Gill Tweed is a nursery school teacher in Wandsworth, south London In the Sixties I spent five years in Salonica, Greece. I lodged in a fifth-floor flat in a block overlooking a square in the middle of which were the ruins of a historic building. I returned to London in 1970. After a while I started having a dream that recurred with increasing frequency over the next 26 years until it became almost nightly.

In the dream I would visit the flats, stand in the street and try to get in. The scenarios varied but I could never enter. Sometimes the door handle would fall off as soon as I touched it or my finger would push through the bell; the block would be a pile of rubble, or gutted by fire. On the worst occasions, floodwaters would swirl up from the drains and I’d wake up “drowning” and gasping.

The dream haunted me until 1996, when I took a family holiday to northern Greece, my first time there since I’d left. I went to Salonica and found the square much changed, but with the flats still standing.

The family name of my former landlady was on the bell push but I didn’t touch it. I noticed a widow sitting on a bench and greeted her spontaneously: “Hello Evangelia,” believing her to be my former neighbour, whom she greatly resembled.

By coincidence she, too, was called Evangelia. We chatted for nearly an hour. I left feeling dislocated in time.

I’ve never had the dream since, to my relief, because it had become tormenting and intrusive. It was exorcised by my visit but I don’t understand how or why.

Petruska Clarkson writes: I imagine that because Gill stayed in Greece for five years, it was a good time for her - although she doesn’t say.

Her nightmares about having this period (building) destroyed after leaving Greece also indicate that she would feel devastated if it were to be lost. The fact that these “tormenting” nightmares stopped when she revisited the site, which was changed but undamaged, and met another “Evangelia” corroborates this. Evangelia means “good news”.

Gill sounds as if she is in mid-life.This experience of change and yet permanence is psychologically important. Although the people and the places of our youth change, some elements remain the same and can continue to nourish and sustain us in life.

Gill Tweed and Petruska Clarkson were talking to Harvey McGavin. Send a 300-word description of your dream, with contact details and a photograph of yourself, to Jill Craven, Friday magazine, Admiral House, 66-68 East Smithfield, London E1W 1BX. Email: jill.craven@tes.co.ukPetruska Clarkson says anyone wanting to understand their dreams more fully should contact a recognised psychologist