I am out shopping for a mouse trap, because I saw a mouse sticking it's head out if a piece of tube,in a hole in the wall where a light switch should be, in a house were I am living, which has been unfinished for years. I decide to go to Terry's but I'm warned by Richard not to buy from him, as he is a selfish little jerk who only ever cared about himself,which is why his stuff never has prices on it.
There is a mongoose in the living room, hiding in plain sight in a group of cuddly toys, it is wearing a green jacket and a pointy hat with a feather. No-one else has noticed it. I trick the creature into going out of the house by calling it and pretending I'm going to feed it.
Then I find myself in Terry's, but they don't have a mouse trap. I go to get the number 17 bus home, but then decide to walk anyway, along the Oxford road and see of I can buy a burlesque skirt. I find a square just off the Oxford road which has loads of quirky Camden Market like shops that I didn't know existed. I search around for a skirt. There is a guy locking up his stall, giving advice to another stall holder on how to sell something to a girl as a present for her Mother, it's rubbish advice, so I tell her it won't work. I go through a stall selling beds and another where a woman is checking the floor with a metal detector. I stop to help because she has two pushchairs to manage too. The metal detector has been plugged in for years because the plug and socket are coated in a thick layer of hardened sticky dust.
I find someone and ask them if there is a burlesque shop. She takes me up a flight of bare wooden stairs and along a passage into a room that has a fetish clothes shop,run by a skinny woman who is just about to close for the day. I think I find a skirt, but I'm not sure if I buy it. The shop owner is telling a friend she has taken £1340 that day, which is a record. She is smoking a joint.. I talk to them for a minute and then leave. I come out onto the Oxford Road opposite Tesco's and the new mosque. Then I realise I don't have my handbag, I have another black plastic bag on my shoulder, but no handbag, I think I must have left it in the shop, so I turn to go back, but the entrance to the square where the shops were is now the old baptist church that was supposed to be redeveloped. It's brick work is blacked and sooty. The door is arched, studded and painted blue, but the paint is faded and peeling away. I push it open and go inside. It's full of rooms made into shops most of which are shut, I finally find the burlesque shop. The skinny woman is shutting it up. I explain I think I thinkI've left my hand bag inside. We go in andI find a black leather bag that has my purse, keys and railcard in, so I take it . She exclaims'You can see what I had for lunch today !! ' and picks up an empty salad container and a pot of hummus. She locks up, I say good bye and leave. I get out onto the street and notice I have no shoes on. I know I had them on when I went back to the shop and I don't remember taking them off. I also realise that although the bag has my stuff in it, it isn't mine, it's one like my daughter's, but hers is brown, and this is black, and it wasn't the bag I went out with. That bag was a leather and canvas one my daughter brought me for Mother's Day last year. That bag has a lot more stuff in it too- but it's all rubbish really.
I need to get home, but then a tiny little man comes running after me, I think he's been sent to kill me, but he 's only six inches tall. He jumps at me, but I catch him and throw him on a silver car parked by the side of the Church that used to be Barclays Bank. It must be cold because the car is covered in frost. I carry on walking, he runs down the car bonnet and jumps at me again. I catch him again and dispose of him, but I don 't know how. I carry on walking, it is very dark and the street lights are all on. The Oxford Road has become a dual carriage way. I can see it stretching away in the distance. There is an explosion far ahead and a huge fire starts. I know I didn't leave my hand bag behind, or my shoes, and that everything that happened was orchestrated by Mike but I don't know why.
How weird is that? It proves I dream in colour, which is apparently unusual. For those if you who are unfamiliar with Reading, the Oxford Road is a road full of hairdressers, nail bars, kebab shops and various ethnic mini markets. It used to have a brothel which laundered cash through a launderette next door called 'The Lost Sock'...
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