Dreams: 1988 - 1998

1988

I was at school and everyone had to walk to the nearby church carrying a piece of sports equipment. I took a rubber ball, and everyone laughed at me.

1989

I was at my uncle's house and my mother was hanging up washing on a wire frame. The house started burning down and the flames consumed me. I thought, "Oh! I'm dead!" and woke up terrified.

(The official explanation is that I was "consumed by passion". But I was only eight years old!)

1990

I went to bed feeling perfectly fine. In my dream, I was lying in bed horribly ill. I had a terrible headache and various other ailments. When I woke up - and I'd definitely been asleep - I had precisely the same illness.

1990

I was in a prison that resembled a giant freezer on an island the size of Australia that was below South America.

Early 1990s

There was a motor race around Brampton, the town where I live, and I had to take part in it, even though I hadn't passed my driving test and didn't have a clue how to control the car.

14 October 1996

I was at school and a friendly sports competition was going on. My PE teacher announced that there was going to be a school trip to Belgium, so we could get tattoos done in France and Germany. If you wanted to go you had to write a letter in a foreign language, so I started mine, then realised I didn't want to go.

16 October 1996

I was meeting some relatives for the first time. I felt really tired, but Mum forced me to go. When we arrived, I realised I was only wearing my nightshirt. I took it off, the other females present also undressed, and we sat and talked.

I was translating Latin poetry, which was a cross between "Aeneas and Turnus" and "Macbeth", only I was in it. It was set in Naworth Castle, where I used to live, and some guests arrived. Aeneas / Macbeth embraced one of them and as he did, stuck a dagger in his chest. He tried to do the same to another guest, but he ran into the kitchen. Aeneas / Macbeth dashed to the living room then back to the kitchen. Helen Wi (a girl in my year at school) tried to kill him with an electric pizza cutter, but she couldn't get it to work.

(Porn AND violence? Naughty subconscious!)

November 1996

A young nun stood in front of a mirror that covered an entire wall of a room, that had polished wooden floorboards. The only piece of furniture was a bed. She gazed at her reflection, then became aware of a presence in the doorway behind her. She turned around a saw a priest. She was terrified, took a gun out of her habit and shot at him several times.

He simply floated into the room. She started talking to him, but he didn't say a word. He passed into the mirror. When she noticed, she screamed, "AAAAAAAAAGH!!!!! It's a shadow!" and ran from the room.

She flew down the corridor and saw Mother Superior and some other nuns. She explained what she'd seen, but Mother Superior only laughed.

17 November 1996

I was in a play, and set out along a country lane on a sledge, although it was a fine snowless day. I turned left and met someone who wasn't in the script, but he refused to tell me what he was doing there.

17 January 1997

Me and my family were on holiday somewhere in Western Europe and walking through playing fields. We travelled fast, covering several fields in a minute. There was chaos all around: kids were shooting guns into the sky and low-flying futuristic-looking aircraft passed overhead. The planes travelled in groups of five, performing stunts. Dad said, "Perhaps we're having a nuclear war."

I was taking an English Language exam. I'd done the first four questions, but there were three more instructing me to write reports. I couldn't find the motivation to write and the people around me were talking. I eventually started writing, but the examiner said, "Time's up" while I was still working.

I was taking a History exam. There was a question - "Why hadn't France been able to defend itself in the second world war?" - worth twenty eight marks. Then I noticed another part of the question which had faded, asking about the war between Scotland and California. "What the beep?" I thought. The paper provided no help, because the rest of it had been eaten.

Mum asked me how to work the Internet. She told me that Dad wanted to send comiserations to Scotland and tell them to buy muscial instruments at Omega Music. I went downstairs and said, "Well, you have to switch the computer on, and load e-mail" and did that for her.

February 1997

One of the characters in this dream was a teenage girl who'd gone to Antartica to talk to penguins because a friend had asked her to. The other was a boy of about sixteen who was popular, rich, powerful and worshipped by several girls. He treated them all badly, and broke the spine of one of them.

They were locked in a mental hospital on the top floor of their school. The boy was able to control when the light in the girl's cubicle went on and off. She refused to eat and had trouble getting out of bed.

