Though We Should Never Forget That Mr Sheen Also Portrayed Greg Stillson In The 'Dead Zone' Film, Who Also Became President...

I try to avoid writing about dreams I've had on the blog, because… well, mainly because it's usually rather dull hearing about other people's dreams.

I invariably find that my dreams are just a tangle of events and fleeting thoughts from the day, as the mind winds down and shuffles its papers like a newsreader about to knock off for the day, but I thought I'd share the following. If nothing else, it'll give you an indication of the shape of the inside of my head, as unhealthy as it might be.

So: I dreamt that I was attending a writers' meeting for the TV show The West Wing, where we were all called on to pitch storyline ideas for the forthcoming season. Of course, since I have no idea what the majority of the writing staff look like, the other writers and the showrunners were depicted by members of the cast - as the head of things, Aaron Sorkin was played by Martin Sheen, and so on.

Adding to the confusion is the fact that although I think it's one of best-written shows in recent years, because Channel 4 burned off their episodes of TWW in all manner of strange places (different channels) and times (post-midnight at one stage, 8pm at another), I haven't actually seen it beyond the stage when John Goodman comes along. So the storylines I was pitching were all being put forward without any certainty as to whether they might already have been done - though as I was also aware that Mr Sheen, like Mr Sorkin, was not in the boss-chair towards the end of things, it was as if I was pitching at some point in the show's past.

Anyway, I woke up, and was amused by the fact that I had, in the dream, been pitching pretty good ideas at a moment's notice (I suggested one storyline for Will Bailey which had Joshua Malina nodding as if to say he understood), bewildered at the way that my mind had chosen to depict behind-the-scenes folks with on-set equivalents, and reminded how I'd promised myself that, once I've completed the Christmas shopping this year, I was planning on buying myself the West Wing DVD boxset by way of reward.

And then, less than an hour later, I opened a magazine and saw an advert saying the boxset is now 75% in certain locations.

All right, Mr Subconscious, I get the message. No need to hammer it home.