dream diaries… 115

01:01:23 The Fall are holding auditions at Rock Bottom Studios, so I decide to go along. When I arrive the group are a vast collection of known and unknown players; the room is crowded. I notice Joe F sat in a corner noodling about on a guitar. He is one of several guitarists and now sports a Mark E Smith haircut. Joe hands me a handwritten chord chart for a song and I begin to play along – A D F#m. Gradually, everyone begins to join in and a great cacophony develops. It sounds good. We all play for a while.

During a break I discover that my guitar (a red and blue Les Paul) has gone missing. No one appears to know anything about it. I suspect that MES has snaffled it away. He looks through me. Unable to play, and suddenly sad, I start to form an idea to leave and lock the door behind me. I search my pockets and my bag for a padlock and key. But MES appears at my side, crouches down and tells me that he has enjoyed reading my diaries. He opens a carrier bag that is crammed with crumpled and scribbled on paper.

02:01:23 It transpires that Vivienne Westwood was Ingrid W’s mum. Ingrid tells me this, quite matter-of-fact, as we browse the overpriced garments in VW’s Regent Street shop. I am flabbergasted! “Still, it does mean that I can include you in some serious family discounts,” she says. The shop is about to close, so I run around picking up and putting down articles of clothing until I finally settle on a mohair jumper – thick orange and blue stripes, with one too-long orange sleeve and one yellow. There are many loose, deliberate, strands hanging from the garment.

The cashier wraps it for me, saying, “that’ll be just £15 please.” As I hand over the money I am shocked to see that she is VW. “Yeah, I know,” says the dead designer. “But I just can’t give up yet.”

04:01:23 Glenn W has started a wild camping business venture in the Yukon territories. It is spread over many hundreds of miles of forest. The Yukon river is full of logs, they move slowly with the stream. However, the boating and rafting lessons, I am informed, will still go ahead. I am particularly interested in a class called Bearskin Bucket Boating (101), so I whittle a paddle from a washed-up log and take to the water.

The Bearskin Bucket is an open-ended barrel shaped craft made from, as the name would suggest, bearskin. One kneels within it. As I drift off into the busy stream I am surprised at how agile this odd vessel is. I shout over my shoulder to GW on the shore, “I’m six foot twelve inches tall!” I am still laughing as the tiny boat is caught up in the log jam and I gather speed. There is no need for the paddle after all. I can hear the falls up ahead.