2 July 1997

I was at Maths summer school, playing Mathematical netball. When you got the ball, you had to answer Maths questions. I was really bad at it and didn't enjoy myself at all.

7 September 1997

It was the year 2164 and a time of war. Several kids had to be evacuated to a safe part of the country, and they travelled in a very wide camping van.

1 November 1997

I was in Brazil and everyone was speaking Latin. There was a big field filled with water where people were working.

Late 1997

I was standing outside my house, smoking a cigarette. Despite having never smoked, nor wanted to, in my waking life, I liked it a lot. I threw the stub into a dustbin and felt a great deal of satisfaction.

Late 1997

I saw my online friend Sam's novel "The Philosopher And The Patriot" published and occupying a massive display in WH Smiths. It bore a label saying, "Novel Of The Year 1997." However, when I looked at the author's name, it was "Ping Peng Chaos", Chaos being one of her pseudonyms.

(The scary thing about this: when I told Sam, she said every time she saw a published book in her dreams, it was written by 'Ping Peng'. Not only that, a few months later she started writing another novel called "Breaking The Rules" and I dreamt that it was published and I went to a reading of it in a cafe / Room E at school.)

22 April 1998

My family and I were travelling around Europe. We travelled across a heauge suspension bridge in Italy, and Mum and I walked through some caves in Spain. In them, we had to deposit bronze coins in baskets, but we ran out of coins before we got out. So we ran past the last few baskets feeling guilty.

I was at school with several people who were standing around a bonfire, measuring wavelengths of different colours of light and trying to draw a graph. We had a few problems, so the History teacher gave us a massive piece of help, which surprised us.

About five of us went to room 12 and saw Katherine (a girl who died a month earlier) there. She said she wasn't really dead, she had been alive all the time.

8 May 1998

I was on the grass beside the school drive, slipping and sliding around in the mud, having a great time. The people in the nearest car were watching me. The school librarian was in the driving seat and Katherine was in the passenger seat, come back to life again. Then she got out of the car and headed towards the school building. I followed her and she started climbing the main staircase. I was terrified she would jump again.

14 May 1998

I was trying to remember the URL for my online friend Twi's website but I couldn't remember which way round the numbers in the URL went. I typed some in and when the page loaded, I found myself at a young writers' club that published vampire stories only.

24 May 1998

There was a family living in the USA. People started filming them and it became international news. A fifteen year old boy wanted to destroy and take the place of one of the daughters, and a man wanted to sabotage the father's career.

I watched the trial of the suspected man on TV, but I missed the ending. I did a huge crossword. My friend Will came into my bedroom and we talked about CDs and had a cuddle.

I got on a aeroplane then a voice told me to get off it again. In the airport, thousands of people were standing around. My former maths teacher gave me directions and I travelled through a dark tunnel containing bits of escalator.

I found myself in a big courtyard with the girls in my school year. Alice said, "Where were you? We were worried sick." I looked up at deep blue evening sky and saw a plane. The narrator's voice said, "India might be dangerous or violent or just strange, but we were certainly ready for an adventure."

"Or nice," I said. "It could be nice as well."

25 May 1998

I had double Games. Hardly anyone was there, and I was told the choice was football or nothing. I opted for nothing and went to the library to work, but I didn't have any text books with me. When school ended, I went to supervise 2X (class of twelve and thirteen year olds I was responsible for) with Will. They left the classroom fairly quickly, but then I went into Room 6 which 2Y (another class) were still occupying. Chris and Sheena (prefects of 4Y) came in and gave everyone a miniature box of Smarties and most people left.

Back in the sixth form carrels, my friend Smill was trying to phone her friend in Jakarta to find out if she was still alive.

26 May 1998

I was in Room 6 looking after 2X with Will. They were behaving remarkably well. Natalie, a girl in my year, came in and asked to borrow a history textbook off me. She told me there was something really sick in it: during the Holocaust, Hitler had given his victims baths in exotic dark blue oil and afterwards, he made them have showers and the hot spray killed them.

It was night time and I was in a deserted car park, planning to treat my mother to a bath in exotic dark blue oil. I realised I didn't want to kill her, just give her a nice bath. I tried to make coffee several times, but there was never enough milk for a second cup. My brother Noj appeared and said he liked hot water better than coffee anyway.

