Et In Arcadia Ego

Why are my dreams no longer on my side?

So I'm walking along with this "leutnant" and his Nazi band. I'm not a solider - for some reason I'm just along for the ride. I'm not with them, I don't approve, but bizzarely enough I am "with" this friend, who is protecting me and keeping me safe. Friend seems a strange word to use, but you'll see what I mean.

Anyway, we were travelling through this big, old Georgian area near a cliff-face. My friend peppering the building with some sort of mortar. He asked me what I thought. I told him that, if I didn't know what it signified, the formalism of the straight lines of windows shattering could even be beautiful. In the dream, that was a bit of a porky, and he looked dubious; but it sounds perfectly like something I would think. His band picking up any survivors and stragglers and loading them onto a train. You can see where this is going. Train wasn't the cattle-car of legend, it was actually more like the Bakerloo line, with all the shabby comfort that implies. In the carriage we were in, there was a spare seat - my friend was pointedly standing, in his awkward, squeakily-parodic SS leather trenchcoat, so I was standing too - totally on my best behavior. After all, I wasn't on the train so to speak; I was with the soldiers. One of the women asked why he didn't sit down - an older, crotchety woman. He sneered something about standards. Then she asked me. I looked around awkwardly, didn't want to seem to be copying, and then perched on the edge of the seat, hoping that hadn't blotted my copybook too far.

The train journey was magical. It lead us through the underbelly of a city, all neon and saturation - but high up, so we could see the dark streets both above and below. Beautiful. Then we came out at another cliff face, with another huge, forbidding castle, or more properly, concentration camp on it. If Auswitz had really been that glam, it might have been worth a four-star stay. My friend left me right next to the gates, with instructions to stay there. Then the regular grunts started loading people through, about eight at a time, and lining them up in a dark building. One of them was the love of my life. By this point I'd morphed into a simple village lad, with sleeves and a tattered waistcoat. So she was wearing a plain shift, and a black crochet shawl et al, and was beautiful in a natural, wholesome, "I want to sell you milk chocolates" sort of a way. A line of soldiers calmly shot them, and then brought the next group through.

At this point, I decided I didn't really trust my friend's agenda. Which was fair enough, as I still don't know why I was there, or why I was safe. I said something kickass, and before anyone could stop me, took a running jump over the cliff edge. Fell a very long way, close to the rocks, into the sea.

I'm not sure at that moment I really had a plan - swimming to safety and death both retrospectively seemed like good ideas. Bobbed around unconscious for a bit. And then there were people, ragged people helping me to shore. I'd been rescued by the resistance! I'm not sure how they knew I was there, or why they thought I was worth rescuing. Like the other dream, I was some sort of special which excused me from guilt. Perhaps I was undercover; or some sort of angelic agent monitoring both sides. They took me back to the city, and hid me with a false identity. I thought "yay! I get to explore the streets!", although like all things in dreams, it didn't make sense when seen close up. Instead, my mind filled it with contemporary Acton pawn shops. "well typical", I said in the dream. Which does create a bizzare set of kicks for you. I had enough autonomy in the dream to despair of a Jewish quarter made up of pawn shops as cliche, but not enough to build a better quarter.

After that, things just got increasingly pleasant. I was one of the people they were sneaking out before the soldiers targeted the city. We got out in a little boat, periodically going under the water. And then it turned out we were extras in a movie, albeit very traumatised ones - a young Natalie Portman was in tears, because it had all been so intense. We were heading to the set exit - which we found, eventually, although we had to travel a lot of dark streets to get there.

Well gee! Thanks brain! Boy, do I want to dream about Pol Pot tomorrow! Then I'll have the whole set! As I write it out, some elements make sense. All the same. I feel like the NAZI COLLABORATOR DREAM is a special, memorable event.

Friend 1 and I

Anyway, I was walking through a city and I came across a small student protest behind a little fence. A Libya protest - I explained I couldn't take part because it was too dangerous. I- and S- were among them - I gave them each a massive hug and a kiss on the cheek which was, retrospectively, a sensible thing to do. Kept walking. Came across another, smaller protest. Of all the people, Friend 7 was in this one. Kept walking through darker streets. All of a sudden, there were a small group of streetsoldiers running across the end of the street, who threw an "IED" in our direction.

So. Not London. And note for the military nerd - the thing my brain labelled "IED" looked like one of those long, pipe grenades, had a blast radius of about six metres and just about enough time for them to be outrun if you were paying attention. I screamed for the other people in the area to run also - I was safely out of the blast, they were a bit more Bond ("SLO MO JUMP!").

I kept going. Went through a tunnel. Came to a grassy valley, thinly lined on either side by protestors who meant business. The mood was far more Les Miserables down here, although I still recognised many of the protestors, including Samir who turned out to be quite the quantum boyfriend* in the dream. I gave him a hug and a I'm-Never-Going-To-See-You-Again kiss too. Oh dear me. I gave them some news - the newspapers up top were saying they weren't organised enough to win, so they really needed to organise. I don't know by what power I was just a floating rambler, but I guess I'd made the decision not to die. I don't know, though - everyone I met seemed to be aware and supportive of me not being heroically massacred. I carried on through a building where the coordinators were planning. They seemed really quite dour about their chances. They also informed me there was no way out this way, and that heading south was my only chance. So, back north the way I'd came, then south by a different route.

*had I a hundred billion lives, quantum boyfriends are people I'd quite like to date. As it stands, they are people I like a lot and am curious about the experience and what the rest of my life would look like. But not sufficiently in-love-with-and-attracted-to to actually be bothered with the trouble of asking in this life. Not so much because it'll be trouble for me, but trouble for them - it seems I feel bad dumping all my emotional issues on people I like unless they've explicitly asked me to. So the attraction remains more a cerebral one. Pity, though. As I'm sure I'll feel a tad mifffed if any of them ever found anyone else. I'm basically just posessive. And greedy.

When I got outside it was dark. I tried to stick to the deeper shadows back through the valley, but when I got to the tunnel there were lines of armed soldiers running towards the defenders in the valley. I nipped into an abandoned house. Became a camera for a while. In the cafe, the owners who had run away to avoid the fighting had returned a few days later, more in optimism I think although it was true - the fighting wasn't heavy here. More like mopping up. They discovered the dog they had abandoned was still alive, and feral - attempting to attack and eat them. Like any dream, they got several attempts to contain the dog before they were eaten. They failed, all three times - the mother got munched, but the little girl survived. What sort of survival is this, thought my camera eye? I floated up the side of the valley, where the protestors were in dugouts and being efficiently butchered by passing troops. One group was actually a tour group from the future whose bubble failed and was picked off with the rest of them (with an exception of one member, who was an archangel).

"I" returned, back where I'd started near the first protest. Near the river. OK, going south. I ran across the bridge - it was morning now - ignoring the rather large group of protestors posessing it. When I was nearing the end, another one of those "IED"'s struck, and I regret not doing the sensible thing - chucking it over into the water - instead of outrunning it to the other side again. It's quieter down here. So I move between buildings, all very Southbank. When I turn, the bridge has been destroyed - it's easing itself into the water, then crashing, and then a ridiculous amount of screaming as everyone falls, then flounders, then drowns.

Eventually, I get to an area which can not be passed. Lots of people bumbling around. We passed into more of a dreamstate again here. Fortunately, the Doctor was there to figure out how to traverse. He and Amy rigged up little rafts across the floor, to an area where there was supplies - joy of joys. I followed, so did a few others. We were trapped there. Oh, and one of our companions turned out to be Gadaffi's son, the poor wretch. I say "poor wretch", because being trapped with a bunch of angry escapees isn't anything an ex-evil-dictator wants, and some very PG-level, Doctor-approved torture took place with the items we had around - including eggs. Note to self - G jr. has a serious allergy to eggs. We persuaded him into releasing a regime-approved carriage and boat, with which we could escape from the building. The Doctor told Amy to drive with G jr. ahead in the carriage. Like, an expression of trust thing. The rest would follow through the canal to the river in the green boat.

Amy took the carriage out of the front. Well, yeah. The building was totally surrounded, as if for a state procession. Hundreds of joyful supporters cheered as it left the building. With that distraction, the Doctor and the other survivors slipped out carefully to the river. G jr. reached his own boat, but he had been so - wait for it - touched by the Doctor's kindness (egg-torture ignored?), and trust in leaving Amy with him that he allowed them to escape in the boat in exchange for releasing him. As his state boat sailed away, he was looking quizzicaly joygul in a totally implied change of heart sort of a way.

Which is the type of thing which happens when you let Doctor Who do real world events. Libya gets a happy ending.

There were some other bits, more unpleasant bits, including yet another my-house-is-under-attack dream. That was interesting by virtue of Steel being its central character - an angry Steel, whose Sapphire had gone missing, and was attacked in Horned hallway by two equally strong villains, who he despatched with great difficulty, firearms, and serious wounds afterwards. I can make sense of most of the fragments - the dog, the archangel, the whole shebang. But I'd rather just leave it for you as a fabulous little string-of-dream-sausages. Good morning, world!

