I made Nat telephone Simeon from my home—not an easy task—to let him know he had survived the minitrauma. Unaccountably, Simeon was totally unconcerned, I could hear him quite clearly shouting over the telephone. He had been confident that Nat would come to no harm. He would seem to be a rather angry young man.

Nat described Simeon’s paintings. His work is greatly influenced by Lucian Freud, grandson of the great Sigmund, but also harks back to the symbolists. Fascinating though this was I let Nat know that, to me, “Simeon” is just a name.

MON FEB 18

In sympathy with current psychological theory, I do not find dreams “important”; they merely serve as a confusing glimpse of, or window onto, the subconscious and are open to infinite interpretations. Their primary function is a storing or filing of memory. The brain must stay active during sleep, and dreams serve as picturesque and often quite convincing entertainments. Their nature is quintessentially random.

Last night I dreamt that the earth was flat and that there were seas on the moon, which I could observe with ease through a purple-lensed telescope. A delicious dream.

On waking, quite stringent conscious efforts need to be made in order to recapture dreams. Popularisation of such procedures is becoming too haphazardly and unthinkingly commonplace. Dreams should only occupy one during the night-time; they do not function as things to be vexed over in the daylight hours. For five years now I have sought to obliterate my dreams, and much peace of mind it has brought me. Now, however, I intend to keep a record of them. I should like to extend meditation into my dreamworld, the most dangerous area one can explore as lucid dreaming seems to expunge the element of chance.

FRI FEB 22

Today I questioned Nat about his future. Is his life going to follow the path it is apparently locked into? For five years? Twenty years? What about when his parents eventually die? I told him that he is underachieving. He has a good brain and it would be a shame to waste it. He kept giggling most irritatingly. I decided it was time to terminate his sickness benefit, in a bid to make him fend for himself. Even if this should only force him into claiming unemployment benefit, that would be something, a gesture. He appeared so completely unmoved that I wondered, for one dreadful moment, if his whole illness had been feigned; an elaborate fabrication, concocted purely to humiliate me. He assured me that this was not the case, and I believe him. But most disconcertingly, he continued to cackle even after I had ushered him out of the room. From the window I watched him scuff down the High Street, heading straight for home. His parents told me that the only time he leaves the house is to see me. He did, however, see Simeon last week, but he never develops a string of engagements. He would probably make a most content inmate: the perfect prisoner, in fact.