I rarely remember dreams, but the inclusion of brain-medication has long done away with the joy of deep unencumbered sleep. Under the ‘influence’ of ever stronger drugs designed to actually make me sleep, my dreams are fanciful and varied, and almost entirely without any frame of logic or recognizable imagination.

I have written an entire novel, in the style of Hemingway, with several endings, whilst simultaneously visualizing the screenplay as directed by Tarantino. I have leapt back centuries and conducted punishments so ruthless and visceral that they make my skin break into goosebumps with the mere whiff of the memory. Some disaster-focused dreams are played through and through relentlessly like Groundhog Day, never ceasing until I remember to say thank you to the kind lady for letting me through the door; remembering to pick up the baby; or even just smiling kindly at someone, who unbeknown to me was dependent psychologically on that one glimpse of human kindness. The main theme seems to be one of self-flagellation – as the less-well equipped professionals I see would put it: I am very hard on myself.

Last night’s dream was along a new theme. There was no real resounding punishment, just a journey through an Alice-in-Wonderland sketch set on an uninhabited Orkney-ish island away from time and place.

I was a bridesmaid at a Royal Wedding taking place in a grand Gothic castle where I had been employed as a cleaner. The dresses were truly grotesque with every fashion faux-pas imaginable included in the confection of satin, badly fitted bodice and over-trimmed excess. Before we could commence our duties the bridesmaids were whisked off to our island in an FBI helicopter and left there to survive (I have seen 2 episodes of Lost and 1 of I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here).

The bridesmaids were in one timezone, whilst in another parallel world lived Wendy James as a resident poet/housekeeper bricked up in a tower with one meal a day delivered to her by the one remaining servant – who fed her merely so that he would one day he would be able to enjoy her as his own prisoner.

The bridesmaids and I foraged and built and farmed and planned escapes; until our new life was distinctly better than the one we had left behind. The day we realised this was the day that the evil servant below discovered that the way out of his world was not by scrabbling up to ours – but deep down the well. As he came up, Rumplestiltskin-like, we fled to our rafts onto the seas, only to be outflanked by the FBI hovercraft speedboats… there was nowhere to turn – but one. We threw one rather dull compatriot to the FBI, another to the nasty servant with gnarled fingernails, and took it in turns to dive down the deep well to the land of Wendy James, sprigged cotton frocks and meadows with daisies in abundance. There we freed our heroine and lived happily ever after.

There are many things to read into this dream… but I still can’t fit in where we got our trophy “I love the FBI” T-shirts: and that is the thing that niggles.