I AM AT A WEDDING RECEPTION BEING HELD IN BUCKINGHAM PALACE. I wander off into the Queen’s private wing and start nosing around. I’m walking down a corridor and come face-to-face with the Queen. I make excuses.
“I got lost,” I say nervously, “I was looking for a way out.”
“No you weren’t,” the Queen replies, “I don’t like you. You’re not honest!”
I return to the wedding reception. I can hear the voice of an old friend called David. He’s telling a joke to a group of wedding guests. I approach him and say “Hi”. A young man joins us and asks me for advice on how to dance with girls. I tell him he should keep a journal and show him mine. Then a young woman comes up to me and asks me to dance with her. We dance. She seems attracted to me. Later, I go to find her in her hotel (palace) room. I knock on her door and someone I don’t recognise answers. I ask if the young woman is in and I’m told “No”, but then she walks past me. She approaches a group of her friends and starts to talk to them. I say “Hello”, but she doesn’t acknowledge me. It’s like I don’t exist anymore.
A celebrity comes back to my childhood bedroom in Slade Green. I’m not sure who he is, but he’s laying on my bed!
“Do you know Tom Cruise is a Jehovah’s Witness?” I ask him.
“No he’s not”, he replies.
“Well, I met Bill Bailey,” I continue, “and Anthony Hopkins came for dinner once.”
He’s unimpressed at my claims and morphs into a Jehovah’s Witness called Greg. I start crawling up the wall and across the ceiling like Spiderman. Greg looks worried. His wife, Helen, enters the bedroom. She asks if I’m going to rejoin the first aid team at the next regional convention.
“Yes,” I say, “but if James (the paramedic) tries it on again I’ll tell him where to go because he’s a big head!”
The bedroom needs decorating. The walls have been stripped of wallpaper and there is an old pair of yellow nursery curtains hanging at the window. I tell Greg it used to be my kid’s room. There are some large sheets of chipboard leaning against one of the walls. I tell Greg they used to have a trainset attached to them. I try to show the chipboard sheets to Greg but they morph into maps of the world.
I go downstairs. Now I’m in my living room in Whitwell. There are more chipboard sheets leaning against the walls. I go outside. Now I’m in Wirksworth in Matlock. There is a new(ish) white 4×4 pick-up truck on the drive. It’s mine. My dad has sold my Mitsubishi Pajero without asking me. The white truck is strangely long, like it’s been stretched out of proportion. I restore it to its proper dimensions and my children start washing it for me.
There is a small parking bay at the front of my drive facing onto Wirksworth high street. I shrink two of my other cars down to the size of an A4 sheet of paper. They morph into actual sheets of paper with the words “Parking Ticket” on them. I place the sheets in the parking bay to stop strangers from parking on my drive. Then I remember a few weeks ago I parked my Yugo in a car park somewhere in town and left it there.
I approach my mum and say, “Mum, can you drive me to the free car park? I left my Yugo there.”
“It’s probably gone by now,” she says, “like all the other cars you’ve parked up and forgotten about.”