My husband and I only come in for our weekly foodshop at our local Aldi. Milk. Bread. Something beige and lazily assembled for our dinner. Something th...
I’m going on holiday with my friend, Kylie. I say “friend” — but we haven’t spoken in three and a half years, a span both fleeting and eternal. They sa...
The café feels cobbled together from vanity and fractured egos. Exposed brick, trailing plants, tortured art clinging desperately to the walls like it...
It starts, as all personal derailments should, in our local pub. The Plough — a place where dreams come alive and shatter before the night has ended. ...
I hear it before anything else — that familiar drumming inside my skull. A cosmic woodpecker tapping directly on my soul. Not so much a sound as a vibr...
It’s raining the way British rain does when it’s not trying to impress anyone — not dramatic, not cinematic, just a committed, personal damp that seeps...
My heart is misbehaving again. It has developed a personality of its own. It now answers to the name Hugo — because Hugo sounds like someone who woul...
I am ankle-deep in eggs. Not metaphorical eggs. Not emotional eggs. Actual fried eggs. Slippery, greasy, yolk-slicked casualties clinging to skirti...
I don’t properly remember last night’s dreams. Not the lush cinematic ones with symbolism you can peel like fruit. Not the kind that leave you waking ...
I’m a fly on the wall again. Shunted out of my own dream and downgraded to a silent witness — no voice part, no influence, no applause. An understudy ...
Something slides through the letterbox. It skids across the mat like a timid white mouse — a small padded packet, light as breath. I bend to pick it u...
I hate calling in sick. I don’t do sick days unless I’m actively auditioning for the afterlife. If I can still blink and drag one leg behind the other...
I’m drifting through the supermarket, minding my own business, snugly cocooned in the blissful vacuum of my own inner world. Head down. Mission-focused...
I somehow gain lucidity. Out of the blue. It just calls out my name — or at least I think it does. I might just be hearing voices. “Mum, mum,” someone...
I’m at a bar that smells of old raincoats, stale lager and the quiet rot of unfinished conversations clinging to the walls. The lights flicker like tir...
The dream-team are back together. Charlotte. My trusted companion. My partner in crime. My emotional support human slash unofficial crisis manager. O...
I’m in the car with Amy. Of all the people. My arch nemesis. A woman who genuinely hates my guts — would wear them as a belt if the sizing worked. And...
There’s a knock at the door. Not the familiar ratta-tat-tat of Richard, our Evri guy, who knocks like he’s apologising for existing. Not the almost-ta...
I live with three cats. This was never the plan. Life just hacked something up and walked away. There was only ever supposed to be one: Monkey. Th...
I don’t know what I’ve walked into this morning, but the atmosphere is wrong. Thick as treacle, clinging to your skin and lungs alike. The kind you cou...
Of all the places my subconscious could drag me, it’s spat me out at a petrol station. A nowhere place. A pause button. A held breath. A suspended mom...
The carpet man has arrived. It’s been a long time coming. Nearly a year, in fact. A year of grinding, saving, talking myself out of holidays, shoes, d...
I’m in an airport, due to board a flight to the isle-of-fuck-knows-where. Or at least, I was. I had good intentions. I always do. They just never survi...
I arrive at the writers’ retreat and — credit where it’s due — it’s exactly as impressive as the brochure promised. A vast stately home nestled in the ...
Christmas has come back to haunt me. I’ve only just survived it — the forced cheer, the ritualised joy, the edible regret — and here it is again, tapp...
Sophie Langford is giving birth on the pavement. Not a hospital pavement — no reassuring white lines or ambulances idling with their mouths open — but...
I’ve been invited on a night out. Invited is generous. Cornered feels more accurate. I say yes, though every sensible cell in my body votes no. I don’...
The diner is a living, breathing embodiment of vintage charm — a shrine to the 1950s. Vinyl booths in sugary pastels. Chrome trim polished to a mirror ...
I’m moving house. This is not exciting. This is not aspirational. This is not “new beginnings.” This is a decision I was talked into — then slowly con...
I don’t usually like sweet things. But today my body craves sugar with the urgency of an addict scratching at their skin. I want all of it. Haribo, fu...
I’m wandering through the town centre with my friend Ash, and everything seems to hang its head, ashamed of lingering past its welcome. Christmas is te...
I don’t know why I’m jealous, but Matt — from work, not my husband Mat — has bagged himself a new girlfriend, and she is hot AF (as the youth would say...
I seem to have travelled back in time. My daughter sits beside me in the back of a battered old car, legs too short for the seat, socks mismatched, no ...
I’m in the depot — just shoot me now, why don’t you? — staring down a parcel that refuses to be known. I’ve turned it, weighed it in my hands, traced e...
