ODD SHORT DREAMS – 2011 - 2020
Sarah Hartwell
These are just odd short dreams which made an impression on me through very vivid scenes or strong emotions.
WRONG ON MANY LEVELS
Dream July 2019
“We need more potassium,” Dictator said, placing his elbows on the desk and steepling his hands, “Do what is needed.”
“Sir,” I nodded, scratching notes in my ledger.
Some would tell me it was wrong, that the chemicals I ordered would be used to kill my own people. Dictator called it “pre-emptively suppressing rebellion.” I told myself that the chemicals might equally be used for fertiliser, or for manufacturing rather than mass slaughter. I kept my head down. While I was useful to the Glorious Dictator I survived. By making myself nobody and nothing I was too insignificant to cause concern to the Party. In the corner, beside the door, stood a uniformed guard, Dictator’s personal attendant.
“That is all.” Dictator said, “You may leave.” He never used my name. To do so would be to acknowledge me as an individual. I bowed my head in response. To become an individual was dangerous.
Dictator stood and his silent attendant opened the office door at this signal. Dictator left in one direction and the attendant escorted me along the featureless yellow-lit corridor to the elevator. He watched to ensure I got into the elevator and that it was descending. I lived two levels down, at street level, the lowest level available on the elevator buttons. The streets were austere grey concrete, but at least they were lined with plant troughs to break up the greyness. The troughs also hid cameras and microphones. From the elevator it was a brisk walk to the building where I lived and worked. Huge murals of Dictator, extolling his values, were painted on the sides of tower-blocks in rust-orange, white and black. The speakers, visible on every street corner, that droned out his inspirational messages to the populace were temporarily quiet, but I knew many of the messages by heart. Soon we would eliminate those who stood in the way of productivity. Another glorious chapter in our progress was about to begin! And the figures: the output of Number 2 factory had increased by 2 percent, Dictator congratulates the workers of Number 2 factory.
I tapped the button for street level, but something had gone wrong with the elevator. It kept descending. The gravity brake kept it from plummeting down. I had no idea it could go so deep into the rumoured secret levels of Dictator’s building. There were no buttons for lower levels – there were (officially) no lower levels for it to go to. Finally it jolted to a stop and the doors opened. On the other side, a youth in Perspex goggles had removed the control panel next to the elevator and was fiddling inside with a soldering iron. Sparks flew from the panel. The youth took no notice as I stepped out, perplexed.
I was in the open air, albeit stale air. Grey columns around me held up concrete ramps and floors many feet above my head. The ground was grimy and weeds struggled to grow at the base of the columns in the sunlight that filtered down through the gaps between the ribbons of concrete above. Here and there were glimpses of sky.It was a very grey place, with grime and a scattering of litter. A woman – quite ordinary looking – pushed a metal trolley. Other people were talking in twos and threes. Their voices were rough. They seemed to live here. How could there be a world so far below mine and yet not underground?
The youth in the Perspex mask called out to the knots of people “Going up!” and they stepped forward to the elevator. My presence here was an aberration. I stepped back inside, clutching the ledger to my chest and pressing myself into the corner, but no-one took any notice of me. Then the doors closed and the elevator creaked upwards, carrying these people from the long-disregarded ground level to the street level above.
WE TURN TO ICE
Dream - June 2019.
There was no time to make preparations. The icy blast from space came from a rotating star that spewed energy as it span. By the time the scientists had detected it, it was already too late. Mars had been blasted into a ball of frost and the next pulse was predicted to hit us in less than an hour. Earth would be frozen right through. First the sky turned white. Etta, the waitress, and I hid from the brightness in one of the storerooms along with a young girl who had only popped into the snack bar to buy chocolate chip cookies. The light streamed through the tiny fanlight window and burned our closed eyes.
I tried to sit up, but a gentle hand on my forehead stopped me. A voice told me to rest a while longer. The face was not quite human – the blue-green eyes were a little too wide apart and tilted oddly, the vertical nostrils were set in a slight depression, the lips were colourless. The accent was strange.
“Do you understand me?” he asked.
“Yes, yes. Where am I?”
“Don’t worry about that just yet. Your planet was caught by our star’s gravitation pull. We’ve learnt as much as we can from your archives, including your dominant language. You have been frozen for a very long time. Where you are now wouldn’t mean anything to you.”
“Etta? Is Etta alive?”
“She’s waking up. And your child. You’re not the first ones we’ve woken.”
“There are others?”
“There were. They became aggressive. We returned them to cold sleep. We can offer your survivors a place on our world.”
“No, don’t do that, it wouldn’t be safe for you.”
His facial expressions were alien of course, but I am sure his expression was surprise and curiosity. I tried to explain.
“We’re too aggressive. We can’t help it. We’d be an invasive species. If you woke us up we’d soon turn your world into a war zone. It’s not safe.”
He sighed. “Your archives suggested this, but we were hopeful that it was not an accurate representation. We can return you to cold-sleep.”
“May we see a little of your world before you return us? Something to dream of – if there are dreams in cold-seep.”
Their world was beautiful, but it wasn’t Earth. The cities were clean. Some were underwater, protected by domes and tunnels, others were on land. Their people were elegant and industrious. The children – whom they prized because they reproduced slowly - had so much joy. It was not a place for mankind.
UNRAVELLED
Dream - June 2019
The city reminded us of 1950s London and 19th Century New York in equal measures. A bridge spanned the wide river, iron girders reinforcing the 1800s brickwork. It was supported by two large brick columns and the tracery of girders showed it had been expanded sideways to accommodate both rail and car traffic. Having evicted the green witches from infesting part of the city (how else did Greenwich get its name?) their energy had dived down under the bridge supports and embedded itself in the fabric of time.
“The only way to get of them is to unravel time and change the location of the bridge,” the team leader told us, “Its supports penetrate the green witches’ domain and give them a path into this dimension.”
“Won’t that harm the present?” we asked.
“We’ll only move it by a few feet, not enough to make changes,” he assured us.
So we unravelled time, or moved backwards, and watched the city being undone. The metal tracery vanished from the bridge and the two huge clocks reappeared at the top of the two supporting columns. Then the brickwork vanished and the old wooden bridge, supported on its hundred stilts appeared. Then that too vanished and in its place was the old beaver dam and a few small boats to ferry people across the narrower stream below the damn.
“They built the bridge where the beavers dammed the river – diverting part of the flow westwards so the river below the dam stayed narrow. If the bridge is upstream a few feet it will avoid the green witches’ dimension. We breach the dam!”
Now we have an aerial view. The dam was breached and the water from the pool upstream poured down, breaching the banks and spreading out across the flood plain in a flood too wide to be bridged. The only site for a bridge was upstream of the dam where the banks were firm.
Now ravel time forwards …..
It was the present again, but not the same. What a difference a few feet would make! Instead of a bridge, large ferries transported people across the broad expanse of water. Without the westward diversion of part of the flow it had carved a single wide channel, a long estuary reaching inland as far as the city. The team leader had overlooked the variables …. We had to mingle to find out what had changed in this world, how far the ripples spread – a local effect or a global change?
The ferry from the western bank left from pier 2.4. The well-to-do travelled on the upper deck where canvas canopies protected them from the sun. We travelled among the anonymous throng below decks. A number of sheep bleated in their pen, the straw and wood shavings soaking up their urine. Another pen contained some piglets. In the pre-change city the livestock had been banished from the streets.
“Fares, fares!” called the conductor. “We handed him an illusory coin – he saw and held what he expected to see and hold, but the moment it was out of sight in his conductor’s bag the illusion ceased to exist.
“We pull in at the pier downstream on the eastern bank,” the team leader told us, “we have to return to this side by 6 p.m. – take the ferry from pier 2.5 – it is upstream from where this one pulls in. Both of you - work your way northwards and observe what has changed – I didn’t expect so many ripples.”
