A Disintegration Loop

'An open day is being held at the University. I am talking with Paul outside my office, which is now in a palatial roof terrace type area. A bearded man akin to Harold Shipman approaches and says that he loves what we’ve done with the place. I think this an odd comment, but Paul dismisses it and wanders off with the man. More and more people arrive through a lift I never noticed before, and as I attempt to fight my way through the crowd to leave, Chris appears, and starts attacking me. He jumps up and over me several times, raining punches down on me as he descends. I am powerless to respond. The crowd simply stand and stare. Each of them is holding a red balloon.' This one actually happened last night, during a relatively sleepless period brought about by the consumption of alcohol.

'Some sort of alien spacecraft is attacking a terrace of houses. It is small enough that I am able to shut it inside the back door of someone’s house. The spacecraft goes about converting the human race in to Combine-style robots despite my clever defensive strategy. Later, hiding in some waterfront properties in a disused docklands-style area, the few remaining humans attempt to form a resistance; instead of helping out, I am hunting an elderly Rik Mayall through flood drains whilst the man is extinguished from existence by robots I sort-of helped create.'

I am an unsuccessful dectective - so unsuccessful I cannot even spell my own job correctly - with a disabled son. I am attempting to find the killer of a woman in Cambridge, murdered by Lion's Yard, her body found grasping a ladle. Somehow I know the outfit worn by the killer is blue/green/grey and I am compelled to look for evidence in the shampoo aisle of a local supermarket. By chance, over the road, I spot the killer queuing to get in to a Pizza Express. I give chase with my partner, who now exists. The killer leads us to a rooftop which seems to be similar to Hadid's re-imagined transport museum in Glasgow, where my disabled son is intent on killing himself owing to my neglect. We attempt to reach him, but before we can he rolls off the roof. I assume he is dead, but when I am eventually persuaded to look over the edge, in an exchange reminiscent of Brad Pitt at the conclusion of the film Se7en, the chair is empty. What sort of elaborate prank is this? When my partner t

This happened, according to notes, the same week that Margaret Thatcher died. It came to mind as a result of watching Southcliffe. 'With Adam and others. The world is apparently populated by sadistic murderers. We are walking along a country road, trying to escape some unknown terror. We pass a derelict farm house. Up ahead a car spots us and begins slowly reversing down the road. We hide in the bushes. A man emerges from the car, and chases children across a field. Later, I wander about trying to work out – apparently by reading the landscape – how to get away from everything that is happening. The man returns. He has had enough of killing and wants to explain his politics via a power-point presentation. There is no level ground to set up the projector screen.'

Bjork is staying at my house, except we are in the Simpson’s house. She is staying with me for complicated reasons involving her tour bus breaking down and me saying I have a ticket to her concert, which I do not. She is living out of bags, and is very untidy. She is also smaller than I imagined. One night, she cannot sleep, and comes in to my room to talk. I do not recall what we discuss, but at the end she lies down on the bed and starts singing. The song makes me cry. I stare out the window at clouds rolling by to try and hide this fact from her. Later we are outside the house, which apparently sits on stilts above a tangled semi-dark swamp, populated by the detritus of previous – none gone – civilisations. I tell her I don’t really have tickets to her concert. She knows this, and offers me £20.

'I have moved in to a posh Boston suburb (home of jogging in a costume and the occasional terrorist outrage). I awake one morning to find people's cars wrapped in twine. I go to the 'farmers market' shopping area - which has three fishmongers but no news vendor - and ask questions but no-one knows anything. The following day I awake to find the area besieged by a plague of falling light-bulbs. This time I see them materialize in the sky. Some how I link the twine and the lightbulb incident together and reason it must be a conspiracy of supernatural origin. At the same faux-quaint shopping zone I think about telling the people of the seemingly terrible origins of the events but instead I watch a fishmonger create a diorama from crabs in his shop window. A man in a nearby cafe tells me 'you're not right for the area.'

'For some reason, I have been appointed the bishop of Durham. I am walking around the cathedral, looking in boxes, terrified about my inaugural address to, first, my congregation, and then the wider world. There are numerous tributes and actions I have to perform and I know none of them. I point this out to an adviser and he tells me not to worry, that I can be guided through the steps necessary. I am led through the crowd. I hear people discussing how young I look, how my appointment (an atheist in a religious institution like the church) is crazy. I think to myself ‘I am going to prove them wrong’. As I mount the stage to give my speech, I realise it is unwritten.'

'We decide to travel to the terminal beach on a jet-ski. There are six in our party, and the jet-ski is basically underwater, but it takes us out to sea anyway. The sea is azure blue, and I can see fish beneath me. Other boats pass, as do tanned people balancing on wires. At the beach a house is carved in to the cliff. It's interior matches Burlington Avenue and - inexplicably - there is a window in the kitchen. When I try and look through it someone jumps in front of my line of sight, explaining that these is nothing of interest inside the rocks. I return to the front door to find the beach being quickly submerged by the tide. I call to people but no-one is about. The sky is pink with paper and fire.'

In the past few weeks I was getting a little worried that my lack of memorable midnight recollections would end this chart of nocturnal wanderings, but in the last week or so, I have remembered around 3 dreams a night; in the process of doing so, I have started using my phone to note things down rather than a pad and pen, and then email myself so I actually remember I have the material. Remembering is half the battle. This dream I thought pertinent as I have just finished marking student essays for Spring Term (and presumably this is what inspired it) 'I am circling some sort of warehouse, possibly owned and run by Argos. Inside, a number of my students have killed a man by beating him to death. They now fall about laughing whilst bouncing off inflatable children’s toys. I try to remain stoic in the face of horror, concerned that I may be next. I talk to them a while, and on finding out that ____ is their ring leader, I try to escape. Every path leads back to the warehouse. Insi

This happened a long while back. Recently though, my dreams have increasingly involved corridors. I find this depressing. 'In some sort of version of Skyrim, except reality. I walk around a tree top world, similar to Kashyykk in Star Wars but also the film Avatar. A strange looking woman with a spear attacks me, and I fend her off and run for safety. Later I am showing an unseen person around the world. Everywhere we go is familiar in some way, though I am unable to explain how I would be so knowledgeable about a world I have barely explored. We run in to the same woman, and before she can attack, I kiss her. Later, we fuck. The unseen person is nowhere to be found.'

'Somewhere on the underground line, with Mark Hamill. We are investigating a disappearance. We find a purple glove at the top of one of the industrial extractor fans. Hamill turns the fan off, and lowers me down through the slats. At the bottom, in amongst a heap of dust and dirt, I find a human hand. We both know it is murder. I am unable to climb back up, so Hamill cuts me loose so that I can find a service exit in the tunnels underneath. As I drop down, I am confronted by another colleague. He tells me that the murderer is in the tunnels. We split up and wander what seems like endless corridors. All is brown/grey and similar to a military silo type complex. At the end of one tunnel, I am gripped by incredible fear; a man with a large moustache – who resembles Dick Strawbridge – is coming towards me. I cannot see his eyes underneath the green baseball cap he is wearing. He gets closer, and the fear intensifies. I walk towards him for some reason. As I get closer, he veers off in