My dreams define my days. Yesterday, I dreamed I was in Italy and woke up with an indefineable sense of peace. This morning, I had a dream so calculated in its cruelty that I refuse to believe it wasn't deliberate. I don't know what Morpheus is playing at, but I want him to know that it really isn't fair. Uuuuugh.

The barstools at Guernsey Post don't think they'll be able to deliver the post today because of the weather. Goodness knows what Gsy would do if we got proper snow. Right now, we've been frosted white by the most incompetant airbrusher ever - barely a scattering - and the whole island's gone to pieces. But what of my sister, and everyone else on the island, whose Cambridge letters are due today? Unfair much!

The good news is, you could ask them to email you. The very good news is: she's got an offer :D thus breaking the family curse. None of us have ever gone - I bet generations of Victorians, Tudors and Bretons are grinning with pride. Or possibly embarassment, that we couldn't find her a nice husband instead.

Work on my essay is almost complete. I've decided to go without stabilisers on this one and write 3,000 words of my opinion, using footnotes only when totally necessary. According to my marks, I have never done a great film essay anyway, so at worst this will be a disasterous experiment. I've put my current draft through Wordle, and the result is pretty funny:



Note: this is actually what my brain looks like right now. But howcome I've used the word "Lil" less than the word "Ze", when his name is Lil Ze and I've only ever used the phrase in one piece?

I'm listening to Patrick Wolf's concept album "The Bachelor", about young warrior in a sort of spiritual, metaphorical battle against homophobia, racism and the rest. You can see why this would appeal to me - it's just one Magnu-the-horse-with-the-golden-mane away from being Warriors at the Edge of Time. Bachelor explores all different aspects of what goes on in war, and has a lovely sense of character, and this morning (of all mornings) I find myself rather itchy for Part II (yes! Tell me it's not prog! There are even flowy cloaks!), "The Conqueror", its sequel. If only to find out what happens at the end.


Thought of the day: the name Spielberg, as in Steven Spielberg, is probably not a German portmanteau meaning "story-mountain." But perhaps it ought to be?

Today's issue: my aims before I return to uni, my sister's new website and a dream theory

Before leaving Londinium for Sarnia, there were two things I promised to do. The first thing was to finish the cuddly toy Rorschach-es which I offered to make for virtually everyone. I don't mind, but as soon as you have to do something it becomes a commitment - and I'm good at forgetting commitments. I've started planning cuddly Blakes'n'Avons, making ATCs to send to strangers, figuring out how to make the Liberator in origami and even got out my old Rosencrantz'n'Guildenstern costume project as a way of dodging this. They all have nicknames now - there's Fat!Rorschach, Leggy!Rorschach, Headless!Rorschach, and then there's one I actually rather like. Maybe I'll swap the coats around because currently, the better costumes are also on the better dolls. Hmmm...

The second was a movie I promised to watch. I'm a tad depressed abot the prospect, and it's entirely my own fault. It could be great, but if it doesn't float my boat I'm fairly sure I'll either lie blind to the recommender, or to myself until I do like it. I don't object to the morality of this in the slightest - recommending a movie or book to someone who then turns around and tells you they seriously hated it hurts. It's my own gullibility, that I can convince myself of liking pretty much anything depending on the circumstances. Most of the time I feel this is a handy character trait - I feel everything is on some level true, so being able to find the joy in any art/stance/person/whatever is like the ultimate act of open-mindedness. And having a flexible mind with no walls at all has helped me to find many arts/stances/people/whatever that otherwise I might have missed. It's just demoralising to know you are going to like something whether you like it or not. This movie has come to stand for several things I've been musing over anyway, about honesty, insincerity, the ethics of doormatting and the nature of friendship, and it's made me very reluctant to sit down and watch.

The third thing was a promise to myself - to finish my Doctor Who spinoff comic. I knew I wouldn't get all the way through, but I did mean to make headway. BBC screwed that one up because of Certain Announcements made about Christmastime. I know I'm writing something non-canonical, but I'm a total Canon Nazi. Though I am avoiding the word, what I am evidently producing is the Fic of Fans, and the only way I can justify it to myself is through being a complete angel when it comes to continuity. Now I have to wait until New Year to rewrite, and the new episodes will probably invalidate the five pages I have drawn and coloured.

This has all occurred to me now because the deadline has loomed close - the eagle will be flying out of the night on Wednesday morning for my return to Londinium. I have such an action packed day for tomorrow - trying to get more Doctor Who videos into my suitcases, meeting friends for lunch, indulging family at dinner, and on top of all that, two Rorschach coats, three Rorschach hats and one movie to fit in. Can she do it? Frankly, no - the Rorschach hats take about three sessions of fiddling on their own to turn them into something decent. And that's before I have the hugely ethical dilemma of whether to pack them, or more Doctor Who...I've even put more effort into teaching myself Greek than any of these other fun activities!


On a more positive note, it's time for some serious pimpage. My sister and her friend have started up their long-awaited television blogging-and-podcasts blog. Check it out:

http://www.theboxproductions.com/

The pair of them are very obsessed, but also very professional - to a frustrating extent, because I feel much of it lacks a personal touch. I know not everyone blogs like I do, but it needs some flair, some controversy, something that feels like a real opinion. Nevertheless, it's still a beautifully writen and run place, so do me a favour: go and read, and then leave comments. Even if you don't watch the shows or understand the topic under discussion, write something short and generic based on the article which makes it sound like you know what's going on.

Man, I'm getting cynical.

Finally, I'm getting close to a theory about dreams - mine at any rate. I feel the more I understand them, the better chance I have of triggering them. A dream can literally make or
break my day - if I've had a happy dream, I wake up refreshed and bubbly for the rest of the day. If I have a bad one, that's it - I wake up unhappy and under a cloud. So having good dreams is essential to my existance.

Despite missing out on the regular sorts, there are about four or five different genres of dream I recognise as familiar.

I have FandomCrazy dreams. It's part of the obsession process - I now recognise the stages, including the "attempt to make cuddly plushie" period. It's why Blake's 7 counts as a proper Obsession, while the A-Team, Brideshead Revisited or the Prisoner are merely programs I like very much - because I've had That Sort Of Dream for a while now. They come on for about a week minimum, and a month maximum - one every single evening regarding the new obsession. One of the reasons I miss London - don't laugh - is I think I dreamed Doctor Who every single night I was in Hampstead. I kinda hope that'll come back in Acton. They all feel sorta the same, as if they come from the same corner of my mind. I can't explain it - I know science has proved you have different "centres" of your brain, but I'm sure one shouldn't be able to sense that without complicated medical equipment. It's like even when I'm not thinking about it, on some level I still am.

I'm used to these, and cool with them. They're never uncomfortable, unless you count a Doctor Who/Watchmen crossover slash dream which I've still no idea where it came from...they're a symptom of my life, but they're still passive dreams, made up of spare ideas and background noise. My mum thinks dreams are the brain's way of taking out the trash, and I tend to agree.

When I'm not obsessed with something - rarer nowadays - I have endless dreams. They're my usual sort, dream default. The plot goes like this: I am in a strange place, one that doesn't exist in reality. I have to do something - deliver a letter, meet someone, go somewhere - but the dream drifts on without it being resolved. I think it says something about my state of mind. Also, I've a theory based on this that the way we write and the way we dream are closely linked. Situations which look gorgeous but in which nothing happens is my greatest authorial bane. I cannot do plots at all!

But then I have what I'll call healing dreams, and they definitely seem to originate from Somewhere Else in my head. While most dreams are passive noise, these seem like a gift from my brain, that someone has made an active decision. They genuinely feel like something else. For example, I don't feel emotion in dreams, except in these ones. One I particularly remember was at the end of a bad patch. I was sitting on a green hill overlooking a valley and chatting with Guildenstern about something. What I don't know, but I woke up feeling a very particular sort of relaxed and happy. I had another one a few days ago, and it was beautiful. The plan is to learn to trigger these dreams when I need them.

I feel I'm getting somewhere. I'll add more if I think of them.

Oh, today has been a little nuts. I had an appalling dream. Well, no - merely weird. It was coherent, made narrative sense and I was almost entirely lucid. Those three facts are very unusual. My dreams are always as organised as a Pollock painting. Most dump me into the "middle" of a plot, without ever providing me with an introduction or conclusion, and I am never ever lucid. This was dramatic, moving, and violent. And Flame related. It's the last bit which is making me worry.

