PETER PANIC

My Diary - Page Sixteen


01/10/08: My wife and I spent the day under a glass dome (with a nice ornamental scrolled top).  She did the house work and I pulled the mummified remains of several French nuns from the inside of an antique grandfather clock - the first one was far less alcoholic than I anticipated so I danced a jig on the landing with my entire record collection on my head.  The evening was spent watching the snow flake darkness descend.
02/10/08: I got up in the red wine darkness and left the house with two artificial hands in my pockets.  I caught a swan to visit the old man from Celtic mythology.  My first task was to build a house on his head - a task I couldn't complete as there was several people already standing there.  I spent the evening waiting for an escaped pantomime witch to descend clutching twenty five golden eggs.  My wife held the frying pan like it was a television celebrity.
03/10/08: I asked my wife to butter two large slices of bread so that I could lay between them.  Using apples and oranges as wheels I drove my sandwich to the shop where I stood like a lamp - it was late in the day before someone came in and turned me off.  I thought of pixie music as I roller skated home, pulling a dozen milk churns behind me.  About half way up the hill I met myself as a child coming down.  I gave him a plastic milk lorry.
04/10/08: Alone in a room I filled it with lengths of string - the kittens, who I am teaching to lip read, kept an eye out for anyone approaching with a pair of scissors.  I had a little time to invent and play a five neck guitar in the garden, watering one of the stone houses but not the other (I could hear the voices of the people who went before).  I swam fifteen lengths in my wine glass before becoming liquid and pouring down the road to work.
05/10/08: I couldn't leave the concrete mushroom house because of the rain.  The anaconda people next door were moving in - I spoke to their dog; we talked of flaming birds ascending from a nettle patch.  June and I dressed as leprechauns and shredded paper.  After spanning a gorge to let a family of squirrels cross I went to work with a paper bag over my head.  I danced alone, turned the bag inside out and eventually came home.
06/10/08: I got up and went out of the goblin door, my hair like the bottom of the sea.  I found the bramble patch put I couldn't find Brer Rabbit.  I had to leave the octopus writhing as I came in to answer the phone, when I came back he was a god - I contemplated blackness.  June went to town as I went to live inside a marmalade jar (I licked the lid in my studio), she came back with a clock hidden inside a stone.  We could hear it ticking.
07/10/08: I swam out of bed and over the waterfall to the kitchen were June was reading to the rabbit.  I leapt over the neighbours fence to have an Elizabethan breakfast - I spoke to Shakespeare as he kick boxed the postman.  I had some time in the turret of the castle my spider ancestors had created before crawling down the retractable ruler road to post a letter.  The evening was spent remembering dreams with the young girl I found behind the mirror.
08/10/08: I walked along a tunnel before getting up and out into the orange air.  June squeezed a jug full while I went to paddle in the bird bath.  I saw the ostrich find buried treasure before coming in to sit on a cactus.  While the rain fell I painted a face which was also a revolver and pulled on the rope to ring the bells.  As the wallpaper rolled down the wall I had to walk to the place where only tiny people work; but came home early.
09/10/08: I got up early to spend the day within a polythene bag.  I saw faces distorted like fairground goldfish; as the day progressed the bag got bigger (the gorilla day was born!).  I was standing alone thinking of wearing sea anemones for hair when June walked in with a dunces hat made from flowers - I pulled a length of railway track from her pocket.  She went home holding the hand of a strange looking green creature.
10/10/08: I got up quite early and stood indoors like the encrusted mast of a long sunken ship; my wife, however, floated about the house astride a large cornflake.  I met the old warrior (who had his, still shining, weapons in a shopping bag).  I came back with a pet stick man to do lines I had previously given myself.  I had to rush out in the middle of the afternoon as the empty bottles rolled down the hill.  I came back later with several filled.
11/10/08: I decided to clean the palace which had recently risen out of the small market town sea.  I tied dusters to three of my hands and moved like a mermaid's tail on an imaginary beach.  After this I  sewed buttons to the walls and pretended they were eyes - later I undid them as they blinked.  In the bonfire afternoon I walked across a concrete meadow, where concrete flowers were still blooming, and said hello to Kate.
