In my dream last night I walked along Riversdale Road and found that my neighbour’s house had been rearranged for a performance that was to be held there over the next day.

I sat in a café and eavesdropped on a conversation between a mother and her daughters. At least I assumed they were her daughters. All had dark black hair. They chattered joyously in that bickering sort of way families do.

I watched them walk out of the restaurant and then along Riversdale Road. They were connected with the performance somehow. I soon found that the husband of the woman with the dark hair and father of the three girls was the director of the play. He had a Scottish accent. I stood in the street and talked to the woman. I introduced myself. She commented on the size and wasted space of our neighbour’s house in which the play was to be performed.

‘I’d change it,’ she said. ‘I’d pull down the front.’

I did not tell the woman that my husband and I had plans to buy this house if ever it came on the market. It adjoined ours and we would love to own the whole space. The woman went on her way and as I walked back home I realised I had the wrong property in mind. The play was to be performed not at my neighbour’s smaller house but in a mansion two blocks further down the road in a place currently occupied by the Jesuits. This was a magnificent space, with a sweeping circular staircase, deep red carpets, and heavy velvet curtains. I was allowed to walk around inside and watched the actors go through their paces.

Towards the end of my dream, which had many twists and turns; I wound up standing on the edge of a high grassy hill overlooking the first full dress rehearsal. I stood with the director of the play. We held hands. His daughters joined us. They were older than my daughters.

One of my daughters had a lead role in the play. I was stunned at the beauty of her singing. I looked down to my feet and realised that the hill on which I stood was in fact a steep slope, so steep that it ran like a wall to the ground. I slid down. I could not get any traction in the grass and lost hold of the director’s hand.

‘It happens like that,’ he said. ‘As soon as you realise where you’re standing, you lose your grip.’