amandalyle's Dreams
Pensioners in the Buff
I seem to be in Venice. Or Venice, according to my subconscious. Narrow canals snake between ancient buildings, gondolas drift lazily beneath stone b...
7/14/2026
The Boy with the Porcupine Spikes
Sleep barely visits me last night. Even when I finally drift off, some part of my brain stays awake — standing guard, worrying about things I can’t fi...
7/13/2026
The Girl with the Rainbow Beads
I’m not a stalker. I promise you I’m not. It’s just… I catch sight of her out shopping, and now I’m following behind her like the world’s least conv...
7/12/2026
The Tooth Collector
My sleeping brain has chosen to drag me back to work again. It either thinks I enjoy a double shift, or it simply has a gloriously warped sense of hum...
7/11/2026
Hammer Time
I return home from another tiring day at work, sweating from every conceivable crevice. Working through a heatwave isn’t exactly fun, but I’ve managed...
7/10/2026
Swedish Meatballs With a Side of “Can We Go Now?”
I love IKEA. A trip to IKEA is a proper day out. Usually it’s a once-every-couple-of-years affair, which somehow makes it feel even more special. It...
7/9/2026
The Queen’s Gambit and a Shrine of Piss
When my husband lost his job, we both imagined unemployment rather differently. He saw opportunity. I saw domestic bliss. He had the whole thing map...
7/8/2026
The Surprise Package
I wake up exactly as I do every other morning. Or at least, I think I do. The familiar fog of sleep lifts. My eyes drift open. I stretch. Yawn. ...
7/7/2026
Don’t Send Me Back to Coventry
“We’re moving.” Mat says it with all the emotional investment of someone announcing we’ve run out of milk. We’re halfway through breakfast when my sp...
7/6/2026
The Kombucha Years
It begins with our regular delivery driver, Richard, plodding his way up the garden path, one arm wrapped around another suspiciously Nike-shaped parce...
7/5/2026
The Empty Doorframe
As a postie, I meet hundreds of people. Honestly, most of them blur together after a while. Just another face framed by another front door. Another...
7/4/2026
The Pirate I Didn’t Ask For
I seem to have acquired an elderly pirate. I don’t know where he’s come from. I don’t know why he’s here. I don’t remember inviting him. One day I’...
7/3/2026
The Lidl Lothario
It begins in a restaurant. The sort with polished wooden tables, overpriced chips and menus that describe mashed potato as a velvety potato purée, as ...
7/2/2026
Just Another Average Tuesday
The dream begins at work. Because apparently my subconscious has run out of original ideas and has started clocking in for the early shift instead. ...
7/1/2026
The Last Witness
There are places that become part of you. Sometimes because extraordinary things happened there. Sometimes because they quietly stood in the backgrou...
6/30/2026
Life in the Fast Lane
My husband and I go swimming most weeks. It’s become part of our routine. Not just exercise, but a little act of rebellion against life itself. A c...
6/29/2026
The Mayo Goatee
I’m all settled for the night. An icy-cold Wim Hof shower. Pyjamas on. Teeth brushed. Bra flung into another postcode. I’m finally ready to mould...
6/28/2026
The Price of Grief
I seem to have travelled back in time. Mum’s face wears the exhausted look of someone who has just lost the one person who held her entire world toge...
6/27/2026
The Silver Goddess
I’ve gone grey. Not just a few stubborn little stragglers that have quietly infiltrated my parting while I wasn’t paying attention. Not a full head o...
6/26/2026
The Longest Wee in History
I try to avoid public toilets like the plague. Too many inconsistencies. Too many surprises. There’s usually a lack of toilet paper, for one. Or wo...
6/25/2026
There’s Something Wrong with Aileen
I’ve cried only a handful of times at work. Which surprises me, actually. Not because I enjoy the job. Quite the opposite. Some mornings, the mere...
6/24/2026
The Problem With Being a Lone Ranger
I’ve always been a bit of a lone ranger. Not because I particularly wanted to be. It just seemed to happen that way. Even as a child, I found it har...
6/23/2026
The Ultimate Betrayal
The day starts like any other. I’m out on my round, pushing my garish red HTC through the streets, delivering the nation’s birthday cards, bills, Amaz...
6/22/2026
The Day the World Went Blind
The world is going blind. Not in a metaphorical sense. We crossed that bridge years ago. No, this is actual blindness. A disease is spreading acros...
6/21/2026
Haven: Part Two
I wake floating on the ocean. Sunlight warms my face. Waves gently lift and lower my body. Maya stands beside me. Smiling. “Good girl.” The phra...
