Dreams

[The Picnic Wasp]

Just remembered I had an earlier dream last night. The eBike I have on order (in real daytime life) had just been delivered. I decided to visit a friend a few doors away who in reality moved from there decades ago. Her house, a semi-detached, was more like a hotel in the dream, with people coming and going and my precious bike chained up outside in a car park where the back garden should be. When I returned to collect my bike, all that was left was the frame and even the battery and motor had been removed. I burst out crying. Nothing like a good night's sleep.😂

[Matt2112]

One of the most random dreams I've had in a long time last night.

For some reason, I'm visiting the studios of GB News (which in real life I occasionally watch for their take on things) and I'm in a green room; Nigel Farage has just finished his show and walks in, all jovial and matey with everyone and engages me in a short but amusing conversation.

Sitting nearby is John Squire of The Stone Roses, who acknowledges my presence with a nod and a smile, so I feel the urge to go right up to him to shake his hand and get a selfie to impress my friends and acquaintances, but I resist, thinking it might be seen as too forward, so I play it cool, intending to accost him later.

Farage disappears, and I walk outside the studio building to get some fresh air.  Peter Sissons is there, possibly having had a cheeky fag.  We greet each other and suddenly my hands are full of hen's eggs, some that look normal and some unmistakably of a humanoid shape.  I drop one of the latter, and on managing to pick it up see it has yolk gushing out, so I curse loudly and put it in a bin.  I apologise to Peter Sissons for my clumsiness and bad language, but he assures me he's fine with it, and heads into the studio.

Then David Dickinson rocks up, seemingly not in the best of moods, and asks me if I'm also going in the building.  I say I am and, as I set off toward the entrance, the dream ends (or my memory of it does).

I'm almost certain this was prompted by pressures at work, given for my role it's one of the busiest times of the year. 

[Slim]

Really odd dreams this morning.

I'm at a funfair with Boris Johnson, standing next to him at the shooting gallery. The targets are all symbolic - for example there's a swastika representing Nazism printed on a little plate. I can't remember the others but there were six or seven of them. The great man takes careful aim with the air rifle and hits all of them.

He wins a prize - a red water pistol with a very long barrel. He gives it to me and I walk with him back to his car.

I go into a gun shop, to look at the air rifles. There are two shop assistants in there, black men in their 30s. I think my wife is with me. I tell one of the assistants that I want an accurate one, to plink at tin cans in the garden.

I'm at my brother's house in Stamford. My favourite Les Paul is hanging from the ceiling in their living room. I take it down, so I can take it home with me. I also have more stuff to take home from there in cardboard boxes, but why I don't know.

I'm sitting at my PC watching a young couple play cards in their living room via a hidden camera. Then somehow I'm in the same room, but lying in a bed (I suppose I must have been dimly conscious that I was in bed and this seeped into my dream). I pretend to be asleep with my eyes closed. Their cat is climbing all over the walls, then it tries to get into bed with me. Then she goes to the kitchen, comes back into the living room, drops her pants and bends over. Oh god no they're going to have sex. Awkward. They aren't an attractive couple and I definitely don't want to watch.

I wake up.

[Slim]

Another strange one this morning. I'm in some sort of office building with clear partitions between the offices - really small cubic spaces. There are a couple of people visible through the partition; one of them is David Oyelowo, an actor who was in Spooks, the first Reacher film and a few other things. Here though he isn't David Oyelowo, he's a young system admin at the beginning of his career and he's there to apply for a job. He's also a bit shorter than I suspect he is in real life.

I go through to the next office to visit them.

David is sitting at a desk that's a sort of console - it looks a bit like a mixing desk in a studio. But there's a stubby steering column sticking out of it, with a sporty little steering wheel attached. This is somehow a metaphor for sys admin. In the dream you do that job by literally driving the console, with the steering wheel.

I start to remove the steering wheel from the steering column.

Was my dream trying to tell me something, I wonder? Do I need to figuratively keep both hands on the wheel in my job to prevent someone younger taking it?

[Slim]

I'm in Hartlepool, cycling along a leafy suburban street called Claremont Drive that used to be part of my walk to school. But uh-oh - the handlebars are a bit loose. It's not a modern bike, definitely not one of my own real-life bikes. Can I tighten the nut sufficiently with my fingers? If I can make it to the town centre I'll be able to buy a spanner.

Later, I'm in my bedroom in Hartlepool. It's a sunny day and light is streaming in through the open curtains.

[Matt2112]

I'm on the outskirts of Halifax town centre (though it doesn't look like the real-life version) atop one of its hills, and in trying to take an unfamiliar short-cut towards town I get a little lost.

I happen upon a pub, so go inside to have a drink while intending to use my phone to get my bearings.

There is a sort of self-serve buffet lunch available, which entirely consists of a large bucket of nasty looking red slop; still, I pour some out into a bowl and only then decide I don't want any.*

I take a seat (not having ordered a drink, but there was one on my table anyway) and sitting facing everyone in the room is a rock DJ/quizmaster, who happens to be Bruce Dickinson.

Bruce - ponytailed and in stage gear - is going through his usual matey patter over a mike, amusing the small number of punters with wise cracks and frequent effing-and-jeffing.

He rises from his seat and looks far shorter than I anticipated.  He swaps banter with a couple of folk before noticing me and he smiles and walks to my table.

"Farkin' 'ell", he says to me, "I'm glad you didn't have any of that lunch, it looks a right load of shit!"

"Yeah mate!", I reply, a little starstruck, "Um, any chance we could have a photo?"

