I dreamt that my mother and I went on a trip to some huge reunion at Eton. The first scene was in some kind of hall that looked simultaneously like an antechapel and the foyer of some kind of state building, stone and gray and official.

It was very crowded and there were all sorts of people I haven't seen for decades. There was a man named Gordon, whom I recognized from his bright red hair. Hedidn't look fifty years older, though. He looked like he was in his mid-twenties. He was really big, much bigger than in real life, and he turned down his nose at me and said, "Ah, ah, but what about YOUR grades?"

It turned out that he had become some hugely famous physicist (this is not true) and had become quite arrogant. For some reason, in my dream, I hadn't gone on to university and was skulking about in embarrassment because everyone else had.

Later, walking down a very brightly lit avenue, I encountered the mother of composer Robert Saxton. She looked as I had last seen her (over forty years ago) but much more svelte. She had a booming voice and she embraced me like a long-lost relative. (In my dream, it seemed, Robert had gone to Eton, though in real life he went, I think, to Bryanston.)

We were all sitting at an alfresco dinner with wooden chairs with woven wicker seats. Robert was there and I said, "I really have to tell you about my opera, Helena Citronova, because it's about the Holocaust." (Saxton is Jewish).

It's an odd dream because I felt ill at ease in my old school, and people who didn't go there in real life were, in this alternative reality, there with me. And everyone was the wrong age because they all looked like they were in their twenties.

I woke up and I am in state of great confusion.