I always dream a lot. And I always have dreamt a lot. I have pretty vivid dreams a lot of the time. I would say in normal times, I definitely remember dreaming three or four times a week. Just a mixture of good dreams, less good dreams, crazy nightmares from time to time. But yeah, I've always been a quite vivid dreamer, I suppose.

I always get laughed at by various people, including my husband, because, you know, your own dreams are very interesting to yourself and not really interesting to anyone else. But I find it really interesting, and I like trying to work out why I'm dreaming about the things I am. Quite often I'll find there's a link between something I've been thinking about or maybe watched on TV and the thing that I've dreamt about. Sometimes a really obvious link, and sometimes not quite so much. I would say in general, I like the fact I dream a lot, because most of the time my dreams are relatively pleasant. I find it really fascinating to think about what your brain is up to while you're asleep.

I've definitely dreamt a lot more [during the pandemic]. As I say, in normal times, I'd be aware of dreaming a few times a week. I'm pretty sure I dream every single night at the moment. In fact, I can be absolutely certain I've been dreaming every single night recently because since signing up to this study, I decided to try and write down my dreams and see how many I remembered. And it's every day. And they're equally vivid as ever. They are maybe less pleasant. Not crazy nightmares all the time, but stressful. I have really stressful dreams at the moment. They wake me up a lot. I find the amount of times I'll wake up in the middle of the night with my heart racing because of some stressful thing that's happened in a dream is much more regular. That used to be something that would happen occasionally.

In the first lockdown there was a while where my sleep was just dreadful, because I was constantly waking up, having had these really stressful dreams, and then just going around in my head. Just sort of, you know, raised heart rate and feeling really stressed in the middle of the night. And then it calmed down a lot. But I was aware that I was dreaming a lot. It's become stressful again quite recently. I dunno if it's because I'm stuck at home again, I don't really know. But in the last few weeks, it's definitely got back to that point of waking up a lot and being really aware of stressful dream situations again.

The weirdest or the most interesting is that when I wake up and then go back and look back at some of the dreams I'll go, “Oh yeah, I remember that dream.” And others I will look at what I've written and have zero recall of anything that I've written down. I think that's probably a good thing because I get the feeling that when I do write them down then I can forget them. My brain can go, “That's done, that’s dealt with, I don't need to think about this weird dream anymore.” I do feel like the practice of writing them down helps get them out of my head.

I would say a lot of my dreams are work related. They're about being at school as a teacher. But also I have a lot of dreams where I am at school as a teenager. None of them are sort of super traumatic. They're not like horrible nightmares. There's a deadline or I'm studying for an A-level. And I don't know anything about it and I have no idea what I'm doing.

There was one that really stuck in my head recently; it was just about having to deliver a plant to a neighbor of my parents and giving the plant to the wrong person and putting it in someone's garden discovering it wasn't for that person.

None of them are really awful dreams. They're just sort of stressful. Nothing's quite working as it should I suppose. Dreams where I am either driving or being driven where I have no control over the car. That seems to happen quite a lot. Or either the brakes don't work, the steering wheel doesn't work or whatever. Or I'm in a car, but I'm stuck in the backseat and there's no one in the front or the person who is in the driver's seat doesn't know how to drive or things like that. On occasion it's planes as well. Quite a few of being on a plane and the pilot’s asleep or whatever. I think the idea of being out of control—that does seem to be the theme.

I don't think I've had many dreams that have been that obviously related [to the pandemic]. I wrote down when I thought I had my first dream that was about the pandemic. There was a dream where people were wearing face masks or something like that. And when I woke up, I thought, that's the first time that COVID has featured in my dreams. All the rest of them are a crazy dream world, but there's no social distancing in my dreams. There's no masks. It's just kind of normal. But then there was one where there was like a sense of COVID happening. People wearing face masks. But I've not had any dreams about some of the things you might expect. I've not had dreams about people being ill or dying. Clearly for me, the issue is the lack of control.

I rode my bike yesterday for the first time in over two years. Just like for various reasons, I just haven't cycled for a long time. And the night before I had a dream where I was cycling. I had to cycle in central London, which is not where I went yesterday, but I cycled to Kings Cross station in my dream. It all went really well on the way there. But then on the way back, I had to go through a forest, as you do, obviously, getting back from Kings Cross station.

And then there was a man blocking the path. He was like gonna try and steal something or push me off my bike or something like this. And then someone, another cyclist, came along and was like, “Don't worry, I'll cycle with you.” But then I got stuck in a big puddle of mud and this guy was coming towards me and I was like, “Oh no, he's gonna steal my bike. What's gonna happen?” And then of course I woke up, but that was, that was clearly related to getting on my bike for the first time.

