Ian McMillan: I dreamed a dream – of misery

Let me explain my current state of dream-induced nervousness. It all began, like many things do for the middle-aged man, in the bathroom. I’d just been brushing my teeth and my eye was caught by what appeared to be a mark in the bath, a discolouration, a spot. I leaned closer and discovered that it wasn’t a discolouration: it was a ladybird. It was an interesting autumn for ladybirds last year, what with the mildness and all, and I kept finding them in the house and liberating them into the garden, from where they often found their way back until I shooed them out again.

The one in the bath was on its back, struggling to right itself, its little legs waving like they were trying to get my attention, which in a way they were. With the aid of a square of toilet roll I helped it to get the right way up and left it sitting in the bath, getting its breath and resting its aching limbs. I saw it again and again over the next few days, and I didn’t have the heart to put it out into the cold. There it was on the bathroom windowsill; on the lightshade in the bedroom; wandering slowly across the stair carpet without a care in the world.

After a while, though, I decided it was time to let it go. After all, the other ladybirds would be wondering where it was and the weather had warmed up a little. And a train of events began that led to my sweating, trembling nightmares. I saw it sitting near the sink when I was brushing my teeth, and I gathered up a square of toilet paper for The Great Escape. Unusually, I had taken my mobile phone into the bathroom because I was expecting a call. The phone rang just as the ladybird strolled onto the expanse of the toilet paper. I answered the phone and the discussion was long and convoluted and of course (Of course? Of course?) I’d forgotten about the ladybird and I screwed the bit of toilet paper up and chucked it in the lav and flushed and then suddenly remembered the ladybird and plunged my hand into the whirling maelstrom but it was too late. The paper had gone. The ladybird had gone. And that night The Dream began: the huge ladybird as big as King Kong battering down the bathroom door as I sit there. It gathers me up in a vast toilet paper blanket and forces me down the toilet, head first. The waters rise around me, churning and churning. I’m sorry! I’m really sorry!