Forbidden Juice

Dad explains that when I was a kid I had been desperate for this string of sweet juice that I thought was sex energy. I was mad to have it, but I'd misbehaved so it was being kept from me. He said it was just Ribena, but I remember it as this concentrated solution of yellow Space Dust and sherbet lemonade steeped in tobacco tins.

Mr Obama Goes To Washington

I am in a communal sittingroom. I turn on the telly- white noise then a blue screen with fragments of  text - now a scene from a cheap American film. The setting is the early sixties, the dialogue uninspired. Lead character walks on and I realise it's a remake of Frank Capra's Mr Smith Goes To Washington but it's about Barack Obama's early life. It is as if it has been made with the racist undertones of a 1930's film so that gawky teen Obama is played by a white actor with exaggerated bulging eyes. I am angry at the grotesque caricature.

In the original film James Stewart plays the part of Mr Smith a naive idealist who fights political corruption and guards American values as a moral hero.

Celestial Flight

My dream leads me along a sunny country lane. I sense that my point of view is 6 inches higher than normal - am I floating? I take the liberty of turning my body horizontal and find I am able to partially control the dream. I glide up spiralling granite steps which morph into the carved feathers of an angel and here I sit singing with a boy's unbroken voice - a tiny insect held by the warm air pressure flying high high snug in those safe wings.

The rest of the night was filled with nightmares dominated by a giant Keanu Reeves slicing his arms open.

Yellow Dress

I get invited to this Roman toga party and end up wearing a lemon yellow nylon nightie and a blonde wig. Too much yellow I think - not very flattering - and the wig changes to black but is inside out.  I am  younger and more muscular than usual. 

Am I safe? I wonder as I clamber through a burrow into the town's library. 

I get the odd look but no-one is really aggressive and the overall feeling is one of liberation.

Quackery Smackery

Following his eviction from Big Brother we watch clips of Robert Kilroy Silk performing conjuring tricks where he removes people's intelligence.  The audience is transfixed. He used this device to attract voters but his shallow campaign has been exposed and now, even within his own crazy party, he is reduced to a laughing stock.

Back To Basics

A statue of Lenin high in the mountains is illuminated by artificial flames. I am finishing a week's drawing course here and I am the only student to have achieved nothing.  As dusk falls I set out with inadequate materials.  I wear a necklace I have found hoping this will give me inspiration but I am not optimistic. I decide all I can do is to make a series of small noctural landscapes- anything to get me going again.

Overwhelming Mass Of Disaffected

This was no normal demo of environmentalists and ramblers - this was an expanding rabble in search of rest and sustenance. We knew they were due to arrive but little had prepared us for the large numbers gathering below our glass room.  

"Dont give them one inch," says our friend, "we have to be tough otherwise the next generation will swamp and destroy us."