6/20/2026
Haven: Part One
The heat hits me the second I step off the plane. Not the gentle sort of warmth that occasionally graces Britain for three and a half minutes each Jul...
6/20/2026
Anne and the Gift Hamper
I don’t know why I’m standing in this church. Okay… that’s not strictly true. I know exactly why I’m standing in this church. I’m here because this ...
6/19/2026
Valve Me Up, Baby
My husband and I always wanted to go into business together. Admittedly, this wasn’t the kind of business venture I had in mind. We sell organs. Fro...
6/18/2026
The Empty Chair
Mat has been made redundant. Now, before anyone starts lighting candles and playing violins, he’s still very much alive. He’s simply lost his job. ...
6/17/2026
The Human Face of Monsters
I work in a women’s high-security prison. This isn’t one of those girls-behaving-badly situations. This isn’t shoplifting, tax fraud, or somebody gett...
6/16/2026
House of Tears
There’s something wrong with Alex. Something I can’t quite place. His whole aura has darkened around him. The usual sparkle that follows him everywhe...
6/15/2026
Rats, Jugs & a Missing Bra
Another day, another shift under my belt And I’m so desperate to shed these fluorescent shackles that I start undressing on the walk home. Not even m...
6/14/2026
Paranoia With a Side of Packed Lunch
I’m in the park. Minding my own business, lost in the pages of my book. Not good lost. Just lost in general. I’ve been staring at the same paragrap...
6/13/2026
Gnome Blind
One thing that really irks me about being a postie, among an already extensive catalogue of grievances, is the sheer stupidity of some customers. I’m ...
6/12/2026
The Haunting
Weird things have been happening. It starts with the masks. Those hideously frightening masks my husband has collected over the years from his travel...
6/11/2026
Softening at the Edges
I put the key in the lock and let myself into my Uncle John’s flat. A place I know well now. The ritual rarely changes. I make his breakfast, check...
6/10/2026
12:15
I’m in a shopping mall. At least, I think I am. There’s something slightly off about it, though I can’t quite place my finger on it. Nothing is bro...
6/9/2026
Steak Night
I hear that familiar ringing in my ears. Not a physical sound as we know it. More like an internal alarm ricocheting through my soul. It arrives wi...
6/8/2026
Only Fan
I know my husband has a secret. I don’t know what it is exactly, but something is definitely off. For months now, he’s been sneaking around the hous...
6/7/2026
Recorded Delivery
I’m sleepwalking my way through another shift. Slotting letters into pigeon holes. Second class. First class. Large letters. Bills. Catalogues. Fin...
6/6/2026
The Last Tube of Concealer
NEWSFLASH. Naomi Campbell has been filmed attacking pigeons. The footage is being shown on every television channel simultaneously. I sit frozen on...
6/5/2026
Therapist to the Stars
It begins with a message. Not just any message. A message from Selena Gomez. Naturally, my first thought is that this is complete and utter bollocks...
6/4/2026
The Bitch Stitch
“I need to go to London tomorrow,” Mat says casually. It’s not unusual. In fact, it’s entirely usual. Mat goes to London every week. Has done for y...
6/3/2026
The Men in the Rear-View Mirror
I’ve made a colossal mistake. A total fuck up. Sex. In a car. With a stranger. Not my husband. A stranger. Now, before anybody starts clutching ...
6/2/2026
The Book of Tides
Ash has come to visit. Unfortunately, Ash has not come alone. She’s brought all seven of her sons with her. Yup. All seven. Within seconds of arriv...
6/1/2026
The Suitcase
I’m having a naughty dream. Semi-lucid. I know what I’m doing and I know it’s wrong. But technically, it isn’t cheating, right? Sleeping with anoth...
5/31/2026
The Academy of Lost Causes
I seem to have travelled back in time. Alex is eleven again, sitting beside me in his school uniform, staring out of the car window with the grim expr...
5/30/2026
No Teef It Is Then
I’m sitting in one of those old-school American diners that only seem to exist in films, fever dreams, and the final moments before shit starts to get ...
5/29/2026
I Hate Cats, Apparently
For one brief, beautiful moment, I genuinely believe I’m going to sleep peacefully tonight. An adorable little delusion, as it happens. Mat’s away in...
5/28/2026
Royal Hell
Royal Mail have recently escalated their stalker antics to levels that feel less public service and more low-budget dystopian thriller. If it wasn’t b...
5/27/2026
Tony Tiger and the Ant Empire
It’s been a while since I’ve caught up with Tony. A good eight months at least, maybe longer. Long enough for seasons to change twice over and for li...