We disembarked at pier 3 and blended in, walking northwards in a purposeless-looking way. Several lanes led inland from the river’s embankment. The first was lined with small shops selling paintings, maps, artists’ supplies and such like, punctuated by coffee shops and small wine-bars. The buildings were built of pale grey brick and many were whitewashed. Parallel to it was a lane perplexingly called “The Snaps” – the road-name being displayed on a black metal sign halfway up the wall of the corner building. It was dingy and instead of stores the walls were punctuated by double-doored grey-brick-built boat sheds. There were several of these – a trading street and then a back street for the sheds and warehouses. They must have harked back to an earlier time of trading.
Soon after, the street widened into a plaza of taller, wealthier buildings, the bottom storeys being shops – a chemists shop, a bookseller, a grocery store. These were not the large, neon-signed stores of the pre-change city, these were smaller and less brash. Then there was a white building with fluted columns and a triangular pediment. A museum? No, it was the city residence of the emperor. A large noticeboard gave a potted history for the benefit of tourists. A few people were sketching the building. There were no cameras.
I was a tourist in this post-change city. The board told me that it was a Romano-Germanic state with an emperor at the top and his Germanic army keeping order.
“Ware! Ware!” came a cry, “Slime seeds!”
People shuffled away from the warning. I felt something prickly land in my hair and cling there like a burr.
“Tourists,” said someone nearby, “they don’t have any immunity to the slime seeds.”
The burr seemed to be growing and spreading. I pulled out a hank of hair, but the infestation was already snarled in my hair. The noticeboard had called them a Germanic weapon from the war. The seeds infested anyone not immune to them, releasing painful toxins wherever they scratched the skin – not lethal, but distractingly painful.
“There’s a chemist up the road,” said an unaffected woman kindly, “Renny Shampoo will clear the slime burrs out of your hair. Or you could use Ren’s Spray for temporary relief. You’ll need something for the sickness too.”
Pulling out snarls of hair was less painful than the stinging, prickling scratches. I didn’t have time to stop, and we were warned against spending too much illusory coinage because it could upset the local economy, so did my best to ignore my prickling scalp and I headed towards pier 2.5 for the ferry back. I had to report back that the ripples from that little change were far reaching – when we breached the dam we had let loose a wholly different flow of time.
AKLON BAE
Dream - March 2019
In this weird dream I was Billie, lab assistant to brilliant scientist Andy and his partner Lenny. Because our world was in a real fix, Andy and Lenny had been tasked with finding a way to travel 500 years back in time to meet the visionary scientist Aklon Bae who had foreseen so much of the future and developed such wonderful devices and also such horrific weapons. Our president believed Aklon Bae was the only person brilliant enough to help us. Compared to solving our current problems, going back 5 centuries was not hard. Once we had sought Aklon Bae’s knowledge we would return with a solution to the terrible problems of our own time.
We travelled back, but were taken into custody of the presidential forces of that time. Our time device was confiscated and we were given laboratories and compelled to use our future knowledge for the benefit of this president in order to get it back. Unfortunately our inventions were so useful to him that he smashed out time device in order to keep us in that century. There was no way to get hold of the extra-solar compounds needed to rebuild our device. As time went on we created more and more terrible means of waging war on his enemies.
“How did we get to this?” asked Andy, “We were looking to cure problems, or prevent them, not dream up such horrific things. And why haven’t we been introduced to Aklon Bae?”
“I think I can answer that,” I said, showing him one of the printouts. We had all initialled it in the bottom right corner: AK LON BAE
“AK – Andy Kirshner. LON – Leonard Oscar Night. BAE – Billie-Anne Edwards.”
PRE-EMPTIVE SOLUTION
Dream - December 2018
I dreamt I was being held in a room waiting for execution by guillotine. The room had small frosted glass windows high up on the walls, and I managed to open one a very small amount to get some fresh air. I wasn’t tied up as there was no way out. Strangely I was past the stage of panic and I was quite calm. I didn’t know why I was being executed and those about to execute me seemed almost apologetic that they had to do this to me. It soon turned out that my cell was a room on the ground floor of some sort of factory. Because there was no guillotine, they explained, they would use “paper cutter number 3.” It was very sharp and would be humane. They didn’t tell me how soon it would be, but I knew it was no more than a couple of hours away. I should have been terrified, but in the dream I had gone beyond that stage and just felt numb and empty.
I was alone and very calm and sad about the inevitability of being executed. Then there was a power cut and darkness and one of the windows was pulled completely out of its frame. Some friends pulled me out of the room and help me run into nearby woodland. We had to get into the thickest part. They were monitoring radio transmission and knew that my captors were looking for me, because my execution was a necessity. I had no clues about what I’d done or why I had to die, why my executioners were sympathetic or why I was so calm and sad about the situation.
Then I seemed to be in two places at once. I was hiding with my rescuers in an empty house, but at the same time I could feel myself standing up with my hands tied behind my back and a person on each side of me.
“Why are they going to kill me?” I asked my rescuers, “I haven’t done anything.”
“It’s not because of something you’ve done, it’s because of something you will do.”
There was a hand on each upper arm, leading me out of the room and towards paper cutter number 3. At the same time I was hiding in that empty house asking what on earth was going on.
“They’ve looked into the close future and there’s something you’re going to do that is a threat to them. So they’re pre-empting it. Try to get some rest while we figure things out.”
I felt myself pushed to my knees onto a stool, bending my head to rest on a towel. My head was turned to the right. A hand on my right ear held my head still. There was a slight mechanical vibration.
Blackness.
THE EPHRAIM BOX
Dream - September 2018
“What is it?” I asked, looking at the metal box. It was about 6 inches long, 4 inches wide and 1.5 inches deep, enamelled in a pale green-brown and with two small lights – one red, one green, on the top.
“Dad said it was in the loft but he doesn’t remember putting it there, “ said my brother, Colin.
Dad had been clearing out the loft as he downsized. With mum gone, he couldn’t manage the house alone and was moving to a bungalow. Colin and I were helping with the clear-out.
“There’s a brown cardboard folder with it,” dad said., “and hand-drawn designs and notes, but I don’t remember seeing it before and I’m not suffering dementia just yet.”
We added it to the pile of things to dispose of and decided to find out what it was before selling it online. Colin said he’d read the handwritten documents and see if there was more on the internet.
“It’s an Ephraim Box,” Colin told me later, “Some sort of conspiracy theory thing. Whatever it does, the MoD were very interested in concept, but the only working prototype went missing with its creator.”
“What does it do – if the MoD are interested in it then shouldn’t we hand it over? It might be stolen,” I suggested.
“I think the designer went missing and took it with him so they wouldn’t get hold of it, Sal,” he replied, “The online stuff is largely speculation, but the Ephraim Box would allow the user to get ahead of the enemy – it sounds almost like a time-travel device.”
I laughed.
“Anyway there are notes and diagrams here and if the circuitry is okay then all it needs are batteries ….” he said. I could almost hear the cogwheel turning in my brother’s head – he was 50 going on 15 and tinkering with old electronics.
A day or so later he announced that he’d fixed it and I should pop over for a cup of tea when he switched it on. In other words, I should stand by with the fire extinguisher in case he blew something up, just as I’d done throughout our childhood. For added safety, he conducted the trial in the back garden. There was a metal toggle switch and when he flicked it the air became distorted. Colin put his hand into the distortion and it vanished. So he next put his head into the distortion – putting his head where angels thought twice about treading, as mum always called his impulsiveness.
“Jeez, Sal,” he gasped, jerking his head back, “When I put my head through I’m somewhere else! Or maybe somewhen else, because it looks like here, but futuristic.”
“Let me look,” I said and cautiously pushed my face into the distortion.
He was right. It looked just like here, but with a futuristic twist. Perhaps we could stand outside the bookies, switch it on and get the results of the next World Cup and make a killing, or something like that. But first we’d have to work out how to use it properly. Colin said there wasn’t anything in the notes or conspiracy theory writings about how to set the Ephraim Box, it just opened up a hole to whenever.