I have no idea why Kings Cross station was the place that came up in the dream. It's not a particularly, like, important station to me. It’s relatively nearby, but I think I was cycling to drop something off or pick thing up and then turn around and coming straight home again. I was a bit nervous when I got my bike for the first time in years yesterday. So, I guess it was just preempting that. Probably felt more nervous cause of this crazy dream.

Another one, I was telling my husband off for this because at some point in the evening he was talking about an Iron Maiden song [that had] something to do with Icarus. And that clearly got stuck in my head because then I had a dream where there had been a plane crash. And one man had survived who happened to be Leonardo DiCaprio, but that wasn't his name in the dream. He was telling us what had happened, and he'd essentially managed to eject out this plane before it crashed, but the way the plane had crashed, it flew towards the sun and then the wings melted off the plane. And then the plane had this massive crash. But this guy escaped because he somehow ejected out of it. The whole plane melted. That was quite a traumatic dream. That was definitely much more traumatic than most of mine because there were no other survivors. The entire plane melted into a pool of metal. And it turned out the plane was called Icarus.

I hadn't felt like I'd internalized that conversation about the song other than the fact that it was mentioned. But clearly, I did. There have been some other dreams where I've had some sort of major incident or accident where some people have survived and others haven't. It's rarely a focus in my dream in terms of being aware of all the people who didn't survive. It's more often [about] these people that did survive, and then there's a story that goes behind it.

I had two dreams in one night last week. I live in a block of flats with a balcony, but in this particular dream, the balcony was sort of shared among all the flats. The dream was that there were people breaking in who got up onto the balcony. Some sort of strangers. And they broke into next door from the balcony, and sort of smashed down the window and started having this huge party. That was a dream where COVID existed because we knew that it was wrong for them to be having this party with 10 of them or whatever in the next door flat apart, quite apart from the fact they just broken in and were stealing or the drinks and food.

That one woke me up in the middle of the night. In the dream, I ran outside and told my husband, “Right, you've gotta secure our flat and make sure they don't get in here. And meanwhile, I'll go and try and confront them next door.” But then not wanting to get too close. And anyway, I sort of woke up in the middle of it all. And then a later bit of the dream after I fallen back sleep where it was a similar scenario except instead of people breaking and it was wolves. Then there were wolves running up and down the balcony. We had to try to stop these wolves from getting in our flat, which we succeeded by closing the doors. But then unfortunately we left the front door open and the wolves got in by the staircase instead. And the wolves came into our flat. And then I woke up again. There was no chance for the wolves to cause chaos, but there was clearly something there around feeling under attack. Or not safe perhaps in our own home.

Then a later part of that dream involved lots and lots of dinosaurs and crocodiles. It was a completely separate scenario where I was on some sort of island with my family. My mom and I had to climb a big ladder, but there were lots of crocodiles. And then when we got to the top, we looked back down from this cliff and there were all these enormous dinosaurs swimming in the ocean. And we were terrified.

I picture vividly the scene of looking out this very blue, beautiful sea with these enormous Plateosaurus, swimming in it and thinking, “wow.” But also, “oh my goodness. We're surrounded by all these terrifying creatures who keep trying to attack us.”

Lots of my dreams involve being outside. Two or three where I've been swimming in a river or in a swimming pool or in a garden. Lots of dreams about doing things outside. I wonder whether that's sort of partly, I dunno, a reaction being stuck inside so of the time. But then I suppose when we are outside in real life, we're outside in the middle of London – in a busy city. When, when I'm outside of my dreams, it's always in the countryside, in the middle of nowhere. Very quiet, very peaceful.

I'm a music teacher. I had a dream which just involved lots of music, which I suppose often they do. A few weeks ago, there was a piece of music in my head. And I wrote down the tune because it was stuck in my head. A lot of the musical dreams involve me needing to do something musical and then not being able to. So, this particular one, I was with a colleague who was not a musician. We were talking about broadcasting some music on the internet for people who are self-isolating. So, I went to go and get

some piano music and then when I came back, she was on the piano playing this amazing thing – already doing it, broadcasting this music. And I'm going, “well, I didn't even know you played the piano.”

I had one where I had to play the organ in a church for a concert. There was a choir and it was the beginning of the rehearsal. And I sort of sat down to play the music and the conductor said, “oh, actually, you know, we're gonna play in a completely different key.” And I sort said, “well, I can't do that in my head. I need the music.” And he was going, “what you mean? You can't do it in your head. You have to do it in your head. Do you play?” And then I had another one where I was, I was conducting a choir and that was the one where I ended up with this melody in my head. But I went to conduct the choir and then no one was singing. Everyone was playing tambourines, and I was going, “no, you're supposed to be singing this tune.” And I was singing it at them. And it was just chaos because no one was singing. They all just had random instruments and sounded awful.