Any regulars on the blog will know that a disturbing dream has the power to destabilise me for the rest of the day. This was very disturbing. I wrote all the details down, but daren't look at them. It reminds me of a time I accidentally killed a character off while doing a story draft. I'd just started this new chapter out of the blue, and then without my permission N. goes and dies on me, simply walks off and into the afterlife. I was a bit shocked. I do have some fairly romantic ideas about the writing process: I do strongly believe things tend to write themselves. But I love N. so, so badly that I saved the file, closed it and haven't looked at it since. Or thought about it. I refuse to admit it's happened. This is what the dream feels like: it actually feels like a piece of Flame continuity come to punish me. This other character, I haven't let die - I've thought about it, abstractly, but never actually done it. I was just intending to let the issue linger open-ended. God, I'm not going to think about it. It was merely a very stupid dream.

In any case, it has been bothering me. At lot. This afternoon, I went to watch some TV to get it out of the system. I've been saving Invasion of Time - Fourth Doctor plus Leela - for a day when I needed some Fourth Doctor. I don't have a favourite Doctor, but I do recognise they are all very different. Tom Baker's era is generally unworrying - something about the style and tone of the episodes, the confidence and mockery in his performance. This isn't necessarily better or worse, just convenient on days when I need something comforting. I only watch the Third Doctor when I feel like paying attention, Doctor Seven for atmosphere - the others I can't even define, it's too intangible.

I decided on a whim to watch Peeping Tom instead - nasty 60s serial killer movie, about a voyeur who likes to film murders. I was already on edge, and hoped it'd shock it out of the system. Well, it's wonderful. Terrifying, but wonderful. I don't really like scary movies because, unsuprisingly, they scare me. But it's a fun emotion in small doses, and this is a very artfully directed and challengning movie. Because it's a film about films, about watching, and it pulls that whole trick where you despise the protagonist but can't take your own eyes off the screen.
Calypso, next time you want an interesting, twisted movie about male gaze, this comes highly recommended. I was glad it was just me, though - I've mentioned before that I'm a fairly physical viewer. I flinch, cower, bounce, laugh, whatever is appropriate - I think I might have actually screamed in the last ten minutes. Damn fine movie.

And then I tried Invasion of Time which bucked my expectation by being possibly the least comforting, least calming Fourth Doctor adventure I've already seen. And dull and confusing into the bargain.

Tomorrow will be better.

Ugh, I had another regeneration trauma dream. The good news is the Master was there. That's pretty much all the good news, however, as what he was doing was horrible - and the rest of it dissolved into weird vignettes involving the Sycorax, Lytton (deceased) and HUNDREDS of Raston Warrior robots. The worst thing about bad dreams is they make me wake up in a foul mood. I never really escape from dreams until lunchtime, so the tone and content of dreams tend to influence me for the rest of the day. I've had some dreams which have made me awake refreshed and brilliant too, so it's not all bad.

But as a result, I'm feeling miserable and grouchy for no good reason, except for the fact I had a rotten dream. Which is rather unfair. I'm probably quite tired too. Last night I was up too too late, arguing Trial of a Timelord with my Doctor Who blog, and then was distracted until about 3 because Vapilla has leant me her Sandman collection (I've traded them for a hairdryer, Marvel 1602, a beaver pelt and a few glass beads). Both these activities were very enjoyable, but it's probably contributing to my foul temper.

And over the weekend, I stayed up pretty late for Eurovision. Vapilla and I went to Roxana's house to see it and slept over. Great fun - we had a nice Iranian dish the name of which I forget and mocked the entries. I can't believe UK got that many points. It's meant to be a song contest, and whatever that was lacked structure, style, I couldn't even work out how many beats to a bar. Just weird.

It was bizzarely ordinary for Eurovision. There were three costume changes the entire night, and only five key changes. I was cheering on Medea and her sister from Armenia, Miss Doriana Gray of Russia with her changing portrait, and the only one I'd listen to a second time was Germany's, who you might recall featuring the talents of Dita Von Teese. But mourned the absence of the customary nutjob entry - where were the transvestite air hostesses? Where the appallingly misjudged 80s throwback? Where the postmodern piss take? I have rather acute talents at mockery, but the only one who actually deserved it was Mr Greece, the enthusiastic man-ho in white with the dance movies, and Miss Iceland - "Is this a dream? Or has it been a lie? What time is my dentist appointment? Did I leave the kettle on?"

Roxane was Ishtar that evening, and Vapilla Morpheus in the morning. I was just me, more or less, but I did do some excellent doodles. As usual, all efforts to capture the images in my mind - all L.A. Confidential. They weren't very successful, but I did a passable Sherlock Holmes and then some gorgeous profiles of Lord M. It was a fun evening.

Before my month's travelcard runs out, I'm going to return all my library books in the city and go on a hunt for a new Tarot deck. They're so beautiful and I want to get one which inspires me more. It's an associative art, so if the one you has doesn't inspire you with meaningful associations then you're a little stumped. I love my Lord of the Rings pack - it was a gift from a friend, I've had it for a long time and it seems to have "positive vibes" for me. But ever since starting learning, I've had to assign all the cards with Doctor Who associations - the type of memorable connections I feel their LOTR approach lacks. I'm actually working on art for it too, which is fun. Until that's finished, however, I want something which will trigger memory of the meanings easily, something with inspiring art, and preferably something all pseudo-mystickal. As much as I admire the Baseball Tarot or Barbie Tarot, they're not so great for impressing people with your arcane, occult majesty. Also, I want some of those Barbies...Having said that, I adore the Housewive's Tarot...I'm also tempted by the B.O.T.A. set. It comes in black and white, with colouring instructions, and in colouring them they take on more of your energies. Cute theory. Also, colouring in! I'm heartened by the fact all proper New Age shops will be sympathetic to my obsessive browsing: naturally, I have to find one which "speaks" to me, which will excuse the problem I have with making choices.

I'm trying to combine this in such a way that I'm on the Strand at 7:30, where hopefully I'll be able to find the Spring Awakening songbook for sale at the Novello. She's a huge fan of the musical, I just like the music, so we both want the music book. I'm buying it to coincide with her birthday. If it were mine, I could take it to uni and she couldn't prevent me. Were it hers, she could keep it at home and I'd be similarly powerless. Neither is wholly fair, hence why I'm not either buying it for me or her. I hope this approach kills any arguments.

The rest of the day will be dedicated to starting my A-Team essay, beginning to learn Greek, watching Batman and Robin and completing my mini-Rorschachs. I want to see that film because the worst film I've ever seen is Batman Forever. Yet more than one person, on hearing this, has responded "So, you haven't seen Batman and Robin...?" I'll finish Maurice if I feel up to it, but a tragic ending must surely beckon.

I'm sure no one will sympathise, but it's weird getting used to having this much free time...

Very weird dream. I can appreciate where elements of it came from, but others have me competely confused.

I don't actually dream about Lord M as much as you might expect: perhaps twice in my entire life. And one of those was two weeks after it all began, and dead creepy at that. It involved Amador and I rushing off to rescue my future wife, an event which hadn't occurred yet in real life but ultimately happened all the time. But I don't think anyone suspected M. and Autumn would end up married, not least me, and at the end of the dream we were dancing outside, with Amador looking on in disappointment, which is something which actually happened some six months into the future.

The other involved me standing Viminalis outside and telling her "Lord M's last secret". No one in real life knows it, and the idea of it has always terrified me, in that "never means never", because it's so huge, and because if it did come out - the repercussions would be as nasty in real life as within the game. It's also not the only secret I am aware of with that magnitude. I came closest to telling Viminalis, and we did numerous deals and trades which one of us always backed out of. So maybe this was wish fufilment, telling someone - and getting to enjoy her reaction.

So the suprise comes in actually having a full, coherent dream about three other characters from the game. Not that Oscar, Anna and dear Scarlett aren't special, but Lord M. does occupy alot more brain space in real, daily life. The story of Oscar and Anna is, to my mind, one of the Flame's most tragic - but then, I was at the epicenter. The pair were fire and water - he was all angst and drama, and the local Mafia never let him escape from it's finger - she was quiet, restrained, cold even, and possibly the only Flame character ever to be concerned about public decency.

The pair met and fell in love, but Anna heard several nasty rumours about his behavior, so turned him down because it was simply not proper to do so. When they met again ten years later, he did ask again and she couldn't make the mistake a second time. That's Anna's tragedy, that she turned him down to spend a life half-lived, and then accepted to be in a situation almost as miserable, because all she had feared first time were true. All she wanted was a nice life, and he never made good on his promise to get on the straight and narrow, always vanishing for days on end, or turning up covered in blood, and not explaining what he was doing in those strange hours. He loved her, but just couldn't change for her. And that's his tragedy.

So the pair were, intermittently, very happy together, but in time this wore her down, and her inability to have children contributed to her sense of bitterness. She did, eventually, adopt a daughter - who curiously enough, was called Emily. Things kept happening - Oscar's old, dead wife Scarlett turned out not to be dead, Ivy claimed to be the mother of one of his bastards, which was extremely cruel at the time, Oscar turned out to be having an affair with his cousin. That was the one that killed her. From an authorial standpoint, I can appreciate Oscar's actions as tragic, and that fierce love for his cousin as a very interesting character point when you examine his whole life: I confess, the two were always in love, in a special way no one else could understand. But at the epicenter, it's harder to be reasonable, as both were married to my characters at the time!!

