Had my first 1940’s newsreel dream, all black and white and crackly. Orson Welles was leading me around various abandoned places: first a derelict V2 rocket testing ground (only recently abandoned of course), then around some old mines in a rocky part of New Mexico and finally that big shadowy castle in France where the mysterious Cathar sect lived. All the while Welles was narrating some big theme about humanity and history, though I can’t remember what, and I was fascinated. Then he spins around and, with that naughty school boy expression he has in the Third Man, he says “But wait, Jim! Look: you’ll be LATE!!!”The next thing I know I’m in the dark of my flat, frantically stumbling out of bed mumbling ‘shit, shit…’

Only then do I realise I’m not late for anything, it’s four in the morning, and that I’ve been tricked by the dream of a dead charismatic genius.