Dream a little dream...

I know, it's been too long. The thing is, you can't go telling all about your teenager. The only thing teenagers like is to be ignored and left to their own devices and indeed vices. However, Lily's dreamworld is more thrilling than anything life can offer.

When I go to wake her up this morning, a little grin spreads over her face. 'I haven't had a dream like that in ages,' she says. 'It was Black Holey and somehow Miley Cyrus got into my dream. We got into this car, actually it was a flying car from Harry Potter except it was a lot easier to drive... No! It was a helicopter and for some reason it was flying upside down, so I jumped on the bottom and opened the hatch and climbed in, followed by Miley Cyrus - she's like my worst singer in the world - and it was like the Tardis. So I took over the controls. You know like when you try to steer and it goes all bouncy, well I managed to smooth the ride. We were over the sea and Everest was there, surrounded by wooded mountains, and I was like, "I want to go and see Everest," and one of my friends said, "You're doing this to annoy me," because she wanted to go home.

'I started telling my friends all these like facts like air density and all that stuff about how clouds form and are made into snowstorms - basically geographical facts. So we got to Everest and somehow the Theatre of Cruelty came into my dream. We'd landed on this ancient temple place and you came into my dream.'

'Yaayyy!' I cry.

'You've only been in two of my dreams ever, like ever! I still remember the other one actually. I'll tell you that later.'

'OK, go on.'

'For some reason the temple was at the base camp of Everest and we could go up a river that goes up the side of Everest, but for some reason we wanted to go inside the temple. So we got in some boats and rowed over to the temple. You know how in galleries they have those guides who tell you about the paintings? You became one of them.'

'Yaayyy!'

'There were murals in the temple and the whole place was lit by candles and you were telling us about them, and one was a baby getting all its limbs ripped off which was really gross, and it became a bit like Venice, and between each gallery you had to go by boat, and we saw people being burnt and people being really tortured - basically all the medieval tortures. It was horrible.

We got back into the helicopter and for some reason we all flew to Vesuvius...

'Hang on. Was that it? I am out of the dream again now?'

'Yup. This is the part where the Black Hole comes in by the way. For some reason we'd all grown to like giants, so we were bigger than everybody down at Vesuvius, and when we got there it was rotating like a Black Hole. It was really cool.'

She starts giggling. 'The outside was made of chocolate and the inside was treacle and honey and golden syrup. Seriously. We climbed to the top and started eating it. Considering we were giants, we pulled bits off the size of my bed. And then... Miley Cyrus came back! Why the hell was she in my dream? By the way it was the young Miley, not this retarded Miley we see now.

'Also people from Twilight started to come in as well. Basically we were all lying on clouds eating the volcano slash Black Hole, Miley comes along and asks what we're doing, and I'm like, "you should totally try some, it's so yummy.'

Lily pauses to savour the memory. 'Mmmm, it was soooo good....

'Then I became Miley Cyrus. Then we all felt a massive shaking, because Miley - me's Dad was coming and he's like the biggest person out of everybody in the world. And I was yelling at everyone, "Hold on, Dad's coming!" and he was literally ripping the Black Hole to shreds and eating it and then he started squeezing and squishing the clouds and I said, "Anybody who doesn't want to be squished by my Dad's hands, let go!"

'So we literally all let go and, I don't know how this happened, we all had bungee cords attached to us and we were bungee jumping...'

'What fun!' I exclaim.

'It was awesome. When we reached the ground we were in America.'

'God, darling, you've been all over the place!'

'I know!'

'Miley had gone very very pale...'

'You're not Miley any more?'

'Nope. It turns out she'd become a vampire.'

'Darling, are you making this up as you go along?'

'Nope. This actually happened. She said, "what's happened?" and we're like, "you've turned into a vampire, mate. Tough luck." We came to a seriously weird train station. You know gypsy caravans? The carriages were like that and to get there, this person pulls up in this shabby horse and cart, and for some reason I knew the driver and he was called Stanley, and he got us all to the train station, and then all my friends left. And then I woke up!'

'Gosh,' I say. I feel like I've been on a major excursion. 'Oooh! Tell me about the other dream I was in.'

'That was like ages ago when I was seven, but that was like really boring.'

'So basically I just feature in a really boring dream and then as a tour guide.'

'Yup. In the boring dream we were in the Caribbean or Thailand or somewhere.'

'Hang on, that's quite nice!'

'We were racing down the beach and there was a wooded path through the trees and I was on that and you were on the beach and we were racing back to our bungalow thingamajiggy, and I said. "let's actually race," so then you were like, "OK," and we started running at the same speed and then I jumped and started flying. It was a really lame dream.'

'You realise your really lame dream would be anybody else's really exciting dream?'

'What, like flying? It's really dull.'

I raise my eyebrows as if to say, honestly!

'What? It's really dull. I started flying and got there first and that's basically it.'

'So, feelings of supremacy over your mother at an early age.'

'Totes.'

'So basically I'm the loser in a race and a tour guide.'

'U-huh.'

'And that's it.'

'U-huh.'

'Have you really not had any other dreams about me?'

'Nope.' She turns over decisively and pulls the duvet over her ears.