Oh wow, I've never had that before. I have people who look like one friend but are another sometimes, but the personality and body are completely one or the other, not bits from each!

I'm kind of hoping this might indicate that I'm moving into one of my occasional months-long phases of having weird, vivid and interesting dreams. They're always fun, and it's been too long since I last had one :-)

Don't you set a random alarm clock to get weird dreams?

Er, huh? Is that a standard strategy? How does it help? (Surely it would just interrupt the dreams at inconvenient moments?)

I was given to understand that you only remember dreams you do wake up in the middle of. But come to think of it, I may have been misled.

For lucid dreaming it's often recommended you have some external stimuli to wake your consciousness enough that you realise your're dreaming and take control of said dream but don't wake up entirely.