All very strange . . . and then I turned the power on last night and it wouldn't boot up . . . gave me this strange error . . . something fatal, but now it's working fine and I've no idea what I did to fix it.

Visited Sam's new flat in my dreams last night. That was all very strange too. Like, I was there, wandering around, when suddenly I said to Sam, "You've moved, haven't you?" whick freaked Sam a bit, because he was like, "What you on about? I've moved from Sheffield, yes, but I haven't moved since then. This is the same place," and then proceeded to show me around. We got to the cellar and something very odd was going on down there. At first I thought it was that feeling you get when the dream's about to turn to a nightmare, as the atmosphere was kind of . . . thick, but it wasn't that. I couldn't put my finger on it . . . the atmosphere was just really heavy down there . . . it was difficult to move through . . . and it made my hair stand on end. Hmmmmmm. Ah well, at least I wasn't watching some guy munching through handfuls of bugs and parasites this time. I didn't like that. That was the same dream where I was within some torus-shaped underwater complex that was clearly in trouble . . . water was pouring in and people were running around, panicking everywhere. Fortunately, I had bumped into this guy who was able to bend metal with his bare hands. He stopped the water pouring into the room we had occupied (I think this happened in one of the Superman films), but I couldn't help but notice that he hadn't done a brilliant job; water was still coming in, just not much. Didn't Superman do a spot of welding with his laser beam eye things? Oh, it was an oil tanker, wasn't it? Ah yes. Last night's dream was dull. Wandering around Leeds, passed this record shop next door to a second-hand musical instrument shop (you know, amps, guitars, synths, stuff like that) and this guy stood next to me start blabbering on about . . . well, rubbish, really. He seemed to have his dad with him, who was mumbling about having lost some receipt for something and that he would have to go back somewhere to get his receipt. The shutters slowly lifted and the shop opened. First thing that hit me was the amount of echo machines the guy had for sale . . . then I noticed a load of nasty Casio keyboard, a couple of ancient but very heavy looking keyboards . . . then this weird Korg that had three strange glowing orbs to the left as some kind of glorified pitch wheel thingies. I started playing with the keyboard, getting weird noises out of it, when that guy who had been blabbering to me outside the shop kind of shuffled up to me and started tentatively pressing a few buttons too . . . then the owner suddenly announced, "Oh, I'm afraid I can't sell anything right now due to the ongoing 'issues' with one of our suppliers." I had no idea what he was on about. "See, they just cut off the electricity from time to time," the shuffling freak told me, "Really? Can they do that?" but I don't think I ever found out the answer, not that I was all that bothered.

so we drove over to Lancaster, leaving at about 12 o'clock? 1 o'clock? I dunno. Dropped Anna off at her mum's house and then popped into Booths for a few things . . . beer, wine, stuff like that. I bumped into Patrick there. Who's Patrick? Well, I used to work with Patrick, a very, very long time ago. It was at the laundry for, erm . . . Lancaster Health Authority? God knows . . . anyway, I (and Patrick and a few others) folded sheets, attached sheets to machines for folding and stuff like that. I must have been 16 or 17 at the time. Anyway, often when I'm back in Lancaster I bump into Patrick, but I don't think I've seen him for a couple of years now. Anyway . . . we went back to my parent's house, M**** and I, and sat around for a while, drinking beer, chatting to my mum, taking photographs of the family tree . . . blah, blah, blah. When my dad came back, we had a few sparklers and fireworks (well, one, actually . . . it was called 'Burning Bush') at around 17:25 . . . then we wandered into town to meet people. The plan was to meet Tania at 6pm at the, erm . . . John O'Gaunt, but it didn't open until 7pm (how crazy is that?) so we had to go to the Merchant's instead. I'm confused now . . . did Anna meet us at 7pm then? I know the meal was booked for 19:30. Erm . . . well, whatever. We were all (as in me, M****, Tarn and Anna) at the Merchant's at about 7pm (and, indeed, 19:28, as the time on these photographs states) and a bit over half an hour later we fought our way against crowds of people (all moving towards the firework display up at the Priory, I guess) towards Crows. M**** was going about the coloured, paper lanterns hanging from the ceiling . . . I tried to take pictures, but they didn't come out too well. At 9pm we met Darren and his new girlfriend, Kate, at the Merchant's (yes, I know, again). I'm not sure how late we left it, but after the Merchant's, still clutching my bottle of wine, we made our way towards Meredith's house for this party. I don't have any pictures of this . . . which is a shame, really. But hey . . . we left at about . . .

