Hello, I have had a recurring dream since I was little and I was wondering if anyone might be able to shed any light on it. Sorry if it's rather long-winded...


I was eight when I first had this dream. I am now 24 and I can’t count the number of times I have dreamt it. The sequence remains largely the same, although of late it is becoming more stressful and I wake up exhausted. I have no recollection of ever having been to this place in real life or of having seen the faces I see. I am aware that I am dreaming but so far I have never been able to change or control it.
Recently, I have started to wonder if it is a dream at all.

In short:
I am hoping to meet people with recurring dreams and ask what I can do about it?
Is this a lucid dream if I can’t control it?
Are there other experiences like this which are not dreams?
Does a recurring dream mean something?
What is this place I have never been to and why have I dreamt about it so much?
How can I stop it/control it?

The dream
I wake up. I turn on the light but it doesn’t work. I wait until I can see in the dark. My digital radio has morphed into an old carriage clock; but the hands look like they have been rubbed out of focus so I can’t tell the time.

I have a strong feeling of needing to find something but I have no idea what I’m looking for.

I get up. I have only the bed sheets for clothes. I crawl through an old fireplace out into the street. It is night, the lights hang low and dim concealing a place full of dead trees and poorly lit doorways. There is a smell of alcohol and pipe smoke, and the air feels really really heavy. (This is the only dream that I’m aware of smells – is anyone else aware of being able to smell in their dreams?) Underfoot are cobbled stones which are wet. I find it difficult to walk without slipping. A discordant piano jangles the air in spits and spurts.

People linger behind the tree stumps and in the doorways. They are dressed in old-fashioned clothes – the women burst out of corsets and the men sport hats and waistcoats. I am in France (although nowhere I’ve been before), sometime in the past and people speak only in French. (NB I don’t speak French. I am not sure if what I’m hearing is my own bowdlerised impression of what I know French to sound like or if I am in fact listening to the actual language. Is that possible? It sounds pretty real to me. And sometimes I seem to be able to understand what people are saying…)

No-one notices me - even though I’m draped in bed sheets and constantly falling over – except one girl. I’m not sure what she looks like though. I can’t tell if she is good or bad. She gets in the way. She goes and comes back a lot, like a bird to its nest.

I approach doors, banging at each one until my fists bleed (although my hands heal in between, as if I’ve been re-set for the next door). No-one ever answers. The girl keeps orbiting. I find a lit window where I see a man working at a desk, too busy to notice me. I knock at the glass. He looks over but can’t see me. He picks up a pair of binoculars and points them right at me, but he still doesn’t see me. He blows out the candle which extinguishes all the light in the street. I can’t see anything. She is still there though, because she holds my hand and squeezes it so hard that I wake up.