Monday, 9th of July

The week has been subdued, but also quite unnerving. Each night now we’ve had the same dream – The Manor as a God given sanctuary appearing over a hill. In the morning I wake up feeling safe, as if the walls are protecting me and nothing can harm me here, but then the realisation comes of what that means to the rest of the world if we’re the last bolthole. Nothing has happened yet, when I saw it Saturday the TV was still talking about Barclays, Libor and Andy Murray – while we sat together and talked about the end of the world. But surely there’s a way we can still warn people what’s about to happen. Surely there’s some chance we can make a difference.
For now Dexter Phillips doesn’t feel the same and is cutting off our internet access and removing our televison and radio to keep the world out – to “allow us to get used to what’s about to happen’. Everyone is going along with it for now, but there is a dark mood amongst us.

I will blog again when I get chance.

Friday, 6th of July

Despite Dexter Phillips’ calm demeanour, in spite of the casualness with which he delivered the news, the room fell silent at that point. We had come here to help after all, to put ourselves in a position where we could alert the rest of the world what is about to happen. The reason we came here was to be the warning beacon, the recue guard. Instead Dexter Phillips was making it clear to us that his vision saw this commune as the life-raft, we are the few chosen ones who will escape and set up a new world beyond the one we have now. Everything we have ever known will be gone, everyone we have ever loved will be dead (or now a slavering maniac, unrecognisable from the people they were before) and we would be asked to stride forward into this brave new world – as what? A group of Adams and Eves? Colonists from the past trying to carve out the future?
I think Dexter Phillips was surprised that when he delivered his talk with an almost breezy demeanour, some people began to cry.

Thursday, 5th of July

We will have everything we need at The Manor, Dexter Phillips told us. The house has its own generator, and there is a well in the garden and livestock on the grounds. There is the of course the slight chance of them being stolen or sabotaged in some way, but we’ve seen those in the world after the incident (that is the phrase he used – ‘the incident’) and such acts of calculated terror are clearly beyond them. We would be safe in The Manor, we could thrive in The Manor, and we could greet the world beyond on our terms.

All we have to do is get our heads around the fact that everyone we’ve ever known, and everything we’ve ever known, is gone.

Wednesday, 4th of July

Dexter Phillips’ message was stark, but delivered with a calm which seemed to me later almost eerie. He was the one person standing in the room – the rest of us sit on the floor – and he moved among us like a hip, young university lecturer addressing an informal study group. His tone had that quality too, conversational, casual, as if what we were discussing was not that big a deal at all. Or maybe that’s unfair, perhaps there was a slight sharpness to his tone – but no more than a weatherman letting the great British public know there was a nasty storm on the way.
The end of the world is coming, he told us, and we are the ones best prepared.

Tuesday, 3rd of July

The world won’t listen to what it doesn’t want to hear, Dexter Phillips tells us. Ask any environmentalist, ask any doomsayer about the economy – people do not want to listen to anything that affects the status quo, to anything which might disrupt their comfort.

But what we have to tell them is huge, the news we have to announce to the world is immense – and for that reason alone it won’t be listened to. The powers that be will just see this strange little community, a commune, a strange cult. You can see the words which will be thrown about already, we’ll just be another band of cranks. Even those out there who are similarly having these dreams will be encouraged to laugh at us. Nothing will happen if we tell the world, nothing all.

As such we have to accept that what we’re dreaming is going to happen and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. And with that in mind we have to be in the right place when it happens.

Monday, 2nd of July

The same dream two nights in a row for all of us. Again we all woke up having seen visions of The Manor appearing over the hill as a haven, a sanctuary. Once more this caused a buzz of excitement around the dining room in the morning. As having spent the last few weeks discussing the same dreams we’ve all endured for months on end, this is something exciting.
Only Dexter Phillips was unperturbed, only he retained his calm. Finally Elvina/Denise asked why – and his reply was astonishing.

Apparently he’s been having this very dream for months, seeing this house as a sanctuary – and that was one of the reasons why he brought us here to Wales. He has determined that London is not safe (indeed no cities are), that it’s tainted. As he explained this to us, he even pointed to me and said that the same thing is in my book, a sense of London as a place filled with danger and fear. That’s why he wanted us to leave. Not that we could all be together in the country necessarily, but so we could all be safe from London.

We are the chosen ones he told us, and so we have to be together and protected away from those in the towns and cities.

Sunday, 1st of July

A new dream!
It is afterwards. After the object has fallen from the sky, after the virus has infected the majority of the human race. I am staggering in the darkness through the countryside. My legs ache and my feet are blistered, as if I’ve been running for days. In the distance I wonder if I can hear these ‘new’ people, the infected ones, but in my rational mind I know that they mainly stay in the towns and cities – better pickings there. They are not going to pursue me over fields and hillocks, and yet still I run.