Panic wears me like a second skin. I’m tearing through the street like I’ve misplaced my soul and it’s learned to crawl. “Monkey!” I shout, dropping ...
Ash has bagged herself a new boyfriend, so it seems. He’s tagging along with us on one of our adventures. I can’t say I’m enamoured by his presence. He...
Mum isn’t quite herself today. Not broken, exactly — just misaligned, like a picture knocked crooked on the wall that no one wants to straighten becau...
I have gone blind. I can’t see a damn thing. Not even the suggestion of a thing. Complete, sodding darkness. Panic detonates in my chest — sharp, i...
“I love Christmas!” Alice beams. She’s wearing a jumper so aggressively festive it should come with a warning label: may induce rage. A sequinned rein...
My husband wants to go for drinks. Eager. Festive. Full of good intentions and Christmas cheer. I’m not keen. I’d much rather stay home with the comfo...
I seem to have been booted out of my own dream. Sidelined. Pushed to the back of the audience… into nonexistence. I’m still here, technically, but onl...
That familiar drilling through my skull begins again, like a bored woodpecker with a personal vendetta. My whole body vibrates, teeth chattering, nerves...
“I have a surprise for you!” Mat is beaming, practically brimming with excitement. He knows I don’t like surprises. Never have. Surprises are just pl...
Mum is being overly loving. Right in my face, smothering me in kisses, telling me — again and again — how much she loves me. It’s unsettling. She’s nev...
All the cats in the neighbourhood have broken in. Not wandered. Not casually drifted in. Broken in. This is organised crime. A coordinated feline sieg...
My blasted brain. It’s a firework display with no finale — just endless bangs, fizzles, and smoke choking the sky. I park the work van somewhere sensib...
Robin looks like someone who has had the air sucked from under her wings. The Christmas rush has finally found a way in. It presses at the edges of eve...
The all-too-familiar industrial screeching begins again. Loud. Unbearable. A drill boring straight through my ears, vibrating my teeth, rattling my sku...
I’m back at the hell hole that is work — where the lighting hangs low and grey, like it’s given up trying to illuminate anything, least of all me. Pau...
At first, the corridor feels ordinary in that dreamlike, shifting way — people rushing past with dream-soft faces, edges smudged as though reality was ...
The wind gods seem to have a personal vendetta against me today. Not a mild irritation — an actual blood feud. I can barely keep my feet on the ground....
I’m hosting a BBQ. Apparently. Though if you looked around my garden — my meadow, technically — you’d assume the event had been cancelled, exorcised, o...
I’m pushing my trolley through the park on my post round. My loyal wheeled companion — squeaky, stubborn, and apparently allergic to straight paths. Mor...
I am seated upon my porcelain throne — royal, obviously — because my subconscious enjoys giving me grandeur at the most unseemly of times. A dignified ...
Mat and I walk hand in hand, streetlamps jittering on the puddles like sky constellations dipping their toes in the dark. He’s picked yet another Fine-...
Mat has lost his upper teeth. The important ones. The front-line soldiers of his smile — the ones people notice first, the ones that do half his social...
There’s a knock at the door — three taps, frantic, like someone who’s just run across seven counties carrying seven children. I open it to find Ash, ch...
I’m dusting the antique cabinet, my feather duster brushing in soft, rhythmic strokes as I hum “Killing Me Softly” It’s absurdly cheerful for a song ab...
I’ve apparently made a dazzling new career move — because why stick to a tedious nine-to-five when you can reinvent yourself in the dream world? I’m no...
Tall trees loom around me like judgmental giants, craning their necks to see which poor soul has wandered into their territory today. I’m sporting a fu...
I’m in the writing zone — no, the writing vortex. The place where reality dissolves and the only thing that matters is the clack-clack-clack of keys un...
I really wish the dream gods would get their act together. Of all the infinite universes they could drop me into — enchanted forests, neon cityscapes, ...
It feels like the end of the world, or something wearing the same mask. The London Underground is vibrating like a creature caught mid-panic. Sirens ho...
I can’t get no sleep. I begin the night as a hopeful pilgrim, lying flat like a sacrifice to the Dream Lords, praying they’ll baptise me in their ocea...
I drag myself through another morning of drudgery, the sky a sullen grey pancake pressing down upon my spirit. My trusty trolley — loyal companion and ...
I’m sitting in a circle of empty chairs, the kind that look like they could squeal if you confess anything too heavy. The whole room has AA energy, min...
I don’t know what strange force summons us here, but here we are — standing on the rooftop of a skyscraper like two miscast extras in a psychological t...