. . . 2:26 in the morning. Left to right, that's M****, Gen and Lucy. Got the taxi back . . . I can just about remember that. I can remember a lot about when we got home though. We went outside to the road (if you can call it that . . . alleyway?) running at the back of my parent's house, as M**** wanted a cigarette. I remember telling her about the time I had accidentally left my red bike there in the middle of the road . . . I had to rush inside for something and I just completely forgot about it. I was probably seven or eight years old at the time . . . I'm not sure though. Then this guy, who lived four doors down from my parents, a very fat man, who lived with his mother (probably still does) . . . well, he's there in his van, wanting to get past, only there's this bike in the way, see? So he just sits there, in his van, beeping his horn for about . . . five minutes. Eventually, he gets bored of this . . . so guess what he does? Gets out of his van, maybe? Moves the little red children's bike out of his way? Naaaaah. Let's just drive over it. And he did. That's the kind of guy he was.

So after a lot of sleep, I had a bit of breakfast and then made my way towards the house of James and Hilary. We sat around for a while (and what's this?), and then I suggested we go for a walk some place. Our walk took us along the quay, and there I noticed that the arches of Carlisle Bridge (over which the train runs) have arches within the arches. How cool is that? These were taken at about 15:53/54.

It's funny having a digital camera - you can take pictures of such rubbish. I went to Beer Ritz in Far Headingley this evening and bought a selection of strange beers. These are two of them. You see what I mean? I've worked out that if I drink all six bottles, it will probably be the equivalent of drinking 10-12 pints of normal beer, as these beers are all at least 8.5% ABV. The 'Delirium nocturnum' is 9% ABV. I bought another somewhere that's 14%. Scary. I also bought a 3-way ladder (as in, it can be a step-ladder, a normal ladder and ladder suitable for staircases, you see? YOU SEE?) from Wilkinson's, but that's another story. This meant two trips to Headingley - one on foot, and one on my bike. I can now climb up to the highest ceilings in my house, which is always good . . . might mean I can start removing that god-awful wood-chip wallpaper. A prize worth at least £20 to the first person to correctly identify those two books there in the picture.

Following on from comments made, er . . . somewhere around here, I'm putting up pictures of my house in various stages of decoration/undecoration. So this is the nasty damp patch that I mentioned yesterday. There's various pipes coming down from the top of the house that kind of bend around the bay window before heading for drains/sewers, as they do. Trouble us, not all the water is getting there . . . some of it's leaking into my house. That picture on the right there . . . that's just a different angle, with a little desk light resting on my piano. As you can also see in this second picture, previous owners have actually liked these dado rail things. I had joy ripping those off. A long time ago, they would have been about a foot from the ceiling, but when I moved in they were about three to four feet from the floor. Wretched things anyway. The only reason I didn't rip these off unceremoniously with my crow-bar was because I didn't want to be patching up unnecessarily large holes in my plaster. Still, that's what they deserved. "Hey, I know, dearest. You know how these ceilings are, like, really high up, yeah? Well, let's break it up a bit with a line of dark wood, about two inches thick, but around all the walls at the same height, and then maybe we can hang god-awful pictures from them . . . whaddaya say?" That looks my piano to the left there, all safely protected from the dangers of DIY with several old sheets and duvet covers. Poor thing.