I woke up today with a vision. Sometimes I wake up with a scrap of a dream in my head, and often I wake up with a general sense of anxiety, but today I woke up with a vision of a place in Croydon.

I just couldn’t get it out of my head, it was so vivid: a quiet residential street lined with post-war houses, just behind East Croydon station. On one side is a small brick wall where the street crosses over train tracks. Next to it, a modern church with a square tower. On the other side of the street is a white stucco house with tall windows and crenellations like a castle. In the distance is the large glass building where my dad used to work.

I knew this was a memory of a place I had visited, but I could only remember being there once. Five or six years ago I had an appointment in Croydon, and had arrived early. I wandered around the back streets, wasting time, and passed the place with the brick wall and white castle-like house. It’s possible I may have also been there as a kid, walking up to my dad’s office on the days we went to visit him, but I wasn’t sure.

It seemed unusual to have such a clear vision of a place I’d likely only visited once. How did I remember all the details? Why this place and why this morning? It was so vivid, I just couldn’t ignore it. Recently I’ve been feeling a little lost, adrift, looking for some guidance in my life, so I treated the vision as a command. I called in sick to work and took the train to Croydon.

I didn’t need to check a map because I knew exactly where to go. I walked through the town centre, across the tram tracks, along Park Lane, past the Whitgift Centre and the Fairfield Halls and the large glass building where my dad used to work. Halfway down Chatsworth Road, there it was: the place from my vision. It was like seeing a celebrity in person, so familiar and yet so alien. The quiet street, the brick wall, the church. The castle-like house. Everything was exactly as I’d seen it - or as I’d remembered it. I was shocked that my vision had been so accurate, considering I’d only been here once, and that was years ago. But it was real.

I had obeyed the call, followed the vision, and now I was here. But why? I felt there must be a reason for the vision but I couldn’t figure it out. So I decided to wait, and spend some time in the place. I stood against the wall and watched the trains pass. I studied the moss on the brick, the weeds in the pavement, the curtains of the houses. The road was very quiet. Then, about half an hour after I arrived, a woman walked up, wearing a bright orange T-shirt with the words

God is on Control

on it. It was a reassuring message on a day like today. I thought maybe she was headed to the church, but instead she stopped by the wall.

We waited together on Chatsworth Road, me by the white house, the woman by the wall. She never looked at me. A little while later, a red car pulled up, driven by a young man with a curly beard. He switched the engine off, but didn’t get out. Then, the three of us waited together. I started to feel uneasy, but I couldn’t move. Something was going to happen.

Over the next few hours, we were joined by dozens of others. A woman pushing a pram, an old man walking a dog, a teenager in a black puffer jacket, a parking warden. People pulled up in cars and mopeds. They stood on the pavement and in the street, creating an empty circle in the middle of the road. Everyone faced inwards, and no one looked at each other. When the girl in the pram started to fuss, her mother knelt down to soothe her - “Shhh. Wait.” The girl fell silent.

With each new person, the pressure grew. The atmosphere was intense. It seemed we had all come here with a shared purpose, but that purpose wasn’t yet clear. Maybe we had all woken up with the same vision. The air began to hum - no, it wasn’t the air. It was us. We were all humming, harmonising, and as our voices joined together, a ghostly rainbow appeared in the middle of our circle. Through the power of our joined focus and shared purpose, the rest of Croydon dimmed and fell away, leaving just us and the space between us. Somewhere in the back of my mind I understood that the centre of the circle, where the air was rippling with a kaleidoscope of colours, was exactly where I was standing in my vision. It was the angle that I saw the road from, with the brick wall on the left and the white house on the right. It seemed everyone else had the same thought, because we all began walking to the middle of the circle. Slowly the rainbow consumed us until we no longer knew who or where we were.

I have something to admit. That story is not entirely true. What really happened today is different to what I have just described.

The vision was real, and vivid, and it is true I called in sick and took the train to Croydon. I walked through the town centre, along Park Lane, and past the large glass building where my dad used to work. But when I turned onto Chatsworth Road, where I knew my vision took place, it looked very different. The place I had seen so clearly when I woke up didn’t exist: there was no brick wall, no white castle-like house, no church.

I felt betrayed: the vision wasn’t a memory of a real place, it was an invention of my imagination. I had come here following a fantasy, expecting reality to look like my dream.

I walked further down Chatsworth Road, and passed a modern church, but it didn’t have a tower like in my vision. Then, turning left at the end of the road, I saw it: the brick wall over the railway tracks. It didn’t look anything like the one in my vision. It was long, and high, and on a very busy road. I would have dismissed it, except I recognised an alleyway running beside the train tracks. I knew I had been here before, and that this wall was the inspiration for the wall in my vision.

So my vision wasn’t real, and it wasn’t a total invention. It was a collage of memories and places. Some were real, like the brick wall, some were hybrids of reality and imagination, like the church and its spire, and some were totally invented, like the white castle-like house. Real memories and fake memories had mixed together in the slurry of my thoughts as I woke up this morning, and I chose to give them meaning. The vision had no purpose. I felt even more lost and adrift than before.

As I was standing by the large brick wall, wondering what to do next, a woman walked up and stopped on the other side of the road. She was wearing a bright orange T-shirt with the words

God is in Control

on it. It was a reassuring message on a day like today. I decided to wait a while.