Dreams

[The Picnic Wasp]

I don't usually post in this section as I dream so often and so vividly that it would be a constant diary. I've been retired a couple of years and don't miss working but continually dream about work with a mash-up of employees and situations from various employers. Most of it very confused and frustrating and some of it quite depressing.

However, last night I had one of those very welcome but too infrequent dreams about Rush. The band were retired, but only in their thirties and had arranged a kind of friendly meet and greet with a few fans, maybe around a dozen. It was in an establishment not unlike the coffee shop you would find in Waterstones. I didn't speak to Geddy or Alex strangely, but sat down with a white T shirted Neil who couldn't have been warmer or more welcoming but a bit shy. I asked him about certain keyboard parts (weird) so we turned to a dream altered form of a Minimoog with big black pad triggers along the top.

When I asked him how they played the synth intro to Tom Sawyer he triggered one of the pads. I asked him then why did Geddy still play Subdivisions on the keyboard but he just seemed confused and the dream faded to something else. Quite a pleasant memory on awakening. Only too rare. I've just remembered, when leaving the place I was chatting with a few other fans as we walked, wondering whether the band would return to do this again as it had been great. Someone piped up that they had a few dates lined up in the US so might not be back for a while.

[Slim]

Supposedly everyone dreams, but many people don't remember them. Often I've woken up from a dream thinking BLOODY HELL, having had such an imaginative and dramatic feature going on in my unconscious head, only to be completely unable to recall it a few hours later.

Early this morning I dreamed that my next door neighbour to the left was sawing long planks of wood on a stand then passing them over my garden to my neighbour on the other side, who was building a shed with them.

Yesterday morning I had a very agreeable dream. I was at a student hall of residence and in some sort of relationship with two of the girls living there. I think they shared the room. At one point I was lying in a large bed with both of them at the same time, although the dream wasn't sexual at all.

The college janitor or handyman came into the room, climbed a stepladder and removed a large video camera from a cabinet in the wall.

There was also a scene with a car, I was supposed to drive it outside (must have been in a garage or at least indoors somehow) but the entrance didn't seem to be wide enough. Outside there were sprawling acres of green grass.

[captainkurtz]

Weirdly, I actually had a dream I remembered after the last post I made. 

In the dream a member of the old TNMS board came to my house with his children and started setting up his games console in my office.  He had taken my work desk apart and basically shoved all the paperwork and other work accoutrements across the floor surface. I got angry and told him to leave.

Then I woke up.  Weird.

[Slim]

Extraordinary dreams this morning.

In one of them, I'm James Bond. There's some kind of crisis at a shopping mall or similar public place. A railway station maybe. People are flooding to the exits - a bomb scare, or something like that. Maybe Blofeld's going to detonate an atom bomb in there or something.

But I'm on my way in there, wearing a sharp suit. I'm going to nail the bad guys and fix it. I know I can't fail, because I'm 007. I always win. I stride purposefully past a row of shops on the ground floor. I feel indestructible. Dominant. It's a very empowering feeling.

Another dream, very affecting this one - I've met a woman and I'm in that uncertain period where we're just about to start dating, she seems to be interested and I really like her .. she's a black woman, very gracious and mild-mannered.  A long time ago I dated a Jamaican girl and I think the dream may be an unconscious flashback.

So later in the dream I'm talking to my wife.. this makes no sense of course but she tells me that she's bumped into this woman while out shopping, and she said she was really keen to see me again .. at this point the emotional dissonance must have been too much and I woke up.

Finally a brutal dream set in a prison cell .. I'm only a spectator in this one but there are three people in the cell, one very dangerous and aggressive. Two of them have a row, or the aggressive one is bullying the other one. He has him on the floor and he's trying to kill him. The other one picks up a gun and fires it into the air, through the open cell door to attract the prison guards. The guards come running and there's a snarling confrontation in the cell.

[Nick]

Rush announced a last tour and I can't get tickets for the uk show. I turn up at the gig and can see the band playing in a circus like tent. The box office tell me all tickets are gone but somehow I get in. I pass a row of old uni friends but they have no spare seats, why are they there? I think, they were never fans. The band are playing and I am spending my time going up and down the rows, the last row is full of Ukrainian armoured personnel carriers. I'm aware I'm missing the show but then wake.

[The Picnic Wasp]

Some humdingers this week including a couple of nightmares but the standout for me was;

Enjoying a beer with Matt Hancock and a few others at a table outside a local pub. Matt suggested to a couple sitting opposite that they might be able to help him with something that might make him laugh and be very hungry afterwards. They gave him a brownish baked bean shaped object which he swallowed in an instant. A short time later he ran off towards the local river, fell backwards on the bank and hit his head. He bounced up obviously dazed but took off again. No one could find him. I was taken along with a group of friends to an office where we were given black blazers with a yellow badge on the breast pocket.

I instantly enjoyed this authority I had been given and set off with the others to find Matt. I received a call though that I had to visit Prince Charles (not King) on another matter and unfortunately this meant relinquishing my new role. I mentioned this to the prince and he immediately ensured that I be given back this power. I was delighted.

I have no memory of whether the dream ever reached the point of finding Matt.

[captainkurtz]

Driving in the van and the rear tyre splits and deflates. 

[Slim]

I had a Neil Peart dream early this morning, which I think may be a first. I've never particularly been an acolyte. I've seen better drummers and lord knows there are better lyric writers.

In the dream, Neil is sitting - symbolically I think - in some sort of scaffold structure which represents him being networked to the world. I'm in some sort of open space. Someone remarks that he hasn't said anything for a while, which refers I think to the time I noticed he hadn't put a new blog piece on his site for months.

