A dream. It could change everything.

A dream It could change everything

The other night, within the first hour or so, I had a nightmare.

I think it’s related to “the letter” that I have written and that I may/may not send.

I was in some sort of meeting and suddenly realised that my mother and my two brothers were also there. I realised they were there when my mother spoke and said something about an event in my life (seemingly unconnected with them) that went wrong and how they were happy that they had made it go wrong (I’m afraid I don’t remember the exact details or even if the “event” had actually happened – you know what dreams are like) – and, at that point, I realised that what I had thought all along was true – they are a mean, vindictive group of people. And I said that I was glad that I hadn’t sent the letter.

And, when I woke up, I wondered if it was a sign that I shouldn’t even bother to send the letter?

So, now I’m hanging on, really in two minds about whether I should send it or not.

The recurring teddy bears

Recurring Teddy Bears

He had died, apparently.

His dad said something to me about “not wanting to bother me” or somesuch thing. I cried. It felt wrong that they hadn’t told me. I was upset, for sure.

Earlier, we’d been watching a film. It was a cross between a thriller and a horror movie.

There had been a teddy bear which something embroidered into it. I asked F what it had been on the teddy. He told me it was an “M” (or was it “em”?) When it had been seen, everyone’s eyes went pink, including the teddy bear’s!

Some kids were playing in their room. It reminded me of Peter Pan. Four kids of different ages, jumping on the beds as if on trampolines. It could have been on stage. It may have been on stage – the camera angle being from below and to the front of them – as if outside the room – there was no wall or it was as if the wall wasn’t there being the front of the stage.

Their mother called them for tea. They ran off. The teddy bear was on the floor, near the nightstand, in front of the nightstand and had a sting of pearls around it or, at least, a necklace with beads. It was dark in that particular corner. A hand reached out from under the bedside table and pulled the teddy bear back underneath, breaking the necklace and, so scattering the beads/pearls over the floor. They rolled around noisily.

I got up to go to the bathroom. I asked F if, in fact, I had asked him this question. He said “No.” It had been a dream that I was awake and half-watching the film whereas, in fact, I was asleep and, most probably, fitting the dream to the sounds of the film.

And, then, later. When he died.

And I don’t quite remember whether it was afterwards (after I had got up to go to the bathroom again) or during the dream that I had had the keys to the flat given to me because that was what he had wanted. And I remember the special teddy bear I had bought him years ago – a limited, numbered edition, with wire-rim spectacles and a rolled up certificate. It had been sitting on the small, child’s chair in the hallway. And I didn’t even, at the time, have any reason to look and less to remember and, yet, I did and had remembered.

And was it during the dream or after I had woken that I was torn between wanting to be the beneficiary of the will and wanting to wash my hands of everything because being a beneficiary was also being responsible for all the shit he had left behind.

In any event, I was upset and I cried more than once (but that was definitely in the dream.)

And, for certain, when I was awake, I didn’t want it to happen – to have happened. For all sorts of reasons.

And, I wonder, when will I be able to shake him (and the problems and issues he brings) out of my life?

I don’t know if I really did wake so many times to go to the bathroom or I dreamt it. These were just two of the dreams I had last night. There were others but I don’t remember them.

Some things never change

This is a story about Barry and William.

Barry and William had been together for quite a few years and then split up after moving abroad. Barry found a new guy and moved in with him.

But Barry never forgot William and, after some time, they got back together again. They decided to give it a go again and had rented a flat and had almost got it completely furnished to move into. The flat was looking great and it seemed as if, this time, it was going to be perfect. They had decided to go to an event in London. Barry bought plane tickets and booked the hotel and so on. They were going to leave on Monday.

*The thing is, I know something Barry doesn’t know! I am watching this, as if from the ceiling.*

So, it’s the weekend and Barry discovers, the night before the flight that William has decided to go back to the UK to live.

*This is the thing I already knew*

“But, you always knew I wanted to go back,” William said.
“Yes, I knew that you wanted to but why do all this – get this flat, furnish it, pretend that everything was OK when, obviously, nothing is as it seems?” complained Barry.
“Because I didn’t want to hurt you,” exclaimed William.

