, I ran into my friend Tim - his hair was a lighter blue than it really is, as if he'd bleached it before dyeing it - and he was annoying.

In the second part (having spent about an hour awake at 5am), it was a Tuesday, and school sports day was taking place in the bit of Carlisle surrounding Hardwick Circus. There were lots of trees around, making the area seem dark and shadowy. My friends Sleeve and Tiggs and various other people had to have blood tests on Tuesdays; at 9 in the morning, they came up to Sleeve. He protested that he usually had his in the afternoon, at 2, after Tiggs', but they said Tiggs' had been moved, and jabbed him in the arm.

It turned out that Tiggs was playing in a concert at 2pm, and if my friend Jay could get time off work, he was going to go there and ask her out. In the dream, I really wanted him to go out with me, and therefore felt very miserable. I knew I should talk to him, but there was no way I'd summon the courage. Instead, I wandered round the area, but kept getting lost. I wondered why I wasn't playing in the concert. At 2pm, there was usually an everyone-must-take-part cross country run, but it didn't seem to be happening, so I went home (I was living in a caravan, nearby). The next day, it transpired there had been an art competition and a writing one. My online friend Rachel had entered the art competition, and her entry had been good, so her degree result had been boosted to a 2:1. I felt annoyed - I would have liked to have entered the writing competition - but, then, come to think of it, my result would have probably been dragged down by my writing.

10 July 2003: Failure To Produce A Patronus

I was in a bookshop, planning to buy some vampire erotica.

I was back at school, in assembly, and several boys in my class were trying to grab my arse.

I was Harry Potter and I was going on a train journey with this girl I liked. She enjoyed making patronuses (patroni?): hers was in the shape of a heart, and she wanted us to both make one at the same time, so my stag could gallop through her heart. However, I couldn't produce a patronus. (Freud would have enyojed interpreting this!) When we arrived, we turned into a goth couple (I was female again); my boyfriend got into a sledge, which I pushed around, until it tumbled off a ledge. He was ok, but shaken.