The pair have recently died: Oscar of a drawn out illness, and several months after that, Anna was found shot in her parlour and her daughter abducted. This series of events is one of the most genuinely upsetting in the Flame to me, because Anna had spent her whole life hating Oscar's criminal world, so to be finally taken away by violence is just not fair. And the overkill: Anna is not a woman who needed to be murdered, there was never a character more normal. It upsets me that Emily is never going to know, now, who she really is.


In any case, the dream was in a city, and we could see fires on the horizon. Everyone was trying to escape, so Anna and I tried too. That was the weirdest part, that I was Oscar for the dream - and a very accurate one at that - not Anna. We roused her to trek to safety, in a really Oscar-ish manner. We travelled through a deserted opera house, and I found a friend there who had resolved to stay and meet death. We caught a bus, we kept travelling down chaotic streets. At some point, Anna's shoes were stolen. Oscar, furens, went to retrieve them.

Scarlett Skye turned out to be behind it, dressed as I had always imagined her. The Skyes always had an agenda. They were overcomplicated, had a strong sense of self-denial and duty, and usually ended in tragedy, but hey - I loved them. And as I mentioned before, she was Oscar's wife-from-the-grave. If you just imagine a femme fatale, then you're a good way to understanding what I mean by "Skye".

So he challenged her about it, and the whole situation got quite violent and nasty - again, I'm amazed just how Oscarlike I was in my dream. But then she revealed her master-stroke. While he had been searching, she had found Anna and again, very Skyeishly, had worked on her fears. They had left Emily at home, Oscar had said there was no time to go back - and was probably right - but Scarlett played on that, and Anna had left to retrieve her. At that point, things looked like they were to get even more unpleasant for Scarlett and Oscar - and I was glad to wake up.

Obviously, the apocalyptic London comes from the sheer amount of War of the Worlds I listened to last night, and the disturbingly rapey overtones in some of those threats doubtless stemmed from a tenser-than-usual episode of The A-Team. But I have an Anna day maybe once a month, and less often now she's gone, so the fact I dreamed of her was odd - especially because I was Oscar in the dream. He's not a character I have ever empathised with, I even for a time played his arch-enemy. But weirder still was how in character the three were - it's a situation I can easily believe, with all three acting as they did. And I'm still a little weirded out.

Early morning, so I'm still in my dream - which featured me and the Fifth Doctor, a room full of baddies and a physical fist fight between the two sides. 'Twas a pretty cool dream, because even though "Warriors of the Deep" stands as testiment that 5 is perfectly capable of beating people up (if he absolutely has to), this Pertwee-style diving in hi-yah!

Probably because I was working on my comic last night. Plot so far: the Master works out there is only one person he can rely on - himself. So he skips back through time and liberates his former selves, and the four of them unite to take over the universe. Four = Delgado, Ainley, Roberts and Simm. I decided the "corpse masters" were in no fit state to do other than rasp, and Derek Jacobi is only the Master for about three minutes. And not even in my mangled canon could I fish him out. Pity, as he's my favourite. It's brilliant, and I'm very proud of my grasp of the dialogue. The plot isn't bad either. The problem is, some scenes I can only make work in my head, and look strange written down. I'm also conscious that I hate Doctor Who novels for being angsty and violent, so am working very very hard to keep it tame and angst free. Yet remove the angst, you lose the drama and danger. Plus, at least one of the four Masters comes from a very bad place, and all he wants to do is hurt things. The chief problem is I'm not up to it, and even if he wants to remove the Doctor's fingers one at a time before toasting them on kebab skewers while singing an aria, I'm not going to sit there and let him do it.

And indeed, that's probably where the dream came from - because one of the scenes I've envisaged but can't draw is the Doc and one Master actually descending to physical violence. It'd never happen on TV, but it's meant to be strange. Putting it on paper is too strange, though, and might I add, way way too slashy. I freely admit that the slash exists there, so like the show, it's innuendo-y without actually directly confirming or denying anything. Script also includes the line: "The Master sent you flowers?". But it makes sense in context.

Russell T. Davies has this to say on the subject:

"You've got to be merciless. People will say 'You love your characters'. But nobody loves their characters that much. If you really write, and you love them, you are the God of them and you can kill them with the click of a finger. It's joyous to do so."

Good for you, Russ. I wish I had your nerves.

I watched and enjoyed the Doctor Who special. Some 12 hours after the rest of the country, which is a shame. More than perhaps any other show - except maybe the 9'oclock news - people sit down to watch it live. It is a television event, and one shared by so many different groups. I like the idea that there are families around the country experiencing at the same time as I am.

The internet is being over-critical, but I don't think that's fair. Yes, everyone prefers the smart-and-upsetting episodes - yet the power of, say, and "Earthshock" is that is comes as a shock. See Galactica, Hellblazer or Torchwood for an example of people getting this wrong: a gruelling experience every single week. For me, it quickly becomes wearying. Perhaps it's just because I engage too deeply with the fiction, and can't physically go through that many high-tension, high-emotion events?

It's a fantasy novel cliche, and whether it's true of real life is debatable. Yet in terms of fiction, light needs dark, dark needs light - they are what define each other. The "everybody lives!" end of Empty Child is only powerful because the Doctor usually gets extras killed off with alarming regularity. But the same goes for Warriors of the Deep, which features the Doctor getting some 200 humans-and-Silurians killed through a bad mix of compassion, doubt, good faith and bad conscience. It packs a punch through being suprisingly dark, just as Empty Child is suprisingly happy. Those two episodes which culminate in dead companions are only moving, intense because there are 31 other companions who left safe and in one piece.

The point is, Doctor Who needs these stopgap episodes, the Shakespeare Codes and Unicorn and the Wasps, to give the significant episodes their power, and with three hours of Tennant left on telly, it's going to be full-throttle emotional onslaught from here onwards. In addition, it's one of the brilliant things about this show that it can be something different every week, from real-life drama, gothic horror, icky horror, epic fantasy - right the way to daft comedic runabouts on the other end of the spectrum. It's occured to me before that the problems I have appreciating other TV shows might just be one of tone, because I'm spoilt by a show which can be different every single week. Particularly Galactica, now I've got to the end of my fourth season of them sitting around on the same six sets. Yawn, another Viper battle? Another emotional challenge for contemporary America? But it can't jump like we do.

My point is, Planet of the Dead wasn't trying to be intelligent or thought provoking - it was about a bunch of commuters crashing on Tattooine and featured the Doctor attempting to make alien technology compatable with a London bus, while eating an easter egg and flirting with Lara Croft. Yet if you accept its dramatic ambitions were small, you can't deny it did exactly what it was trying to do brilliantly. Full review on my blog: http://malcassairo.blogspot.com/


Other news? Still ploughing through that darn essay, and fanmixing. One of the things I truly adore about Spotify is that companies have uploaded their entire catalogues, which means some really odd stuff has slipped through. How else could I listen to "Moog Rock - Classic Hits"? Or "Balm of Gilead", a really limp rendition of Gospel songs by a gal with a guitar interspersed with maudlin facts about slavery. Other sources, and yes I admit ones of potentially shaky legality such as Youtube, always had the problem of relying on what the web could find - which meant hugely popular. Bad for me, who likes my music bizzare or obscure. Spotify might have weird absences like Peter Gabriel, Pink Floyd and the Beatles. But it makes up for it by having the full back catalogues of other Genesis alumni - Tony Banks and Steve Hackett. Several albums worth of the wonderful Victor Borge. Lots of Rick Wakeman. And of the more mainstream crowd, all their demos and extra tracks which I never got due to sticking to albums. Banks'n'Hackett are my real treat, though, because as a family we have all their LPs and have yet to upgrade to CD.

As a student, I haven't been able to take any CDs with me to uni, certainly no LPs; and my mp3 memory is pitifully small. So it's great to look up whole albums which we have at home, and I had to leave behind. Furthermore, the oppertunity for finding single, rare tracks is wonderful. For years, I've wanted to hear Jeff Buckley's cover of "Back in NYC", but never known where to start. It's great, as good as the original. Or I've a strong dislike of Coldplay, but have a true fondness for "Violet Hill". After that, things like a nice interface and playlisting capabilities are just added bonuses.

Some people have raised the artists as an issue. My thoughts are they're likely getting more this way than through sheer piracy. Furthermore, Friend 2 introduced me to the program, and she knows her music and has a policy of buying albums of small bands to support them, so I find it hard to believe she'd do it if it was that bad.

Finally, my first Lord M watch has broken. It's slightly, but not much like the real thing - too small, opens in the wrong direction - I got it from "Pocket Watches of the World" magazine. Later, my friends teamed up to get me a proper one, and while that's not perfect either, the heaviness is better and it's engraved with his father's initials. But the broken-ness of the first one unnerves me a little, because if we're going to talk about the fictional watch in detail, it's broken and can't be wound. It was probably a metaphor for something at the time...

