Dreams

[The Picnic Wasp]

Poor guy just seemed to avoid any kind of social interaction that wasn't part of his role. He couldn't look you in the eye and stuck rigidly to a daily routine, becoming upset if slight changes were made. He would stay at his desk for lunch every day having the exact same snack meal and didn't engage in conversation with the two older colleagues he shared an office with. I would ask him about computers as he seemed that's how he spent most evenings and as a result I learned that he liked a couple of bands like Queensryche and Iron Maiden. That opened things up a bit between us and it was clear he started to search for Rush stuff online which we would then chat about.

When the company was sold he was made redundant. I was really worried for him so I put a good CV of his skills together for him but I later found out he didn't use it. I even 'phoned a friend who owned his own company and who was always on the lookout for hardworking trustworthy people. He understood his less than usual traits and had a suitable position for him practically within walking distance of his home, but he didn't contact my friend and I don't think he worked again after that.

Folk at work would laugh about him and say that one day he'd come in with an AK47 and get his own back, but I always wondered what actually went on in his head causing him to be trapped in his narrow world. I've experienced shyness in my life but nothing so devastatingly powerful.

[Slim]

A variation on a traditional theme, early this morning. I'm in a small bedroom, it's my room at a hall of residence. I've come to the end of my time there but I haven't engaged with the course at all, haven't done anything. And now I'm packing my things, taking them out of the wardrobe to catch a train home.

Apart from the room not being the same, this mirrors my real-life experience of my first degree course 45 years ago quite closely. I didn't take a train home though, my dad came to pick me up on my last day there.

I look around the room, thinking that I'll never see it again and maybe I should take a photo. Then I look at my watch. It's 10pm! Far too late to catch a train to Hartlepool. So I'll have to stay another night. I put some music on, on my phone. It's loud, too loud. I don't want to annoy the other people in the building so I plug earphones in.

Later - possibly on my way home - I'm visiting a small business, in a little office. A guy in his 50s is there, and a young woman - a coworker or assistant. I have some software for them, or I'm supposed to collect some data, or something. I think it might be a university actually. The guy I'm visiting is an IT guy at a university department.

The guy tries to do something on a computer screen in his office but an error message comes up. He's slightly irritated but he selects FORMAT DISK from a menu on the screen to initialise a new disk. It's some sort of cloud or networked facility.

I ask him to think about how much harder it would have been 30 years earlier, having to replace and format a physical disk.

[Slim]

Do you have places in your dreams that keep recurring there, but don't exist in real life?

I dreamed about two of these places early this morning. One is a place a way out of Hartlepool, on the road to Elwick. The road forks to the left and there's a pub there, a quiet place with a gravel path. I've dreamed about it many times, but it's not real.

The other one is a place in London. It's an oddly low key place, almost like a nondescript part of Middlesbrough or Northampton. Like residential streets near a provincial town centre. Sometimes there's a small shopping mall there. One time I went in, and sat in a coffee shop; a drab place with wooden seats. But if you keep walking through these streets, eventually you come to some sort of theatre district, lit up brightly with tall buildings; theatres and glittering lights. Not only that but when you turn back, there's some sort of upmarket hotel with an outdoor garden. Again, I've visited them many times in dreams but none of them are real. Sometimes the basic plot of the dream  is that I can't find them.

[The Picnic Wasp]

Yes, I do seem to have a recurring place theme in my dreams at present. Not specific towns or buildings but a bit of a dark (mood) urban landscape. I thought about this going to bed last night hoping that a more lighthearted atmosphere might return at some stage but alas, not yet. I had some horrible but not quite nightmare level dreams last week. One night I had three lengthy, very detailed troublesome events. I almost recorded them here but it would have rambled on a bit. I am always staggered by the random characters which turn up though. People from the past whom I rarely if ever think about.

Also, the fairly frequent appearances by former colleagues that I had no great ties with at the time but there is one individual that gave me some difficulties at work, who operated under the camouflage of being a daft wee laddie. In reality he was quite a devious character who would chuck you under the bus without a second thought. I'm very often violent towards him in dreamland which isn't me but he seems to possess a superpower resilience when faced with this and never gives in regardless of injury. Quite disconcerting.

Boris Becker appeared briefly on my doorstep last week although this was probably inspired by the real-life unexpected canvassing visit by a well known Scottish politician a day or so before. Seemed a nice chap and when I complimented him on the fact that he came across quite honestly in TV interviews he replied wryly, "Well it's quite a low bar". I appreciated that. Made my day actually. If this gets a political comment yellow card I'll just claim that I dreamt it.😁

[The Picnic Wasp]

I forgot to mention, I very often dream that I am barefooted, usually on a night out, or having to make my way home on manky, wet, stony pavements. My state of self- consciousness about this during the dream is quite overpowering. Definitely one for the psychologists.

[Matt2112]

I'm finding that my dreams lately are tending to mirror the ebb and flow of my challenging (but rewarding) week at work.

The other night I dreamt I was causally walking around a nondescript but local town centre with Madonna, as she looked in the Into The Groove video from back in the day - but even sexier, with denim shorts that barely covered her hips and made her legs look better than I'd ever seen in my life.

We were walking arm in arm down a shopping precinct like teenagers, constantly kissing and clinging to each other, which of course in my dream was a massive ego trip - I had pulled one of the sexiest female icons of the eighties.