12/10/08: A bright day with the sun masquerading as an octopus.  I painted white lines on the top of my head but nothing landed.  However, I did discuss foreign cuisine with a group of guinea pig tourists (one was black and white and the other brown and white).  After I put a table cloth over the smiling face in the garden I spent the remainder of my day riding in a chariot in the old magician's library.  I got a big red book off the shelf and dusted it.
13/10/08: I had the whole day to myself, although I knew there was a collection of severed heads that I kept in boxes that wanted to talk to me.  I said good morning to the tourists before climbing a pole in my studio; once at the top I found it easy to paint eyes - every cloud and high tree is now staring at me.  I closed my own eyes in the afternoon and imagined saving the smoke girl from the fire boys.  I woke up with a lap full of vegetarian dumplings.
14/10/08: I stepped out of the picture quite early; smoke was still circulating from the recent gunfight.  The secret message said I would be among the cognizant frog kings during the evening so I spent as much time as I could on the level playing field during the day.  My friend the crayon was concerned by the age gap between herself and her paintbrush lover.  I hitched a lift on the roller coaster where the future remnants of the human race will seek refuge.
15/10/08: I went out of the house in a toy boat, collected the hay for the horses in my head and came back talking to a leprechaun.  June and I had dinner in an unknown South American country.  When got back home I had to crawl under a hedge to talk to a bearded lady - June held the box but no comments were recorded.  I walked a tight rope to work where Kate was cradling a shrew.  I held a guinea pig who I called Beatrice or Benedict.
16/10/08: I went out in the morning to see the man who lives on a roof.  I clambered up to speak to him clutching my snowboard, catching one of the flippers of my scuba suit on bramble as I did so.  The old man was an Eighteenth Century farm worker - I remembered the old farm cottage with several sets of headlights moving across the wall.  I said goodbye to Ratty and came home by tramp steamer.  The girl sailed  into port that evening
17/10/08: I had a clean sheet to work on as I got out of bed beneath the remains of a steam locomotive I keep on the wall as a trophy. Against the advice of the windmill sage I worked all morning in the jungle among the paper animals.  I called the afternoon sleepy and painted by tallow light in Paleolithic caves - I heard simulated sounds of future life forms as I prepared the space ship for a trip to a friend's two dimensional garden.
18/10/08: I did not have the day I planned, I thought this while moving granite boulders that had settled in the immediate area overnight.  I added them to the sea defenses on top of the hill and then went down with Jill.  We had dinner on a landfill site wearing fox heads and drinking red wine - I wrote a boat on my plate watched by people who had been pinned to the walls.  All evening I stood still while Claire sat motionless.
19/10/08: I spent a lot of my time in a garden that had appeared on a saucer before the cup was put back down (I remembered a day in my childhood when I watched an army of crockery sets march by).  I had time to ride a paper dart to the jungle before going to work down the wishing well.  While fighting the monsters that exist only in dark places I patented a design for a new type of rope ladder.  I tried to sell it to an Indian on the way home.
20/10/08: I had breakfast on a chess board and then tried to copy the symbols that had mysteriously appeared on the dining room floor.  One of the symbols became a smile so I taped it up.  I tried to signal to a ship which was sailing too close to the rocks but I couldn't get the tape off.  It rained in the dark caverns which mimic life on the surface;  I put a coat on the dragon who was sleeping there - I didn't want its fire to go out.
21/10/08: My first task of the day was to cut a path into the bamboo so the old relic could be dragged through.  Action men in monks clothes practiced for the adventure.  I made musical instruments from the pipes and a friend turned them into young girls.  I had black hands and made marks on the white wall - these were later interpreted as a plan for a herbaceous border to be planted on one of Saturn's moons.  The old man held his beard.
22/10/08: My wife and I had to take the mini men to the vets.  The one I call Ernst invented a new art technique on the way - I swallowed a scale model of a new shopping centre as he did so.  I came home wearing an ice cream cone on my head, which my wife said was very fetching.  I tried to make a picture out of the mist and then walked to the old mill where the workers blow on spiders legs to make music.  I turned the radio off and came home.
23/10/08: I went out in the pitch dark and found myself inside a snail shell, the lights penetrating its thin walls.  When I touched down the space craft was red hot so I cleaned the bathroom before coming home hanging onto a bird feather.  Once in the partially lit cave I tried to reproduce the lines on my forehead but all I managed to create was a landscape - barren like an old slide.  I sat at my desk feeling the emergence of wings from the sides of my hat.