5/26/2026
I Slept With a Serial Killer
I love true crime. Obsessively so. Far too much, probably. There’s something deeply comforting about sitting safely under a blanket while listening ...
5/25/2026
The Things We Think Into Being
Imagine a world in which your thoughts and beliefs alone create the very fabric of reality. You want a matcha latte without so much as lifting a kettl...
5/24/2026
The Half-Million Pound Fish
I don’t know why I’m always the chosen one. I can barely look after myself, let alone tropical fish. But little Sue insists I’m the right person to t...
5/23/2026
The Cheese Correspondence
It starts, as many of my worst decisions do, with me sitting at my kitchen table writing a letter to a stranger. Not an email. Not a text. Not one of ...
5/22/2026
The Stuff Nightmares Are Made Of
The first thing I notice is the bed. Not the darkness. Not the room itself. The bed. It moves beneath me with a slow, seasick wobble, like I’m lying...
5/21/2026
Not So Peachy
It never ceases to amaze me who the subconscious comes dragging, half-drowned and coughing, from the depths at three in the morning. People I haven’t ...
5/20/2026
The Postie Who Got the Cream
I genuinely don’t know how I end up in this position. And I mean that in the most literal, spiritually humiliating sense possible. One minute I’m sor...
5/19/2026
The Hairmare
My hair has grown to catastrophic lengths. Not in a long, flowing Rapunzel-esque sort of way either. Nothing remotely glamorous. No mysterious woodl...
5/18/2026
Papa’s Hoes
I don’t know what quite led me to these circumstances. This sudden, catastrophic shift in career paths. One minute I’m battling letterboxes and rowdy ...
5/17/2026
The Holiday of Lies
I am soaked to the skin. Not mildly damp. Not “caught in a shower” wet. I mean absolutely saturated. Rain lashes sideways across the pavement as I...
5/16/2026
Snail Mail
There are many things I hate about being a postie. Working in the pissing down rain. Vertical letterboxes designed by people who have clearly never s...
5/15/2026
Eyes Are the Blindness
It’s happening again. That all-too-familiar vibration begins deep inside my body, low and electrical, like live wires twitching beneath my skin. It r...
5/14/2026
Don’t Eat Them All at Once
The first thing I do every morning now is check my pockets. Not for keys. Not for my phone. For wealth. Because in modern Britain, a person can sur...
5/13/2026
The Curious Case of the Funny Bone
The waiting room smells faintly of antiseptic and borrowed fear. The sort that burns the inside of your nostrils and makes you suddenly aware that eve...
5/12/2026
The Tea That Wasn’t Tetley’s
The sea is trying to kill me. Not in the poetic, “life is drowning me” Instagrammable way people post beneath black-and-white selfies after three days...
5/11/2026
The Guest List
“Have you seen my phone?” I ask Mat. He’s standing in the kitchen wearing the expression of a man who has either committed light treason or booked us ...
5/10/2026
The Ghost Between Us: Part Two
For a moment, I just stand there staring at the peeling paintwork, unable to steady my breathing. Because I thought she was okay. God, I really thou...
5/9/2026
The Ghost Between Us: Part One
I haven’t seen my daughter in a while. This isn’t unusual. She has her own life now. Twenty-one. Independent. Busy. Existing in that strange orbit ...
5/8/2026
The Day it All Went Tits Up
I’m at a salon. Not my salon. I don’t have a salon. I’m the sort of person who cuts her own fringe at 11pm with kitchen scissors and spends three week...
5/7/2026
Ghosts in the Woods
We’re halfway through the woods when I decide — against better judgment, but entirely in character — to bring up the afterlife. It’s one of those soft...
5/6/2026
The Day I Got Taken Out by a Trolley
I don’t arrive back in secondary school. I’m deployed there. Dropped — without briefing — into the same stale corridors where the walls sweat Lynx Af...
5/5/2026
Beef
It starts, as all nightmares do, somewhere offensively mundane. The depot. Fluorescent lights flicker out of habit, not enthusiasm. The air smells fa...
5/4/2026
The Compound
I live in a gated compound. They don’t call it a cult — not officially. It’s dressed up as something softer, something seductive. A concept wrapped in...
5/3/2026
I Don’t Like Creme Eggs
“Richard’s bagged himself a job.” Charlotte says it so casually it almost slides past me — a harmless sentence wearing the disguise of something ordin...
5/2/2026
Man on the Hill
I hate the dentist. No. Hate is too weak a word. I loathe the dentist. Loathe it with every trembling tooth in my head, and every twitching nerve end...
