It isn’t that early.  Maybe 9.30 a.m.  I am walking, with Rufus and Dino, through the offices.  On the left are the white, plasterboard walls, behind which are offices and meeting rooms.  On the right is the typical open plan office, separated from me by a half-height wall so that I can see the desks – although not so many people are in.

I get to the door at the end and open it and go through.  The room is large, wood-panelled with a brownish, nondescript carpet.  There are some desks and a leather sofa.  I let the dogs off the lead.  I notice a guy lying on the floor.  Probably in his 30s, casually dressed.

“Oh!”, I exclaim, “sorry about the dogs”.

“It’s OK”, he replies.

I’m here to do a job.  It’s not a permanent job but I’m being well paid.  I will be assisting the Managing Director.  This guy.  Who is he?  We sit and chat for a bit and then I get on with my job.  I decide that I need to get something from the car.  I have an English lesson to finish and the stuff is down there.  I leave the dogs with the guy.  He is lying on the floor, reading a book.

When I reach the street, the city is busy.  It is London, after all.  I find my car.  It’s an Audi estate or maybe a Ford.  I get in and find the papers I need.  I realise that, maybe, I should take Dino-clone upstairs as well.  For some reason I should never let Dino-clone and Dino meet.  After all he is Dino’s son (I had been watching Terminator Salvation previously).  But, stuff it.  What harm can there possibly be?

I take him up.

As I get back into the office the guy is where I left him.  Next to him one of the dogs has been sick.  And there is dog shit all over the floor.  I am amazed that he can just lie there and do nothing about it.  I start the clean up.  I clean most of the sick and then start on the shit.

The MD arrives through the door.  He, too, seems not to notice the dog shit everywhere.  He goes to his office which is in the corner of the room and up a couple of stairs.  There are two entrances.  Both doors are open.

I break off from my cleaning up of the dog shit and go to my computer which is in his room.

“Ah, good”, he says, “I need you to help me with this computer package in 10 minutes or so”.

“OK”, I reply, “no problem.  Whenever you want”.  But thinking to myself that, surely, he realises I have to clean up the dog shit first.  I step outside his office into the big room and continue.

A visitor comes.  A big guy, with a moustache, wearing a camel coat.  The MD invites him into his office.  The doors are not closed yet I can’t hear their conversation, which I am slightly puzzled about.  Me and the guy from the floor sit at a table in the ante-room.  He asks me why I’m here.

“I live in Milan, Italy”

“Oh”, he says, asking “where’s that?”

I think that he’s just an idiot.  I start to explain about the dogs.  I have to go back every weekend.  I take the dogs with me.

There’s a puzzling thing.  It’s OK taking them back to Milan but how did I get them here in the first place?  I think: Will I have to leave them here?  Will they have to stay in quarantine for six months?  No, that can’t be right.  No, I’m certain I can get them back to Milan.

Then I cannot understand how I got them here.  It just doesn’t make sense.

This ‘working it out’ wakes me up.  It’s 1.07 a.m.

I wonder why I’m having such strange dreams right now.  That doesn’t make sense either.