A couple of days later he noticed that someone was watching him. Workmen were digging a pretend hole in the road while really keeping an eye on his house. Leaflet deliverers were more active than usual and didn’t seem to have leaflets. Some young men loitered to smoke cigarettes in the street. There was always an occupied cat parked within view. Colin reverted to a sort of childhood code in his texts and emails.
“I’m glad you came, sis,” he said in low tones as he let me in the house, “I am certain military intelligence know that we switched on the Ephraim Box and are keeping an eye on me. I’ve stopped using wi-fi and I’ve only posted really inane stuff on Facebook or Twitter.”
We peered through his net curtains to the parked car. The driver and passenger were both getting out and looking in this direction. I was sure there was the bulge of a weapon.
“What are we going to do?” I hissed at Colin.
“Only thing I can do – keep one step ahead of the enemy. Use the Ephraim Box and go through the distortion, then switch it off.”
“You’ll be stuck on the other side and we don’t even know when that is!”
“I think it’s about 50 years ahead. Look after dad, will you?”
The men were almost at the door and we knew they wouldn’t bother knocking. Colin flipped the toggle and the distortion appeared. He grabbed the documents that accompanied the Ephraim Box and stepped into the distortion. Two men had pushed their way into the house, quite obviously wanting the box. All they saw was Colin’s hand, waving goodbye from the distortion and the hole in reality snapped shut with Colin on the other side. They’d have to wait another 50 years or so for someone to find the Ephraim Box and switch it on, and with luck it would always stay one step ahead of them, just as it was supposed to do.
CONSTRAINED
Dream - September 2018
To deepen the understanding between the two planets, Brian invited one of the visitors, whose name transliterated as Anthlith, to join him for a game of golf. Anthlith agreed eagerly, he was delighted to learn more about Earth’s pastimes and most of the American and Japanese businessmen he had met spoke of golf.
It was played with a long stick, bent near one end, somewhat like an Iqk club back home. The object was to strike a small ball with the bent end and knock the ball into a flag-marked hole some distance away. Anthlith found it a familiar concept, even though he was unable to adopt the stylised pose to swing the club in the same way as his host. The aim was to knock the ball into each of 18 holes in as few strokes as possible. This perplexed Anthlith.
The American suggested he demonstrate. He arced the ball a fair distance and required two more strikes to knock it into the hole. Then he handed the club to Anthlith. Anthlith swiftly calculated the probabilities and constrained the ball to travel in a low arc from himself directly to the hole.
“A hole in one!” enthused Brian, “That’s pretty darn good for someone who has never played golf before.”
“It reminds me of a game we play back home,” replied Anthlith modestly.
They walked to the next hole and this Brian suggested Anthlith went first. Anthlith calculated the variables and constrained the ball to land at the foot of the flag that obstructed the hole. Brian gave a low whistle. It took him 4 strokes to line the ball up and knock it into the hole. Anthlith wondered why Brian didn’t simply constrain the ball. It seemed an oddly unchallenging sport.
“I’m curious,” said Anthlith, “You don’t constrain the ball to go directly to the hole? “
Brian made the “huh?” sound that Anthlith recognised as “I don’t understand.”
“I’m struggling to understand the challenge of this sport,” Anthlith continued, “Why you need so many knocks to get the ball in the hole when it can easily be done in one.” Then he hurriedly added (lest he insult his hosts by his misunderstanding) “Though there is more challenge without constraining the ball.”
“O-kay,” said Brian, “This is where I say ‘I don’t understand.’ What’s constraining?”
Anthlith explained that he mentally weighed up the options, calculated variables such as wind deflection, envisaged the path from tee to hole then constrained the ball to travel that path.
“When we play Iqk, which is a little similar, the object is to bounce the ball from multiple points and not run out of momentum before sinking it into the hole,” he explained. He made a few quick calculations and constrained the next shot to deflect from 3 trees and finally approach the hole from the other side.
Anthlith had heard the saying “jaw-dropping” but until now had never seen a human’s mouth open as wide as Brian’s mouth now opened. Oh dear, he thought to himself, this seems to be one of those cultural misunderstandings …
CONTRABAND
Dream – July 2018
Me sir? I’m Lazlo, Lazlo Azlos. Yes sir, it is a bit of a mouthful. The Scylla? I signed on as first mate a few months ago. Captain Bill seemed to know his trade. He’s so weather-beaten from years at sea that I don’t know what his ethnicity is, what with his grizzled beard and eyebrows. It was Captain Bill, Maureen – his wife – and the two hands crewing her. Maureen? Yes, she’s the woman – half Bill’s age, skin the colour of strong coffee with a dash of milk, short black hair – a bit vain too, if you don’t mind me saying, sir.
When we arrived in port Bill told the two other hands to take some shore leave. He and I would let the customs officers check the Scylla over for contraband. Maureen kept to her cabin. Well yes, she’s Bill’s wife, but they don’t share a cabin. The officers came on board and once they’d spoken to the captain I was to show them anywhere contraband might be hidden.
No sir, not just contraband. Anything illegal in this jurisdiction. Certain drugs, moonshine, pornography – though when a man’s at sea for long stretches he needs something stimulating, and the captain wouldn’t take kindly to us oggling Maureen. Yes sir, she’s certainly – how shall I say –easy on the eye. Well the pornography is a grey area. Technically it’s illegal hereabouts, but as long as it stays locked while we’re in this jurisdiction and only the captain has a key to the locker, well then it’s okay. The men can have it back once we’re out to sea again.
Yes sir, I showed them everywhere they wanted to go. That’s what captain Bill told me to do. If they want to fish down the heads then let them do so. The searched all the cabins and the galley, and the engine rooms, even shone lights into the fuel and ballast tanks. We came up clean. Smuggled animals? There wasn’t even a cockroach in the kitchen. Cargo? Mostly fibres – jute and suchlike. No sir, nothing exotic, just useful stuff. No sir, they didn’t find anything untoward. That’s right – they just let us on our way.
And Lazlo thought to himself, and once they were gone Bill tapped his nose at me. Always hide the contraband in a place so obvious they won’t even think to look there. Like the tobacco right in the middle of the jute bales, all woven into rope so it looks just like the jute itself. Or disguised as coir mats. Just so it doesn’t look like smoking tobacco. Yes sir, that’s how you do it. That and “a Maureen” to distract them.
IT’S OVER
Dream – May 2018
I’d been intending to finish with Mick for a while. I was fed up of him always being broke and needing me to bail him out, or drive him somewhere because he couldn’t afford fuel for his car, or order in meals at my expense because he didn’t have money for both rent and food. That day he had managed to put fuel in his car – though in retrospect this might have been by dodging its road tax and insurance – and we’d gone to “sell some stuff” to one of his dodgy friends. Coming back we’d gotten lost. He didn’t sat-nav so I was reading a street plan.
“It said Chelmsford Road for f**k’s sake,” Mick shouted, “this is f**king Chelmsford road!”
I pointed out that Chelmsford Road went through two villages and to just keep going. We ended up turning round in a goods yard (and being shouted at by the yard manager) and finally found where we were going. I stayed in the car while Mick did whatever it was he was doing – dodgy goods, dodgy substances, stuff that would be no concern of mine after today – and half an hour later he came back with a wad of money.
We found the way back to his flat with little incident.
“Thirty-six quid after I’ve paid the rent arrears,” Mick grinned, “Babe, I’m practically rich! It was a great day wasn’t it?”
“Yeah Mick, it was a great day,” I agreed, not mentioning that swearing and cursing and sitting around while he did something illegal, “It’s good we’re ending on a high.”
“What the f**k d’you mean, babe? You’re not still talking about leaving me are you?”
“Yeah Mick, it’s over,” I told him, “really over.” And I picked up my cardigan from the sofa that doubled as his bed.
