dream diaries… 117

05/03/23 Joel S invites me on a tour of Ireland with his band. It will cost me £560, this will cover all travel and accommodation expenses. Food and drink is extra. I’ll be gone for 5 weeks. I sign up for it immediately and soon find myself in Ireland backstage at a vast festival in search of a cup of coffee. As I’m spooning granules and pouring cream into a large paper cup, I wonder why I have come on this journey. I have no role here. I have spent all my money. My love is at home, and all my clients will have moved on to someone else. I carry the coffee across endless fields of campers, back to a wooden bench, spilling most of it. Bonnie Tyler sings ‘Total Eclipse of The Heart.’ I wonder if I can fly home on my ticket.

06/03/23 Above an idealised south Devon beach, the shape of the county, the coast, the country, silent, below me, far below me, seen first like this, then this, then this, as clear and as sharp as a day in June, a Saturday, perhaps, I glide. The breeze, cool to my eyes, my cheeks, my chest, my hips, my ankles, flows over me, as delicate as sheeting, silky, I glide.

The sea is blue. 1970s blue. It glints. There are small movements upon it, within it. It laps the edge of the land, pale sand, and it pours generously over the horizon. I see yachts of fibreglass, white, with sails of triangle white. I see schools, mackerel blue and moon silver; their shadows beneath them, darting and close. At the lip, in the surf, and slightly beyond, flashes of flesh. On the sand, the same, but with patches of colour.

A beach, a town, tarmac-black and brown and glass, sparkling in the sun. It is late morning and the streets are moving. Beyond the town, the countryside rolls out, verdant green and rapeseed yellow and ochre shades. There is a viaduct, seven arches, a clutch of caravans, sparse cottages, several farms (with yards), a road, a wood, a river, a village, another, a river, a wood, a road, several farms (with yards), sparse cottages, a clutch of caravans, seven arches, a viaduct. Verdant green and rapeseed yellow and ochre shades of countryside, rolling. A town; late-morning, traffic, all tarmac and brick and glass. A beach.

13/03/23 “Mirror is such a beautiful word,” I say. “One of the very best,” she says. “I haven’t seen you for so long. Where have you been?” “I’ve been here,” she says. She leaves my side and goes to the other side of the room, ducking down behind a large cheese plant. “I Was here all along.” It is a remarkable trick. But in the mirror I can now see that what I thought for so long was a sheet of paper (crepe, red, crinkled), dropped, perhaps, or left by me as a note to self, was actually the very hem of her dress all along. She shakes the large planter behind which she is crouched and the serrated palms tremble with laughter.