He seems to ponder this for a couple of seconds and, just when it looks as if he's going to respond, I wake up (15 minutes before my alarm was going to go off).

* Almost certainly influenced from two nights earlier by watching S1 E2 of Breaking Bad, featuring graphic scenes of liquefied human remains.

[The Picnic Wasp]

A couple of seemingly lengthy sagas last night but at least a rare Rush appearance to report. I was in an auditorium which I seemed to realise was contained in a university building. I was explaining to a friend that it was my favourite concert venue due to its acoustics and pointed out the baffles and wall insulation panels to him. Geddy appeared on the stage for rehearsal and laughed at my comments in a way that suggested he had heard me say these things too many times before. He and Alex began to get organised and my next vision was the band playing although I was watching from a kind of cafe area. A girl approached me and said, "sorry, I know I'm stating the obvious to you of all people, but they're rather good". The song which Rush performed was very reminiscent of their PW days. As I woke I reached for my phone and recorded my memory of the chorus into Voice Memo:

He beat the cars
He beat the sun
He beat his enemies
Before things had begun

Gobbledegook obviously, but I only need an intro and verse from a future dream for a complete cosmos given Rush song.😁

[Slim]

Bizarre dream this morning. I'm sitting next to Randy California, in some sort of office canteen, talking about guitars and practice. I mention something I read in an interview (for real) many years ago, that Ted Nugent used to practice with his first guitar until his fingers were sore and the guitar had left marks across his torso.

No idea where that came from except that I've been feeling guilty about not practicing enough. But how Randy California burbled to the top of my unconscious mind, I can't imagine.

[Nick]

Was stuck forever in a tiny room in a castle, the only escape was down a triangular twisting slide that went on into infinity.

[The Picnic Wasp]

I spent some time this evening Googling stuff about nightmares having had yet another horrible one last night. Tons of theories about causes but no really satisfying self help simple solutions. One rather surprising pointer was to consider a bedtime snack which is mainly protein. They suggested a couple of boiled eggs and more surprisingly cheese. There must be a reason for troubled  dreams but I just can't figure it out.

[Slim]

I had a variation on an old recurring dream in the early hours of this morning; a dream I used to have often but I don't remember having it for years.

The wife and I go into a branch of Boots in some distant town. Perhaps we're on holiday somewhere, but we've never been there before. It's an unusually sophisticated branch of Boots, with several floors. I mention to my wife that it's more like a department store.

We go to the next floor up, then the one after that. On each floor the staircase to the next floor becomes more obscure and difficult to find and the floors become quieter and more disconnected from the usual business of the store, like storage spaces.

Eventually we're climbing a ladder into a sort of dingy attic space .. it's small though there's more than one room. It has a dusty old patterned carpet. There are no windows. But there's some sort of mechanism there - maybe like the clock mechanism in a church tower. An old woman appears from the next room and remonstrates with us .. we've invaded her private space. I explain that there's no sign or barrier to indicate that we've left the store into an area that's out of bounds.

[The Picnic Wasp]

Strange one this morning. I was in a busy school lab type environment with a mix of acquaintances, friends and former colleagues. I think my very unreliable financial adviser was in charge. A news item was shown where someone I think I might vaguely know was involved in a F1 accident. I don't know if he survived, but due to his misfortune there was a further gathering of people in this room. I was immediately drawn to this girl with long, slightly unkempt raven black hair. We chatted and it was clear we were interested in each other. After she left I asked a friend if he knew her. He said she was Ann van Lear and was a bit weird so I should forget about her. I followed this up by going to find her. She was in a relationship but it was crumbling so we started seeing each other due to our strong bond. On awakening I Googled Ann van Lear. The first entry was for a woman who lived in Pennsylvania in the 1700s. She married a Scotsman called John Hutton. My only visit to the US was a week visiting three states with the party spending most of the time in Pennsylvania. The Google article mentioned Kane County where we were but the details were behind a paywall. I suppose the accident was probably triggered by a chance meeting I had with an old friend earlier in the day when he told me of a pal's recent motorcycle accident. The girl in the dream seemed very familiar with a distinctive accent. I later unscrambled that she was Sophie (Aimee-Ffion Edwards) from The Detectorists whom I always found very attractive. So strange how the mind can conjure up such random names during sleep. Makes you think!

[The Picnic Wasp]

I had a variation on an old recurring dream in the early hours of this morning; a dream I used to have often but I don't remember having it for years.

The wife and I go into a branch of Boots in some distant town. Perhaps we're on holiday somewhere, but we've never been there before. It's an unusually sophisticated branch of Boots, with several floors. I mention to my wife that it's more like a department store.

We go to the next floor up, then the one after that. On each floor the staircase to the next floor becomes more obscure and difficult to find and the floors become quieter and more disconnected from the usual business of the store, like storage spaces.

Eventually we're climbing a ladder into a sort of dingy attic space .. it's small though there's more than one room. It has a dusty old patterned carpet. There are no windows. But there's some sort of mechanism there - maybe like the clock mechanism in a church tower. An old woman appears from the next room and remonstrates with us .. we've invaded her private space. I explain that there's no sign or barrier to indicate that we've left the store into an area that's out of bounds.

Sounds like The Wasp Factory mechanism.

[Slim]

I read that book in 1995, perhaps I'll reread it some time

[The Picnic Wasp]

I read that book in 1995, perhaps I'll reread it some time

Just about the time I read it too. I picked it up recently but I'd forgotten about the animal cruelty angle and I find that I just can't handle that anymore. So I put it back down. Any record of animal distress these days is just too much for me. I can't even watch those superb Attenborough programmes anymore as I know something dreadful will happen at some point.