I dreamed last night that I was jailed for ten years. The dream actually covered the entirety of this period, which was good going for something that lasted only an hour or so in real time. When I was collected from the prison on my release, I thought how strange it was that I had such a good memory of what I'd been doing the day I was put away. ‘It's as if it was only yesterday,’ I said to myself, ‘or perhaps as if the whole thing was one long dream’.

One would have thought I could have managed to take the next imaginative step from ‘it's as if this were a dream’ to ‘hey, maybe it is’. But I didn't, so the mystery of why my memory of ten years ago was so vivid continued to baffle me … until I woke up, and thought ‘oh, I see’. I felt quite silly for having been so close to what was actually the right answer!

Although I also spent a lot of the dream resenting the loss of ten years of the prime of my life, I was also fascinated by the futuristic world my subconscious dreamed up for me to be released into. For example, small two-man helicopters were readily available as an affordable alternative to owning a car. I was rather disappointed that I woke up before getting the chance to play with one.