I dreamed and dreamed. It was overly warm in my dream - a fine, hot day in a panorama of places knitted together and traveling between. My first memories of it was walking towards a store. One of those huge hyper-stores they satellite out with other massive stores thinking bigger is better when in fact it's just boring.

I was going to meet Phet.

He worked there - he was the loud speaker guy - "Clean up in Aisle 7 - Jamie Franks to the office please, Jamie Franks - you have a phone call in the office". We'd been video phoning in the morning so I'd know what he looked like: with his headset on and talking into the phone, his head filled my flip-phone and now I knew who I was looking for exactly. This was the first time to meet him - and my only time to meet him because he was going away. This was our window. I walked along the buffer-corridor of the building - the floor was carpeted in those thin felt carpet tiles like they have in school and the light was dim. The store was to my right, bright lights and business through the thick poster-covered glass.

And then there he was. This tiny, tiny man. no, I mean *tiny* man.. though his height kept changing from about 3 foot tall to about a foot tall. It was Phet's face all right but he was really tiny. "no wonder he fitted in my phone" I thought. I looked at the glass windows of the store again as got closer to Phet, and saw the reflection of myself "that's right" I said, seeing an old classmate, Catherine Cheyne's reflection as my own "I'm tall".

We hugged. Hard. He spent the rest of the night in my dream.

It was, as I mentioned, a stitched-together affair. I was out in the desert at one stage, being told to jump into an inverted cone-shaped hole by someone who was familiar and shadowy at the same time. What did he think I was, stupid? I've seen Return of the Jedi, I know what those sorts of holes do - they eat you whole, that's what those holes do. I refused, and it made the person I was with slightly aggitated. Seems he wanted to make me go away and it was proving more difficult than he had bargained for seeing as he only had one plan and I was refusing to play along.

Exasperated, he eventually gave up and drove me back into another part of my dream and turned into my ex-mother-in-law on the way.

When I was married, I used to dream about my ex-mother-in-law a lot. I used to dream I had no voice, and I would squeeze my hands around her wrinkly old neck, feeling all the fine bone snap under the pressure. Now she was driving me to a different part of my dream, I couldn't strangle her or risk crashing - so I threatened her with violent acts through clenced teeth of a vicious nature.

She eventually dropped me off in part of my dream where Greg was doing the gardening. And Phet was helping - though not so much because he likes gardening, but because he was left so long he got bored and needed something to do. He'd become taller while I was gone - now about 5'4" or so. And I walked towards him as he leaned on his shovel and looked at me. I could feel I was me again, and not the willowy Cathrine Cheyne, and I could also feel the smile on my face as I saw what he was wearing.

OMG I wish you could take photos of dreams.

He looked at me and narrowed his eyes and said "shut.up"

I just grinned harder.. he was wearing plaid short shorts, a loose fitting light knit dirty-from-gardening sweater with the sleeves cut off; sneakers and socks. "keep the socks" I said "they look fantastic!" and he growled at me. The socks came up over his knees to a loose mid-thigh.

He looked quite rustic in a grubby old cricketing, gardening kind of way.

This dream had other things in it too: clothes and emails, Rosie and Bella, computers and kitchens. All the things that crossed my plate over the evening, but repackaged and reordered and now, reclassified in my brain stamped with the vivid image of Phet in borrowed clothes that made him look like God's Gayest Gardener.

And THIS, Phet.. is exactly why you should NEVER go to Work Drinks on a Friday night. While you may be forced to garden when left alone too long in my dreams, my mind will play DressUps with you if you're not there to keep me awake.

This dream was brought to you today by:

• Rosemary and Thyme (that British gardening murder mystery series starring Felicity Kendal who kind of looks like a boy but doesn't wear shorts)
• Dave's Acerbia Girl in long stockings
• fishboy's flipphone/inside-my-computer conversation
• Ian's Midget Porn
• Rosie's links on MSN
• Phet coming home and telling me to remind him to never go to After Work Drinks ever again then going to sleep early
• the many images on Flickr before I went to bed