I’m dreaming that I’m duct taped up against the window in McDonald’s.

My head is free but the rest of me is completely wrapped in the thick grey tape. I look like an Egyptian Pharaoh who was so brittle he had to be mummified by Pimlico Plumbers.

My body is in the Orthodox Mexican Starfish position. Fine work by whoever put me here (I don’t rule out it being myself). It’s Christmas time and I’m fully aware my cashews, Messrs Phillip and David, are prime targets for the Nutcracker to live up to his name.

The only positive thing is that with my back flat against the window, my posture hasn’t been better in years.
Not since my school days being strapped to the underside of a see-saw, where my back would be perfectly flat against the metal beam.
Although my head was free and would occasionally droop after a few hours. Fortunately, there was always a classmate who would offer to leap off the other end of the seesaw and the tarmac would smack my head back into line with my spine.
Though there’s a risk your neck can go too far back, if your bullies are feeling the pinch and using a cheap see-saw, as part of the frame will be aluminium. If it is, the back of your head will start to make a dent in the beam, until eventually your neck is bent back 90 degrees. Then every further kiss from the ground hammers your chin like a woodpecker, and your head sinks further and further into the beam. By the end you’re looking out the other side like Han Solo.

I need to work out if I’m on the inside or the outside of the restaurant. I look around.
There’s ketchup all over the floor and cones and tape saying “Do not cross”.
A guy is asleep on the floor.
Ok so I’m inside.
For once I’m thankful health and safety has gone mad and a minor spillage and napping driver requires the Highways Agency to close the road.

Hmm the bloke on the floor looks remarkably like Leonardo Dicaprio…
OMG I’m on a mission! I need to join Leo in the dream below. Cobb is missing his corn! I need to butter myself so I can slip out of the duct tape and check in to a plush hotel to fall asleep on duck feather pillows.

But I have no butter, so I have to get creative.
I remember my head is the only part of my body I have control over. I sat next to Harry Maguire in school and our maths teacher both gave us the same advice, “Use your head”.
So I start slamming it back against the window. Over and over again, trying to knock myself out. It’s a fine balance. Too hard and I’ll smash the window and become just another mummy in the street. Too soft and I won’t get the concussion I so desperately want.
Fortunately, I have plenty of experience smacking the back of my head against solid surfaces. But this is the first time I’ll be doing it by myself. I’m like Fowler in Chicken Run. I can see why Ginger and Babs might have thought Fowler could fly a plane – as he was in the RAF. But it was humiliating for a proud rooster like Fowler to have to spell it out in plain English, that in fact he did not know how to fly a plane – as he was a chicken. Well in the end he stepped up when it mattered. And if a chicken can fly a plane, I can knock myself out on a window!
I take off with a thud (or fifty), and land smoothly in a dream within a dream.

I need to figure out where I am fast, and then find Leo.

I’m unable to move my body. Even my head is pinned back and stuck fast.
FFS I’m glued to the other side of the window!

I strain my neck and manage to rip my head free, leaving behind all the hair on the back of my head. My head now looks like a baboon’s arse. But at least I can look around.

Oh no! I’m in a nightmare!
There’s blood dripping from the ceiling.
In the December cold, icy cone-shaped stalactites have formed, and there’s police tape wrapped around them.
It’s like a Christmas in Hogsmeade as, near the blood, someone has Wingardium Leviosaed a bloke up against the ceiling and left him there for dead. Presumably while they go to blow the froth off a few butter beers.

Ok so it’s a nightmare, but at least I know I’m outside now- OMG the bloke on the ceiling is Leo!

I start bawling my eyes out. But strangely my tears run up, over my forehead and into my hair…
He’s not on the ceiling… I’m upside down!

I’m in the Inverted Mexican Starfish. The most aesthetically pleasing, but technically difficult, of the crustacean holds.

Suddenly a feeling of dread comes over me. While I’m no longer vulnerable to the Nutcracker’s steel toe caps, I’m exposed to his mallet. I’m a fairground. Phillip and David don’t know how much danger they’re in!
Phillip can look after himself in a fist fight, but is like a man stuck to a window in terms of mobility. He’s the fairground strength challenge where you have to slam a mallet as hard as you can on the pad to make the bell at the top of the tower ring.
David is quicker, more agile. The hare to Phillip’s tortoise. He’s a game of Whac-A-Mole. A game as much of reflexes as of forecasting. For his sake I hope the Nutcracker’s had a few too many eggnogs…

People see me crying and feel sorry for me. They start giving me food. After nearly 100,000 long milliseconds, I put on so much weight that the glue can no longer hold me. I drop off the face of the window and the jolt wakes me up. I’m back in the dream one level up.

I’m still stuck up against the window, but I’m a little more grateful this time. The blood is no longer rushing to my head, and the duct tape distributes my weight more evenly so I’m able to lean into it a bit more and relax.
I must have been spiked because I don’t remember it, but I think people were shovelling food into my mouth again, as very soon my weight makes the tape give way and I crash towards the floor. I wake up just before I do.

Phew! I’m back in the land of the living and the slim.
I look around and I’m in McDonald’s. I must have fallen asleep in the booth by the window. Ah yes, that makes sense why it was at the front of my subconscious!

I go to the self-checkout to mindlessly order the Presents-under-the-tree festive burger (a cheeseburger where the cheese finds itself beneath the burger), when the flash of police lights outside catches my eye.
I finish my order and make my way over to the window to watch while I wait.
I spot little remnants of grey tape on the window. And Pritt Sticks all over the floor. And… is that a patch of hair stuck to the window?

I look down and my stomach is protruding. I press it, assuming it’s gas and just needs encouraging out. But it’s as solid as a see-saw beam in a private school.
I realise I’m pregnant! (It’s not fat because I’m not fat, so it CANNOT be fat due to me not being fat).

Then it dawns on me… I don’t know if I’m dreaming or not!

Fortunately, I have a foolproof method to find out.
I have a spinning top I always keep in my left trouser pocket. I reach in to get it. It’s not there!
I panic and search everywhere. I breathe a sigh of relief when I find it in my right pocket. I have my jeans on backwards! (The mystery of why I couldn’t find my flies earlier and ended up wetting myself is simultaneously solved).

The test is: I spin the spinning top. If it spins indefinitely then I’m dreaming. If it stops spinning then I’m awake.

I take the spinning top and spin it against the vertical window I used to call home.
It instantly falls to the floor. I tentatively gaze down at it. It’s completely motionless.

I’m awake!