“C’mon babe, I’ll change!”
No you won’t, I thought to myself, you’ll always be the same dodgy Mick, scrounging off others and doing dodgy deals. Instead I just said “Bye Mick,” and opened the door of his flat.
As I stepped into the hallway I heard him cursing. I ran down the two flights of wooden stairs that curved back on themselves in the compact space. I heard him lumbering after me and I was more scared of him than I had ever been before.
“Dave! Dave!” I yelled, hoping the downstairs neighbour would hear me and come out to shout at Mick. No-one messed with Dave, not even Mick. But Dave either wasn’t in or couldn’t hear me. Mick caught up with me at the street door. He pressed his mouth against my ear and breathed smoky breath at me “I love you, babe,” and he slobbered a clumsy kiss on my cheek.
“F**k off, Mick,” and he was so shocked at hearing me swear that he stepped back and watched me leave.
I walked quickly to where my car was parked on the street. To my shock the bonnet was up and one of the front wheels had gone, replaced by a pile of bricks. Yellow and red paint was sprayed along the driver’s side. Sod it, I thought, though I could have wept with frustration, I’ve had enough for today. At least without Mick scrounging off me I could afford to write it off, just like I’d finally written him off.
INFECTION,
Dream – May 2018
“Get in, get in, quickly,” the man exhorted.
I scrambled into the back seat next to two sisters. Each had a cat carrier on their lap – my cats. The third carrier was on my lap. No way was a I leaving my family behind, even if my family were furry rather than human. Excluding the cats there were five of us. The couple who owned the car, Paul and “what’s-her-name,” the two sisters and myself. We were neighbours and now were friends in adversity. The virus had spread from London and was steadily infecting Essex.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“West, gotta keep moving west, keep ahead of the infection,” said Paul. His wife, in the passenger seat, nodded silently.
He drove like a maniac, but luckily the traffic was all moving westwards. A few crossroads were hair-raising as cars sped north or south – to get loved ones, to get home and get their stuff, whatever – and we raced through streets and suburbs, staying clear of the snarled-up main roads. Paul knew a lot of the back routes. Apart from the confused miaows of the cats, we were quiet, as though silence would get us away from infection even faster. There’s a gap in my memory here. Paul and Susan – aka what’s-her-name – and I were in the front room of a bungalow. It had a wide bay window. On the sofa was a blanket. The last of the three cats was wrapped in it. They’d succumbed to infection just the same as the two sisters. How long ago was that? Two days ago that the sisters had died. Then two of the cats. Then the last cat this morning.
“Gotta pee,” I mumbled and headed to the bathroom.
“Tell Norman ….” Susan shouted after me …
“Norman’s gone!” I shouted back, “He’s left already.”
I couldn’t remember who Norman was. Some friend of Paul’s?
Susan started crying. The two sisters were wrapped in tartan blankets in the bedroom. No time to bury them. I’d show signs of infection – that was why my memory was shot – but it was only a mild form which meant I was immune. Paul and Susan had also fought off infection. Us older people, Susan had said, hadn’t been raised in the obsessive hygiene culture and were better equipped to deal with the virus. Norman was immune after infection has spread down his street. You could smell the decay from some of the houses where the bodies of those less fortunate lay rotting. Sometimes you could hear the cry of a baby or small child whose parents had died, but no-one dared go in and rescue him – or her – for fear that they had a mutant strain. Children were the super-spreaders.
On the way here, Paul had siphoned diesel from the strap-on tanks of a lorry whose driver had pulled over and died.
“Ireland has closed all its borders,” he said, “any boat that tries to land is being shot out of the water. The USA has shut itself off. We can go west, but there’s nowhere to go once we hit the coast.”
“So what now?” I asked.
“East,” said Susan, “everyone – everything - susceptible will be dead now, even the super-spreaders.” (Funny how we couldn’t bear to say “children.”) “East and start over.”
THE MOUNTAIN
Dream - September 2017
Our punt bumped the one in front and I braced my legs against its sides. Frank was in front of me, between my knees, similarly braced, and our sack of supplies was in the bow of the punt, between his ankles
“Careful!” warned the boat tunnel man, pushing the stern of our boat away from him.
Bumping around the turn, our boat – and the one in front and the one behind – jolted down the channel and into the root of the mountain. It was cold and clammy, dark and dirty, the only lights being the smoky oil lanterns strung along the tunnel sides. To the left was a wall of rock. To the right, a long slow slope of steps below the oil lanterns. People trudged up those steps towards daylight, their two week shift at an end.
Time stood still until we finally reached the lagoon under the mountain. Frank grabbed the sack of our belongings and we jumped onto the quay. The place echoed with noise as picks and shovels excavated the black rock. Sacks of rock were loaded into the vacated punts and they were pushed back into the channel, to find their way down the long, slow slope and out of the mountain to be met by unpackers.
“Two weeks,” said Frank, “Two weeks without sunlight.” That wasn’t strictly true, because light shafts and mirrors guided a little light into the caverns.
“Two weeks,” I agreed, “and maybe we’ll be lucky to find something in the rock.”
That was why people came to work in this hell, not just for the combustible rock shipped out by the sackful, but in the hope of finding some gem or artefact in the process. Chambers led away from the quay and we were directed to one of them. One day the mountain would be honeycombed by tunnels and probably fall in on itself, but not yet. Sometimes diggers stumbled on something left behind by the old ones – strange machinery, too large to move, or parts of even larger machines. Some things could be scavenged for metal and something were just left, useless to us and their original purpose unknown.
On our second day of digging and of pushing barrows of black rock towards the quay, we hit a solid wall. The section supervisor told us to keep excavating. If it was something valuable behind the wall she would get a bonus and so, hopefully, would we.
On the fifth day of digging, we had cleared away a wall of useless white stone to reveal two pairs huge iron-bound doors, strangely unrusted, either side of a stone column set into the rock face.
On the sixth day, we had cleared enough of the floor to see sets of tracks where the doors opened on their heavy hinges. Without waiting for instructions from above, the supervisor told us to get the doors open if we could. Should we get help from other diggers? No, she told us, let’s keep the bonus between just three of us.
Behind the doors were two massive black, metal cylinders, on their sides so that the two round ends faced the doors. In the face of those round ends were hatches and doors. We’d never seen anything like it.
Frank moved a lantern closer, and in doing so we saw writing engraved on the opened doors. This was something from the time of the old ones, surely too lofty for diggers to understand? But no, the instructions were clear and plain. Make sure the chimneys were not blocked and the upper chamber of the sideways cylinders were full of water then stoke and light the boilers in the lower half. Stoke with what? Why combustible black rock! The old ones had built this engine in the middle of everything it needed – a mountain of black rock to burn, a constant source of water and chimneys right up a mountain.
This wasn’t just a bonus, this was a civilization-changing discovery.
THE SLEEPER AWAKENS
Dream - April 2017
The three sleepers lay as always in a row of three hospital beds. The sleeper at the far end had begun to scream. This could only mean one thing – his avatar had come too close. The grey-faced Guardian sat, as always, in the corner of the room nearest me, dozing (as always) in his chair. This gave me a dilemma. I needed to wake the screaming sleeper, but the only way to do that was to kill the Guardian and then all three sleepers would wake – and that was not a desirable option because it would also allow their avatars to come into our world. No-one had foreseen this possibility. The risk of leaving the screaming one asleep outweighed the risk of waking all three. I raised my curved blade and sliced open the Guardian’s head. He never woke and he never felt a thing. All three sleepers screamed in their sleep as their avatars – grey-face and grim, robed in brown and grey - broke through the walls of reality. I turned to face the first of the avatars and raised my curved blade.
THE CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL
Dream early 2017.
For some reason the scene in this dream seemed incredibly important and I felt I ought to recognise it. It also revisited an institutional bathroom that I previous dreamt of, but don’t know from real life.
