With mine, it’s either a steep hill or flight of stairs. I'm trying to get up or down but I can’t. Other people are walking past me easily but I continue to struggle. My feet slip from under me and I'm in constant fear of falling or just being stuck. Sometimes, when it’s stairs, they’re cluttered with stuff like table lamps or piles of crockery. Steep slopes are often icy. It’s weird and it’s horrible!

Dee

Oh, I don't think I could take the lapping water - awful. Why my anxieties should centre round Goldsmiths I don't know,except that I'm there three times a week these days and maybe I absorb the anxieties from the milling students. Apart from the Journalism course on Saturday mornings I meet my Taiwanese langage partner there a couple of times. She's the one should worry, not me, what with all that media theory to get the better of. For me it's like an MA by proxy as I try to help her understand expressions like 'soundbites' and 24/7, although she does the research and I check the grammar. She's supposed to do another four pieces of coursework by the end of Jan, though, and since she's more interested in socialising than study, maybe by then I will be getting the lapping waves, as she leaves it all to the last minute.

Sheila

Mmm, An intersting variation that has a Wonderland feel to it,Dee. Have you ever been a waitress?

By coincidence I slipped on some leaves as I left the flats last Saturday. The last step of a concrete flight was completely covered and I fell and bruised my leg on the edge of the step, so was hobbling around and managing stairs badly for the last few days. I couldn't make it to Goldsmiths, although I was halfway down the hill before I realised I wouldn't be able to get on the bus so I might as well turn back.

Maybe these dreams afflict those of us who are overly-active and too ambitious about what we can accomplish?

Sheila

I know the feeling about Goldsmiths', Sheila. It's very busy, isn't it, even without the sirens screaming round the one-way system every three minutes.

Dee, the clutter tripping you up I recognise. I also have an infallible dream when I'm starting something new and external, like a course or a job, where I'm at a weird version of my school... Oddly, I didn't get it when I was about to start at Goldsmiths, which I took for a good omen. Though the stairs in the Whitehead tower seem like a bad dream - endless grey concrete. And it has two lifts, one of which stops at odd numbered floor and the other at evens. It's perfectly sensible, and yet it seems so weird... even nightmarish...

Emma

Well, of course they didn't have the Whitehead tower when I was first there, nor the new library building. Is it one and the same? I've got the head cataloguer as mc in a short story I must type up. If I were you I'd stick to the original building as much as you can, or those little terraced houses round the back where I used to doze off in seminars after lunch time sessions in The Marquis of Granby. My Saturday class is held round corner in New Cross Road at the old Deptford Town Hall - definitely worth a visit. The interior is as ornate in the public spaces as the outside. Check out the brasswork on the entrance to the loos.

Yes, New Cross is a bit rough. What about that shop with all the theatrical stuff? Do they get any customers?

Sheila

Creative writing is stored along with English (I refuse to regard them as the same thing) in the Whitehead Tower, all 12 or 15 floors of it, next to the new library. Seminars go on in the pre-fabs in St James: I feel like someone having a briefing in The Spy Who Came in From The Cold, but I can live with that when the seminar/lecture list goes Maura Dooley, Blake Morrison, Tobias Hill, Jackie Kay, Julian Barnes, Wendy Cope, and Kazuo Ishiguro yesterday.

There's a short story in that theatrical shop. I'll toss you for it.

Emma

I did mean the lock out and no I reacted like a terrified toddler left on the tube station while my mother and brother disappear through the closing doors. I too logged on as someone else and had to rope in David to sort me out, I'd left one letter out of my password.

Julie

Yes, it's great they attract so many experts. My language partner told me they'd had the leading British expert on Asian cinema to talk to her group last week. I was envious.

Sheila

Jubbly, the same with me. I'd left one letter out when I registered initially- it seems incredible I should have typed the confirmation wrongly, too - and after that I never seemed to have to log in again - I just got access directly from members' emails. Changes I had to make to sort out webmail problems seemed to distrub all that and I had to log inagain. Of coure, I used the password in its entirety.

Sheila

Yes, it's utterly panic-making. Which of course isn't the best frame of mind in which to be clear-headed about what to do. I think it's the bafflement, feeling like a child when no-one believes you or will listen.

A propos passwords, I've taken to not letting the computer remember mine even if it offers, at least not until I've typed it in often enough to get it right. Same with phone number memories. But I've got one online bank account which I get myself locked out of repeatedly, and as I don't with others, I think their security features must actually be quite badly designed.

Emma

Oh dear, now I'm getting duplicate notifications because I'm sending replies to a posting by Lady Grey, my doppelganger. I suppose it will stop when her membership lapses. I hope so, anyway; otherwise it will be really weird.

Emma,I have an idea for a short story inspired by the theatrical shop- I'll work on it when I'm swimming this afternoon. There's nothing to stop you writing one too. However, I think you'd better stick to that novel and your site duties. You have, as they say in 'The Archers', enough on your plate.

Sheila

When I first met my husband 9 years ago, he told me he was taking my daughter and I to London for a special weekend treat.

We lived in Swindon at the time, but up until then I had lived in Devon where I am originally from. Living so far down in the country, meant I had never been to London before, so this was to be our first visit.
My husband however, was born in London, so knows his way around.

Anyway, the night before we went for our weekend away, I had a really vivid dream. I dreamt that we went to London and the hotel room we stayed in was sort of on two floors. It had a blue carpet, with a bluey grey sofa bed on the ground floor, and this white spiral staircase leading up to a sort of mezzanine where there was another area.

In the car on the way to London the following day, I told my husband and daughter about this dream and we all remarked how strange it was.

When we got to the hotel and checked in, a porter took us to our room. He opened the door and all I could do was say 'oh my God.'

The room was exactly as my dream had portrayed. The blue carpet, sofa bed and white spiral staircase leading up to the other area.

I was so shocked, and couldn't explain how I had dreamt it.

It's a weird world we live in.

Kat

Sheila, yes, no short stories allowed till I've finished the novel, but I'll make a note.

Kat, I'm not a believer in premonitions and things, but that really is very remarkable. I'd never dare put it in a novel! (Which is an interesting thought in itself, come to think of it.)

Emma