“So, when do you intend to go?” asked Barry.
“My flight is tomorrow morning.”
“What the fuck? But our flight to London is tomorrow afternoon. Why didn’t you tell me?” Barry is angry. William starts crying.
“You let me book everything and in the meantime you’ve made other plans and I’ve just wasted all this fucking money and all this ….. this pretence of being together is just that ….. pretence!”

And, of course, worse than that, William is just walking away, leaving him with all the shit to clear up which will be difficult, a pain in the arse and expensive. Barry wonders what he’s done to deserve this. This is not the first time William has left him to pick up the pieces but this time it’s going to be so difficult.

Barry’s life has just gone down the pan. Cut to the other flat with the other guy. They are in the flat they had together.

“… and now we might lose this flat,” Barry is continuing his conversation, “and we’ll have nowhere to live.”
“But I’ve already given notice on this flat,” says the guy.
And looking around, Barry can see that the flat is empty and everything is already too late.

And he is filled with a sense of panic as he, once again, has to start from nothing. The panic rises. His heart is thumping.

I wake up.
That was about the third nightmare last night. Of course, the people weren’t the people as I have named and, in any case, the situation would/could/shall never happen (again).

But, just for a moment, it seemed real enough.

In which I become old and, thankfully, not crippled and have a strange dream

Monday. 24/11.

This morning I didn’t shave as normal. What I’ve left, could become some sort of goatee, I guess, if I let it grow. The reason for this was the event on Sunday. I was angry with myself. And, not a little worried.

Have I become one of those “old” people who fall and injure themselves?

I’m taking the dogs out for a rather long walk. We’re about 5 to 10 minutes from home. We come to a crossroads with traffic lights. The lights are green (for us) and so I shorten the dogs leads so that they are right by my side.

We step off the curb and the next thing I know, I am hurtling towards the ground where my chin hits the road and my glasses fly off.

A load of people are racing over to check if I’m OK. First I check the dogs. Bless them, they have stayed exactly where they were when, eventually, on my fall downwards, I let the leads go. Of course, the reason I hit my chin was that I didn’t let the leads go immediately and so had no time to brace my arms/hands against the fall.

Next is my glasses, which someone has picked up.

I check with someone if my chin is bleeding. It seems not but the skin has broken. Already I can feel it’s going to bruise.

I toy with going back home but he is cleaning so I don’t want to do that. I really feel like I need a sit down but there is nowhere to sit. I go on.

Later, I see the chin is red and puffy. F wants me to go to the hospital but I say no. After all, this is just a bruised chin.

But it does hurt.

And I realise that I never said thank you to the people who helped me and I feel really bad about that. But we don’t always think straight at times like this, do we?

During the night, I had a rather strange dream, part of which was to do with the “accident” I had earlier.

I’m driving (quite fast) and I see, a little way in front, cars stopped (as if at traffic lights. I have plenty of time to stop but, for some reason, I am distracted and don’t stop. Instead I go plowing into the back of the last car causing me to fly through the windscreen. I fly over the four or five cars in the queue, each one getting battered by the car behind as the crash acts like an accordion being closed.

I eventually land on the ground, in front of the first car in the queue, unsurprisingly, smashing my chin on the ground.

Other than that, I am quite unhurt. After a few moments of getting my act together, whilst waiting for the police, I go back to the first car I hit which is quite mashed up. The occupants are no longer occupying the car and I find them sitting down in a café nearby. I go to the woman to say how sorry I am but her husband/boyfriend jumps up, really angry.

“She’s pregnant!” he explains. “Didn’t you realise she was pregnant? She could lose the baby!”

And he keeps going on about this and all I could think was how we never know how much our actions will affect others.

And then I woke up. It was about 4 a.m. Strange dream.

A Policeman Calls

The old, Art Deco-style phone by my bed rings.

I pick it up. The mouthpiece is large and made of metal. It’s quite a beautiful example of its kind.

“Excuse me, sir,” the mans voice says, “this is the police. The alarm appears to be going off downstairs.”