At first I am walking along a corridor. This is the first storey above ground level. To my left side are a series of plain wooden doors – a pale wood - to small rooms. To my right side is a row of wide metal-framed windows – 1930s style, each pane is wider than it is tall. On the window sill (which is about hip-height) in front of each window is a small vase of flowers or a small potted flowering plant. It’s an attempt to make the Spartan corridor look cheerful. Apart from the flowers, there are no ornaments. The windows overlook a concrete area. On the other side of the concrete is another part of this building, 2 storeys, also with wide metal-framed windows. It’s like a mirror image of the corridor I am in. The corridor floor is covered in cream linoleum tiles lightly specked with black. The walls are a pale cream-green, the sort you see in institutions.
Although I am currently the only person in the corridor, the building isn’t abandoned. I get the feeling that the people who live and work here are currently elsewhere. At this time of day (mid-morning? mid-afternoon?) the wide windows let in plenty of light. Ahead of me is a single white painted panelled door with a brass door-knob on the left, set quite high up – 1930s style. Unlike the doors to the rooms, it’s one of the original doors in the building. It is part open and that is where I am heading – the room at the end of the corridor.
I push the door open and stand in the doorway. I can feel that the room is chillier than the corridor. The floor is a checkerboard of black and white linoleum tiles. Straight ahead of me is a toilet – white ceramic, mahogany seat (I don’t see a lid), and a high-level black cistern with the pull chain (with a boxy wooden handle) on the right. On the wall to my right is a single metal framed window, about chest height. The glass is frosted, but the window opens (there is a single glass panel with a fanlight above it). All the walls are a pale “institution green.”
To the left of the toilet is a large, square wash basin with some wooden shelves under it and a wooden shelving unit beside it. The shelves are dark and look well used. The room is quite wide – the full width of the corridor and the small rooms leading to it – and there is a matching frosted window at the other end of the room. If both windows are opened, the wind will whistle straight through the room.
Against the wall opposite the wash basin is a white claw-foot bath. It’s about halfway between the white door and window on the far wall. The taps are at the end furthest from the door. There is a metal hose and shower attachment resting on a cradle above the taps. A shower curtain can be pulled around the bath for privacy, because I have the feeling this large bathroom is used communally. In front of the bath is a heavy wooden bench with an off-white towel on it.
I walk across to the far window, push it open a little way and look out. To my left, the building continues straight ahead. Ahead and to the right is a large lawn. There is a paved pathway running against the side of the building, below the level of the lawn (so there is a sloping “wall” made of the same paving slabs). I get the sense that this institution is on the outskirts of London as it was in the 1940s or 50s.
The bathroom is chilly – it’s on the end of the corridor so it has 3 uninsulated brick walls and 2 draughty windows that will rattle when it’s windy. It’s a bit damp and gloomy if truth be told, and has a sort of “school PE changing rooms” smell mixed with the smell of carbolic soap. I feel it is used by youngsters so maybe this is a 1930s-built children’s institution in the 1940s or 50s. I don’t know why it feels familiar or significant.
(Update: I had a sudden flash of a little boy aged 7 or 8 in the bath. I was using the shower-head to rinse off his red-brown hair. He was laughing, I also heard a snatch of a counting/nonsense song. I think I must have worked at this place.)
THE CIRCASSIAN ATTACK
Dream - July 2015
A countrywide school tech project had turned into a major hazard because "faulty electronic components" supplied to schools meant every school-child had built a bomb. These had to be collected up and destroyed - army vehicles everywhere! I came across a convoy of army vehicles carrying a large number of these student bombs. I realised it was an alien plot by the Circassians because I was actually an alien who'd been living on earth for over a hundred years ready to protect the world against the Circassians. I knew the Circassians and humans would be able to detect me by my unusually high body temperature. This was caused by an energy storing internal organs that contained lithium compounds. It also meant we aliens could fly. This in turn meant that the military forces would regard us as a threat which was why we stayed hidden in human form and did mundane jobs (electrician, car repairs etc). Unfortunately, by snooping on the military convoy I had made them suspicious and they had used thermal imaging cameras ... and my unusual heat signature had made them even more suspicious. That meant I had to get away from the convoy doublke-quick and warn my alien colleagues of the Circassian threat.
Because it was an emergency, I flew to our hidden ship which was hidden inside a block of flats. The rest of the crew had grown bored and most had pretty much forgotten our real mission because we'd been there for so long without anything happening. I persuaded one off the crew to stop repairing a car and to unseal the secret door in one of the flats so we could get into the control room. Inside the control room, a signal beacon was bleeping because it had detected Circassians. The crew member had been lazy andignored his duty to check the early warning beacon so he'd sealed it away in the hidden control room. This meant the Circassians had already almost reached Earth.
One of us, doing a mundane job as an electrician, had collected up a lot of student-bombs and rewired them to be used against the Circassians so we loaded them into our ship inside the block of flats. I remember saying "When did you last see a large building take off? Except for Doctor Who of course."
The ship/block of flats lifted off after it had evicted the human occupants and their possessions (sorry humans, but this is for your own good!) and went into hyperspace until it reached the far side of the moon. From there we could see that the Circassian hunter ships were homing in on Earth and the Circassian bomb ships were bombarding it with long range missiles. Earth had no idea what was hitting it. We saw major buildings struck by the missiles. Several of us bailed out into space and turned into our native form (a bit like huge jellyfish) to fight the Circassian hunter ships. Each ship was manned by 2 Circassians - grey-bearded male humanoids in red and black leather-like uniform. The Circassian hunter ships were very fast-moving, very agile arrow-shaped ships designed to do raids and get away quickly.
Hyperspace was amazing. It was full of colours and images. It was especially amazing if you were a jellyfish-type creature and could swim around in hyperspace. I did some somersaults to get used to being a space jellyfish again. The colours were like ribbons of light swirling across hyperspace. The images were landmarks on Earth, visible in close-up, but a long way from the planet because of the way hyperspace distorted everything. The coloured ribbons and images also acted like signposts for ships to follow when they wanted to reach a particular planet. If we wanted to return to Earth, we just had to follow the Earth images until we reached an exit inside the planet's atmosphere.
Unfortunately, our spaceship needed repairs. Our commander told us we needed a special part for our ship (which was old and hadn't been maintained properly because we'd become complacent) so we could drive back the Circassian bomb-ships. It was a special type of repair tape that hadn't been manufactured for about 400 years, which was the age of our ship. He had transmitted coded enquiries and the only known piece of this tape was held as a relic by the Sisterhood of Jebsi 8. We had to persuade them that their centuries old relic was essential for us to defend a rather primitive planet called Earth. The Sisterhood dressed in yellow robes. The meeting place reminded me of Stonehenge. They offered the relic to us very reverently telling us it was an ancient holy relic held in trust for "the defenders."
I woke up as they were handing us the tape, which looked like a long piece of very thick duct tape. This was a huge pity as I was really enjoying the dream of giant hyperspace jellyfish vs the Circassians.
A few years before, I’d had a similarly themed dream. I was one of Earth's secretly resident aliens and a threat was detected. I had to welcome two ambassadors onto Earth, also secretly. One was called Lady Duck,she seemed quite young and lively and she wanted to try out some Earthing men. The other was the Empress of the Universe and she came with an entourage of a thousand drones - sterile male workers/soldiers - whome we had to "park" somewhere. Luckily they could go into semi-hibernation standing up for almost a whole Earth day. The Empress, Lady Duck and I went to a nice olde worlde tea shop for tea, scones and to discuss strategies against the alien menace (it was never quite defined what this was).