I found a journal belonging to a boy in the Upper 6th, the school year above mine. I took it, fascinated, but before I could read it, I woke up.

28 May 1998

It was a Sunday and I was looking after a fruit and flowers display in the middle of the road where I live. Several people walked past and tried to take fruit, but I told them it wasn't ripe yet.

(How Freudian can we get?)

3 June 1998

I was in a computer game where you had to solve a mystery. I was waiting impatiently for the animal refuge to open when I woke up.

6 July 1998

I was at a jumble sale and saw an exercise bike exactly the same as the one we have except it worked. I tentatively asked my mother if I could buy it, and she said yes.

16 July 1998

I was pregnant and at boarding school.

20 July 1998

I met my online friend Heather at my parents' shop.

22 July 1998

I lived in a lighthouse with three girls my age. We had to retrieve multi-coloured barrels from the sea. Then I was at school and I heard band playing in the music block. In order to get my clarinet from the sixth form carrels, I had to break into the Physics lab and Junior Science lab. I succeeded, but by the time I got to the carrels, band was over.

23 July 1998

I was doing an army training course and everyone else was wearing a uniform. A former English teacher, who was in charge, told me I had to get a uniform, and Helen G, a girl in my year, offered to go to the nearby city of Carlisle with me where I could get one.

24 July 1998

I was playing the computer game "Simon The Sorcerer" when I found myself in the game with some other people. I ended up in a house in Scotland where none of the lights worked, then on a six-mile long log flume in Canada, heading towards Vancouver. Fun!

31 July 1998

I was working at my parents' shop when some people in my school year came to visit me. We went to celebrate the end of Young Enterprise in a building across some fields from the shop. It was silent and deserted and I kept losing people in the corridors. Alice, Helen Wo, Smill and myself found ourselves in a library, but there wasn't much to do and a teacher came in and regarded us suspiciously. So we left and saw several little girls wearing dresses hanging around.

Mum and I visited my uncle who lived in a big house in the middle of nowhere. He took us for a long drive and gave us cakes with sickly sweet chocolate icing on the top. We went to a beach and I watched him making these cakes.

Will and I were in the living room of my uncle's real house talking about films. I mentioned that I liked "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and Will said he did too and suggested we watched it again together. I agreed enthusiastically.

At the shop, Mum was really fraught and telephone rang. To answer it, one had to climb up a heauge stack of boxes, which I did. It was my friend Roe's mother, calling from Ireland. She mistook me for my mother and told me not to get stressed.

I hung up and wanted to talk to my uncle, but Mum kept giving me jobs preventing me from doing so.

2 August 1998

My friend Chris told me we had to get a Christmas present for a girl two years above us at school. We went to the shop across the road from school with our religion teacher who was talking a load of bunkum. We saw some gangs of kids loitering in a field and around the bus shelter. They insulted us for hours. I tried to ask them about education, but they said they were doing Shakespeare and had picked quotes like "Sleep no more!" and "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow."

Finally we left, and I realised out loud, "We haven't got a present!" Chris said he'd looked in the shop and taken some photos of things, what did I think? I looked at the pictures but wasn't impressed.

3 August 1998

All the kids at school had got hold of a really bad poem I'd written. They guessed what (or rather who) it was about, and teased me mercilessly.

4 August 1998

I was in Ireland and Mum said she was going to Canada for a few days. I met my online friend Heather who was touring Scotland. A 21-year-old guy said to a girl, "You're 12.0, right?" "No," she answered. "I'm 14.0, even though I'm in the last year of high school." "Oh good," he said. "That means we can go out."

I had to get my former French teacher a copy of "Interview With The Vampire" in French. I found one at home that wasn't mine. Unfortunately it was in complicated Greek, and after about thirty pages it turned into English. She didn't mind though, but when she compared its ISBN number to that on her copy she saw that they weren't the same.

I started reading it, but it was a Choose Your Own Adventure book. I found myself in the story, and it became a computer game. I was travelling around in a vehicle with some blokes in Brampton, the town where I live. We went to the industrial estate, where my parents' shop is, where a new unit was being built.

I escaped from the game and went into unit 5F where my mother was working. In one corner there was a noisy gas fire. She protested about it, so I put in the vehicle.