It’s incredibly dark. Of course it’s been dark for a long time now, but the countryside is like stumbling through sheer blackness. I have fallen and tumbled so many times, I even think my shoulder might be fractured. But still I go on, even though I know there’s only a small chance I’m being chased, it’s still enough to spur me forwards.

Suddenly I find myself at a ridge. Hearing (or imagining) some nearby sound, I desperately try to scrabble up at it, kicking away with my feet and aching arm. Finally I pull myself to the top and beyond is like heaven.

There’s a house, a grand old house, but one that is actually lit and so looks protected. The light from it shines into the sky so ethereal. With a gasp of joy I start pelting towards it.

I dreamt this in my room within The Manor, a large house in West Wales. The house in my dream – and we all had the same dream last night – is clearly The Manor.

Thursday, 28th of June

So what are we going to do about it? What are we going to do with the fact that we thirteen are seemingly the only ones who can see the end of the world is very nigh? Dexter Phillips has become much more gnomic about this, wary of opening his mouth to any pronouncement. He stares at us, he nods knowingly when asked, but the great schemes he talked of before we got here seem to have temporarily gone quiet.
Why that is I don’t know, and it frustrates the hell out of me. Forget the economic crisis, Barclays Bank or any of the other nonsense I see in the news these days – something truly serious is about to happen.

Sunday, 24th of June

We dream each night, then talk all day and discuss what (if anything) we are going to do. I have never felt so much part of a community, but I’ve also never felt so lonely as well. Here we are in a big manor house in West Wales, the only thirteen people – perhaps in the world – who share these experiences, and it allows us a window into each other’s souls. Over the course of each day we don’t just talk about our dreams (that might be a recipe for insanity), but bond as we discuss other things and find out what we have in common. I am part of something here, something that is incredibly and uncannily special.
However I am also very alone. Each night we sleep by ourselves – which of course is better to aid our dreams – but it means that I miss Julie. Even though I see her in the day, she is just one of the group now – the member I know best, but still one of thirteen alike souls. I am making new friends, forging new connections, but in the process I seem to have lost my girlfriend.

Dexter Phillips is right though, we need to concentrate on the dreams. A bruised heart is going to be the least of our worries when this thing slams into Earth and it all begins.

Thursday, 21st of May

The world afterwards is a dark and nightmarish place, where those few of us who survive and aren’t infected (what is it about us that makes us immune to infection? Do the dreams give us some kind of protection?) live a life on the margins. The air is heavy and clogged with ash, and all around us is the next stage of man – one which has given us all semblances of civilisation, and where cannibalism and horrific violence are not only the norm, but a source of great pleasure. We real survivors have to creep around them, knowing that like all hunters their senses are heightened, and if they were to intuit our presence their fingers would dig deep beneath our flesh and rip our bones from their sockets.
Out here in Wales the dreams are so intense that we can spend the first half hour of a morning just holding each other as a group, trying to briefly protect ourselves from what’s to come.

Sunday, 17th of June

We are now all together. There are twelve of us, disciples if you will of Dexter Phillips. (We all realise how biblical this looks and joke about it from time to time – but until we find more people who have these dreams then that’s the way it is). We get up to a ringing bell in the morning, which frankly is as relieving as any bell rang at the end of a particularly fraught round of boxing, and then stagger down to the breakfast room. After we eat some cereal we get together and explore what we all saw the night before, how the images are linked and what they all mean. It’s wearisome work, but the theories are forming and it feels like we’re getting somewhere.
All of us together we are a commune, a collective – one that is working for the noble cause of saving the world. And perhaps I for one would feel better about all of that, if it wasn’t for the intensity of the dreams and the doom hanging over us the whole time.

Wednesday, 13th of June

The internet connection isn’t all it could be at The Manor, but apparently that will be fixed soon.
Still people come – from different backgrounds, countries and cultures – all of us brought together by these pictures in our head and Dexter Phillips’ promise that combined we can make a difference. There are eight of us now, with the other five expected by the end of the week.

The dreams are getting more intense. We stare at each other warily in the morning, each of us wondering who’ll be the first to broach the subject of the horrible things we saw last night. Dexter Phillips is incredibly excited though, he thinks that whatever it is will be coming soon. That if we don’t act – and if they don’t listen to us – then the world by the end of the year will be totally unrecognisable.

Sunday, 10th of June

We are in Wales.
Dexter Phillips wasn’t lying when he said he comes from money, as I am typing this from a grand (if slightly needing maintenance) house on the West Wales coast. There is a Welsh name for it, but Dexter – and apparently the entire Phillips family – refer to it as The Manor. It’s the kind of place that once upon a time would have had servants, but now we are self sufficient. There is a rota for cooking breakfast and dinner, and in-between we talk about our dreams and what they mean to the wider world.