SKY TRAINS
Dream - August 2014
Mama said we would make the journey to our new home by sky-train. This was a source of great excitement to me as I'd seen the sky-trains crossing high overhead and I'd read about them in books, but didn't think I'd ever travel on one. Of course, I was quite a young boy at the time. Mama had sent our luggage on ahead by surface crawler, the slow tracked vehicle would take a week or more to reach the next city, because we couldn't afford to take any luggage by air. We boarded our carriage at the foot of the pylon and it was hoisted slowly up the 5 mile tower to join the other carriages. As a small boy, I was thrilled to see the dusty streets and rooftops diminishing below us, and then the city itself diminishing into a blotch of dusty roofs in the wide, dusty, red-brown barrens. In the distance, I was sure I could see the pylons of the two closest cities.
At the top of the pylon, we were hitched to several other carriages ready to depart. Above us the sky was a clear pale orange. Below us, the barrens were a dusty brown. Already I could feel the air-stream jostling the carriages.
"Will we see clouds?" I asked mama. I'd read of clouds in my books.
"Don't be silly," she replied, ruffling my hair "not even great-grand-dad has seen clouds."
This was true. The clouds had burnt away many years before grand-dad was born. Instead of water from the sky, we relied on water trapped underground, but each year the boreholes had to go deeper to find a wet aquifer. Above us was clear cloudless sky, right up to where the atmosphere met space.
Now the carriage was rocking with the wind. This was thrilling because there were no wind currents further down, but up here there were jet streams that roared around the world, rising and falling, branching and twisting at the north and south tropics and at the equator. The carriage conductor yelled at us to "hold on tight," and then the sky-train surged forwards onto one of those jet streams. I admit that I screamed as it dropped slightly before surging forwards, and mama was a little white faced, but we picked up speed and raced along the air-stream towards one of the distant pylons I'd seen. We really were going to the next city!
I have to admit, the journey was a little boring after that moment. Apart from occasional turbulence rocking the carriages, there was little to see and little to do except read the book I'd brought with me. The only excitement was when we spotted a sky train intersecting our path on the left, but travelling on a higher air-stream.
"That's the north-south streamer, young man," the conductor told me, "He's heading south to the ore mines."
There being little else to do, the conductor started telling me about sights he'd seen while working different sky-train routes, "At the dry continental shelf, there are giant mare's-tail trees whose roots reach down to the deepest aquifers. It looks like they are on the edge of a lake, but what looks like water is a type of clear goo that bubbles out of the ocean bed. Their roots have to go right down deep or the goo would choke them. The mare's-tails are a hundred feet tall and the locals tap into their stems for water."
Below us, a small plume of dust marked the barrens: a surface crawler making its slow way from one city to the next. I wondered if our belongings were on there, along with people who needed to move, but who couldn't afford the sky-train. What a long, boring journey they would have with nothing to see except the barrens for days on end until they reached the crawler port at the other end.
A cloudless, windless world of barren plains where high altitude air currents roar around the planet; mare's-tails that have evolved over thousands of years into trees; lakes of waterless goo ... what is this place? Why, child, this is planet Earth.
BACK IN TIME
Dream – May 2014
I had a peculiarly vivid dream about 9/11. I was in one of the towers and had foreknowledge of the events (in fact had current day knowledge and I was aware that I was in the middle of past events). I had to persuade one of the women in an office above the impact zone to leave because "something's about to happen". I insisted we used Stairwell D, not the lifts and that we had 15 minutes to get as far down as possible and as fast as possible - in particular below the level of the sky lobby. After 15 mins there was a huge thump from way above us that shook the stairwell. We kept heading down and at level 9 there were people flooding into the stairwell - some trying to go upwards to rescue people. I kept my friend going and when we hit the street I insisted we just keep on going - on foot - because "it's not over yet" and because of all the emergency vehicles. People were standing around watching in disbelief. Debris was falling and we made it into a coffee bar on the right hand side of us and told folks there to put the TV on. A little while later, the street was engulfed in a huge dust storm that billowed from our left, and I insisted the staff pulled some people in off the street to safety inside. (The following night was an equally vivid dream about fighting a fire in a refrigeration warehouse. )
BACK TO SCHOOL
Dream - April 2013
This dream seems to reflect my sense of never quite fitting in, but no-one around me noticing that I was different (Asperger traits), and always telling me to try to fit in.
I had been put in Mrs Hannam’s class and after playtime on the school field it was art class. The desks had been pushed together to make larger workspaces and covered with newspaper. The two boys on my table were daubing large sheets of paper with paint. They were standing up over their artwork and I was sitting down with mine on my knees.
“It’s a truck” said one, pointing to a mis-shapen rendition of a lorry.
“Mine’s a fire engine,” said the other.
“And what are you drawing?” Mrs Hannam asked me.
I tried to hide my draughtsman’s drawing of a heavy vehicle’s manual transmission system, from cab controls to gearbox and axles. Mrs Hannam expected to see a crudely daubed sheet of paper with mismatched black splodges for wheels. It was too late, she’d already spotted it.
“You really should try harder to fit in,” she said.
I stood up and said, a little harshly, “How? I’m not a child. I’m a 47 year old woman, and an engineer, and I’ve been put with a class of 8 and 9 year olds.”
Though I was a full head taller than the primary school teacher, she didn’t seem to notice I wasn’t a child.
“You really should try harder to fit in.”
INSTITUTIONAL BATHROOM
Dream - April 2013
For some reason this room, though I don’t recall any such room in real life, seemed to be very important to my subconscious. I found myself surveying it in detail. It’s a shared bathroom in some sort of institution. Although the room and its fittings are antiquated and spartan, it was not possible to tell which decade this room exists in. I got an impression of the 1950s or earlier. This dream location has occurred several times.
I am walking along a corridor in an institution type building. To my left are a few painted wooden doors. To my right the wall has several panels of those glass bricks that let light into public toilets or cellars. A slender woman with a borzoi dog passes me in the other direction. The theme of the corridor walls and doors is institutional pale green. At the end is an unpainted wooden panelled door. The round black door knob is at chest level, like those in early 20th century houses.
The door is hinged to the left and opens into a large, chilly bathroom. The floor is chequered with black and white lino tiles. To my right is a small frosted glass sash window. Ahead of me is an antiquated looking toilet with a mahogany seat, no accompanying lid, and a wall-mounted black cistern high above. There’s a pull chain with a white handle. A few feet to the left of the toilet is a wash-basin. It is on a pedestal. The shape of the basin is rectangular, but with the corners “chopped off”. The two taps are old-fashioned with cross-head handles. Further still to the left, are some wooden shelves where towels are probably stored.
Opposite the basin, and therefore to my immediate left behind the door, is a bath. It is a white enamelled tub standing on metal feet. There’s a white privacy curtain around it that comes just below the top rim of the bath. This is so that a person can bathe in relative privacy while other people come in and out of the bathroom. Evidently, if a person wants a bath, they mustn’t inconvenience those who need to use the wash-basin or toilet. Just beyond the bath, and opposite the wooden shelves, is a wooden stall where the bather’s clothes can be left. At the far wall there is probably a window, but I can’t remember.
Apart from the black and white floor, the white enamel and the black cistern, the colour scheme remains pale institutional green, with a fly-spotted ceiling that was originally white and has discoloured to yellow. There’s a single strip light. The room seems damp and chilly. I expect to see a large green-painted radiator, the sort you see in schools, that resembles a dinosaur’s ribcage, but if it’s there it’s out of my sight.
MY HEAD IS A HOLODECK
Dream - November 2012
My dreaming mind is a personal holodeck.
I spent most of last night dreaming I was a reptilian-alien crew-member in Next Generation! Dr Pulaski was giving human crew-members their flu shots, but being a reptilian alien I didn't need a flu shot, nor a shot against the Stygian Plague. I joked that my body could replicate Stygian Plague antibodies to give to other people. While others queued for their vaccinations, Commander Riker and I had to hunting down a troublesome alien stowaway. The alien was a short squat grey-green goblin with a spiny frill on its scalp and jowls, and hanging folds of slimy skin on its body. It was like a living gargoyle.
