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Twenty Five

Not especially old this, very vivid. It followed an early morning of extreme sickness in which I managed to read 60 pages of Philip Hoare's excellent 'Leviathan', whilst in the toilet, but enough of that...this dream essentially involved multiple versions of me imagining my own waking, none of which actually took place.

'I awake from a restless sleep, convinced that a fire is present somewhere in the building. It is not like a regular fire, as it doesn't grow, but instead hides. It doesn't want to be found out. The room I get dressed in is the front bedroom of the York house, though this has become the main bedroom now even though, in reality, none of the furniture would fit. I spend a long time staring at the socks in the sock drawer, convinced the fire may be concealed in one. Zoe attempts to reassure me that the fire has probably tired of our home and has moved on elsewhere, where people are less intent on discovering it. Outside the sky is pleasingly blue, and I watch clouds go by for a moment or two from a window that also doesn't exist in reality. I am then already dressed and downstairs, planning my day. I recall that the owls that normally wake me in the back bedroom were unusually noisy in the night, despite the obvious lack of trees at the front of the house. When I awake, I feel like I'm in the wrong bedroom, but remembering the fever in the night combined with the reality of actual noisy owls, I fall back to sleep.'

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