I don't remember my dreams much these days but the other morning I woke up and recalled that I had been having a chat (in my dream) with the poet laureate Andrew Motion.

I can't remember what happened but I can assure you it was nothing out of the ordinary.

My slumber was shattered by my two lads who insisted on watching Match of the Day at 7.10am.

Dreaming of the poet laureate set in motion a search of my library and I managed to find Motion's recent book, Ways of Life: On Places, Painters and Poets.

I managed to find the time to read a short essay about Motion's trip to Haydon Bridge, in the North East, to find letters poet Philip Larkin had written to his friend Monica Jones.

A year or so ago, I heard Motion read some of his poems on the village green at Warborough, and he fought valiantly with a terrible public address system which kept backfiring on him.

Motion will probably always be remembered as the official biographer of Philip Larkin, but I like some of his poems, particularly those he was not encouraged to write for the Royals.

I also read a great short story this weekend in the Review section of Saturday's Guardian.

It was by JG Ballard, who recently died. Billed as his last story, it was a disturbing yarn about a warring husband and wife on a final holiday to Tuscany.

After the wife discovers her husband's fear of heights, she scales every tall tower in the area.

When she climbs the leaning tower of Pisa, he declines to follow her to the top, and actually manages to push the tower over until it crashes to the ground.

You couldn't make it up, but Ballard had the warped vision to tell such a tall story, and I wish he was still around to write some more.

I read some of his autobiography, Miracles of Life, a while ago, but I couldn't find a copy when I searched my library and I fear it is sitting in a charity shop as we speak.

There were quite a few pieces about Ballard in the weekend papers including an interview with his partner, a Mrs Walsh, who he met in 1969.

Apparently, for most of their time together they would only meet up weekends, which was one way of keeping their romance alive.

If I get the chance today, I shall go on a Ballard hunt at Oxford's Central library.