We split up in order to cover more ground and I entered the holodeck to search for the stowaway. I found myself in a holodeck program where a raiding party (humans in Klingon gear) carried off/rescued a human woman in a crimson dress who'd been tied up by a kidnapper. This holodeck program turned out to be the personal holodeck fantasy of my superior officer and his wife. Their chosen holodeck setting was the Enterprise itself, which was very disconcerting for me. As I dodged the raiding/rescue party down holographic starship corridors, I thought "whoops, this could be awkward next time I'm in a meeting with him".
Cut from being a character to being an observer on another scene. The moist-skinned goblin had gone into a turbo-lift where Data was "most curious" about it. Unable to scare the android , and feeling trapped, the goblin shot up through the ceiling, got mangled by the old-fashioned chains of the lift mechanism and fell onto the floor. The lift had a horrible red/rust pattern carpet on the floor. The mangled bits of goblin-alien dissolved the floor and fell down the lift shaft. Worryingly, the pieces were coalescing back into the goblin even as they dissolved the turbo lift floor. With the turbo lift in that section out of action, I had to use a conventional staircase - the rather dingy concret sort you find in a multi-storey car park. There was a strong feeling of menace emanating from the staircase.
Having gone up a couple of floors on foot, I went gone into 2 school classrooms. The Enterprise seemed to have a huge number of young children on board as there were 2 classrooms, each with about 30 children. I asked each class if any of the children had seen the goblin or if it had touched any of them. There was a moment of panic when the youngest class said they fed the goblin. Luckily it turned out that "Goblin" was the name of their class mascot - a very friendly grey-brown Maine Coon cat.
I made it onto the bridge without having found the goblin. The forward view showed the Enterprise heading through a cloud of gas surrounding a binary star system of 2 bright yellow suns. As it emerged from the gas, the scene cut to a view of the goblin, no longer looking slimy, walking across the semi-molten surface of a planet under a lurid orange sky. It had simply been trying to hitch a ride home.
A HELPING HAND
Dream – October 2012
My subconscious speaks to me in dreams in parables ....I think this one is about needing (and accepting) help to overcome long-term illness.
I was in a bookshop, downstairs in the magazine dept. The main book dept was upstairs. It was a 2-storey staircase and the stairs were shallow, but my legs became weaker as I climbed them. Other people didn't notice that I was starting to struggle and they reached the top with ease. About two thirds of the way up, my legs were so weak I couldn't take another step upwards. Only the handrail kept me upright. Looking up at the book dept, I thought "there's probably nothing up there I want to read anyway". Gripping the handrail, I went back down to the ground floor.
A little while later, I was joined in the magazine dept by some more friends. We wanted to go up to the book department, but I knew the climb was too hard for me and was reluctant to try again. This time though, a friend was behind me as I started up the stairs.
"Don't worry," he said, "I'm right behind you. If you start to slip, I can catch you."
I held the handrail, and my friend put one hand against my back - not to push me up the stairs, but to encourage my progress and support me if my legs gave way.
With the confidence that he wouldn't let me fall, I reached the book department. Far from being "nothing I wanted to read", I found it was full of fascinating books.
ANOTHER TIME-SLIP DREAM
Dream - August 2012
I slipped a couple of hundred years into the future and found my home still existed, but was abandoned. Strangely, it had been hidden behind a large metal roller-shutter in semi-derlict inner city area. The street was lined with old brick warehouse-like buildings and a brick bridge, possible a railway bridge, went over the street a bit further along. It looked like the sort of place drunks, druggies and down-and-outs would sleep. After breaking through the metal shutters, with the aid of a passing street-gang and their rocket launcher, I went in for a look around and found my house preserved.
Despite being behind metal shutters, the house seemed well lit. My living room was empty of furniture, but still had the carpet. The 1970s gas fire (that got removed when the heating system was upgraded) was back in the living room, mounted on the chimney breast as it used to be. Apart from that, the room was empty of furniture. The kitchen was completely different - it was my parents' kitchen as it used to be a decade earlier - 3 times the size of my own kitchen which meant the house had been expanded to one side. The fridge was working and there was stale food in it.
Upstairs, I didn't like the bathroom suite or decor. The ceramic wall tiles were hideous floral pattern. The bath had been changed and now had a mixer tap and shower attachment half-way along the side. The shower head seemed to be mounted too low on the wall. The loft, which was still accessed by a ladder through the loft-hatch, had been converted into a room. The floor was boarded over and there were windows in the slope of the roof.
Back downstairs, I went to look out of the dining room window. This should have overlooked the back garden, but when I looked out the window, I saw a whole different and nicely kept housing estate had been built around the house. This struck me as odd because I'd discovered my house behind metal shutters while walking through that derelict inner city area. The adjoining house had gone, making my home a detached corner property instead of a semi-detached house halfway down a street. What used to be the back window overlooked a pleasant road with roadsigns on a grassy area at the corner. What used to be the party wall also had a window in it. According to roadsigns of the housing estate, it was on the corner of Cockriknott Road (pronounced cokri-not) and Carlodito Road (neither of which exist at the present time) and this had become the Italian Quarter of town.
I was trying to find a ladder to climb up into the loft for a look out of the loft windows when I woke up. For a few moments my brain was surprised to find my house exactly as it was before I went to sleep.
AN ATTIC OF MEMORIES
Dream - August 2012
This dream had a vaguely "The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe" with three children playing in the attic of an old house and a magic doorway looking into the past. I don't have siblings of those ages in real life.
I was 11 or 12 years old with a 10 year old brother (Paul) and 7 year old sister (Lucy). We had moved into a very old house, or perhaps a hotel, with a large attic that we liked to play in. There were some wooden packing crates in there, a couple of old tennis racquets in wooden clamps, and a few items of broken furniture, but not much else; in our games, those crates became boats, cars or tables. Lucy, who always liked to be centre of attention, was lying on a long crate pretending to be a hospital patient and Paul and I were the doctor and nurse discussing her treatment.
"It's no good," said Paul, "I'm going to have to amputate ...."
Just then, a shadow went past the open doorway.
The attic is on a narrow corridor that runs along one of the outside walls of the top floor. Its doorway, which no longer has a door, is opposite a window made of several panes in a white window frame with a slightly arched top. If you look out of the attic door to your right, it takes you to some wooden steps down to a big open area. To the left it goes in higgledy-piggledy fashion around the house, a few steps up and a few steps down, and with twists and turns. It's like this because the house sort of "grew" as new bits got built.
We'd become bored with pretending Lucy is sick, though she is enjoying the attention of course. All our games seem to involve Lucy, the baby of the family, getting attention - she's a bit spoilt. When the shadow passed the doorway, Paul and I left her lying on the crate, where she complained why wouldn't we play with her, and we stood in the attic doorway to look out of the window.
This is the attic's real attraction - when we look out the attic doorway we can see into the past. The corridor itself isn't very interesting - sometimes we see a servant walk past carrying something, but the window is much more fun. We've tried a few times to step out of the attic to see if we can get into the past, but that doesn't work. If we step out the doorway we are back in the present. And when we step back into the attic, we might be looking at a different time in the past or simply at the modern time. We think of the attic as a room full of memories that likes to show us what this house has seen.
We first discovered this when we stood in the doorway looking out of the window at the great fire of London in the distance. It was amazing the way it lit up the sky. We only knew what it was because of scurrying household staff in the corridor. At first we thought we'd become invisible because they didn't notice us in the doorway. A lot later we realised that the doorway can't have been there several hundred years ago.
"London is on fire!" said a young woman in a grey dress. She and others took turns to peer through the window.
We could see the landscape from the attic doorway and it wasn't the London we knew. There was a lot of dark empty countryside between this house and the fire, though today it's all roads, housing estates and street-lighting, and London is almost on our doorstep. There were too many people bustling about for us to get a closer look and when we did eventually step out of the attic doorway we were back in the modern time. It took a bit of experimentation and going in and out of the attic door to work out what was going on. Most times we went into the attic, we would see a different period of the past, but only things that happened while the house existed. Bits of the house are different ages and rooms have changed a great deal, but the attic must be in the oldest wing of the house as it has seen a great deal of history.