7 August 1998

My remaining grandparents died and another old man did too. I was at a water amusement park and didn't like it. I was desperately trying to sort out the Young Enterprise accounts, and Chris asked me to do some knitting. Ayp!

8 August 1998

My school year were putting on an assembly in the school chapel and we hadn't practised at all. It seemed to work out, except I kept stuttering over my lines. It was all about some pots and kettles, which were lined up on the altar. Then we started ad libbing a lot, and I stole the show. I offered the audience a kettle and they burst into applause. Chris walked over to me and kissed me on the cheek.

I found myself beside two rollercoasters: a big one and a small test one. A man told me and some other people to get into the small one. Although I was slightly apprehensive, it wasn't bad. Throughout the tests, he kept asking us the same questions about the physics of the rollercoaster. He started increasing its speed, and I decided not to go on the big one. Then he asked me a question and I wasn't sure how to answer, so I ran away.

I found myself in central Carlisle with no way of getting home apart from walking. I started walking through the cathedral, wearing a nun's attire, and it took me forever to get out. When I did, I found a phone box outside Our Price and inserted twenty pence.

The phone rang strangely for a while. At last, I got an answer machine, so I told it where I was. Then I saw my brother Noj in the same predicament as me. We began to wander around some shops. Mum and Dad were suddenly with us and we went into a book shop called Horrals. It only sold non-fiction books, but I found some stationery and asked Mum if I could get some paper, a ruler and some staples.

4 September 1998

I was at the shop with Noj and we were on the Internet. I saw my friend Katrina out of the window and she saw me. I went outside and Katrina and I started walking around.

We got on a plane which I slept on, and we got off in New Zealand (which is where Katrina lives). We wandered around and tried to make conversation, but she was acting strange. She'd completely stopped caring how she looked and didn't bother washing. I met my online friend Flink and we stopped outside a shop window. She pointed out the Speed Racer and X Files playing cards that were on display.

I was worried about having to fly back to England, but I made it to the plane ok.

5 Septemer 1998

I was in an X Files episode - "Duane Barry". I was with a lot of other people on the moon. It was very small, since I could see about a quarter of it. Half of the moon was inaccessible because that was the dark side of the moon. The gravity was strange and there were very small mountains. There was an emergency and all the kids were returned to earth, and all the men and women were to follow.

The following episode, "Ascension", started, still on the moon. There was a God-like figure who instructed everyone. He told us to get onto an aeroplane, which involved going up a million steps set into a mountain side. We got there, but the aeroplane turned into an enormous theatre. We were told to find seats as quickly as we could, and I sat down.

29 September 1998

My four fish morphed into six and one was about a foot long.

(I have weird dreams about my fish regularly: they vary slightly, but it's always terrifying.)

13 October 1998

The brown fish became tiny and the blue fish became enormous.

October 1998

I found out that Chris and Helen Wi were going out together. I climbed to the third storey of the school building and threw myself down the stairwell. I woke up, horrified. (I never liked Chris *that* much!)

21 November 1998

I went for a walk on a thin twisty muddy path. Then it was Christmas and I was in carrels at school with Chris, playing with Lego.

2 December 1998

I became male half way through this dream. I followed a member of the Conservative Party around, trying to talk to him, but he went back to his mansion. The only way I could get into the grounds was to cross a huge lake. There was a bridge, but it was dodgy in the middle. I got across and waited in his garden for three years. Then I tried to get back across the bridge.

7 December 1998

I went shopping with my friends Marion and Fiona. Marion drove us to the shopping centre and as we got out of the car, I saw a girl stealing my bag from the boot. We set off but kept getting lost. We found ourselves in a country lane, and tried to get back to the shopping centre. This involved going through a cathedral where you had to climb up lots of stairs and over loads of junk, following a bad-tempered tour guide.

25 December 1998

My school year were preparing for the Christmas carol service in the school chapel. Suddenly the lights were turned off and we were supposed to leave. But I'd left a present for Marion on one of the benches and in the darkness I couldn't find it.

I had to play a solo in the carol service and was worried and annoyed. My father and music teacher failed to console me.

My mother, brother and myself were at my uncle's house watching TV. My uncle fell asleep and we realised we were watching his dreams on TV. They were full of wars.