Thanks Fogelbise!

I particularly like SSILD now, having given it a good go for the last couple of weeks. I've not had any direct success, but it seems to help me fall asleep more methodically regardless of any other effects. I have used it like a WILD method on a few occasions and noticed hypnogogic sounds - some very vivid voices and swooshes. When you say try it for 15 times I'm assuming you mean 15 rounds on the same attempt of falling asleep?

I'll play with your idea of how I'd use my current situation if turned out to be a dreamstate - that's really interesting concept, thank you

During the nights surrounding New Year I lost a lot of dream recall - sleeping hours were reduced so less REM time and also because of a little bit of alcohol I think. I've noticed on nights that I have had one or two drinks (and only one or two!) I don't recall dreams so well. In addition my awareness and reality checks dropped down to very poor levels. Now I'm back home and back to work in my normal routine I'm getting my usual one or two dreams each night.

I have been thinking over my experiences so far and noticed a couple of trends:

I have a natural tendency to turn over during micro-wakings immediately on finishing a dream. Only in the last couple of weeks have I really spotted this but it's a very important thing for me. If I have the memory of a dream quite fresh in my mind I can lose the thing completely when I turn over, so this is something I'm training myself to overcome. I don't yet have a habit of RCing immediately when I wake so I want to work on that just to see if I can catch any false awakenings.

I'm enjoying DJing and seeing what crazy stuff my head comes up with each night, but I don't seem to have any obvious dreamsigns; no objects, places or people that turn up frequently. That is proving a bit frustrating and is stopping me from using the most commonly described method for RCing when you spot a dreamsign. I will continue with working on awareness, working on recall and random RCs. If I get time I will put some journal entries here for others to review and perhaps there is something obvious that I'm missing

Flan