1.
I was at a sort of jumble sale in a 1970s-style council building. I saw a bunch of records that a woman had just bought. She was half-way between a landlady I had in Sydney and an old school friend who lives in Cornwall; she was a hippy, with a kind of satisfied look about her, though she was looking flustered at first. I noticed I owned some of the records she’d bought; in particular I saw a boxed set of The Cream of Eric Clapton (which I don’t own, and which actually doesn’t exist as a vinyl box set) and asked her about it. I told her I had it at home, along with some of the others, and asked if my parents had taken my records and bought them to the jumble sale. She said no. I asked if I could look through the pile. She let me, and I noticed some Procol Harum and Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs by Derek and the Dominos (ie Eric Clapton).

Then it seemed like I was getting a lift with her and some of her children. I gathered she was a kind of teacher. We arrived at her house in the countryside, which looked like a ramshackle boarding school. Children were everywhere, and a brother and sister took a shine to me and showed me round. It was then I noticed the children turning into various animals and birds. Foxes, badgers, birds, insects. They made a hand movement when they changed, there was a sparkle in the air, then they were an animal. I had to make a phone call, from an old red phone box in the huge garden. I couldn’t get through. One of the children told me I could change if I wanted, into a bee. How? I asked. He showed me the hand movements, Like this, he said. I was about to do it, my cat jumped up on the bed and meowed in my face, and yes, of course, I woke up.

What can I say? Production values weren’t high; it looked like it was shot on 16mm then transferred to VHS, but that was part of its charm. There was a magical yet eerie lyricism about the dream. It felt like those great 1970s BBC kid’s programmes – The Owl Service, The Changes, Children of the Stones. Acting was good, natural. Special effects, not bad for the time – kids turning into animals.

I had a late breakfast; scrambled eggs and caviar on toast, a pot of proper coffee. Life wasn’t bad. The cat meowed, wanted feeding.

Previously on Barnflakes
Children of the 1970s

2.
The 13-year-old boy had expensive camera gadgets plus a drone. I hid them from him under a rug. He asked me where they were. Stolen I said. Oh no he cried. He told his parents and they called the police. The police couldn’t find them until I tried to move them. They caught me and I went to jail. The boy filmed me in jail with his phone and put the video on YouTube. The video got millions of hits and made him a YouTube superstar. I got out of jail and filmed myself watching his video of me in jail on YouTube, then filmed myself smashing up my phone, then uploading the video. It got like 2 or 3 hits.

When I’m happy and busy, I never remember my dreams. When I’m listless and despondent, I have really vivid dreams, such as these.

Previous dreams here.