Last night I dreamed about lots of things. I dreamed about massive sharks and crocodiles in Venice (probably something to do with reading Batman and Green Lantern before I went to bed: one involved Killer Croc, the other a huge mutated shark). I dreamed about being stranded on a spaceship when my own small craft went missing, and us all just drifting through space (and that is quite possibly a Galactica thing. Disappointingly, in the future, commercial space liners will look like a cross between a shopping mall and an airport duty free lounge). I dreamed about Doctors 5, 6 and 10, concurrent or consecutive, and water, and a city.

But I also dreamed about a hare. I was driving (I can drive, y'know, sort of. No license. But I get the principle), when I saw a hare obviously injured in the road in front of me. I stopped the car, to the irritation of the people following me, picked it up gently - it was in a very bad way - and left it on my lap as I drove away. Curiously, I drive badly in my dreams - uncertainly at least - just like I do in life. The thing could barely move, there was only the slightest flutter to register it was somehow still going. So I started driving to the nearest animal hospital (we've two on Guernsey), but as I drove the hare seemed to get better and better, and by the time we arrived it was happilly hopping around the car. I stopped outside the hospital, and let it out, and it ran off into the forest next door.

The fact it happened that way around is interesting in its own right, as traditional dream logic would suggest things getting increasingly worse for no reason. And the three words in my head when I awoke were: Osatara, Eostre and Easter. Obviously all from the same root, and it reminded me of my favourite Easter story. I've been doing a Wiki-unt, and haven't been able to determine if it's "real" myth or "fake" myth, but I've always been fond of it.

It all starts with the Germanic goddess Eostre, who's all about fertility, flowers and fluffy animals. One day she is walking (do goddesses walk? Glide? Survey?) through a field when she finds a little baby bird with broken wings. In true divine style, she doesn't do anything like y'know fix the wings - instead, she turns him into her patron animal, a spring hare, which goes happily hopping into the woodland. The only problem is - it still lays eggs! And that's the origin of the Easter Bunny.

Cute isn't it? Has anyone else heard this story? My dad is an author, so it's possible he made it up for us as kids. I wonder if there is some divine bureacracy, governing exactly how the gods can interfere in mortal life - perhaps actually mending the problem is forbidden, so Eostre has to think outside the box for a solution? It'd certainly rationalise some of the dafter outings in the Metamorphoses.

And all for saving (sort of) a dream rabbit which could heal itself, I've woken up in rather a good mood.

I enjoy sleeping a lot, it's one of my favourite things, so it's natural that dreams mean a lot to me. I'm actually quite a bad dreamer - I never have the classic ones. Never lucid dream, fly, get chased, see the future or have recurring ones as much as I'd like. To be honest, it's rare that I don't dream about Doctor Who these days, which is always an enjoyable experience.

In this post: a run down of last night's dream; a digression on Robert Holmes: hero of Who; another digression on Jason Foss, future bestselling author; corset shopping with Calypso; and bad news for the new Movie of Dorian Gray.

I wonder if dreams can come true?

Last night, it was me Anne and Jessie, and in a gloruiously mundane detail, we were sitting down in someone's lounge to watch some Doctor Who. Out of the stash of videos, Ribos Operation won - which warmed the cockles of my heart. It's more or less The Sting in space, but I love that episode, it's fantastic - good old Saint Holmes - because you actually genuinely end up caring for the extras. I cried, CRIED in the last episode. For the bad guys. Saint Holmes, incidentally, stands for Robert Holmes. You get so tired of people telling you he's a genius, you forget he really is a genius - he invented the Master, the Sontarans, the Valeyard; while he didn't invent it, he redefined Gallifrey as corrupt and sneaky, and is responsible for phrases like "Eye of Harmony", "Chancellery Guard", "Castellan", "Panopticon", "Prydonian" and "Matrix" which we all use like second nature nowadays. If that wasn't enough, he really knows how to write an episode - they're always rich in background detail (one of the things I loved about Ribos Operation was how real Ribos felt. Throwaway comments gave it an economy, religion, history - all backed up by the lovely set, of course), his extras are always interesting (a valuable skill for a Doctor Who writer; Moffat has this perhaps even better, making them loveable in a line or less e.g. "Proper Dave" and "Other Dave") and his plots, while often nothing new, are so well executed they become the ultimate in that story. As if to prove it, Caves of Androzani and Talons of Weng Chiang always battle it out for the top spot in Doctor Who polls, along with the indomitable Genesis of the Daleks (written by Someone Else).

For the second half of the dream, my mind kind of forgot that it was about "Anne and Jessie" - when I next found them, it was Lauren and Jessie - which obviously makes sense at the time, though now awake I feel guilty my subconscious mind has done what teachers have done for years. The part you will enjoy, however, was I was at a post-book launch party for my dad, Jason Foss - who's a soontobe famous author.

Now my dad isn't quite up to the standard of Saint Holmes yet. He's written, broadly speaking, airport novels - only nobody buys them, presumably on the basis that they're far too well written. In other words, good books, but crap airport novels. The first set - Shadow in the Corn (the New Age one), Byron's Shadow (the Greek one) , Lady in the Lake (The Arthurian one) and Shadesmoor (my memories of this are hazier) - are about Jeffrey Flint, archeologist come private detective. In other words, they're murder mysteries with a historical twist - but the characters are solid, the observations great, and a total absence of cliche. If that's your kind of thing, give them a look up - they can be got all over the internet, although ignore the nutter on Alibris trying to flog his Shadesmoor for £47. It's good, but not that good. Off the top of my head, Lady in the Lake is the one I recommend - but only because the twist regarding the sword is great; and perhaps it would be best to start with Shadow in the Corn, as it's first.

Then there's my two favourites - Blood and Sandles, which in broadly the same template as the former stories, is about a female archaeologist who becomes a historical consultant on a Hollywood epic, and unwitting private detective when there is attempted murder. Now, though I miss Jeffrey Flint - Maddy Crowe is nowhere near as adorable - the movie background obviously appeals to me even more than the historical one does. And the central idea is genius - after a botched assassination at a dinner party, not only has Maddy to work out the killer's identity, she needs to work out who he was trying to kill as well, which gives the whole thing a great paranoid atmosphere after one character after another becomes either suspect or victim. My other favourite, probably harder to aquire, is Islands that Never Were - a collection of short stories about the Channel Islands. They start in the stone age, with a mythic creation story; move towards the present day via Romans, Witches, Nazis and Fund Administrators, and then into the distant future, in a story that once again takes on a feeling of the mythic. They are all based in some sort of reality - i.e. There really are supposedly copies of Grande Albert and Petit Albert, Guernsey's most famous grimores, in the Guille Alles Library. Bits I really like: "Bring me the Head of Victor Hugo", about an assassin sent over Guernsey's most famous literary denzin (though naturally, soon to be overtaken by my pa...), "The Conquered" about a crashed Nazi pilot who is held prisoner in an abandoned mine during the Occupation, "Rendezvous", probably a ghost story but pretty regardless, "Colours" because of the sick twist, and the first story about the creation of the islands. Bits I don't like: the fact no one bought it, and therefore he will never actually write the sequel Islands in the Mist - we've never seen eye to eye on this, because if I had another book I wanted to write I'd sit down and put it on paper; whereas he doesn't bother, recognising in advance that no one will publish it. Shame, because I really want to read it, never mind anyone else.

Incidentally, Oscar Wilde says it is the first duty of a father to write stories for his children. And I suppose the "Emily and Alice" stories were that - Alice is my sister. They were great in their own way, aimed at the 8-year-old me. The plot was always broadly the same: Mum, who must represent the rational and safe world, was out or away, and we two plus Dad would get into some vaguely supernatural scrape: Aliens on Liberation day, kitchen antics on Pancake Day (and a sequel, I think with Christmas Puddings), and one about how we saved Christmas. Hmm, I really fancy digging those out again now...

He's just finished his new one, which is still a murder mystery, but the detective is a young boy and there's a supernatural twist. Being set where he grew up, it's also probably a bit more autobiographical than he lets on. I was particularly fond of that one, if for no other reason that his previous six books have got through his sisters, parents and wife, and that this one would be my turn for a dedication. No luck with publishers though.

I've been reading drafts, and I keep being asked how it could be better - the answer is, of course, it couldn't be. I'd sugarcoat any criticisms anyway - but the fact is, writing a good book is the last way to get published, as demonstrated by the amount of crud on the shelves. It's an impossible, frustrating industry. Currently, he's revamping the sci-fi murder mystery, which he wrote in the early 90s and in which he inadvertantly invented the internet. Is it going to be good? Of course. Is it going to be published? Watch this space.


