I would say that I dream fairly regularly during the week. I don't recall every night, but most mornings I will wake up with a fairly strong narrative dream. Occasionally I wake up laughing or crying. If I'm undisturbed, I will be able to recall quite a lengthy dream. Well, I say lengthy; who knows how long the actual thing takes when I'm asleep, but it feels quite lengthy. [In the morning,] If I'm distracted, it will go immediately.

If I have a dream that really makes me laugh, or really stands out, I will sometimes tell other people that are engaged in the dream. I'll email a friend or something and I'll say, “Oh, you'll never guess what. We went to Washington last night,” you know?

I've had some dreams that are very specifically concerned with processing the pandemic and the experiences around that. And some that I think are about other concerns, but they include themes, issues, anxieties from the pandemic. I don't actually consider myself a very anxious person. I think I'm pretty resilient, but I've been quite surprised by how much I've been processing in dreams. If you see dreams as processing the day and processing unconsciousness, which I guess is how I see them. I've been quite surprised by the strength of them.

Some, some are very directly about the pandemic and others definitely refer to it, or it comes in a form that is slightly disguised, but I think about it, I realize it's got elements that are related to the pandemic. For example, I might have a dream that's fairly unrelated, but somebody will be wearing a mask.

The ones I've had that are directly about the pandemic in the last two or three months: I've had one where I've been on a really complicated game show where I have to find a vaccine and I have to deal with research and then try and synthesize it into some information that will allow people to create a vaccine. And this is a competitive process on the telly [the TV]. I woke up feeling quite concerned that I wasn't going to do very well on this television show. It was a kind of reality show, but all related to trying to get a vaccine.

I've had dreams about, of birds being killed by a plague. Beautiful birds that are dying off because they're catching a virus. The birds were utterly gorgeous. Some of them were very large and very ornate with wonderful long feathers and very brightly colored. And they were in skies and along rivers, but they were all dying off very rapidly. This is almost a kind of extinction rebellion sort of dream as well.

And one that was probably more immediately anxious about animals trying to get into the house in order to be fed. And I was trying to feed them but also prevent them coming into the house because I knew they carried a virus, and they would potentially infect us. I was sort of lobbing food behind screens, trying to keep the animals at bay.

About 25 years ago, I worked in an orphanage in Romania, and I saw how brutally some of the children were treated there. And I had a dream that somebody in a Romanian orphanage—in a setting that looked very old fashioned—was trying to vaccinate a child who was resistant to it. And they ended up slapping the child and cutting them with scissors before vaccinating them. And it was really distressing. And I could only witness this rather than intervene.

Those have been typical dreams that I've had that really directly addressed vaccinations and the pandemic in a completely undisguised way.

I had another dream, which I think was very more, much more introspective where I sort of told myself that my favorite day of the week had moved to Saturday from being Friday. I've always been a Friday fan because Friday's herald relaxation and going out and having fun. In this dream, I was specifically telling myself, you don't like Friday any longer, because there are no markers between the days much. And instead, I now prefer Saturday because Saturday is a busy day when things have to be achieved. I think there's something there about absence of activities and, and markers in the week that I was kind of processing. Normally Saturday would be a day when I go to the shops or clean the house up. But somehow Saturday had become much more meaningful. Because Friday evenings were out the window that no, no more fun to be had there.

I've had political dreams. I really think this is being informed by my general politics, and also the fact that I'm feeling very frustrated with the way that government is dealing with the pandemic. I had a very strong dream that I went to a meeting with Michael and Jacob Rees-Mogg, and they were discussing it. And I was feeling quite contemptuous of them. Some people in the meeting were wearing masks and some people weren't. Some people in the street after the meeting, weren't wearing masks. I was feeling quite anxious about transmission. I started talking to Jacob Rees-Mogg, who said, “Would you like to come back to my house for a drink?” So, I went with my partner back to Jacob Rees-Mogg’s house, which was completely posh and extensive and had this huge hallway. And he had children scattered around the place. But all his children were being tutored by black men and he had exclusively black servants and I was really disturbed by this. I didn't want to be in his house, but he kept pouring us really extravagant cocktails. And this probably reflects my drinking habits as well—the fact that I have enjoyed a lot of cocktails in lockdown. And then he started to complain about Michael Gove. And I just thought, “Oh, this such filthy sort of horrible behavior. And he's such a horrible man. And I'm gonna sit and enjoy all of this information that I'm going to get while secretly thinking he's a massive racist incompetent man.”

That was one where I woke up feeling quite amused and thinking, “Christ, where did all of that come from?” It was very colonial. I was thinking, “This is just great dirt. I will do something with this information afterwards. If he's happy to entertain me, I'll just sit here quietly, because I'll get him into a load of trouble afterwards.” Naughty!

I've also had a dream that the secretary of my constituency labor party had killed a man. I was tasked with trying to get rid of the body, and that involved traveling around on buses and trains [during] the pandemic. I knew I had to search for places to put the body. I was traveling around the local area on buses and trains that I really didn't want to be on, trying to cover my face and not touch any surfaces. I decided that there was nowhere locally that I would be able to conceal it, so my best bet was to cook it and then serve it to people to eat.

That’s really grotesque, isn't it? I was kind of repulsed, but I woke up at the point that I had decided that that was what I was going to do. I was just sort of disgusted with the thought, but I knew that I had to protect this woman—the secretary of my constituency labor party—and dispose of this body. Presumably I totally accepted that: she'd done it for a good reason.

[Something] being enforced in one way or another is a big theme. Transportation is a theme as well. I live under a flight path—Heathrow—and so, the absence of planes has been really noticeable, because they would certainly have woken me up during the summer. I quite like the sound of them. But obviously they are very rare beasts at the moment. I have had dreams of trying to get on planes or get out of train stations and being in very small, confined spaces with people. Almost filmic—that kind of dramatic sequence where everybody has to bundle in somewhere like, “Let's get out of Saigon.” But I'm, I'm small space cramped in with people desperately trying to escape a situation, which is not entirely clear.

Fear of public space, fear of contagion, crowds... you know? I've also had general disaster dreams. I dreamt that my sister was trapped in a building that had flooded and was burning. My younger sister and she would be safe as long as she didn't try to escape. So again, confinement being both scary, but also potentially saving your life is a theme.

I also dream that I morphed into Olivia Coleman. I think I've been watching too much Netflix. This was probably from watching The Crown. I was crossing the ocean in a huge gold liner and that was kind of fun. I knew that it wasn't quite reality. That was fun to wake up from and think “Christ, I imagined I was somebody else. How did, how did that happen?” That was definitely the lighter end.

I quite like sharing dreams. I'm quite interested in other people's dreams. They fascinate me.