Hello from the city that brought you black snot.

I’ve not been here for just over a year (airports excluded), and when I was last here it was not long after my move back north from Glasgow, so I suppose I didn’t notice the pollution all that much at the time. This time, however, after a year of the clean, fresh air of Inverness, I’ve really noticed, felt, smelt and tasted the grime, traffic fumes and thick, smoggy air.

It was perhaps the brain-warping influence of the polluted London air, plus the crush of the Tube, that led me to have the strangest, most peculiar dream I’ve had in a long time, in the early part of this morning…

I was in Glasgow, standing at George Square. There was some sort of event on – a gig or carnival or something. Suddenly, one of the buildings on the square vaporised and turned into smoke, taking the form of a dragon which flew over the square and breathed fire over everyone. There was chaos, people running in all directions.

I ran into a building, which was busy but strangely calm, and tried to run through the crowds away from the square. I couldn’t get deep enough into the building to get to a back entrance, and instead found myself going round in circles. At one point, I leapt through a window to escape, crashing through it effortlessly and finishing with not a scratch on me. You’d have been seriously impressed with my stuntmanship had you been watching my channel on dreamTV (not available in all regions).

Alas though, I was still indoors. Frustrated and unable to escape the increasing unrest, I found a fireplace and had a strange hunch it led somewhere. So I threw myself at it, and lo and behold it was a sort of portal, because I landed on grass, outside, in the calm. I was next to some large stone object. I looked up, and saw it was some sort of tomb. The name on it was “Stephen Fry“.

Then I woke up.

Utterly, inexplicably strange.

But in a sense, also great fun. If I’d tried to write a fantasy drama sketch set in Glasgow, I could never have done as well as that dream.