In any case, this was the launch party - and there I was, in a fantastic outfit, mingling with stars I didn't recognise in a brilliantly decorated room like the inside of a gold jewellery box. So there you are, pa. Maybe it's a premonition.

If for no other reason, I was pleased about not dreaming From Hell, which I mentioned yesterday as Alan Moore does Jack the Ripper. It all got fantastically violent last night - every time there's a murder, of course, there's a few panels of gore, but there's time to catch your breath afterwards. The final one, however, went on, and on, and on, five pages, six pages in increasing detail. It was brilliantly effective in spelling out the horror of the situation, especially in contrast with how quickly the former ones were dealt with. It reminded me of a similar sequence in Watchmen, where page after page is...well, I won't spoil it. But you can actually HEAR the silence, and in a comic book that's pretty impressive.


What's happened since I last posted? The main important bits are that Calypso is a BAD INFLUENCE, and if a large amount of cash suddenly vanishes from my account (it'll hurt, but I can probably just about manage it) it's ALL HER FAULT for taking me corset shopping - this is the best collection of pictures which look not-too-whory:

http://www.fairygothmother.co.uk/corsets_with_straps.htm

Naturally, it's all about how you wear it - and there are indeed many ways to add corsetry to your image, without resembling a Victorian brothel ma'am; and during the sale, they've been reduced to ONLY £90 or so.

Hurts, doesn't it? I'm aware that we live in an age where unnecessary things are the only necessities, but I truly cannot justify getting one. They're still lovely to ogle, however (I was also very tempted by this Cylon Number 6 dress, but I don't think I could get away with "red dress" look, at least not in a group who knew me: http://www.fairygothmother.co.uk/ch-20.htm)

While talking Wilde, I couldn't help but think of his wife - who was heavily involved in a woman's group for Victorian costume reform. Every month, they'd put out a paper about women whose ribs had been crushed by tight corsets, or whose skirts had caused them to catch on fire or break bones when they were caught in the wind.

And while talking Wilde, I also got a bunch of white roses for my room. I'm pretending they look great.


Finally, talking Wilde - and parents or people with a sensitive disposition might want to look the other way for this bit - I came across a piece of news which made me shout lots of naughty words, very loud, in the middle of Oxford Street.

I've long been a little rattled by the new Dorian Gray movie on the way, particularly by the inadequate casting of Ben Barnes hearthrob as the titular hero. Granted, he's nice to look at - but his beauty is too 50s American Diner Boy. Nowhere near cruel enough. And I know the conceit is he looks innocent while he's rotten inside, but I mean cruelly good looking, gorgeous in a way that spites the rest of the world for being so dull compared. It should be otherworldly, not like any guy you could meet - no matter how lovely. In comparison, the hair colour change matters less to me. This has grated a little, but in the back of my mind I have always thought "maybe he'll be OK". But he seems like the dream compared to a new piece of information someone unwittingly spilled on Oxford Street.

Lord Henry Wotton. Colin Firth.

I'll pause for that to sink in, not to mention calm myself so I don't say something filthy. What infuriates me most is that I want to make this film, as I see it - heavy with decadance, overwhelmed with colours and experience, a bit like Marie Antoinette only with substance to back up the style - yet with such safe casting as Ben Barnes and Colin Firth, I know it's going to be a staid literary adaptation, not a well directed, edgy piece of intriguing cinema. The story is so detatched from contemporary morality and worldview, that to do it in an OTT, surreal way is the only way. Hyper-real, actually - Dorian's romance with Sybil doesn't work in real world terms. And I'd want to keep the "horrible Jew" line, which is naturally an inconcieveable way to speak for modern viewers; hence, you would have to immerse it in Victoriana. And when drugs, blood and sex got involved, it would be as lurid as a penny dreadful, and as corruptingly OTT as a Social Education video in which but picking up a spliff sends you incurably insane.

What I mean to say about Mr Firth is that you cannot have a dubious, dangerous part like Colin Firth played by someone your mother fancies. And I don't just mean my mother, I mean all mothers. Lord Henry has some great lines, but he's so much more than a quote machine a la Lord Goring, Lord Illingworth or Algy. All three of those are just dandy posers - Lord Goring in particular betrays his genuine depth of feeling for his friend. Lord Henry is more 3D - the pose is part of his personality, not just something to air at dinner parties.

Have a look at this gallery - while I'm getting used to Mr Barnes, Colin Firth's expression is the same smile I've seen him pull a thousand times:

http://benbarnesonline.net/gallery/displayimage.php?album=205&pos=1. Those posters look like the crap as well - blue? Surely sepia...

Oliver Parker, director, certainly looks like he should know what he's doing - he made Importance of Being Earnest and Ideal Husband, both of which Friend 4 hated. I actually liked the former, though it's hardly a great pedigree.

It's not like I'm a change freak - it's quite an uncinematic book, and the climax rolls out in a whole chapter of Dorian thinking to himself. But naturally, I don't care who this Emily Wotton character is and while I maybe understand why she was felt necessary to give the second half of the book some structure, it does not nor can it come to any good. So to not "reveal the ending", the actress tells us Dorian finds her "somewhere she shouldn't". So what you mean is, she finds her way up into the attic at the end then? Presumably after he has genuinely fallen in love with her (she probably takes on an equivalent role to Hetty Merton) and has to do something unpleasant.

Why not at least have made it Gwendolyn, Harry's sister, whose children are not allowed to ride with her any more - she does at least feature in the book. Instead of this, presumed, daughter.

No - the only way to do this is like Marie Antoinette, the Sofia Coppola version. All sights and sounds and senses, with a traditional plot on a backburner. Oh! If only you could see the Dorian Gray I would make...

In this post: my most recent awesome dream; discussion of "new age thinking" and defence of religion in our society; going to Sceptics in the Pub

Dreams are just marvellous, aren't they?

This one was probably sparked off by reading From Hell - Alan Moore's Jack the Ripper novel, which was (so I'm told) turned into a complete hack job of a film, albeit one starring Johnny Depp - just before I went to bed.

It was about school - probably, Ladies College - though in the dream it was the Victorian era (thank you Mr Moore) and the place again resembled grandma's house. The whole thing took place in sickly, muted tones. In any case, in this dream I was two women - one in white, which was quite clearly me (proof of this later), and one in severe black who wasn't me. The woman in black had, as a student, accidentally got pregnant - and to spare herself the shame, had got a maid to hurry the child away and hide him in the Matrix.*

*lesson for uninitiated: the Matrix is made up of the memory of dead Timelords, kinda like the greatest data bank in the universe. But you can actually enter the Matrix, at which point things get very surreal - it's a dream country, governed by no logic but the strongest imagination in there. It didn't occur to me when I picked the comic up, but there's a Valeyard book called "Matrix" in which he becomes Jack the Ripper - oh the joys of the subconscious mind!

This, naturally, doesn't do the child much good - or rather, he grows up pretty interesting. Put a baby in a place where everything you imagine comes true, and the consequences will likely be intense. What I really wanted was to see Alex grow up - could he extend this ability to the real world? What actually happened was the dream jumped forward to the woman in black's death, when she was calling for her son before a room of people who had no idea.

At the same time, I was the woman in white - I had come back to visit the school 30 years after being there. I was having the double experience of seeing it as it had been and seeing it as it was now. Psychoanalysts might want to identify this with the serious sense of distaste I have for what my replacements are doing to my poor old school. There was something terrifying about the place, though - I've come to appreciate the house on which the dream based itself, but as a child it did scare me so perhaps the idea is stuck. I knew that I was going to see something unpleasant in the piano room, I'd known from childhood. And indeed, when I was there I saw myself, aged 11-or-so, come bounding in through the door - also wearing a white Victorian dress. And looking just like me, looking at me with a peculiar expression.

I seem to recall the term "blinovich limitation effect" being used, which somehow dilutes the "Peter Gabriel would write a song about this" effect. Anyway, that's the core of it. I had a wonderfully thereputic dream last night, but I don't think I'm going to talk about it.




Last night, we went to an arty party, Sceptics in the Pub - a friendly but rowdy group who meet up in pub basements, basically to debunk stuff. Students are meant to go to gatherings of bourgeoisie intelligentsia, right? In any case, it felt very much like those groups you hear about pre-Revolution, of well-to-do gents who meet up to talk about stuff.

They're not exactly my lot - at one point, they described themselves as organised scepticism - while I believe as long as you are happy, and as long as what you are doing does not harm either yourself or others, you should be able to do whatever you like, whereas this lot seem to be more focused towards wiping out mumbo jumbo of all descriptions.

I'm quite in touch with my spiritual side, actually - while a great deal of it is utter crap, nevertheless I do believe that thinking positively makes you positive, attribute it to "positive energies" or no. I'm a great fan of visualisation exercises - I don't believe for a second that merely by visualising things, they will come to pass. But by putting yourself in a spiritual state - that is to say, finding an area you feel safe, blocking out distractions, and focusing on your problem - your subconscious mind is bound to start thinking creatively. Or "psychically cleaning" an area - it might be bull, but if you're walking around thinking "this area is psychically clean" it's bound to have a positive effect on your thinking.