In another dream I'm watching old footage of Jimmy Tarbuck on a telly in a cosy living room somewhere. Liza Tarbuck is present. I tell her that that I used to think her dad was very funny when I was a kid, which is true.

[Slim]

Bizarre dream this morning. John Travolta was part of the Coronation Street cast, and one of the episodes involved John recreating one of his song & dance routine with Olivia Newton-John from Grease. One of the other Corrie regulars stood in for Olivia.

How does this stuff come into my head? What possible train of unconscious thought led to that?

[Slim]

I'm in a living room with my ex-girlfriend, Sara. She's vandalising our settee, painting words - a slogan of some kind perhaps - on the side of it, with a small paintbrush and yellow fluorescent paint.

When she's finished I go to the kitchen, to get a cloth to remove the paint. I start to scrub it off, and she tells me she's leaving. Don't try to follow me, she says. I tell her that I won't. I hug her, and tell her that I'll always remember her. I mention her brother and sister by name and tell her that I hope their lives bring them everything they would wish for themselves.

I haven't seen her for over thirty years, but I still dream about her sometimes.

[The Picnic Wasp]

Some stinkers last night. I think it's a reaction to the excess food and alcohol pollution of the bloodstream during the holidays. The dream I remember was being in a Greggs type shop trying to buy my lunch during my break at work. I keep dreaming about work even though I've been retired a couple of years now. The shop is full of really tasty looking filled rolls or to be more accurate filled crusty bread loaves. Crammed full of meat, cheese, salad and looked really appetising. The only thing that was more crammed full was the shop itself. Guys literally shoulder to shoulder, like the old football terraces, and all really big, burly gangster looking types. When it was my turn to be served the girl behind the counter just couldn't seem to figure out what I was looking for and kept giving me options which I'd agree to but she still didn't understand. The crowd of guys became noisier and more threatening and a couple of faces actually morphed into a kind of painted on appearance with weird frightening eyes. Suddenly, the crowd disappeared except for one guy who had been the most threatening. He began to mock me in front of the staff until I noticed he was wearing a name badge from one of our competitors. I think in the dream I was telling the truth when I declared I was a major shareholder in the company he worked for, and with one phone call he would lose his job. Things evaporated fairly quickly after that and I woke up with heart racing and that horrible cold nightmare feeling of dread. Not a good night's sleep.

[Matt2112]

There seems to be a theme running the ones I remember (which happens only occasionally) where I am feeling disconcerted or in some kind of oppressive circumstances, yet find a resolve to make some kind of verbal or symbolic stand against it.

Take last night's: the dream started just after I had played 90 minutes in an 11-a-side football match on an indoor, full size 3G pitch, the other team being a classic bunch of sh!thouses, constantly trying to intimidate us with vicious and belittling verbal abuse.

The game had ended in a draw, so there was a penalty shoot-out to settle the winner, but unfortunately our 'keeper was worse than useless, possibly having caved in to constant sledging and insults.  As the ring-leader (possibly captain) of our opponents went to take the deciding penalty, he actually got some abuse back from my team, resulting in a knee-jerk "bite" where he made a vile sexual reference to the four-year-old daughter of one of my team-mates.

It was so shocking that it stunned absolutely everybody into a momentary silence, ended by a few "whoooaahhs" from players on both teams; then one of my colleagues (possibly our captain) came out with a perfect slam-dunk put-down, the exact words of which I would love to remember, but can't.

The penalty was scored and we lost the game, but the other team didn't celebrate, just filed past me mumbling things while I smiled at them sarcastically, knowing that my team and I had the moral high ground.

[The Picnic Wasp]

Another troublesome production of vulnerability and frustration from the makers of my nightly mental routines. Work again. I wonder if I'll ever shake off the unhappiness that being in the wrong jobs clearly caused me, yet I was unaware of the scale of the problem at the time. That last part probably isn't true. Last night was again office based, with a dolly mixture of staff from various employers, unable or unwilling to help me find a commonly used 'phone number to pass on to an increasingly frustrated client. There was the usual appearance of a guy who folk saw as a bit of a daft, harmless character, but who I believed to be an odious Machiavellian rat who would land you in it instantly if he had the opportunity. On and on it went with it seemingly impossible for me to write this number on a piece of paper to pass on. When I did manage to remember it and write it down, the note would mysteriously disappear into the mess of other scraps on my desk. All this time the evil court jester in the background, passing comment, but being entirely unhelpful. A therapist would have a field day with this stuff but the money would probably be better spent on beer.

[Slim]

I dreamed I was walking across an empty and huge petrol station forecourt, on my way to pay for a tankful of petrol. There's a tiny spy drone following me, just over my right shoulder. I shoo it off and it flies off quickly, like a startled wasp.

I get to the counter in the petrol station, and find that I don't have my debit card on me. I can't pay for the petrol. Can't remember what happened after that.

[The Picnic Wasp]

That was a pleasant change. I met Bob Mortimer and we quickly became friends and just hung out together having a laugh. We visited my local butchers which was owned by Jim Moir and we had a good bit of banter going with him at the expense of the old ladies who were being held up from being served. Strangely for a butchers the stock in the chill counter was mainly fish including huge whole herring, much larger than I think they are ever able to grow to. I persuaded Bob to try an Arbroath Smokie and we ordered three for our next day's lunch with Jim.

We later went for a walk where I saw a guy I had had a bit of a fall out with in our late twenties. We patched things up afterwards but things were never the same again and he later moved South for a really good job. I introduced him to my new friends knowing he would be jealous. He was wearing a 70s style cagoule with the hood up, something he would never wear.

I wish the dream had gone on longer but it fizzled out. More of this type please.