24/10/08: I slid down the morning stairs on a slice of toast only to find myself hanging from the side of a high hedge - The ivy was slowly cut.  Once in the pig sty I tried to rob my own bank while drawing horizontal lines on a vertical panel.  The police came just as I made the lines meet.  I had to go out later in the day to stuff half empty bottles in a tuba before blowing it in an old mans orchestra.  The orchestra ate shepherds pie as an encore.
25/10/08: After spiraling down from the inside of a cloud I went out to sit on the side of a hill while wild horses rode over head.  Colleagues and I cut down a number of homes - the bonfire took a long time to light.  I wandered round aimlessly with a goldfish bowl over my face and then came home.  When I got in I fell asleep on the head of a pin.   After an hour of two I pulled myself out of the pin cushion and helped to make a dress.
26/10/08: It poured with rain inside the glass dome I had attached to the end of my nose.  When I looked though the glass the dog looked half her normal size - later I saw her running from a giant centipede.  I rescued the dragon from Andromeda and then settled down to copying images of the solar system from inside my head (someone photographed me talking to aliens - I heard the camera click).  I walked home pursued by a gigantic earthworm.
27/10/08: I sat in a canoe and paddled to the breakfast table, having waterproof cereal before splashing in molten lava.  I stood, legs apart, over my very own Pompeii.  My head was in the clouds and pink flamingoes perched on my sunken galleon glasses.  I had a little time with the Lady Of The Lake before going to a meeting with a pink wine glass in my hand - a volcano appeared in my glass and I ate cranberry flavoured cheese as the ash fell. 
28/10/08: I tried to get up earlier, seeing a reflection of myself with a hatchet in my head as I did so.  I stumbled down stairs like a man who had been trapped in a spider's web all night.  I planned to mend the hole that had appeared in the sky over our heads but ended up bringing all my under garments inside for the winter.  I was able to play all evening with several icicles stuck in my ear holes, finally melting when my wife turned the music up.
29/10/08: I scratched my head until a band of apache Indians had collected on the horizon.  Pulling my Winchester rifle from my packet of muesli I went out to water the garden.  I came in when the buffalo started to stampede, the hands on my watch had turned to wings and I had to get ready to fight the silent gladiators which collect on the overhead wires before flying south.  I blew up my plastic gloves after I got home.
30/10/08: I got up early and went out through a half open mouth before the fashion model had switched her light on.  I found the grey haired man sitting inside his shell, together we listened to the sea coming in.  I came home via the opposite side of the planet (for some reason), walked in and saw my wife and dog hopping on pogo sticks.  Apart from my Lusitania door mat all the walls, ceiling and floor of my studio were sticky - I got stuck!
31/10/08: I got out of the watery bed and stood like lighthouse.  I saw several sinking ships in the distance as I cuddled a guinea pig.  I had a little time in the middle of the day to lay a rope down in the shape of a man.  Later I became the missing piece in a jigsaw and then unfortunately lost myself again.  I was found in an empty shop trying to sell nothing to no customers.  I got home in a spider taxi, crawled out and slept in an moth cocoon.
01/11/08: I had to get up early to carry a ladder down the road and then carry it back again - I didn't notice that someone was climbing down on the way home.  The middle of the day, which was uncovered like a fat woman pretending to be a teenager, was occupied with a hammer in my hand - most of the furniture in the house hid.  I then skipped to the garishly lit puddle where I am often known to splash, returning later with wet feet.
02/11/08: Somehow I accidentally unzipped the ceiling and various long legged creatures were able to climb out; I told them all it was raining outside.  I had time to clamber back up the pole and emulate a flag, although I wasn't sure what nationality it was.  In the afternoon I trudged to the deserted mine where I waited for the ghosts to arrive.  When they were all present among the fallen debris I switched on my camera and filmed myself writing this.
03/11/08: I had a relatively normal morning; tied to the tracks while a row of hats rolled over me - I caught the last one and sat in its carriage (in the distance a little child called Gerald knocked on the huge door of the ogre's house).  I spent all the evening in the dwarves workshop, they busied themselves making things while I sat in the corner with my thumb stuck in a cup of hot water.  I was glad to escape when all the lights were turned on.