It's one of the reasons I'm a great fan of the Tarot. Whenever I have a serious problem, I genuinely consult the cards. I put myself into what believers would call a ritual state - that is to say, cosy clothes and a hot chocolate. The very process of focusing on my question and dealing out the cards gets my juices going. I think about the pictures and the meanings - the fuzzy nature of fortune telling means you can interpret the same card very widely. No, I do not believe the God of Mumbo Jumbo has answered my question. But it encourages me to calm down and think creatively. The Tarot card says my key problem in solving this is actually a lack of progression or risk. Well, is it? And if it isn't, maybe mulling it over will lead me to some other angle I haven't considered. Would I let someone else read my cards? Only for fun - because I believe the interpreting process to be genuinely helpful, not that they themselves contain mystical power from on high.

I also believe that places hold power - Ellis Island Immigration Centre, one of the nastiest places I've ever visited, had something just horrible emanating from the very walls. Even though I recognise the illogicality of it, I do believe that places have memories as much as people. I've started to wonder whether there's some deeper reason why my house and the Maughan Library unsettle me. And on the flipside, there are some places you go - particularly natural places or religious buildings - and they too seem to have power. One place which comes to mind is a waterfall in New Zealand - we went on a long walk on a muggy day, had to climb across a swing bridge, and venture up through rocks and mossy trees. The whole place was just magic - it's what religious scholars call a numinus (Latin: divine power), and it's basically a word which means "having a religious experience".

I might even investigate a new age religion properly, if I had the time, the staying power, and could work out which of my atheist friends and my Christian friends would be more alarmed. It's a question Iacomus asked me on the evening - would I rather people were living in a fantasy and happy or realistic and enlightened? I went for the former, naturally, and was probably the only person in the pub who would have.


In any case, I kept my mouth shut, and it was fantastic. A rowdy room of non-believers and intellectuals, and a single speaker from Boston speaking on "Women's Intuition and other Fairytales" - about think-yourself-happy scams, "the mommy instinct" and the damaging effect Oprah Winfrey has on the female psyche. Great fun stuff - from the notion that mothers "just know" what is best for their children, to retreading that whole indigo children thing. Which I always thought was crapola - all parents think their children are the most wonderful things in the world, and your little Timmy being a starchild from Witch Mountain is just one cut above Shona getting her Julian the lead role in the school play.

As noted before, there was an angle from which I disapproved - I like having these things in the world, so I can test them and come to a conclusion, and I don't think it's fair for a large group which hasn't tested it to mock, no matter how hilariously daft it all is. And I do in part believe some of it - think positively that you will get a porche, you might not actually get one; but at least you will be thinking positively. The chief argument I had with it was the idea that people would "put their creative energies" towards a goal and sit down and wait, instead of actually working for it. I doubt anyone would give up on their dream and wait for it to be presented to them - and the knowledge that they are going to achieve it through psychic means is an incredible boost of confidence. I know people who have been ill, and healed through the power of prayer. A sceptic's response would be "that's total B.S.", but I think that's unfair - even if you don't believe that God had a helping hand, the fact the patient believed in the prayers must be very powerful on a psychological level, even if you rule out a spiritual one. This isn't about whether there is/isn't a God - it's about whether religion and spirituality have a place in our world, a question to which I would say "emphatic yes". When used incorrectly, this sort of thing can start wars and cause pain - but that's the way of the world. Food is a necessity till it goes off, when it is fatal; electricity makes our lives possible, but still causes deaths; the concept of "freedom" has been responsible for all sorts of atrocities, yet we wouldn't live without it.

Thus so spirituality. The sceptic says, "when they pray for that patient and he dies anyway, they'll say it's part of God's plan - they've got an answer for everything!". To which I say, how much of a comfort is it to accept that a God, who you trust, has taken your friend for good reason - than to be told it was some unlucky gene, some freak occurance, or cruel accident. One may be right and the other wrong - but there's no denying that one is going to help you cope far more than the other. Religion and new-age-crap have a very powerful place in our society.

Yet the speech was still fun, well argued and informative, and the audience quick with banter and contributions. It should probably say something about Calypso that she asked a question.

And the afterparty was fun too - we hobnobbed, and met some people Iacomus told me were famous, not that I recognised any of them. Famous columnists and the like. One in particular you could tell was famous - the charisma smacked you from across the room. When the group of us got talking - well, Iacomus and Calypso were doing the talking really, I wasn't feeling very witty and charming yesterday evening - you could instantly tell why he was a celebrity and we weren't. Did he remind me of Dorian Gray? Or was it Paul McGann? The very fact I was comparing him to hot people who he didn't even vaguely resemble in the cold light of day means I probably had a crushette. Which was swiftly rectified when he offered to buy us a round, and when I said I was OK, he commented with the distinct implication I was way too young for alcohol.

Which was something of a bucket of cold water. I didn't correct him.

Who else? A member of the green party who had a great cat badge. A comedian who Iacomus was also very excited about, and who I also didn't recognise. A non-suicidal guy (running joke, don't ask) Spirita made friends with, whose friend is intending to open a prog bar, and is told he looks a bit like Peter Davison ("You don't" I replied on reflex, and then shut up for the next ten minutes hoping it hadn't sounded too cruel and dismissive). Iszi Lawrence, comidienne and podcaster, who also has the coolest hair in the universe.

Also, David Tennant's little brother. Probably. Well, he looked uncannily similar.

I will certainly go again next month.

Finally, parents, if you've heard about the "squat in Peckham" incident, I want to reiterate that I definitely wasn't there, it had nothing to do with me.

In this post: a brilliant dream; navagating the "Library of Sheol"

I have spent today operating on anger, adrenalin, chocolate milk and Strauss.

I'm taking an hour off, to blog and catch up on my comic. Then it's back to slog. Honest.

Today has been all kinds of hell. I woke up from quite an impressive dream. The details, naturally, run away from me now. What I do remember is a girl called Jackdaw Flash, on account of her hair. Hands off that name, by the way - Jackdaw Flash is going to be coming to a book near you very soon. We were in grandma's house, choosing a scary movie to watch; only I was too afraid of the house. Which is part true in real life - only, now I appreciate the mix of kitch and terror, the crazy random decorating and all the details and junk. You can't get bored in a house like that, even if part of the "you could find anything!" encompasses everything from an original Dorian Gray to a dead body.

This morning I remembered why we were going around this place - now all I remember is there was a room.

I think Dorian Gray was responsible for the next bit in any case - I found a room which wasn't there before, and it was intense. Naturally, there's no room like this in the house - although I remember dreaming once there was a secret passage there, and while I know that dreams are dreams, I've never quite shaken the feeling that there should be. This house has an Anne Frank style attic which used to be behind a bookshelf, a green library which looks like it's been abducted from another house entirely, and a recently discovered cellar with a wine press which nobody knew about. So maybe there is a secret passage, and this is what is at the end of it.

Unlikely, as the room was intensely Chapter 12 - like something from the Vatican. The high roof was decorated with jewels and gold, marble floor and there were pearls in the walls. What was so remarkable about the room was that I experienced it as sound. I heard the sound of the emptiness and size, and then the rattle of the pure pearls, and then a jangling sensation like tiny bells to represent the gold. I have far more of an intense impression of it than I would have by sight alone.

Finally, we were in a trial room - and I'm not going to describe the circumstances, but like Miss Flash expect them incorporated in a coming story.

It took some crawling to escape that dream - I woke properly at 9, having set my alarm for 11, which was satisfying. I had cereal (I rushed to Sainsburies yesterday, but got distracted by the Watchmen posters and cutouts, and after five minutes of ogling, I was too late. Then I tried Atlanta which is a corner supermarket, and almost bumped into the manager as he was leaving. He asked me if I needed anything, and at that point I just requested cereal and milk. So I've been subsisting on that. The greatest crime the religion has ever perpetrated - no, not the stonings, the martyrs, the bombs or crusades. It's things shutting on Sundays. At the end of a hard week, I only want to veg out on a Saturday. But I'm bored by Sunday - at which point shops, supermarkets and attractions close. Why? No good reason, except ?2000 years of tradition or more. Why not a more convenient day?), and set off for the Maughan Library.

In Ballad of Reading Gaol - in an Oscar Wilde mood at the moment - there's a line about each man going back into his private hell. Mine looks something like the Maughan. Initially I was pretty excited about Chancery Lane - it's a line from Planet of Fire, when Turlough reveals his guardian on Chancery Lane is actually a Trion agent spying on him. There's a tax man on Verdon and an agrarian commissioner on Darveg as well, though obviously I've never visited Verdon and Darveg. In any case, I do get a little leap of love whenever I see the road sign; and the Knights Templar, the nicest pub I've ever been in, is on the corner; and the building is beautiful.