When the servants in uniform walk along the corridor past the attic door they can't see us in the attic. Maybe it's just a blank wall with no doorway, or a shut door, or maybe there's no wall at all because the original attic in this wing of the house hadn't been divided up into smaller rooms. Some of the more recent staff seemed to have lived up here though. If they step into the attic, they step into it in their own time-period which is different from the time-period we are in. They walk towards the doorway and vanish. At first that was quite scary, but when we got used to it we found it funny how they'd get closer and closer to the door and just disappear. That's how we know they've gone into the attic that existed in their own time. If we step out of the attic, we can't step into their time, only into our own.
We tried things like putting an arm through the doorway to see if people from the past could see us; we could see our own arms sticking out into the corridor, but the people couldn't see it. If one of us leans through the doorway, we lean into our own time, but anyone not leaning can see us leaning into whatever time period the attic is showing us. This is only fun if there are people in the corridor. We also found that the grown-ups can't see these things, only me, Paul and Lucy. Lucy only stopped being frightened when we told her it was like TV and the people weren't ghosts. Lucy is a bit young to be interested in history. Because the attic sometimes shows us the same memories, like the fire of London which we've seen three or four times now, she soon got bored; she thinks it's all repeats like on TV.
Paul, who is bright and scientific, tried to explain how it works. The attic is like a big book and everyone who goes into it is opening the same book, but at a different page. So when people from the past come into the attic, they are opening the book at a different page and don't meet us on our page. That's how we can all be in the attic at once without bumping into people from different times - we are all on different pages.
A CHIMP AND A CHAIR
Dream - June 2012
Although some people tell me it's unusual to dream of reading, it's something I do regularly - I seem to have a whole library in my subconscious. And what I read in my dreams is perfectly clear (no jumbled words) and the words/sentences make sense, just the same as waking life.
I am some sort of benevolent crusader who flies around my local area on a white metal chair which has a seat, back and arms, but no legs. The chair is always in flight or hovering above the ground which means its lack of legs doesn't matter. On one flight, that appears to be Coggeshall road, Braintree, I pick up a simian assistant. She is a super-evolved juvenile chimp called Trudy whom I reluctantly accept on board my flying chair when her troupe rejects her because of her super-evolved state. Despite her advanced intelligence, Trudy is a child at heart and rides on my back chimp-style. However, she understands English perfectly when I talk to her and she communicates with me in some way I don't understand, but I suspect is telepathy. Unlike most chimps, Trudy doesn't have any odour (in waking life I really dislike their odour).
While the chair is flying between places (it's not very fast) I spend my time chatting to trudy and reading a paperback novel. Trudy is a voracious reader of lightweight paperback fiction and an avid fan of Blue Peter, a fact that has relevance later on. I end up wearing my pink rucksack to keep our books in because there isn't enough room on the chair. Trudy clings happily to my right hand side, beside the rucksack.
Somehow, the chair and its two passengers, ends up in the Blue Peter studio. This turns out to be a large vacant shop unit on Moulsham Street, Chelmsford (where there is currently a Thai restaurant). I find myself talking to presenter Lesley Judd who seems very young again, though my dream insists she is actually dead (she isn't). She presents the latest Blue Peter Annual to Trudy, who lets me read a few sections of it. I am please to find it is more like the early Blue Peter Books with plenty of informative text i.e. before they became picture- and graphics-heavy.
Trudy and I haven't left our hovering chair throughout all of this. We are invited to take part in the Blue Peter Christmas show in the shop/studio. This spills out of the doorway into Moulsham Street. The show ends with a choral finale in the doorway of the shop while the flying chair and occupants fly up into the air, reaching eaves level. We hover high above the street, slowly rotating and very slowly ascending to roof-ridge level, ready to fly away over Chelmsford. As the ensemble sings, we are enveloped in a white luminescence and my oustretched arms emit beams of bright white light and "transmit goodwill" to everyone below us. We are playing the part of the Christmas Star. Below us, the chorus reaches its end and it's time to move on. Stuill clinging to my right shoulder, Trudy packs her new book in the pink rucksack and we fly over the roofs from Moulsham Street to Writtle Road to the site of Marconi Radar.
Marconi Radar's Writtle Road Works was demolished several years ago to make way for housing so I suggest to Trudy that we see if the chair can fly backwards in time. Now about 35-40 ft above ground level,tThe chair proceeds along Writtle Road towards the Waterhouse Lane Junction and the surroundings look more like my memories of the area before redevelopment, which suggests we have gone back in time to the late 1980s/early 1990s. There is also a lot less traffic. Unfortunately I wake up before exploring further.
I often dream of Moulsham Street (the Moulsham "West End" section, not the town centre section) and Writtle Road, probably due to working in that area for many years. No idea where the flying chair, Blue Peter or super-evolved chimp have been dredged up from though.
POLYGIRL
Dream – 2012
Sometimes I dream I am listening to the radio or watching TV. In this one I dreamt I'd been listening to Radio 4, the station my car radio is normally tuned to (so I often catch beginnings and ends of programmes and not the whole programme).
I caught the tail end of a Radio 4 dramatised book-reading and it was a repeat of a programme I'd heard 20 years previously, but didn't know the name of the book at the time. Unfortunately it was the final instalment. A young woman has been in a coma in hospital for a number of years. She is attended by 2 nurses, one male and one female, who chatted to each other about their families, friends, plans etc as they tend to her. She can hear their voices and these, along with some of their things they are talking about, filter into her subconscious where they are 2 close friends.
The storyline took place partly in the ward, but mostly in the girl's coma dream. The ending made it unclear whether she woke up and met her carers (whom she doesn't know in real life) or stayed with the friends her subconscious had created from overheard fragments. Either way it was a somewhat sad ending, but a cracking good book. I heard the author's name - Linda Evans - so in my dream I went to Amazon to look for the book and found one called Polygirl ("poly" because she was in multiple places at once) available in 2 imprints: adult and young person's imprints.
Maybe I was thinking of the "Life on Mars" TV series. Unlike that one, Polygirl made it clear which was reality and which was dream and whether to swap the illusion of friendship for reality. Also, losing the friends she'd built up during several years in a coma would be equivalent to a bereavement for her, but her ongoing coma was similar to a bereavement (without closure) for her family. The dream was mostly about how I vaguely remembered the book-reading from 20 years ago and had enjoyed it (especially the uncertainty at the end), but hadn't caught the book details.
Is it sad to dream of searching for books on Amazon? Is it even sadder to check in real life? (It doesn't exist, by the way) Maybe Polygirl was a metaphor for my own dreams where the real world is less interesting than an imagined one? Is it even sadder to be reviewing a book/dramatisation that I've only imagined existing?
BUS SPOTTER DREAM
Dream - October 2011
As I described it to a die-hard bus-spotting contact ...
I had this amazing dream last night. In it, I caught the bus to the station. It was being driven by this gorgeous young bloke who was incredibly available and told me he was due for his lunch break (the Capt Jack Harkness of bus drivers). I particularly noticed that his stylish 10.4 metre low-floor, easy-access 40-seat bus was comfortable with a streamlined, aerodynamic exterior and stainless steel integral frame, but I noted a slight tendency to "wallow" when cornering thanks to its otherwise excellent suspension. Its rear-mounted Mercedes-Benz engine gave it plenty of oomph delivered via an Allison 2010 automatic transmission. The advanced and comfortable cab, with its intuitive displays and well laid out controls, included monitoring software and real-time data transmission back to the depot allowing performance monitoring and fault diagnosis while the vehicle was on the move. I mean, this bus was drop-dead gorgeous! But, I really must have words with my subconscious about paying attention to the wrong parts of dreams .....