04/11/08: I walked down the watery lane in search of my stack of wood; the elves were collecting up shards of glass to freeze.  As I wasn't needed in the crows nest I returned home with my motorised ball and chain.  I had time to sit in a bright red landscape with a green cat on my lap.  After reading last weeks newspapers with my eyelash lunch I disappeared in the orange jungle again.  I came out with a purple python wrapped round my neck.
05/11/08: I started the day by running down the road holding as big a cup of coffee as possible; I ended up falling in it.  I came home to receive a delivery of doors - I am still awaiting a delivery of walls; I wrote a message with a white feather in the interim.  The day took a turn for the worse as the rain started to fall before I had finished making the cage I could contain myself in.  After metamorphosis I escaped, leaving a solitary feather as I did so.
06/11/08: I got up early to hang from the climbing frame like an orang-utan.  After several cups of tea I tied flowers to a pole and vaulted home (woodpeckers knocked on the door for me).  I had a little time to lay the flowers in front of my easel before climbing to the top of the forest canopy and turning the radio up for the carpenters by the cross.  I had to make up imaginary numbers with magnets before I could take a cat chariot home again.
07/11/08: I opened my eyes while laying in a canoe drifting down a slowly moving river.  I thought about writing letters as a kingfisher preened in multicolour while perched on the antenna of a robot just landed from another planet's town.  I had meant to hide myself in a test tube as the pig people looked for a new deity to worship.  After the siren had sounded I pulled my head out of a bag and looked at the desert island telephone.
08/11/08: I met the druid as he went to town along a ley line.  I came back to my mobile home constructed on a German half-track last used in the Second World War.  I tried to build a wardrobe where the gun once fitted.  Unfortunately I couldn't persuade the commander to loosen the nuts.  I did a war dance with a lump hammer but left the room in pieces.  These were later made into a wedding cake by the sisters of the shadow man.
09/11/08: I got up out of a bed built on stilts, jumped down by parachute and started work again on the wardrobe.  I secretly wished I had made it from the soft bones I could have bought from the Merchant of Venice; instead I was trying to mould it from the fossilised remains of the whale Jonah kept his wine in.  I managed to sail the Atlantic on a raft before going out in the late afternoon to stand in a lake with tin lids as eyes.
10/11/08: I put in the square eyes I kept in an old biscuit barrel beside the bed.  Then instead of waiting for my breakfast to spew forth from a volcano hidden under the sink I went upstairs, wrapped myself in strands of ancient linen and became a mummy in the wardrobe - the robe became a giant all seeing eye.  I had to wipe away its tears as we both stood watching my avatar hammer away on the bright green casket - inside was a piece of old carpet.
11/11/08: I had to go up and down the lines in the board game garden before I could strap myself in the capsule.  Once inside I looked at people I once knew through a stained glass window and then went out to watch a game of football played in the tree tops.  I got home earlier than expected and sat down in front of a giant's jawbone which was laying on the carpet where my wife had just launched the TV into space - the ass returned to Earth safely.
12/11/08: I decided to search for the invisible webs of invisible spiders and walked about the kitchen with treacle in my hair.  I put on pyjamas so I could walk in bare feet.  I had to quickly turn the page which the two dimensional man was reading and then sat in a sacred circle.  I managed to make one row of aboriginal marks in the overhanging rocks but the second line turned into a row of sunglasses left out in a rainstorm.
13/11/08: I left the house made from broken eggs shells very early.  The road was made from plasticine and the motor vehicles from cardboard.  I was a plastic kit waiting to be made and got off the bus in pieces.  I spent a couple of hours looking at derelict castles before swimming the moat.  I pulled myself out of the water with my paper wings crumpled.  I stroked the cat, patted the dog and then placed a pile of stones on the head of a friend.
14/11/08: I walked into a box and surprisingly found myself on the edge of a crater.  I spent some time there holding various nails in my mouth - listening all the time to the voices in my hat.  I came back to the great dome to whisper and collected up pencil shavings into mounds like ancient burial sites.  I pinned a smile to the map and went to work attached to a piece of elastic.  When the pin was pulled I sprung back home with paint in my hair.
15/11/08: I brushed my hair with a tractor and came downstairs in a shower of robotic bees - my wife winked her eye at a jellyfish which was majestically sailing by.  Later I dismantled a chest of drawers and used the parts to assemble a mechanical gun fighter which then accidentally shot the postman.  That evening I became one of many mannequins standing in wine bottles.  I came home tied to my steed with several toy soldiers in my pocket.
