I have possibly the most bizarre dreams in the world.

The one last night with Hitler and a clear box full of sperm. (The type of box in which veggies are stored in the fridge.) What was all that about? Am I the only person who has dreams about Hitler and his moustache? (The sperm and Hitler were in no way sexually linked. Blergh. Freud would have had a field day.) There was a factory and women were baby-making machines, with no other purpose in the world.

Or there was the one where I dreamt I was pregnant, spot on right down to the dread and the sickness and the aching, and the cautious hand on my stomach. I spent a month waiting and wondering and worrying, and being utterly convinced my dream was some sort of freaky prophesy/prediction.

I am always guilty in my dreams. I wake up chewing my lip till I taste blood, and worry and worry that my dreams have happened, or will happen, or have some deep significant meaning.

Either that, or I wake up crying. I dream of people dying a lot. Or I dream people alive, the ones who should be dead. I wake up seeing faces of dead people, and cry and cry because they were there one moment, and gone the next.

"Cough and you wake up," was the advice of my father when I was three, complaining about a dream in which I was given a very realistic poke in the stomach by a nasty man in a black bowler hat with white gloves and a walking stick.