But I want to die as soon as I get inside. It genuinely puts me in a worse mood than the Tube, and I normally start off pretty stressed from being on that. To begin with, you have to swipe in, on that irritating swiper with the wrong direction marked on it. From thereon, it's a warren of despair. The staff are unfriendly and useless. The cafe's always closed. The filing system is incredible - it's the American Library of Congress System which, incidentally, my mother also uses when she rearranges my bookcases at home.

Which is to say - completely bloody random as far as I can tell.

I admit that the good old Dewey Decimal is probably inadequate for an academic library, but understanding the system hurts. P is Language and Literature, but PE is English lit, and so on.
What makes this worse is nowhere in the library is this list actually displayed. There are little leaflets reading PN is room 1.26 and DU 4.32, but it's useless if you don't know what PN and DU actually mean.

It's the only sensible building in the world (as opposed to, say, the Empire State Building) where I condone normal, healthy people taking the lift - if I didn't, I'd have to find a staircase; and if I tried that, well, the caretakers would find me emaciated and feral three weeks later after being unable to find my way out. I know that to find film, I go up the lift one level, turn right and walk to the end via the Spanish books; Byzantine history is up lift 4 to floor 2M; to find the Oscar Wilde, you pace floor 2 until you see a pitch black area where the light doesn't work - that's where his shelf is. Lucky that I can identify most editions of most of his books by touch, then.

Oh, and the cafe is down to -2 and straight across. But they don't sell chocolate milk.

If you find the right area, it's impossible to find the actual book you want - I have to check the catalogue four or five times. And often as not, the book's not there when you need it, even when the catalogue says it is. By that point, I'm usually in tears from stress, and I don't physically have the strength to work out whether the book's been taken out, I've got the room wrong, the shelf number wrong, or the catalogue is just lying to me.

And then there are the little niggling things, like the computer rooms being out of the way so it takes 15 minutes to just hop onto Google to check something, not to mention the toilets all being treks away; like the request system not working; like the fact the Classics section is on the divide of the number system, which means half is at one end of the massive corridor which makes up the building, and the other on the other; like not having a copy of the Silmarillion; like the fact Lagaan, a 3+ hour film, is on short-term loan, which means you have to renew it after 2 hours; like the fact it's on no convenient Tubes or buses, and it's a bloody stress to get to. You can't even watch films there in comfort, because the room with the TV booths have the most appalling reflections that you can barely see.

In any case, back to the Library from Hell. I have never once been there, but that it has let me down. I spent half an hour trying to find Photius' Bibliotecha, and after phoning up my lecturer in a state of distress, discovered only the first volume of two was there anyway, meaning I had to write an exam on a source I only had the duller half of. There was not a single book on the Parthenon, Mycenae, and nothing about Greek buildings or architecture, with the result that I got a poor score because I didn't reference enough. How could I? I couldn't find any damn books to reference. I've got one on Greek pots due in a week, and I just know there will be nothing useful on the topic.

To sum up the rant, then - once you've spent 45 minutes on the bus and Tube, you're already stressed, tired and not in the mood to be pissed about. Especially if you're working on a deadline, the fact you're going to lose at least two hours to public transport really stings. Unfortunately, it'll take at least that long in an environment twice as stressful to locate a book. In the unlikely event you find something potentially useful, at that point I am in no fit state to work. Any desire to do well, any interest in the subject or spark of enthusiasm has been wholly crushed. If you go through all that, and then make it back to Hampstead, you're in a state to do one thing and one thing only - sleep.

One day I am going to find a room with no one else in and scream at the top of my voice "I FUCKING HATE THIS LIBRARY". Then walk out. Which is the mantra which keeps pumping around my head as I get more, and more, and more stressed in that evil place. Today I merely picked out one of their useless "maps" which don't help at all, and scrawled words to that effect, in big letters on it, like a PostSecret, and left it in one of the racks for the next person to find. I hope it makes them smile. It certainly made me grin. Screaming, however, is only a matter of time.

That library has only ever been good for one thing. The very last video booth is around a corner on the Mezzanine, so you can see any approaching lecturers long before they see you. Or properly, your screen. I had the most divine afternoon when I took off my shoes and watched 3/4 of Planet of Fire there. But even then, it was the token rebellion against the third worst place in the world which really made it fun. The other two, incidentally, being Bodmin Gaol and the Ellis Island Immigration Centre.

In any case, today was no exception. It got to the point where I had to sit down in the corridor, because I was getting serious stomach cramps and vomit sensations. Not because I'm ill - from stress and anger. When I asked for help, I got directed to people who directed me to other people, who directed me to all sorts of different places to tell me what I'd already worked out - that the "Short Loan" and "Reference Only" system did not function at all correctly, and that people who could have taken the train to London and watched the exam movies at any point over Christmas hadn't - and were obviously happy to sit on the videos, and just pay the crippling fines after the exam.

So I did the trek to the computer rooms and establish that most of the DVDs I needed were in Swiss Cottage Central Library (15 minutes away from home). Back on the tube. Back on the bus. Back to the TV room.

I walked back under the arch and made a provisional oath. I say provisional, because naturally I don't ever want to be in a position where my sons are Kinslaying, burning Swan Havens, stealing boats or throwing Silmarils into volcanos, and I didn't swear on anything serious like Tanquetil, because I wouldn't want to have to stick to it.

Which is nowhere near as dramatic, nor as satisfying to write, but probably a better idea in the long run. But if I can help it, I am never going to go there ever again. I'll use Camden libraries - there are nine of them - or the British Library, or Senate House. Anywhere else. Even Wikipedia.

I managed to get four films out the library - Comme Une Image, Angst Essen Seele Auf, La Strada, and Marie Antoinette. Total cost - £7.89, but the satisfaction was immense. I staggered back up the road and ensconced myself in the TV room for the rest of the afternoon for a quadruple bill.

In the process, I made a permanent enemy. I've been getting closer to the campus cat for the previous term. He always comes and sits on the floor when I'm in the TV room, which is really comforting, as I'm mostly in there on weekends - when everyone else is at home. He usually comes in for my Doctor Who marathons too, though generally only Jon Pertwee episodes. Not sure why - Cat must be a connoisseur. Today I managed to persuade him onto my lap, where he promptly fell asleep. It was lovely, I felt far calmer. But then I had to turf him off to change the DVD - and he refused to come back, attacking my hand when I tried to tempt him. It upset me more than it should have; mind you, the fact he had a nap on my lap made me happier than it should have, so it all evens out.

As it happened, I only managed two movies before my stomach started complaining. I had only had a bowl of cereal, so I dashed across the road to the place where the guy had let me buy the cereal yesterday (I want them to have my custom, they were nice). Dinner = two sausages, taramasolata on toast (Olympia brand - quite potatoey, but nice texture) and Salt and Vinegar crisps. I don't even like crisps, but Jessie's mum has this theory that when you crave something, it's your bodies way of telling you you have a deficiency. I don't get that much salt, so I always choose to believe it when I fancy some.

Though my body must have a serious calcium deficiency if that's the reason I've been drinking so much milk.


So today has been stressful, but rewarding in a weird way. It's reminded me at least why I came home exhausted. And apologies for the foul language. I'd like to think I'm a skilled enough author to express the horror of the place without resorting to expletives, but sometimes it's the only way to get your point across.



In other news - I had quite forgotten my unkillable plant, Leon, over Christmas. As soon as I got back, I started tidying - I'd left the desk and wardrobe a total mess. And I kept coming across things I'd half forgotten were here - my red shawl, my wonderful copy of Sands of Time, my lemonade bottle I've converted to a permanent drink holder and Leon. Well he was all curled up, so I gave him some water and he's perked up. It's incredible, it's like I've never left. He's all green again. I'm genuinely impressed - it's truly hard to kill!

And I proudly rearranged my MicroUniverse Display Box - only to realise I'd left the three Dalek figures at home! So the collection is still not yet complete...

The plan as I see it is this - now, start researching Marie Antoinette (I had to let Sholay go, mainly because I couldn't find it in Swiss Cottage - despite the massive section of Hindi cinema. Plus, it's three hours when time is running short, I can't appreciate the whole of Indian Cinema in so short a time and I enjoyed it too much. Marie Antoinette I liked but didn't enjoy, so I'm willing to get digging)

Go to bed early, wake up early and watch Comme Une Image, then try and hunt out the other movies for the rest of the day. Missing - Rear Window, I know Where I'm Going. The latter might be tricky - I may ultimately have to skip it.

Finally, and then I'll get back to work honest, I did point out before I left that Estonia, a Marillion song written in typical cheery style about the sole survivor from a boat disaster, was the most divine song ever written - particularly the instrumental break with the dropping guitars. Here it is:



Having listened to it again, some of the magic has worn off - but its lovely, isn't it?

Finally, if you come across a Doctor Who book called Matrix, you will pick one up for me? I've just established that not a single library in London has a copy, see.