16/11/08: I stepped out of an ancient door way holding onto a bag of oats; a flock of birds flew hypnotically inside the cardboard box I was wearing as a hat.  A pterodactyl perched on the top - we passed the time of day as a group of mushrooms shot out of the ground and started a game of football.  I became goal post while the pterodactyl became the referee.  I was given a red card and walked to work with my feet in bags of wet earth.
17/11/08: I got out of bed with my tape measure at the ready and examined several doors before climbing out of the window ( I held on tightly to a bag of sawdust). I counted the number of flags stuck into a cloud floating overhead like an ocean liner before it was torpedoed. Eventually I crawled into the cockpit in my studio and nose-dived into a new painting.  I paddled about in green and brown paint before walking like Joan of Arc.
18/11/08: I stepped out of the frog mouth later than usual; I wrapped myself in a postage stamp and descended to the ground floor in a petticoat elevator.  I lifted it up, wolf whistled and walked out.  I had my breakfast in a boat and drifted outside holding the cat and a model space rocket.  I painted on Mars most of the day, although I walked my wife to town along a giant squid's tentacle - later I traipsed through the swamp lands holding an urn.
19/11/08: I cranked up my engine and came out of my hanger with sawdust flying everywhere.  I said hello to the tree man like I did on the other days when the paper aeroplane in my head found it difficult to land.  I had some time on the sunlit plain, my pencil standing out like an African spear, before crawling to work on my snake belly.  Kate came in holding an apple which she preceded to eat while I swept the floor.
20/11/08: I got up early and walked out of the door holding a number of sheets which I had previously knotted together.  By the time they had unravelled I was talking to the kindly old man with a bull's head.  I spent some time laying on a plate like a cheese and onion quiche before venturing home trailed by several wild men from the lost frontiers.  I shut the door quickly and unpacked my sixes and sevens guns.
21/11/08: I got out of bed without a label so I wasn't sure what I was for the day.  I decided by lunch time that I was a Jurassic handshake and spoke to the elf that knocked on the door in several languages - he gave me a parcel I didn't really want.  I was the omphalos of the world over an extended lunch and while the car windscreen wipers jerked to a stop I went out wearing socks on my hands instead of gloves.
22/11/08: I held court in the morning to the milk bottle people until my breakfast had sailed out of its port.  I had a few moments when the giant blinked to run on the spot, after which I gathered up my clothes and became a suitcase in a railway carriage.  June and I counted polar bears and saw stars as the robed people switched the lights on.  We came home quickly with various vegetables nonchalantly stuffed into our pockets.
23/11/08: I should have gone out but couldn't because the tiny creatures that inhabit the train station when no one else is around would not let me on - I was wearing a girdle made from the vines removed from the sacred grove.  I stayed  at home as the rain slowing diminished.  Both June and I saw our neighbours taxiing down the runway with their hands outstretched.  I spun my propellor and did a lot of work around the house.
24/11/08: The day started in multi-dimensions as I scratched the cat's head instead of my own.  I had a bowl of milk for my breakfast and then retired to the gun turret to try and wear pet guinea pigs as earrings.  I saw Natalie in the evening coming out of the mist that collects over stagnant water.  I remembered coming from hospital with rows of trees obscuring every house.  I lost several pieces before I even started the jigsaw.
25/11/08: I replaced my morning head with a block of granite but still managed to live where snakes wind themselves round broken statues.  I undid the string holding the brown parcel together and got out several versions of the same afternoon.  I decided on the one that matched the wallpaper and played with this until I had to roll down the road like a piece of tumbleweed.  I came back with my evening head replaced with a clump of seaweed.
26/11/08: I woke up like a fly in the ointment - my wife was a pair of curtains. I had time to aimlessly ice skate in the derelict palace called my studio (with a short break going down Lizard Street and then coming back with straw instead of hair).  After revolving several times on an old record player I went out to work with all my possessions carried in a sack slung over my shoulder.  I came home dressed only in a fishing net.
27/11/08: After an early morning spent in Delilah the slime mould's boudoir I went out to dinner with some soft humans that had recently emerged from the giant egg that landed among a pile of children's comics.  I imagined myself as the egg man fighting the flying spiders while holding onto the Empire State Building.  I won, as I always did in my flower pot man dreams, and traipsed off with my shopping bag holding it's head in a cloud.
