I'm a middle-aged Englishman living in rural, south-central Britain, married 20 years, with two teenage kids about ready to fly the nest. We've just moved into a farmhouse to accommodate my wife's ambition to start a goat dairy making artisanal cheese and yogurt. It's risky, but I'm successful enough so it doesn't have to start turning a profit quickly; and she really wants to try it.

The place has a huge sunny stone-fenced yard or back field, with pens and a shelter. No goats yet; she's still planning. May need some improvements.

I like the new place, it's spacious. But it's a bit farther from my girlfriend. My wife knows of course; the marriage was a triangle from the start. They're friends. I've been quasi-married to this sculptor for longer than I've known my wife! Would have married her, but she's deep-rooted in a commune in a small town southeast of us--she works big, and needs her spacious workshop there, and it'd be hell to move her stuff--bronze and stone! And she just plain likes her communards, and needs a lot of time alone. So we never married, I just visit, and we've stayed lovers twenty years.

The triangle feels stable and happy; the fear/excitement/instability is all around the dairy business. Well, a little uncertainty about whether to hide our triangle from the neighbors. They're conservative; what'll they think?

Today one neighbor visited. He went around the yard examining our farm equipment. I think "Good, I can pump him for dairy expertise." Glad to help, flattered, he doesn't think to ask about our personal lives...

Now the whole thing is a BBC mystery. I think. A tall skinny man arrives--a police detective investigating some crime.

When I wake, I forget the plot details. What sticks is my place, my people, my other life...

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Mystery set in rural England: Felicia Yap's Yesterday, which I just read.
• Sculptor needing lots of solitude yet living in shared place: artist-me. I do live in a big shared house--gives me room for larger art projects.
• Rural Brit husband: in Yesterday, the husband's a writer in rural England. He cheats on his wife, hiding affairs; when exposed, they hurt her a lot. Different in my dream--I was honest with my loved ones, though wary with conservative strangers. So who's this dream-me?
• Wife: business? A steady, productive routine? Nourishing others? All those?
• Goats: uh oh! Nature show on Galapagos said feral goats stripped vegetation so whole isles went bare; tortoises starved. Rangers killed the goats, and the woods and tortoises recovered--doing well today.
• Artisanal dairy farming: when I typed up the dream, for dairy I wrote diary! A meaningful slip. I'm culling book reviews from my diary to add to our library's online catalog. The dream warns it may be a timesink as destructive as goats. Like the reference to Yap's book, dark undercurrents here?
• ACTION (short-term): beware book reviewing as yet another time sink.
• My unconventional life's OK, if prone to misinterpretation: I do feel okay single, if still a bit lonely. I'm not lying or exploiting anyone--unlike Yesterday.
• What to hide, what to reveal: yep! A real concern for me. As an autistic, much of my life is strange enough to be readily misinterpreted, so I keep my mouth shut.
• What's the dream mean? My current set-up works for me, but I need privacy, or outsiders judge me--and try to help me to death!
• ACTION: (long-term) James Thurber once wrote an anti-self-improvement book titled
  LET YOUR MIND ALONE!

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