I remember now, F had told me a few days ago that the alarm had gone off and he had had to go down. In the end there wasn’t anyone there but, you never know.

“Are you here?” I ask the policeman. He has a typical policeman voice. A little bit “west country” – Devon, Somerset, perhaps?

“No,” he replies. “We’ll only come if there is a real problem.”

I suppose I’d better go down then, I think. But F is away and what if there are people down there. I look across at the door. It is dark; it is the middle of the night. I see the shirts hanging on the bedroom door handle. I know they’re shirts but, for a moment, they could be a person, crouched down. I knew it was only shirts and I knew that if I looked at them, they would look like someone was there. My heart is thumping like crazy. I really don’t want to go down and see if anyone is there.

I am surprised that the dogs are not awake and by the side of the bed. It seems a bit strange.

I now need a drink. That means going to the kitchen. I don’t want to go to the kitchen either.

I lie back down, as if to go to sleep. My heart is still thumping like it wants to leave my chest. I realise now, some other things are strange.

Let’s take the phone call. The guy was an English policeman. He spoke in English!

Then, of course, the fact that I don’t have an Art Deco style phone by the bed (it’s in the hallway, not connected and, anyway, has a black Bakelite handset.)

Then, in addition, there is no downstairs!

But, at some point, this changed from being some sort of nightmare to real life. In fact, it became real life just before I looked across at the door at the shirts.

So the bit about F having had a call from the police before was obviously not true.

Or was it?

Constraints and Claustrophobia

Constraints and Claustrophobia

It’s nearly 3.30 and I’m not sleeping again.

It’s not that I’m not sleeping because of anything in particular. I was asleep and sleeping well. But, then I needed to go to the bathroom and, I guess, I was sleeping so well that I needed a nightmare to wake myself up. I really hate that. The problem with your head giving you a nightmare to wake up is that the nightmare stays with you. This wasn’t such a bad nightmare. More odd, really. So I got back into bed and F seemed to have moved so that he was diagonally across the bed meaning that my feet had no room. And I’d tucked the sheet in well so that my feet have about two inches of space. Which is obviously not enough. So, I’m constricted. And this nightmare (or the end of it) won’t leave me and I can’t figure it all out for it makes no sense and it’s kind of hot so my arm is out of the bed and then I hear the faint buzz of a mosquito so I bring my arm and shoulder inside the covers even if it’s too hot and that’s when I realise that I have that itch on the bit of my hand that forms the sort of web between my thumb and the forefinger which, of course, means that the bastard mosquito I heard flying was actually flying away, stomach full of blood, to find some water and give birth to more bastard mosquitoes.

And, then I realised that the whole thing was all about constriction and claustrophobia – the nightmare, that is – and that I didn’t feel good about that but that it was also unreasonable (of me) since no one was truly “forcing me” and yet I felt this way. F being diagonally across the bed so that I had no room to move my legs was just the final straw. And, so as not to wake F because he hasn’t been sleeping well recently – and far worse than me – I got up and decided to write about my dream and revelation.

So, first to the nightmare.

We have the flat and yet, at various points in the dream it is and isn’t ours. This flat is big and comfortable. There is even a kind of sub-flat. Anyway, someone comes to stay. As a result, we shall not sleep in our bed but in the spare room – this kind of sub-flat. Except, like the cellar for the new flat, for some reason, I’ve never been there. F tells me, by the way, that the cellar s very big – but I don’t see it – I mean I don’t really believe it to be big. We had one, V and I, and there was just about enough room to store stuff. There again, maybe that IS big for cellars here and so F, thinking of other cellars, may be right. Anyway, I digress. So, I’ve never been to this part of the flat. Our flat is in an old building (much older than the real flat but that’s how dreams work, isn’t it?) and we have stairs. So we go up the stairs and instead of turning left to our bedroom, F, leading the way, turns right.

