Thoughts from the South

Thought No. 7
Dreams

My life over the last week has been pretty fun. Had a pretty intense weekend followed by an almost full-time campaign of job applications.

However, I have still found time for sleep, and what I shall be sharing with you today are not the rigours of reality, but the riotous realm of the mind - dreams.

Dream 1 - Early hours, Wednesday

It was a Friday. I was in Slough with Sago and Bott (two old school friends). We were planning to stay with a host family as of Monday. On going to the address, the host was rudely surprised at how early we were. On telling him that we were only there to drop our luggage off, he claimed that was not possible, and that we would have to use alternate facilities.

He was helpful enough to show us the direction to these facilities, though. We had to walk along a river bank. Higher up on the embankment there was another path where various groups were walking. They were all young and threatening, and one of the gangs threw something at the gang in front. This did not spark any altercation, presumably because hurling stones was just part of the routine banter between gangs in that part of the world.

We eventually found the building where we were to deposit our luggage. But we were unable to find a specific room, as the entire building seemed to be one labyrinth of corridors as if it were the London Underground. There were a few passages that had stairs, but even they led to dead ends.

Dream 2 - Early hours, Thursday

We had been cooking a variety of meats by the fireplace in our (real-life) dining room. From the looks of it, most of the meat appeared to be bacon, folded up lengthwise. However, they did not look particularly appetising.

Our conclusion was not to eat them. However, there were so many of them I got a little upset at the sheer waste. I left the room and went to my mother's workplace (which, as so often happens in dreams, was less than a minute away). The office was apparently in the 'EU'. I laughed at how high and long the empty corridors leading to her office were. All the walls seemed to be riddled with blue electronic paraphernalia.

I finally reached my mother's office. It was a square room with about 20 computers lined around the perimeter. It was around 5pm and my mother, holding a clipboard, was giving instructions to one of her colleagues. I told my mother how coming to the EU and seeing all the waste in the office (wasted space, long corridors, machines which didn't do anything etc) made me feel far better about the wasted meat at our house. My mother then warned me about undercooked potatoes, saying my father had got ill from them only recently.

I got home and, predictably enough, started to feel a little ill, like there was a brick in my stomach. One of my uni friends was there (hello, if you're reading this!) with a laptop. I griped to them for a bit but they didn't have anything constructive to say. My mother, who had now got back, just warned me to find a basin to throw up in with a sort of coarse inevitability.

At this point I was trying to convince myself that this was just a dream. Alas, as so often happens in dreams, what would be completely unrealistic in real life does not seem so absurd in dreams. However, usually when I become conscious of the fact that I am dreaming I can get up pretty quickly, usually by doing something violent, jumping out of a window or staring at the mirror, hoping my mind will produce an image distorted enough to wake me up (albeit in a slight fright).

Eventually I did wake up, it was around 3am. There was no brick in my stomach, just the routine night-time digestion. I soon got back to sleep, in time for...

Dream 3 - Slightly later early hours, Thursday

I had gone to some sort of book store. However, I was not there to read their books, let alone by one. Rather, they had a bathing facility. Literally, there was a bath for me to lie in. Oddly enough, though I got in the bath free of any clothes (and was fain to cover my modesty) by the time I got out I was fully dressed. The bath was at a pretty ideal temperature and it didn't feel at all unusual to have a bath in a public bookshop.

During my time in the bathtub I was given an expensive chocolate of some sort. I felt guilty about the fact that I had had to pay for neither the bath nor the chocolate (presumably they were both free as part of their 'customer service') but I put forward a £1 tip to the girl at the cashier, who had sort of been expecting a tip but was nonetheless very happy that I had given one.

Later in the dream (I know not the bridge between the two events) I was at some ridiculously large cathedral. Though I felt as though the congregation were people from my old school, I did not see a single person who I recognised. We sung hymn 177 which, as it happened, was the last hymn in the hymnal, though the last third of the book had an index, or Psalms or something. It was not a hymn I have ever heard before, though it was all very familiar. Some of the people around me were singing far too loudly.



With dreams like these, I wonder why I would ever want to be awake?