Writing a diary, recording my dreams

One of the things I started doing this year, apropos of nothing much, was writing a diary.

I know I've been keeping this blog since 2009, but there were a couple of factors that made me start writing a private and personal one in a book at the start of this year. The first reason was that my agents, United Agents, send me a nice hardback diary every year, which has space for a third of a page per day, so that's ideal for a quick record of what you've been up to.

The second factor was My 1975 Diary, which I revisited to make into a calendar, and which I've posted as blogs too. This reminded me of my diary-keeping tradition, which had begun in the summer of 1974, and which I kept up in that fully illustrated Picture Diary form until my O levels in 1978, after which it drifted. I then seem to have kept a hand written page-a-day diary in 1979 and 1980, though it gets patchy because my life has become more interesting. And in April 1981 I still remember vividly how I lost the diary I'd been keeping, by leaving it on the coach on the way back from Exeter for the Easter holidays. I didn't resume diary keeping until some point in the 1990s, when I started writing in a small pocket diary but didn't keep it up. From then until 2009, whatever went on in my life is recorded only in scraps of memorabilia, and what my ailing memory can pull together.

The third thing that made me want to write a diary was that I started the year feeling a bit anxious about money and work, and wanted to vent my thoughts on the page, but didn't think it was the stuff to put out in public. I'm happy to report that, four weeks later, I'm feeling much more positive about all those things, and maybe the diary keeping helped in a small way to make me realise how little I had to worry about.

A by product of keeping this diary has been that I've written down a few dreams. Usually I would forget these not long after I woke up. But since I have the book there by my bedside, and especially when I'm away in hotel rooms there's no-one to be disturbed if I turn the light on and start scribbling, I've got a few of my dreams down on paper. Here are the mysteries they have contained...

- Me having to hold the cat down while the vet examined him.

- Having to get back down a corridor but it was narrowing into a claustrophobically tight slit, and was blocked with furniture.

- Hev & I stumble across an art exhibition. Glenn Tillbrook of Squeeze is there, as are Ed Byrne, Al Murray, Stephen Mangan and others, about 20 of whom I recognise.

- At a comic con in a stately home I have to escape from fans who've given me a souvenir t shirt. I escape up a hill, it has a steep ridge, an older woman teeters at the top and her head falls off and rolls down the grassy ridge. I go back down to pub where I'd had lunch but the way through is blocked by building work including builders erecting a massive statue of a horse which I try to clamber over but can't. Someone hides my bag which I am looking for in order to get out, then I wake up.

- I'm being chased out of a building, like our old house in Clevedon, by someone with a shotgun. Elsewhere in the dream I've told someone this is just like a dream I have.

- In a shared house, or a museum trip, I have to eat a truffle. Elsewhere in the dream a boy is so unhappy he kneels down in oncoming traffic but it misses him. I am on a bike supposed to rendezvous with a colleague but we've got separated. At one point Hev is on a scooter, wearing a big black anorak, and goes away in the wrong direction up a street like Lothian Road. Noel Clarke was in this dream at some point.

- Had to make stencils or designs to go on a gun.

- Had to go on a double date with Neil Gaiman! I was in Saudi Arabia and had to go back home to get something, then was lying to the people in Saudi that I was in the UK and wouldn't be long.

- A lot of us are in makeshift beds on the landing of my parents old house in Kibworth. Later Keir Starmer brings the wrong number of kids into one of my classes, 60 instead of the agreed 30, so we have to go and sort this out, which we are still doing when I wake up.

Analyse that!

My Books And Where To Find Them...

Richard  The Third Paperback • signed	Findlay  Macbeth Paperback • signed	Prince of  Denmark Street Paperback • signed	Midsummer Night's  Dream Team Paperback • signed
Shakespeare Omnibus Paperback • signed	Comic Tales From The Bible Paperback • signed	Joseph, Ruth & Other Stories Paperback • signed	Space Elain Paperback • signed
Book Of Esther	Who Notes	Sweet Smell Of Sockcess	Attack Of The Sausages
My 1975 Diary Calendar	Colouring Books Paperback • signed	Scottish Falsetto Socks Annual	Tales Of Nambygate

Colouring Books: Hollywood Legends, Punk, Cult TV, Eurovision Vol 1, Eurovision Vol 2, Eurovision Best Of British & Irish, 1960s Pop, 1970s Pop, 1980s Pop,  1990s Pop, 2020s Pop, Bowie, Scottish Pop, Doctors Who, Royalty, Rom Coms