We go along a rather dingy corridor and through a door into a lounge. The lounge is small. I mean quite tiny. And yet there is a sofa there and cabinets and the furniture is old but not like mine, more Victorian in style, big and brooding and elaborate for no good reason. It could, in fact, be old Italian furniture, excessive amounts of wood and imposing and curvy and just too much. It fills the walls and seems to bear down on you. There is a rug covering the floor and heavy curtains and yet no window. It gave a sense of wanting to smother you. Or it could have been like a dolls house. Where the furniture is just too big for the room and everything is out of proportion.

But we don’t stay here as we’re off to bed. I say to F, “Is this OK for you?” to which he replies that yes, it’s OK, after all it’s just for a night. But then it seems that this is his place or the new place. For he’s been here before. He knows where he’s going. It’s as if it was his flat. So, we enter the lounge and immediately opposite is another door. It takes about one stride to reach the other door, the lounge opening out to the right as we pass. I say open out when, in fact, there are just the furnishings in a room that’s a stride wide.

We then start to ascend some stairs. The walls are smooth, white plastered walls. But the stairs are narrow, just wider than my shoulders and the impression (although not the fact) is that they get narrower. F leads the way although at one point F changes to be my youngest brother, T, and then back to F. He soon disappears for the stairs curve as they seem to get narrower. I turn to try and convince Piero to come. He has his doubts. The reason is the stairs themselves. They are wooden but with no riser. Like step ladders but with some intricate wooden structure holding up the next stair. Still, Piero doesn’t really like it. I don’t blame him, I’m beginning to dislike it too. The stairs are lit by something but not by windows and not by a light, yet they seem bright but there are shadows (which makes no sense at all).

I hear F above. He has reached the bedroom and I hear him go down the stairs (short stairs) to the bathroom. I hear him in the bathroom. I carry on up the curve of the stairs. It has only been a few seconds but, as I reach the bedroom, I see F is out of the bathroom. I query with him, “Have you finished?” “Yes,” he replies. And that doesn’t make sense at all. he hasn’t been there for long enough. It’s been about 2 minutes since we started up the stairs and yet he’s got up here and been to the bathroom and is already getting into bed.

And then I notice the bedroom. It is round. The roof is like the inside of the old Chinese hats – the ones they used to use in the paddy fields. It is simple white plaster. The windows are open but they are not really windows but grills, intricate, white-painted, metal grills with glass beyond. The glass is open. The reason for the grills is simple. The room, aside from being round and having the inversely-pointed ceiling is, at most, two feet high and the “windows” are the whole wall, i.e. from the floor to the ceiling. They look pretty but ……

F is not standing. He can’t. At it’s highest point, the room is, maybe, four and a half feet high. The bedding is arranged around the walls (the bits where the windows aren’t). His is one “side” and mine the other. The window is in between. I look for the stairs down to the bathroom but can’t see them. The “doorway” into the bedroom has become less of a doorway and more of a hatch. I will have to pull myself into the bedroom. The width of the doorway is such that it will be a tight squeeze. The only way out is back through this doorway. I don’t actually want to go in any more. I feel claustrophobic just looking into this room. I don’t think I can do it. Before my eyes, it seems to get even smaller. It seems like we have climbed inside a small tower yet that cannot be. And yet it is. I really don’t think I can sleep here and telling F is going to be difficult.

I wake up.

So, there you are. My feeling of claustrophobia and constraining.

I’m sure it will pass.

I haven’t really explained the brother thing that appeared and disappeared. But I can’t right now. Trust me, it’s the same feeling of constraint and claustrophobia and, for different reasons, they can be the same person – which was why they were the same person for a second.

Then, of course, getting back into bed and having my legs trapped in that corner of the bed, made the constraint real for a moment and clarified the dream.

And now it’s a quarter past four and I get up in less than two hours. Once again, for a different reason each time, I shall start the week feeling like I need a weekend to recover. Bugger!

p.s. I may edit this tomorrow if it doesn’t really make sense.

In which I meet people that I’ve [still] never met.

We’re sitting around a large kitchen table, as you do.

We’re chatting about the good old days of Mott [the Hoople]. Ian [Hunter] is talking about what fun it was and I’m agreeing and we’re talking about the great music they made and the great concerts they did.

The only one round the table who seems a really miserable bastard is Mick [Ralphs]. “It wasn’t that much fun”, he says.