28/11/08: I found myself encased in metal and clanked to work promising never to harm a human.  I had a busy morning and ate my robot lunch while stapling my eyelids to a book.  The afternoon was spent in the smoke lands.  I was the King Fire that suddenly went out and as the evening was cold I huddled up with all the other knights of the Round Table until the cards were drawn and I had to arrange the plastic dolls in their own room.
29/11/08: Early in the morning I rested on the edge of a saucer contemplating the sheer size of the cup that loomed above.  My other self had a cup of tea and then lassoed several memories which were trying to escape.  I rode after the outlaws until I stopped in a miniature village and to my surprise saw the head of a bright pink giraffe sticking up above the trimmed yew hedges.  I decided to uncut the hedges and grow nettles in tubs outside the front door.
30/11/08: Today was a wet spider's web and I didn't know which road June and I were on.  I walked aimlessly holding a collection of sawn timber - all different lengths - while June dropped plastic eyes into several tin cans.  I planned to make a model railway at the foot of the gibbet but then decided to fold up the tracks and put two bolts into my neck.  Later June and I went out to see the bank that Rupert Bear fell down.
01/12/08: I got up too late in the mouth shaped morning.  Every room I walked into was filled with spaghetti so I wore metal forks as earrings.  Laughing at my own jokes I pulled a wooden ladder out of my permed hair and waited for someone to climb down it.  I had a little time in the listening afternoon to turn the spaghetti into painted lines on a canvas.  After work the eye shaped evening blinked in front of a forgotten fire.
02/12/08: I decided to sleep in a mass of frog spawn and rose like an amphibian "lady of the lake".  I splashed about for a little while before feeding the cats and playing a game of chess with the dog.  It was a little while before the merman blew his horn after which I worked in my studio in the Nautilus.  Meanwhile Mrs. Nemo wrapped presents with jellyfish paper and octopus tape.  I wasted the evening standing alone on a hill in the living room.
03/12/08: I jumped down from the flying saucer to do some odd jobs for June; she then wanted me to become the ring master in an electricity pylon circus (I usually don't like circuses unless they are watched by animals).  Back for the afternoon, I wiped away the tears from the canvas as I tried to find a photograph I had only ever seen once - picture cards replaced my fingers as I waltzed to work.  I was the grand telegraph pole as the cold rain fell.
04/12/08: I got up early to walk the pheasant feather way in the pouring rain - stuck to the windscreen wiper was a photograph.  I spoke to the clouds and then I spoke to the grand old man who lives below them.  I came home in the sunshine riding a crossbow bolt.  I thudded into the door and later opened it to someone bringing me flowers.  Before dinner, I went out in the rain again to rescue an alligator from the dark.  After dinner I slept like a baby.
05/12/08: I had to break from my conversation with the snake man and tread the path to the bottom of the garden where a man I knew lived in a bucket.  I came home with water in my shoe.  Jack and Jill had dinner together while making plans for their life in a dolls house which they had recently bought.  I had a spell in a magical ship's rigging plaiting a mermaid's hair which I had to then climb down so I could visit the sparkling bottle mountain
06/12/08: I spent most of the day moving around among bent sticks and broken wood which the magpie called a garden.  Not all of the wood fitted together to make the dinosaur skeleton I saw between the pages of a book -however, I managed to pin it together like a Fifties dress pattern.  I took a steam train to the highest cloud so I could fall to earth and land in a floral apron.  I then wore the apron under my space age body armour.
07/12/08: I had a sluggish day among the sticks again - stick men argued in the street (I became the king of the stick men).  After I had nailed everyone's hands together I brought down the Christmas decorations from the loft.  June blew up the tree and I found some patented bald ornaments in the giant toupee they were hidden in.  I pretended the wig was an escaped black widow spider and called the police who arrived in yoghourt pots.
08/12/08: I opened a door in the wall which had mysteriously appeared over breakfast, only to found it led back to the place I had just woken from.  I shook the sleep from my badly worn coat and threw out my shoes - I imagined a procession of people with old boots instead of heads.  I had to go out early and wrote messages in glass bottles before the biological specimens were added.  I had very little time to smoke like a volcano when I got back in.
