There was a long stretch when I didn’t seem to be dreaming. Certainly, I couldn’t remember any dreams when I woke in the morning. I can’t pinpoint when this began, but it bothered me.

There’d been a period, many years ago, when I’d kept a dream diary of sorts, but I’d fallen out of the habit. I’d still dreamt, but at some point in the last year or so the dreams seemed to have dried up. It didn’t feel right.

Then, in early September, we spent a week in rural France, visiting Nick’s dad. I ignored emails, and hardly looked at my phone. My holiday reading included Josephine Corcoran’s wonderful debut collection What Are You After? Some of her poems are directly framed as dreams in the title. Many more have a dreamlike quality, with richly strange detail, or the odd logic of dreams. I felt more keenly what I was missing.

And then – hallelujah! – I started dreaming again. It was so dark and so quiet at night and I slept like the proverbial log. And when I woke in the morning, I jotted down my dreams in my holiday notebook.

Since we’ve been back in London, I’ve allowed the emails, the phone, to encroach again. I don’t always sleep well. But I have a notebook by my bed and when I wake, if there are dream fragments still floating around in my head, I scribble them down. I can’t prove it, but it feels like recording my dreams helps me to remember more of them. I don’t know if I’ll turn any of these into poems or stories, but I feel a little more anchored, somehow, knowing my subconscious is whirring away while I sleep. And how delightful to wake this morning and recall I dreamt about kittens last night:

a rambling friendly house  summer feel  long grass  wooden verandah
kittens – tabby, & one that was black with a leopard pattern in its fur – so silky – trying to catch them & bring them inside