Wednesday, 28th of March

I find myself missing Alison. Not because I dream about her a lot, but because in her disappearance and subsequent messages (as well as what might have been her brief reappearance in Hungary) I feel that she’s somehow a lot more connected with me now. I think if I was to sit down and talk to her about my dreams and what I’m thinking, then Alison would understand. It’s like she’s part of it, as if we’re on the same wavelength. (I know that’s not how I necessarily felt about her during our brief relationship, but it’s a sensation I can’t shake now). I know I have Julie, a new girlfriend, but she doesn’t understand and so I don’t try talking to her about it anymore. If I’m honest I think it’s causing a bit of distance between us.
I have all these thoughts and visions in my mind and no one to share them with – apart from perhaps my ex girlfriend (who has vanished) and maybe a female Elvis impersonator in North London.

Jesus! When I put it like that I see that, I really am fucking insane.

Tuesday, 27th of March

In my dreams, when a mushroom cloud appears at the distance – is a nuclear bomb really what I’m seeing? Is it war? Are the Russians, or the Iranians (or even – special relationship gone forever – the Americans) launching strikes against us? Am I witnessing the annihilation of the world as we know it?
Or is it something else? I read once that a nuclear explosion is actually only one percent of the potential energy of the bomb which creates it. Human beings, simple race that we are, don’t yet know how to tap into the full energy in the world around us. Indeed, if we could, there is so much energy untapped within our own bodies that we have the potential to blow up like nuclear bombs ourselves if we could harness it.

So what if the thing I’m seeing is new, not a bomb at all – a development far scarier and more powerful? What if the thing which brings the end of the world is something we only discovered how to do the day before?

Monday, 26th of March

Things I should try to improve this year:
1. My love life (although that seems to be going well, fingers crossed)
2. My book sales (well, I am trying).
3. My job.

I think Louise sees that last one as the root of all my problems – my general malaise in the world of work intruding into the rest of my life (and my dreams). But I’m not sure I buy her thesis, as I’m not overly ambitious career wise and happy to plod along. My job is something I do, not something I am. I did try to explain this to her tonight, but I think I failed. After all, I have told her I’m unhappy there and so one can’t blame her if she thinks I shouldn’t put up with unhappiness.

What else could I possibly do though? I’ve been in this job years now and still have no idea what else I could try.

Sunday, 25th March

Julie was busy last night, so I went to see Elvina – the female Elvis impersonator I found in Clerkenwell. She really is something – sexiness personified, gorgeousness defined. I see her in my dreams of course, singing in the apocalypse, but it was so much better to see her in the flesh. Perhaps I was hoping that the reality would put the dreams out of my head, but that wasn’t the case at all.
She introduced ‘Always On My Mind’ by saying it was for a special friend and admirer – then stared directly at me the entire length of the song. Her body was leant slightly back, so her breasts were high in the spotlight, and her right eyebrow arched knowingly. Why was she staring at me? Did it mean anything, or was it just flirtatious showwomanship? How could she know who I am?

Does she read this blog?

Wednesday, 21st of March

I now understand why people who’ve read Nostradamus say he’s too vague. My father went through it as an undergraduate and he told me that the language is so flowery and the images so opaque, that you can interpret these ramblings to mean virtually anything. Yes he predicted ‘Hister’, but a lot of the others require a huge leap of imagination. I don’t think that I’m a new Nostradamus (not least because this blog is supposed to be there to promote my new novel – that might dent my credibility), but I now see some of the problems about prophesising the future. After all what I am really seeing? Is the world going to end when a meteor strikes, or a nuclear explosion, or some ancient monster from below, or something else? It’s impossible for me to tell, and predicting all those things at once just seems like desperation, as if no matter what happens I’ll be right.
Perhaps my therapist is correct and I have a problem, maybe my girlfriend is correct and I shouldn’t worry about it – but I can’t get these things out of my head.

Tuesday, 20th of March

People talk about being naked in dreams all the time, I guess it’s a sign of vulnerability and helplessness. However I’m rarely naked in my dreams, for whatever reason my own peculiar vulnerabilities are never exhibited in that way. Except last night I was.
I was stood on my street, with the broken branch in front of me, waiting for that bright light to crash in from above. And I was completely nude. But I’m now so used to seeing the world destroyed – I expect it to happen – that my own nudity doesn’t bother me. What does it matter if I'm naked when some meteor or asteroid (or perhaps something completely unidentifiable) is about to fall out of the sky in front of me? We’re all going to die, after all.

But then I start to feel a creeping on my flesh, the hairs on my body start to stand on end. What I’m feeling isn’t just fear, it’s sheer fucking terror. But it’s not at what’s about to fall from the sky. The feeling I have comes from being watched. It comes from the sense that around me there are dozens of pairs of eyes staring at my naked form. It shouldn’t matter as something is about to fall from the sky and obliterate us all anyway. Why should anyone care? But the realisation comes to me that everyone watching me knows what’s about to happen too, and are preparing themselves. In the world that comes afterwards (if we survive) being naked will make you more vulnerable than you have ever been before – it will be good to be armed, good to be protected.

The world afterwards will not be a friendly place.

Monday, 19th of March

My fever dreams are difficult to recall with any clarity now, but I’m sure there was one of them involving Louise. We were sat in her room, and her eyebrow was raised as I talked through one of the crises in my life – probably the dreams themselves, but maybe the intruder in my flat, or perhaps Alison. (Not even my own therapist takes me seriously). And just as her eyebrow arches its highest, there is a sudden explosion from outside. It’s an incredible sound, clearly not particularly near but one that vibrates through us both and smashes the glass in the windows. In an instant the air is sucked out of the room, and the expression on her face changes. It looks like fear, but perhaps there is also the realisation that she should really try to believe me.