09/12/08: I started the day as a tree man and took root in a the lion's den which I have been using as a studio after Daniel had vacated it. I had only a little time to flower before my leaves started to fall. I walked down the street, where all the houses were shaped like sandwiches, and knocked on the cheese and lettuce one before going on with a string of tin cans clattering behind me.  I emptied out my pockets in the shop where I work.
10/12/08: I decided to sleep in a tea spoon but woke up in hot water, emerging from the liquid as a whale like creature orbiting Jupiter.  I flicked stars from my hair and went out to feed the Medusa birds (the grey doves looked like teeth in a permanently open mouth).  I ate my sandwiches on a yacht made from an old newspaper, rolled it up and went to work followed by the strange frog people I had seen earlier among the toothbrush reeds.
11/12/08: After a very hard struggle I climbed out of the top hat - the magician was staring down at me (it wasn't as foggy as I expected it to be).  I had to skate across a huge expanse of smiles and then winked and blinked to the shop on the hill.  I slid down much later with hungry caterpillars in my back pockets.  I found a message in a necklace and attempted to answer it with a bow tie I have never worn.
12/12/08: Today's book opened like a book from another age.  I turned on a valve radio and felt the warmth as a little donkey flew by.  I tried to catch it but failed.  I climbed the stone stairs as June went to town - she left riding on a ostrich and came back held aloft by Roman legionnaires.  In the turret, that revolves in step with the phases of the moon, I made marks on canvas like butter smeared over toy figures that I had arranged in two rows.
13/12/08: June and I went to the sparkling den again; she travelled on a baguette while I sat on a sandwich.  Once in the glassy citadel I watched the train eat its own tail.  The noise formed a triangle while people stood on conveyor belts watching trousers cavort with pastel tops.  I pulled a cloud from the sky, unzipped it and put it back.  We came home in the rain followed by an unknown number of ornamental gates.
14/12/08: I opened the door and walked out.  After pressing a pet rabbit from the cardboard packaging I knelt in front of the still smoking altar and pretended to pray. I put a bird in my top pocket and brushed clean the toy drums I was wearing instead of shoes.  The sun was like a second class stamp so I came back inside, removed my electric guitar coat and sat in the fish tank.  Two birds were circling overhead as I played music like spinning wool. 
15/12/08: I went out of the frog door quite early.  I had an appointment standing in a cold room waiting for the big flood to come - people seeped in.  I went into the cupboard to rescue a spider from a bottle; the spider had a house on its back (soon to be condemned).  I christened the house Boris.  I found several other people in the dark - each with their own rescued spiders.  I poured a glass of wine and jumped in.  Later I told Adam about it.
16/12/08: I woke suddenly as an ostrich with my head in a cat litter tray.    I pulled myself out and then licked myself clean.  June and I hung from kites for most of the morning while I fumbled in my pockets for a logical explanation.  Later I produced music with a slab of butter and a lettuce leaf before painting a landscape and then filling it with bullet holes.  Even later I listened to the sea in an ear sandwich before licking the road like a lolly.
17/12/08: I had to get up early, disturbing the mechanical kangaroo which was asleep on my chest.  I curtsied to the wardrobe and went to work dressed in a tongue and an old eyelid.  I spent all day throwing bottles and catching them between my toes - never breaking one (even when a jet fighter shot through the room close to the speed of sound.  When I got in; with a castle, moat and drawbridge on my head; I just sat like a South American mummy.
18/12/08: I had to get up even earlier (the kangaroo had hopped away into another dimension) and I went out like a candle flame.  I arrived as smoke at the giant bear's hideaway but was quickly put out.  After lying on a piece of buttered toast for a couple of hours I trudged home with party sweets in my hair.  After running around as an extra from a Diaghilev ballet for some time I eventually became a stone statue sitting by a window with a cat on my lap.
19/12/08: After a particularly dark night I found myself in bed turned into a voodoo doll.  I had to pull all my pins out before I could merge with the artist on the hill.  I only had a little time to look at the view before having to jump on a windmill to paint.  I descended from the cockpit of a World War One biplane and went to the mysteriously lit bottle town; visiting the fat lady in the brandy bottle and the thin lady in the liquour one.
