Wanderlust Dream

Ian T. is a volunteer at his local Catholic church: a small, dark building in an urban street. The church itself is half-full with the props, sets and scenery for a musical he is writing: a strange, violent SF-themed production. A rehearsal is underway; I observe the bloody dematerialization of an organic-looking android figure at the end of a rousing speech. (Doubting, as I do so, whether this production will find much of an audience.) Ian tells me he wrotes Les Miserables, but sold the rights cheaply- 'for a song'- but I don't believe him... His father is also here: an alcoholic who lives in a coverted flat nearby. The walls of an old working mans' club next door have been knocked through to create a large rehearsal space, but they've run out of money to complete the renovation, and my family is thinking of acquiring the property instead.

As I leave his neighbourhood (at one stage via an Underground terminal) I find myself in the passenger seat of a car being driven by Pete Murray. We have left the rankness of the city behind us. Here, against a backdrop of green hills and open skies, are large homes with ornate and very eccentric features. Great stucco figures protrude from the roofs and walls like an English village equivalent of the Gothic follies and blimps of Gotham City. 'It's very expensive to live here,' Pete tells me; but I feel as though this is home. It's a model (at least) for a kind of reordered, aspirational lifestyle more suited to my personality.

UFO Dream

It's the week of the Fresh Expressions expo... I am finishing up at Langley Park and moving on. A few of the gang are with me, including Greg Smith, a fine-looking man now slowly going to seed (I reflect, somewhat sadly.) I remember posing moodily on a shop-fronted square, the place where new students gather. My attitude piques the interest of one or two others... including Valerie Davis. As we sit on a bench discussing the changing demographics of Britain, young Muslims drive past, saluting aggressively.

Later I get talking with a provocatively-dressed fat girl, a Pole or Ukranian. Her, a friend, another man, my father and I squeeze into a minibus to shoot a scene for my film... A large blue craft (a spinning diamond, organic in appearance) rises from the ground and spins in the sky above our heads.

'That's the shot I want for the trailer!' I shout, feeling excited and scared at the same time.

Morrissey Dream

Two o'clock in the morning on Saturday, and my head is a mess... I'm in a state. There have been several wasted hours of masturbation, computer porn and Facebook: and a strange e-mail from a woman I met in the library. These stalker relationships have got to stop, I think to myself, working myself up into a state of concern about Enhanced Criminal Record Bureau checks, the state of the surveillance culture, and my deepest workings exposed before a jury of unsmiling female police officers.

I climb into bed, seeking recovery for my battered senses and the comfort of oblivion. When I awake two hours later I am lying on my back in a vaguely yogic posture- both legs are resting together, the knees at right angles to the rest of me; a stretching sensation that is oddly pleasurable. The effect on my mind is dramatic: I awake from my nap feeling renewed, restored to a pristine state... with the knowledge that there are faculties that need awakening, a process of slide and atrophy that must be arrested. More than anything else, I need to sing.

I am on a boat... My father and brother are both there, and three or four couples I don't recognize. My parents have wired up a karaoke machine to curb my notorious temper, to keep me sane, to bring out the best of me in a difficult world. My song selections are drawn from a cassette or cartridge called 'The Best of Morrissey'... I remember snapping into the microphone- 'Bloody buggery!'- which draws no reaction from my father except sage-like patience... He seems to know what makes me tick, what calms me down.

I sing a song similar to (but not) 'There Is A Light That Never Goes Out'. Despite being well-received by the others on board, I am unsatisfied... The next singer, however, an Irish man (on the cruise with his wife) assures me the performance has generated a good atmosphere. Everybody seems either to be having sex or drinking heavily. 'When you've been asked for a drink three times and you speak as little of the lingo as we do,' he jokes, 'you know they're drunk.'

'Oh I know,' I say, still in character. 'I could kill for a lager... die for a lager.'

Football fragment...

England are playing Germany in the World Cup final. Some friends and I are anxious to know the result. I queue up with a Communion wafer at a check-out in a late night store; believing somehow that its purchase and consumption can affect the outcome of the game... The place I am staying in is semi-rural; and the night sky is illuminated by many strange lights, which hover and dance like a conclave of aliens gathering to observe the match. Gradually, like the all-clear after a bombing raid, news begins to emerge. It's nil-nil at the end of extra time; a result which (according to the rules of dreamland football) will trigger an England victory if they don't concede a goal. A group of crusties are camping out under the stars, and an assortment of glamourous student-types, possibly swingers, are sharing my digs.

The stars twinkle... An England win? I am jubilant, yet crestfallen too. These are days I had longed to witness, yet now they have arrived it doesn't feel like I thought it would. Now the dawn is breaking too quickly; revealing the mysterious lights to be mere aeroplanes, the hipster swingers icy and distant. A short, elfin girls celebrates with her friend, taking photographs. As I drive back into town, my van veers all over the road. I mistime my attempt at parking, overshooting the space and colliding with a stationary black vehicle in front. I manage to regain control and bring the vehicle to a stop, but realise with mounting horror that the car park I have ended up in is crawling with police... I have been caught drink-driving for a third time, signalling another ban and jail time. 

Dream fragments

Walking down the Balls Pond Lane at night with Ian Saunders, looking for nightclubs. I know only the whereabouts of the many places to hear good traditional music, but Saunders wants something more 'banging' and to take me with him. At the same time, I am lamenting the gentrification of the neighbourhood: the exodus of the small and secretive 'sex and crime' parlours I like to visit... It's late, and we've walked a long way.

Saunders finds his club eventually. It's crowded with young, mainly black and Asian customers; the vibe is aggressive, and in no way communitarian. (No sense of hippy 'togetherness'.) Muscling our way back out to the road, Saunders tells me he's bought fourteen pills for his last night out with his mates; evoking resentment on my part, being unable- through poverty- to participate in such adventures. (Even though the prospect does not really appeal.) Saunders is now transfigured into a cat, and makes a swift airborne exit through the urban foliage; leaving me at the mercy of two muggers, who demand twenty pounds. As I approach their hastily-erected tollgate, listening to their well-drilled calls and jabberings, two discrete thoughts float through my mind: Where are the police? And the ugliness, the tawdriness of crime. Both men are real bottomfeeders... And anyway, all I have is eight quid.

*

Marc Bolan has opened a synagogue in the upper room of an archaelogical site. He applies to the Jewish authorities for the right to preserve and develop it... little knowing that, on the same spot, or beneath it, years later some children will see an apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The site becomes a pilgrimage centre, a religious tourist attraction; but the upper room carries on undisturbed. Uncertain how best to defend it from commercialisation, Bolan takes to living in the room full-time (in the nude), and requests that any visitors first contact him before arriving, thus preserving (and absorbing) the energies of this special spiritual site.