In my dream last night I was introduced to a new term: looes, for a certain kind of hair selfie. It’s an anagram of e-solo, of course, which makes sense for “selfie” – if you’re the kind of person who dreams in anagrams. It was in connection with Justin Bieber (there’s an anagram for “watt”…) and his apparent penchant for selfies about his hair. Whether or not he does, I’ve no idea.

But then my subconscious former English teacher stepped in and cleared its metaphorical throat. First it took down one of the copies of the Compact OED from the shelf (what, you don’t have more than one? Pity.) It looked up “looes” and said there was no mention of it; no surprise there. But then it grabbed the full OED (which I no longer have… sigh) and found an obscure reference in the works of Mallory and one in Pope. Of course it did!

And then the geographical part of my subconscious pointed out that clearly I was thinking of “loess”, a form of sedimentary rock formed from airborne micro-particles. Very fine, those particles, apparently like Mr Bieber’s hair. What, asks Subconscious English Teacher, the hell do you know about Mr Bieber’s hair? Geographer-subconscious shrugs, mutters something about Instagram, and wanders off to put sandals on over its socks.

At this point, Sir Sh*ts-A-Lot, one of my catsitting victims, begins bazooka-barfing on my shoes in the real world and my anagrammatic cryptic-clues dream draws to a merciful conclusion.

Why can’t I just dream about running uphill or being naked in front of the boardroom like a normal person?