5/1/2026
On the Periphery
This wasn’t part of my plan. You have to understand that. There was no mission briefing. No emotional warm-up. No gentle psychological stretching befo...
4/30/2026
Bargains & Bucket Hats
My husband is practically vibrating with pre–car boot sale enthusiasm. This, in itself, is deeply unsettling. In real life, he wouldn’t be caught dea...
4/29/2026
The Pottery Showdown
Apparently my social life is thriving in my dreams. It’s a shame I hate people. I’ve been invited to a house party. Not someone’s house party. Jus...
4/28/2026
Biscuits, Bees & a Stapler Called Colin.
The rumours have started again. They don’t arrive gently, or with any sense of proportion. They never do. They seep — under doors, through vents, ...
4/27/2026
The Final Scrunch
It starts with a sound that isn’t there. No scrunch. No crisp, decisive collapse of plastic crushed into submission — that semi-orgasmic full stop th...
4/26/2026
Pierced Ambition
Mat and I decide — against instinct, logic, and the gentle pull of our sofa — to crawl out from under our rock and re-enter society. There’s a new bar...
4/25/2026
The H₂O Brigade
I smell it before I see it. Not the comforting, vaguely edible kind — toast left a moment too long, or a rogue fish finger committing quiet suicide in...
4/24/2026
The Trust Exercise
I’m sitting on a plastic chair that has, over time and through sheer compliance, moulded itself perfectly to my arse. It hugs me in a way no chair shou...
4/23/2026
I Had One Job (It Came With a Scroll)
For reasons entirely and suspiciously unbeknown to me — no interview process, no background checks, no gentle easing into the role — I have been entrus...
4/22/2026
The Night I Was Nearly the Main Course
I’ve been invited to a dinner party. I don’t know who invited me. There was no invite in the post, no conversation — just a creeping conviction that ...
4/21/2026
Hunger Games: A Tale of Two Cats
It’s been a week since Pickle arrived. Seven days of chaos. Seven days of noise. Seven days of what can only be described as a hostile takeover — sma...
4/20/2026
The Venga Life
I seem to be living in my Kia Venga. Not using it. Not sleeping in it. Living in it. Properly living. I don’t know how I got here. There’s no defini...
4/19/2026
In the Deep, Dark Woods
I’m in the woods. Night has settled in properly now — not the soft, forgiving kind that tucks you in and calls it day, but the thick, suffocating sort...
4/18/2026
Curl Up and Dry
Mat is beaming. Not just smiling — beaming like a man moments away from committing a crime. The kind of grin that suggests something is brewing inter...
4/17/2026
The Day It All Turned to Potatoes
I forget to set my trusty alarm. This is not a small thing. This is the thing. The spine of the morning. The quiet, dependable 6:00 a.m. that holds e...
4/16/2026
Knicker-Gate
I’m back there again — that place I just can’t seem to escape, no matter how many exits I imagine. Work. Of course I am. Because apparently even my ...
4/15/2026
Staying Alive, Staying Alive…
It’s happening again. That rattling inside my skull — as if someone’s poured a box of screws into my brain and given it a good shake. Then it builds...
4/14/2026
A Load of Old Shit (and Other Things I Tried to Save)
Three and a half years. Three and a half years of silence so complete it has settled into my bones, calcified there, hard and unmoving. Not a word e...
4/13/2026
When Monkey Met Pickle
We bring him home in a box that is far too small to contain the sheer volume of chaos he is clearly preparing to implode upon our world. Pickle. Tin...
4/13/2026
Cookie Cutter Orgasm
I wake to two hairy balls thrusting in my face. Ginger. Fluffy. Meticulously clean. Monkey’s balls. My cat, you filthy bastards. He’s mid-grooming...
4/11/2026
The Most Loneliest Day of My Life
6:00 a.m. on the dot. Not 5.59. Not 6.01. 6.00 a.m. Exactly. The time my body normally slaps me awake like it’s got someplace better to be. I lie...
4/10/2026
The Boy in the Box
Al — my colleague, and professional over-talker — fills the van like expanding foam, seeping into every gap, setting solid, leaving no space for a sing...
4/9/2026
The Gift That Keeps on Taking
It’s my husband’s 40th birthday. A milestone, apparently. A celebration. Another decade under the belt. Though, if you ask my mother-in-law, it’s ...
4/8/2026
Popemobile 0.2
There’s a van at work that everyone prays they don’t get handed the keys to. Aptly christened The Popemobile. Because, well… it looks just like that....
4/7/2026