Dream 27/12/06

I was running full-tilt down a hill in the pitch dark with a friend. We ran smack into a low wooden house in the middle of the forest. A sort of woodsman's home, but very long, made up of one long series of rooms.

We went through the front door almost through sheer momentum, but once inside, the house proved so fascinating we had to explore. Although rustically built, it was packed with gleaming technology, as well as all sorts of arcane collections – I remember gramophones and old theatrical posters. It was like an exhibition. In one room, a sort of window showed my friend's face – I thought he was looking through it. The face spoke, and shouted, but then he appeared for real behind the face, and said it was this amazing device that could copy people.

Then the owner returned - we saw light down the corridor of rooms. He found us, but we explained that we'd stumbled over his house and found it too fascinating to resist. he was annoyed, but forgave us. He was around 35 or 40, and looked a bit like a country singer, with long hair and a short-cropped beard. He was somehow involved in technology for the PR industry.

Then we were all sitting around his table, a whole group of us, and he was talking about how one of us was destined for a great career. We assumed he meant in the marketing/PR world, or technology.

An arrogant man that I used to work with (in real life) stood up and held the umbrella over his head that was a sort of symbol of the chosen, or of the speaker to the group. This man said it was obviously him who would be the great success, given that this was his field.

No, said the owner of the house. He pointed to me. I hadn't said anything. But he said I was definitely destined for greatness - as a paleontologist. 'You've got it,' he said.

Then I was at my house, and had to go to the bank down the high street. I decided to make the journey interesting by going through all the buildings. I jumped into next door's front garden, but found myself surrounded by high, grey walls.

Luckily, there were also two strange black boxes, like big trunks, in the garden. I used one to vault over the wall. Then I found myself at the back of an old wooden building like a barn - one of the buildings on the high street. (But only in the dream.) I let myself in the back door into a large barn-like space. Green metal stairways and catwalks led all over. A staircase led down into a large empty pit in front of me, with a similar staircase the other side. It was all some sort of factory.

I passed a man with a clipboard, talking to someone else. He scowled suspiciously at me, then went back to his conversation. I got a bit lost in the factory, then found my way into the office building next door. I wandered about, up and down some staircases and through some double doors, and came into a room where the man from the house in the woods was holding some sort of meeting.

'You're nothing but trouble,' he told me. I grinned and carried on through the building.

Judi Dench, who was the boss of the company in the building, smiled and said cheerfully, 'Do any of you realise we have an intruder in the building?' She wasn't overly bothered, and nor was anyone else.

Through another set of doors I found myself in a huge, cavernous branch of Barclays. Through big plate-glass windows I could see out onto the high street. The journey seemed much quicker than it would have been walking along the street. I assumed it was because I'd made it much more interesting.