As soon as I was "aware" of my extraordinary luck the dream ended.  But it was quite nice while it lasted.

[The Picnic Wasp]

My usual mad concoction of rubbish mainly involving coach travel with my personality being massively different from the real me, but nothing worth reporting. Except, close to wakening I had a very brief Rush dream. The three guys were dressed up in exaggerated Victorian gentlemen's outfits, complete with ghoulish face makeup. As it ended and I awoke a musical chorus occurred;

In an English photograph,
In an English photograph.

I realised in was pleasant and catchy and thought of recording it to perhaps use at some later stage. Then, as the mists of sleepiness departed I heard in my head;

In a vapor trail,
In a vapor trail.

Oh well!

[Slim]

A pleasant and catchy version of Vapor Trail? Nice!

Last night I dreamed I was buying some pickups at a guitar shop. They showed me into a store room round the back, a huge room with dusty racks and shelves. Said pickups had been installed in a Les Paul for me to try. I pick the guitar up. Select the neck humbucker. I'll just knock out a couple of bars of a jazz blues or something .. oh - the amplifier is set extremely loud with the gain turned right up .. OK I'll just crank out a couple of heavy blues licks  .. oh god no my fingers won't obey my brain .. a deafening sound of musical ineptitude rings out

[Fishy]

A pleasant and catchy version of Vapor Trail? Nice!

Last night I dreamed I was buying some pickups at a guitar shop. They showed me into a store room round the back, a huge room with dusty racks and shelves. Said pickups had been installed in a Les Paul for me to try. I pick the guitar up. Select the neck humbucker. I'll just knock out a couple of bars of a jazz blues or something .. oh - the amplifier is set extremely loud with the gain turned right up .. OK I'll just crank out a couple of heavy blues licks  .. oh god no my fingers won't obey my brain .. a deafening sound of musical ineptitude rings out

And full circle back to Vapor trails..

[The Picnic Wasp]

My dreams are worryingly bizarre. I dreamt this a few days ago but didn't record it here initially as it's embarrassingly strange. It began with me trying to walk my dog on a narrow mountain path with a sheer drop. He's 11 stone and drags me all over the place in my waking life but somehow we survived this nocturnal danger. The dream followed on with my sister being given a huge amount of banknotes by a mystery uncle. She split the notes into three massive wads and gave equal amounts to me, Matt from on here, and a third unknown individual. We looked at the value of the currency and we were stunned to discover that most of the notes were £655 face value each. An absolute fortune in total. That was the extent of the dream.

I met Matt once for a few moments before a Rush concert at the SECC. I don't remember us exchanging anything other that a hello with the only lasting memory of that brief exchange being that Matt looked quite ill, but bravely decided to attend the concert. The random selection process that occurs in our brains during sleep is beyond any explanation.

[Slim]

I had a variation on my train dream. I'm somewhere in London, at either a local railway station or an overground tube station somewhere. In the dream there's always confusion over which platform I should be on, where to find the ticket office, if I'm supposed to get the train that's arriving now, etc etc.

I go to buy a ticket but I can only buy a bundle of them. It costs £55 and the guy behind the counter hands them over in a transparent plastic bag.

[Slim]

I dreamed I was at a Sea Power gig. But, in the tradition of my old Rush dreams, the gig is very unconventional. It's a small hall, there's no stage and the band are lined up standing next to each other, like a boy band.

[The Picnic Wasp]

I had a lengthy and detailed dream about being partly responsible for the discovery of penicillin. Sheldon Cooper was actually the man behind the science but I was having praise heaped upon me though at first I couldn't figure out why. As the dream progressed and I was involved in preparing large quantities of sausages and fried eggs for a team of people, it dawned on me that no one was quite sure what to do with the penicillin but I was able to wipe down surfaces with it to make them safe. I think I still gained an award for this part of the process.
On awakening, it came to me that this dream probably stemmed from my subconscious disappointment at not having the opportunity to meet Sir James Black, a Nobel Prize winner in medicine. He died in 2010, very shortly after my mother. My family has become very close with a dear friend of Sir James' not long before this time and over the following years enjoyed some great stories about the man and his achievements. I think I would have loved to have been in his company. He gave the world so much and yet remained very modest.

[Slim]

Paul McCartney is playing a gig at a railway station. The stage is down on the tracks, with the audience crowding either side on the embankments. I arrive only to find that I've left my ticket at home.

But Paul comes up to the entrance gate to meet me, and say hello.

[Slim]

I'm in some dusty, dingy basement club. It's more like an old storeroom than a music venue, but Motorhead are playing there. I have a seat on an old chair in the front row.

The band walk on stage. Lemmy throws cans of beer to people in the audience. He throws me a can of Newcastle Brown. I open it; it's warm. Then they walk off again, and the support act comes on. They're a five piece band with two drummers.

I get up to walk to the loo, and when I come back someone has nicked my seat. But a few minutes later he goes to the loo as well, so I take it back. His mate in the next seat tries to tell me that the seat is taken, but I tell him that I had it first.

Then suddenly, the seat rises into the air .. it's somehow part of a "teacup" style fairground ride, set on a spinning circular base levitating on a huge mechanical arm. I'm spinning around in circles, near the ceiling.