In my dream I am traveling on a plane, which later becomes a train. While the plane is in the air someone takes it into his head to shoot a couple of the passengers. Their bodies lie inert on the floor between the rows of seats. No one seems perturbed but I over hear the plane’s captain. He is angry and wants to land as soon as possible.

The plane becomes a train. It rattles its way through the countryside and I can see the broken rocks of the mountains through which we travel.

There is a group of people on the verge of a green hill. They are dressed up in readiness for a wedding. I have not been invited to this wedding but somehow I mingle with them. It starts to rain, trickles at first then great torrents. A small group of us head for the shelter of a tree whose branches are dome shaped, as if we were standing underneath an umbrella. The rain gets so heavy eventually it soaks through the branches.

I take out my red umbrella and offer to share it with a woman whose hair is beginning to lose its pre-wedding curl. I feel sorry for her. She has gone to some trouble to prepare for this wedding and now she begins to look like a sodden dog. I offer to make room for another man underneath the canopy of the tree but there is scarcely room for the three of us.

I am inside a house now with a friend, someone who has also been invited to the wedding and a couple of her friends. They are preparing a dish to take to the wedding. I offer to help. My friend is enthusiastic about my offer but the other woman in the couple is not. She barely speaks to me as I go about offering ideas on how best to cook the lump of meat they have placed in a shallow baking dish. I take a bottle of milk from the fridge and prepare to pour it into the base of the dish. This is the best way, I say, to stop it from drying out. My friend is impressed. Her friend, the other woman, is not and says as much.

‘I’ll be off then,’ I say and flounce out. The front door slams behind me.

The two women follow. On the nature strip my friend apologises but her friend says nothing.

‘You are the rudest person I have ever met,’ I say to my friend’s friend. ‘I was only trying to help.’