Interview

I am standing in the King's Road, Chelsea, with noted author and television presenter David Baddiel and his sometime creative partner Frank Skinner. Frank and I are conducting an impromptu interview with David, who is late for something or other. I am simultaneously Handycamming the meeting and attempting -- with variable success -- to hold a boom mike on a fibreglass pole over their heads. I'm being encouraged to chime in to the conversation when I have something to say. "Just watch how loudly you talk, you'll overload the mike," cautions the helpful Mr Baddiel, who is wearing a black leather jacket and a Radiohead t-shirt.

For some reason David -- who does not hold a driving license and has no prior experience of intercontinental navigation -- is preparing to participate with a driver he simply refers to as "José" in the Paris-Dakar Rally, the longest and most serious desert race for motorbikes and touring cars in the history of organised sports.

Somehow this is not challenged by the infamously trenchant Mr Skinner nor myself, although we have to stop filming for around five minutes whilst an elderly man pushing a pretzel cart -- pretzels do not exist as snack food in London and one cannot help but notice that the sign on the cart is somewhat mislettered -- wanders on past hollering in some unidentifiable language.

The interview winds up with Mr Baddiel producing an immense length of blue velour fabric which he wraps around his head into a considerable, heaped, formless impersonation of a turban, with one end of the fabric still tucked inside his jacket. As a parting gift, he also provides one of these garments for me, apparently producing the fabric from his shirt pocket and cutting the final length with a dainty pair of nail scissors. It is unbelievably heavy and I am very nearly immobilised, but otherwise too polite to shrug it off. With an indistinct but dire-sounding warning about taking the assemblage off before midnight, Messrs Skinner and Baddiel promptly bugger off down towards the Groucho, and not without some courtesy, leaving me standing in the Kings Road struggling with a videocamera, boommike, portable DAT record, and a goddamned unbelievably heavy turban. Which is purple.

(In spite of this humiliation, I was quite angry when I woke up and couldn't carry on dreaming. I was probably just about to get promoted.)

Lofty

The previous night I was small and skinny and I was wearing a hoodie that made me look like one of those hippity-hoppers, but I didn't care. I had an animal companion, an Italian Spinone in fact, which was badly lip-syncing to dialogue read by John Hurt.

We were wandering around a farm on the side of Chinnor Hill. Chinnor Hill is a very high hill near where I live. You can drive and park in the woods at the top of the hill and walk all the way down to the bottom if you like, but it's something like a three-hundred-foot climb back up to where you parked the Escort if you do. Outside the woods, the grass is kept short and bouncy as only a proper infestation of rabbits seems to be able to manage, and generally speaking it's really quite a lovely place to have a picnic.

There is no farm on the side of Chinnor Hill in real life, but in real life neither are there gigantic hovering causeways made out of metre-wide marshmallows stretching out into the air. The dog and I (the dog's name was Bruce, by the way, and as I have indicated, it was a talking dog) were somewhat bothered by the apparent disappearance of all the livestock. From the equipment, fencing, terrain, and the sign out front saying "DULL FLIGHTLESS BIRDS £1.50 ea. or £9/pair" -- that's what it said, folks -- it seemed safe to presume that there ought to be some animals around.

Nothing but the occasional rabbit, however. Bruce wasn't interested in these, complaining that they smell overpoweringly of pheromones at this time of year and that he'd rather be eating wild grouse.

Someone was playing two-voice harmony on a guitar, we could hear it quite clearly. Eventually we realised that the sounds were drifting down from the slightly ominous hovering marshmallow stairway, and started climbing up it. Eventually the paths forked into three, and then to nine, and so on irregularly, and from that point we were more or less wandering around about a thousand feet above the ground, generally alternating between "childlike wonder" and "being freaked out at just how far away everything was and how come we still couldn't see the guitar player, anyhow?". However, it was an exceedingly pleasant sunny day and there didn't seem like much else worth doing, so we just carried on wandering. We could dimly hear the sounds of traffic and record stores and things drifting up from the towns below.

It was warm so I took my hoodie off, which left me in a t-shirt. This was fine except shortly afterwards I lost my footing and tripped. I was fine and so was Bruce, but in my brief terror, I flung my arm out to protect me. It went over the side and I accidentally dropped my hoodie, which plummeted like it had a prior appointment with something on the ground. We watched it fall as we tried to calm down, until we realised it would be a better idea not to look. We stayed sitting down for a long time until we felt more confident about the marshmallows.

I think we went back to the hillside after that. We'd been talking for quite a while about ethics and how to "do the right thing", and why this is difficult. Having a conversation with something that has the voice of John Hurt is very, very pleasant. As it turned out, to get back to the hillside took much, much longer than we expected, as we got hopelessly lost, and by the time we stepped back through the woods, it was almost sunset. At this time of year, that means nine pm, which means around eight hours after we arrived at the hillside.

We were quite hungry, and I bought us fish-and-chips for dinner on the way home. Somehow, fish-and-chips never tastes quite as good anywhere as it does in the driver's seat of a white van. Although I can see that having a wire-haired dog poking its head between the seats to beg for chips could be something of an acquired taste.

Nonetheless, I woke up extremely hungry.

Dream different.

I went to sleep last night with an Apple iBook dozing lightly on my desk. When a second-generation iBook (the one that isn't shaped like a toilet-seat) goes to sleep, it slowly blinks a dulled white light to let you know that it isn't quite switched off. I fell asleep with this on and had a very nice dream.

Walking on a beach that stretches towards a rocky outcrop that is battered diffidently by breakers, I find myself stepping over sands that release growling, singing noises with every footstep. Like tiny slivers of guitar feedback. The waves themselves generate similar susurrations, although much more quietly and much more numerously. I find myself weighing my steps to make the most pleasing sounds.

The sky is dark, twilit, purple, although a low moon hangs above the horizon. The waves steam lightly as they break gently on the sands, and as I watch, its pale disc wavers gently as it hangs above the sea.

I walk a little away from the breakers and step into the low dunes, where grasses sprout from amongst the sighing sands. Some are short, familiar, stiff-bladed plants. Others resemble earthbound kelp forests, towering above me into the sky. Listening close, I find these are also singing softly in a low breeze. I think that this place must be dreadful if there are ever storms here.

But there isn't a storm. Just the low evening breeze, the still air warm on my skin. The breeze is cool, though, and I settle down against a dune with my hands on my knees. I pull off my jacket, bundle it up under my head and fall slowly asleep as I kick my feet into the sand, warming them where the dunes still retain the heat of the passing day.