I’m in a decrepit old house I don’t recognise. The ceiling sags and weeps in slow, swollen drops. Strips of wallpaper curl down the walls, peeling away...
There’s a knock at the door. I open it to find a blonde woman in full-body Lycra — the sort that should come with a health warning. She has the face o...
Somehow the universe has dragged us back together, though the air between us feels thick — like a decade’s worth of unspoken sentences has congealed in...
These winding roads are mocking me now — taunting me with yet another bend, yet another déjà vu of sodden hedges and potholes deep enough to store chil...
Michael Sealey’s honey-soaked vocal cords seep through the holes in my earbuds like warm caramel, oozing directly into the gullies of my soul. Oh, Mich...
Back at the drudgery they insist on calling “work.” Can’t I escape this damn place? Apparently not. Even my dreamworld gets infested —parasitically— b...
I’m at a barbecue, though no one looks like they’re enjoying anything remotely edible. People are scattered around Laura’s garden, sipping beer like it...
I wake up, or at least I think I do — because everything looks the same, but feels… off. Like I’ve slipped sideways into a knockoff version of my life....
I have been entrusted — quite irresponsibly, I might add — with a magical contraption full of swirling orange liquid. It looks like a flute, if a flute...
My phone is popping off like a firework in my hand — a staccato symphony of pings and vibrations. Texts are flooding in, relentless, multiplying like c...
We inherit a house. Not just a house — a mansion. It rises before me like something half-remembered from a fever dream: Victorian, vast, ornate as a w...
The restaurant is buzzing with noise and hungry diners. The kind of chaos that clings to the walls like grease. My husband and I sit by the window, awa...
I feel my body vibrating. That ever-familiar screeching in my ear. Like a kettle screaming from another dimension. I know I’m about to take off — but ...
It’s another delivery day, and I’m out with Kev — Kev of the creased face, Kev of the hollow eyes, Kev of thirty-five years and one frayed nerve left...
After gobbling down a chunk of chalk-sized Altha-GPC (industrial strength, straight from the dream gods themselves), I start to feel the all-too-famili...
Ding. Ding. I wait on Mum’s doorstep, stamping my feet to keep warm. Jen stands beside me, her breath hanging in the air like cigarette smoke. We’re i...
Granny’s practically levitating beside me, her wiry silver hair fizzing with anticipation. She’s been saving up her pension for this — for the boys, sh...
The bottom row of Mat’s teeth have fallen clean out. Snap right out like a denture. He holds them up to the light, which glints off them mockingly — th...
Church bells pierce through the wind — loud, discordant, like they’re arguing. I’m at a wedding. My daughter, Phoebe, is getting married. To who, I’m n...
I’m at the depot and all hell has broken loose. People are spitting feathers — literal feathers, almost — because the whole place has had a makeover. A...
I’m back at the dentist. That same antiseptic tang - disinfectant and fear — hangs in the air like a warning siren you can smell. “Not this place agai...
It’s Sunday. I hate these twelve o’clock starts. So much for a day of rest — it’s a day of waiting, watching the hands crawl towards doom. When I fina...
It’s Bring Your Husband to Work Day. The depot buzzes like a restless hive, fluorescent lights trembling against a ceiling stained with time. New faces...
The air in the depot is thick as treacle — heavy, slow, and humming with exhaustion. It clings to my skin like someone else’s sweat. The fluorescent lig...
I’m abroad somewhere hot and vaguely exotic — Greece, maybe, though it feels more like a parody of Greece, built from postcards and plastic suncream bo...
I wake to my daughter’s voice drifting through the morning air — loud, exaggerated, bright with that wild joy only children seem to carry. She sounds al...
That familiar sound of industrial scraping — metal on metal — an explosion in my ears. My whole body is vibrating like I've swallowed a jackhammer. Am...
I’m out on delivery again, though nothing feels quite right. My uniform’s wrong for a start. Gone is the garish red of Royal Mail — replaced by an Ame...
I approach a Victorian-looking toy shop — the vintage kind. Its crisscrossed windows glow like a lantern in the dusk, flickering gold against the darke...
Alex is young again. No older than six. He sleeps beside me, mouth slightly ajar like a baby bird waiting for crumbs of air. His cheeks are flushed, so...
The church door looms over us like something alive. Mat knocks once — a deep, hollow sound that rolls through the air — but there’s no answer. Just sil...
I’m at Mum’s. She’s been acting off all morning — twitchy, distracted. Not her usual self. She keeps pacing from the kettle to the window, window to th...
I realise I’ve become lucid. What now? I think. I mustn’t waste this opportunity. The air is ripe with possibility, thrumming like a pause before thund...
Dream Journal Ultimate
