In the culture of my family we began piano lessons and received our first watch on our 9th birthdays. It was so new and adult to translate time into words. Time, of course, had no meaning as one day flowed into another, and was measured by the sun and what we were allowed to eat.

In the dream I am standing in front of the kiosk trying to buy my train ticket. The machine is becoming uncooperative.

I am lying in the tent – hiding from the midges that are hanging in dark clouds – on the Isle of Arran. I am listening to the water and a bird giving a soft whistle call as if it's having a conversation about the ordinary events of the day. I am alone.

When I am hiking in the European wild areas and I am lying there in my sleeping bag, this time in a small tent, I start thinking about all the wild animals out there roaming around. It’s not a comforting thought.

The journey started at the Berlin Train station. I was travelling with my family; my son, daughter-in-law and grandchild. Rowan was looking for The Guardian to read; as it wasn’t there, he bought a copy of the New York Times. On the front cover was an article on the separation of children from families on the US-Mexican border.

"You can’t garden with such will," I said as I entered the surround of the dream.

In the dream, the helpful people had bulldozed a pathway down to the garden. They stood there dumbfounded, as if to express, How could you not like our help? The path did not even follow the contours of the hill, it just went straight down. And still, they seemed shocked at my distress. How could I not appreciate their straight, steep, bulldozed path?

I once owned Brian Eno's record Ambient 1: Music For Airports. I lived in a 28ft tipi with Mike in the early 80s and that particular album was perfect to play whilst redoing the tipi lining - one of those slow meditative processes. Poetry and music were the most important things in our life, so we managed to stretch an electrical cord into the tipi just to play the record player.