After Dexter Phillips and Denise, Julie and I were the first to arrive. We were surprised to find ourselves given single bedrooms. Even when we reminded Dexter that we’re a couple, the sleeping arrangements didn’t alter. The most important things, he said, are the dreams and nothing (including amorous encounters) must be allowed to get in the way of those.

Arriving over the course of the week was Jessica, a hairdresser from Hull; Tom an Australian accountant; and Hans, a footballer from a lower league German team. There are more on their way, we’re promised, but the dynamic between the group as it is now is good. When you’re seeing the same pictures each night, then you do have a lot in common.

Maybe it’s the clean coastal air, or maybe it’s the fact that so many of us are together – but the dreams seem even more intense out here. They are the same dreams, I am still seeing London and my home within the city, but that seems a long way away now.

Wednesday, 6th of June

A quick note that I’m typing hurriedly in the corridor of a train, having excused myself to go to the loo.
I had a call from Alison!

Yes, Alison, my Australian girlfriend who disappeared from my life (and everybody else’s) at the start of the year. I hadn’t thought of her in days, but my phone went off yesterday evening from a  with-held number. At first I couldn’t hear her, it was just static. I was just about to hang up thinking it was a dreadful line, when I heard her voice in the background. It only lasted a few seconds, but she said: “Have a great time in Wales! I’m sure you’ll find what you need!”

Has she read this blog, is that how she knows? But then how can she have found me in Budapest? That wasn’t on this blog beforehand. And of course the biggest question, why does she reach out so obliquely?

I haven’t told Julie about this, I haven’t told Dexter Phillips about Julie either – and yet I can’t help thinking this has something to do with our dreams.

Tuesday, 5th of July

Well, the decision has been made, we are going to Wales. While everyone else was watching the Queen celebrate her sixty years on the throne (or sixty years since they first actually put the crown on her head – I believe they’re different dates, and I’ve stopped paying attention to the mundane or predictable parts of the news) we’ve been packing. It has been a week that has seen both Julie and I racked with dreams. When the alarm has gone off in the morning, we’ve crawled with red ringed eyes into the waking world, still shaking from the night before. Each of us has lost hours of the day on the phone to Dexter Phillips, relating our dreams to him and hearing what went on in his head last night – as well as what other members of our group have told him. Then at the end of each day, mentally and physically exhausted, we curl up next to each other and fearfully await the next instalment of our night-time terrors.
Clearly something has got to give. We cannot concentrate on our life anymore at work, indeed the whole of waking life at the moment is hard after being torn apart by our dreams. And so tomorrow neither of us will go to work, we will each close the door to our flats for the last time, and start the train trip to West Wales.

Sunday, 27th of May

Julie and I have stayed up late talking about it, we’ve called into work sick so we can stay at home discussing it. Sometimes we feel that Dexter Phillips may just be a crank and to give up our careers (admittedly, Julie’s career has had a lot more hard work go into it than my career) is sheer insanity. Equally, what are we going to say to our families when we disappear into the middle of nowhere in West Wales?
But then, the dreams come, so intense and unbelievably scary – so full of portents of danger – that something drastic seems like the only possible response to them.

Friday, 25th of May

In a way it’s blackmail, but clearly Dexter Phillips sees it as more noble than that. We are crusaders, he told us, our role is not only to save the world but improve it.

At the end of the afternoon he and Elvina/Denise left myself and Julie rather shell-shocked. He made it clear again that Wales was by far the best option, that he will look after any financial concerns we might have. This is our chance, he said, and we have to seize it.

We’ve spent the rest of the week thinking on what he’d said and wondering whether we should take this leap into the dark.

Thursday, 25th of May

Once all together in out Welsh country domicile, we can work out what these visions mean and which of them represents the true end of the world. When we have that information clear (Dexter Phillips thinks that will only be a matter of weeks) we will confront the world with the knowledge.

In fact we can do more than confront the world, he told us. We can make a great claim for seeing what is going on, but if people want to know the full story of what is about to happen then things have to change. The world is an ill place at the moment, seriously sick – and if they want the patient to be saved from death, then some of that has to improve before we tell them fully what is going to happen and what they have to do.

Wednesday, 23rd of May

The first step is to get all of us together, the dream guru said. It’s crucial that he is no longer the conduit, instead we should all be in one place and talking. Each day should begin with a discussion of what we’ve just dreamed, a comparison, so that we can interpret what we’ve seen and shape the vision that is being presented.
That is what we are, Dexter Phillips told us, visionaries of a new age.

He wants us all to resign our jobs, to give up our lives. With a twinkle in his eye he told us that he is rich, that his family has money. What’s more, he has a large house in West Wales. It’s quiet and secluded, and has plenty of room for thirteen people to dream safely and work out what’s going to happen next. This coming together has to be fast, he said, within the next few weeks. There’s no need to worry about notice periods or rents, he will handle all of that. We should just quit and go.

Then, when we are all in one place, we will plot what to do next.