I don’t know why he’s so miserable about it. Then, I start to wonder why I’m there at all, like I’m sitting round the table with old mates talking about “the good old days”, since I’ve never met them before now.

It just seems slightly odd. It “feels” right but my logical side says that it’s not right.

And, of course, my logical side is right.

I struggle to wake up enough to realise it’s all a dream.

I have never met these guys, even if they were my favourite group, growing up, and even if I’ve seen them a number of times. I can’t even imagine why I had this dream.

I don’t think Mick is a miserable bastard and I’m sure he wouldn’t say that, so doubly strange. And, yet, there they were, in my dream with us chatting about how good it all was like it was all quite normal and with Mick being grumpy like he was having a bad day!

An aircraft story

I’m sitting at the back of an aircraft. A big one, like a 747 or something.

It’s quite hot. The stewardess offers to open the back for me. There’s a curtain to keep the “draught” off my back. She’s right, it’s much cooler. Effectively the back of the plane is on a hinge. the curtain does not flap but moves slightly as if in a very slight breeze.

The absurdity of this does not pass me by. I wonder at how amazing it is that, at whatever altitude we are flying at that moment, unlike all the films, I am not sucked out of the back of the plane.

We are coming in to land and, for some reason, I walk down the plane and into the cockpit. The pilots are laughing and joking with each other and, generally, having a good time.

I notice something that they have failed to notice and so, I point it out to them.

But they react too slowly and sure enough, the next thing is that we hit the back of the plane in front, on the runway, which forces it to hit the one in front, and so on.

I fly through the air, backwards, as if lying on a magic carpet, whilst, in front of me, where I have just come from, the plane is crumpling up.

It is a race to see if I will make it out of the back “door” by this flying I am doing or whether the crumpling plane will catch up with me before I make it out.

And, to that, we will never know the answer.

I wake up.

I know her! (No, not in THAT way)

The car pulls up to the kerb.

I am standing on the pavement by the bank, sort of opposite my house.

It’s not really that warm but warm enough.

The car door opens. She swings her legs out of the car like a proper lady and starts to get out.

I am struck by the fact that she is wearing a black coat or long dress which is either open or split down the front.

You can see she has beautiful legs and, underneath, is wearing blank panties and black suspenders and stockings.

I am surprised she isn’t trying to hide them.

Then I look at her face and see that she is, in fact, on of the prostitutes that is a regular in my area*.

Then I wake up. It lasted for all of a couple of seconds.

*The area where I live is a nice area but the main road is one of the main roads in Milan and, so, the prostitutes are there. Hey, look, don’t judge – this is a country where you quite often see prostitutes in the middle of the country, seemingly miles from anywhere, on major roads, sitting in sun-chairs whilst waiting for their next trick! They don’t hide away here.

Two dreams

I had two quite strange dreams last night.

The first involved a famous footballer. Not a specific famous footballer, you understand and, yet, I suppose he could have been David Beckham.

Don’t get me wrong, David is quite good looking but not really my type. And it wasn’t really David as this guy had some hair on his chest. How do I know this, well, because he was naked and lying/sitting on the bed, propped up on the pillows.

But this vision was, in fact, a flashback, whilst I was telling someone about it and insisting that ‘nothing happened’ because I really wasn’t interested which, if you’ve heard David speak, you may understand. His manly frame is not upheld with his, frankly, pansy voice.

Even more weirdly, his wife or girlfriend was also there – lying over the corner of the bed (but clothed, obviously)!

The second dream was, indeed, more weird and just a little horrific and I think it was this one that made me wake up.

I would suggest that if you’re a little bit squeamish or don’t eat meat, you stop reading here.

No, honestly, this is going to be terrible for you.

In fact, this will be quite terrible for anyone.

So, stop reading.

Please?

You won’t like it.

Really you won’t.

I didn’t and it was MY dream!

Well, if you’re still reading it then either you’re mad or you don’t care and can watch the most horrible of horrible of movies.

And so,

It starts with me sitting with an animal (like a baby calf or a baby pig) lying with it’s head resting on my lap.

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