I've always had a problem knowing what day of the week it is. I'm not talking about just being a bit absent-minded. I really have experienced considerable difficulty with this all my life.

It was an absolute nightmare when I was at school because you were liable to get beaten if you failed to hand in your homework on the day it was due. Even now, I regularly have to get my wife to tell me what day it is. Anxiety about this is something that often features in my dreams. However, the dream I had two nights ago was something else.

I found myself in a city I did not recognise and yet I knew exactly where I was going: I was going to see the wife of my cousin. I entered a house by the back door and in the kitchen were a young woman and a girl about four years old. They were both extremely alike with the same jet black hair and there was something subtly unusual about their features, though I could not say what.

The woman greeted me and I thought at first that her accent was Irish but after a while I began to doubt this. I felt quite sure I had never met her before yet she seemed to know me well enough.

She introduced her daughter and I talked to the little girl for some time. I remember nothing of our conversation except that she seemed far too intelligent for her years.

Then the woman told me I should stop worrying about the days of the week. Those were not the real days, she said, and the reason I could not fix them in my mind was simply that the shadow of the true days lay underneath them.

After saying this, she told me I should go now because her husband would be home soon and he would not like to find her talking to me. I knew then that she was no relation of mine.

A moment later I found myself out in the street once more, and a moment after that I awoke. Lying in my bed, recalling the dream, I was immediately filled with the conviction that the woman I had spoken to was a fairy.