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.'