20/12/08: June and I (joined by butterfly wings) went out for the day.  The first part of the journey was crawling through a narrow tube and then we fell, among coins, into a funnel.  I mentioned to June about the heat coming from a walking stick.  We came back disguised as spaghetti.  I later had to descend the crawling steps to work among the familiar orange lanterns.  I pretended to milk cows while the gnome guards marched over head.
21/12/08: I made time to make the bedroom an oasis - feathers still floated to earth from the night before.  I crossed the desert by boat and wrote to Natalie from a rocky outcrop.  I tied the message to a dove.  I alternated dinner with the act of making an exact reproduction of me from soap, washed myself well and went to work.  I plugged in the tree and waited for the tiny feet to light up, reminding me that my new shoes make my own feet pong.
22/12/08: I sprawled about on a saucer musing on the missing cup for some of the tea service morning.  I then jumped into the bath pretending it was the gateway to heaven, floating out to ride a cloud to work.  I attempted to eat a bow and quiver of arrows and then artificially smiled at everyone who came in from the cold.  I met my match with the young man who had swallowed a medieval catapult.  June remained in the castle.
23/12/08: I got up late; squeezing my telephone voice back into the toy box, I speedily took off the model building site I was wearing, jumped into my cereal bowl and licked out the bath. Watching the door for representatives of the bat people I rushed to the shops and then to the test tube where I work.  I threw a number of small animals onto the coat rack and searched my pockets for cognizant seaweed. Triceratops were moving up the valley.
24/12/08: I had to fly out in to the countryside on the back of a house sparrow.  I talked with the sheep man in the paddock with hair instead of grass.  The grass had gone grey and I turned the pages on the television screen.  I came home just as the antelope had managed to escape the lion; I sat down on top of a cake and waited for the voices to start.  My time as a gladiator was short and I brought my grass hair skirt to lay in the family room.
25/12/08: Christmas Morning (I got up at the same time as I went to bed).  June and I went out as pantomime characters - she in a pumpkin coach, me with a pumpkin head.  I heard the laughter from the other side of the hill as we galloped down the side of a giantess. I hid some happy memories in my pocket and then clasped a signal box to my chest while June tried on some new shoes.  After dinner we walked underwater listening to the seasonal sounds.
26/12/08: I spent the laughing part of the day with a little princess, drinking tea through a walkie-talkie and eating pies from a plastic hair dryer.  After I emerged from the polar bear den I had to trudge to my place of work, standing in the spotlight  and making glove puppets from used chewing gum.  I spit this part of the day out and returned home to count steam locomotives as they sped by a menagerie of small furry animals.
27/12/08: I had a lay in, snuggling up next to a walrus who had pulled himself up the beach during the night.  I hoped his snoring would not annoy the neighbours as I launched fireworks from the top of my hat.  When I finally got up the sea mist had cleared from the living room and I marched around holding the television.  I quickly wired myself up and shone all the way down the road to the laughing shop -  by the end of the day my light had dimmed.
28/12/08: The first complete day for some time in the sledge hammer cathedral.  I stood on a piece of the arctic ice sheet and thought about odd numbers - June hoovered the lounge and considered even ones.  When I re-entered the prehistoric tunnel system I retired to the painting vault for a time.  Smoke was seen to be issuing from the miniature houses in the distance that matched exactly the smoke from the full size ones on the mantlepiece.
29/12/08: I jumped down from my diamond encrusted perch, followed swiftly by my breakfast (which was slowly metamorphosing into a replica of the North West Hampshire countryside).  I then took a little while rearranging table and chairs on an iceberg floating in our multidimensional living space.  After a ceremonial dinner I spread the table cloth over the stuffed badger I was using in lieu of a computer screen and excused myself to go to work.
30/12/08: I got up too late to dance a jig on a sword blade so I pushed it into a stone and walked on water to my place of work.  It was a seasonal day and I was one broken branch among many on a vast plain.  I played tug-of-war with myself while waiting for the messenger.  June meanwhile was hiding in a jug with one leg coming out of the top and one out of the spout.  I came home with a bottle of milk and a smile.
31/12/08: I was the cardboard tube man all morning (I could be made into dozens of useful objects!).  I finally escaped as a space rocket with plastic wings.  My angel wings fell off as I turned the corner in a speeding racing car - above Greek gods were pursued by flying sharks.  I started to cough as I passed the ageing gunfighters on my way to work.  I left holding unknown archeological remains and a battalion of toy soldiers attached to my coat.