The Magical Bureaucracy Box

Can’t remember how this one starts, but it’s all about this beautifully-carved wooden box, jam-packed full of puzzles, that my mate Danny carved while he was away on paternity leave. My other mate, Chris, is helping me navigate the puzzle-box, but what feels really weird is that I realise I’ve seen it before either in […]

Gregory Bumbary and I Meet In Antarctica

I’m walking on one of the outer islands of Antarctica. It’s not bitingly cold; there’s only a little bit of snow on the ground. It’s the height of summer in Antarctica and I’m with two gentlemen guides. They’re dressed in much better clothing than I am – I’m wearing my jeans and a blue-hooded top. […]

Bats In Hair Lesbian Mother

My mother is a lesbian. I have bats in my hair. I know she’s a lesbian because she’s been smiling in a seductive way at another woman through the window of a grey house. She keeps walking that way, past this row of bland, semi-detached houses, just to catch a glimpse of the other woman. […]

The Greasy Salad

I’m revising for an important exam. A group of work colleagues meet me in a place that’s either Bradford or Edinburgh. I’m not certain, but I’m high up in a building with them and one says, “there’s going to be a celebration next Thursday,” and I say, “oh, ok”. And they say, “yeah, something to […]

Flying Past Roger Moore and His Dog-Beasts

I’m walking along these narrow streets. It’s a cross between San Francisco and Soho in the late 1970s. I’m looking into the windows of a few shops and a couple things interest me, but mostly the stuff is pretty tatty, more like junk. To be honest, it’s like someone’s collected a hoard and then put […]

Violent Cheese Shop

We go into this hideous labyrinth of shopping mall mines, deeper and deeper underground on a set of big escalators. And we reach a violent cheese shop. There are cheese ninjas in the shop. There are cheeses on display, behind modern glass cheese counters, and cheese presenters, literally cheese entertainers explaining everything about the cheeses. […]

The Jimi Hendrix Jumper Sheep Dream

We’re together, you and me, in San Francisco in a time that feels like the late sixties because Jimi Hendrix is at his height, touring and performing solos and we go to see him, but he seems distracted while he plays his guitar, like his soul isn’t in the music that day and we think […]

Snakes, Doctors, Aliens & A Bloke Called Stuart

I’m in a temple with a swimming pool in the middle and it’s full of snakes. I’m hoping there might be a Christmas tree somewhere, to get me in the festive mood, but the more I wander around, the more and more snakes I see and they’re getting more textured, more bumpy, more gnarly. I […]

The Slough/Mangalore Carehome Restaurant Saga

I’m in a place not too far from Wales, but more like Slough, but also with the essence of the Indian city of Mangalore. I’m learning to ride a bike around Wales-Slough-Mangalore and it’s very nice. Suddenly, I’m riding along a boulevard with a Las Vegas feel to it, by a lake edged with palm […]

A Short, Very Odd Dream

I’m on an island called St Kits, and it’s sunny. I’m walking through a beautiful woodland. I briefly think, like Alan Partridge might, that if there was a nuclear holocaust, this island would be pretty good to wait on for a few days. I follow an old, naked man along a steep, sandy track leading […]