The Bob Dylan dream

A few nights ago I dreamt about Bob Dylan.  We were both young and I had a French accent (!).  He was very thin and we were cuddling which was nice.  I was caressing his hands, they were very bony and the skin was soft and smooth.  I was feeling for the calluses on the tips of his fingers.  There weren’t any.

The end of the world

I dreamt that we knew that the end of the world was coming. I was in a house with children that I loved; my own children, my parents, my sisters and brother and some others (perhaps ex pupils). They were all children. I was the only adult with them.

We were on the first floor and there were stairs leading down to the front door, though it couldn’t be seen from the room we were in. There was an explosion a long way away and out of the window we could see buildings collapsing and turning to dust radiating out from the blast. I called the children to me and most of them came, although some preferred to carry on playing. I didn’t insist, as long as they weren’t afraid and happy with what they were doing.

I was expecting an explosion as the crumbling buildings became closer and closer to where we were. Some dust was coming in through the front doorway which I realized was open. The dust was coming up the stairs. I decided there wasn’t much point in closing it. Through the windows we could see dust rising to the level of the room we were in. It was a greeny yellow dust. At this point I realized that we were going to suffocate and be buried in the dust. I started to pray; at first for help, when I realized there was no use in that. I asked for peace and calm so that the children wouldn’t be afraid. I woke up when my breathing started to become really difficult, but I was still calm

More cookery?

Incredibly I dreamt about cooking last night. I was in a long narrow kitchen, there were plenty of cupboards ovens and electric and gas burners but no work surfaces. It made life very difficult – nowhere to put down hot saucepans and dishes, let alone prepare the food. I’ve not long started reading 'Last Night in Twisted River' by John Irving – hence the busy kitchen. I already knew that the loggers ate well, but the descriptions of the huge quantities of food that they eat and the conditions of preparation obviously went to my head. It’s a great read, but not if you’re on a diet.

Dream time

Rob’s computer died on him last weekend, so we’ve been sharing – he’s also had a few days holiday, so I haven’t had the time on my computer at all. Our postcard business has to come first. We have managed to have some fun just the same. Christmas shopping, going to see the lights in town one evening, walks between downfalls and generally getting ready for Christmas. The presents are all bought and now need wrapping up.

I thought I’d better post as I had a rather strange dream about blogging last night: I was reading a cookery blog, which came by post in the form of a magazine. The problem was that the pictures were taking a long time to download. When they did they were like videos. The blogger was making whipped egg white with canned peach slices. The slices were very small and fragile and a lovely orange which went well with the egg white.

Funnily enough, I knew exactly why I’d had this dream as soon as I woke up. The Saturday supplement which comes with our newspaper was running a feature on a French blogger who writes a cookery blog and takes lots of photographs of everything she makes. The white whipped egg white came from some eye shadow I received in my latest Glossy Box. It was described as mousse and is white, when applied to the skin it gives a golden sparkle. (Will go very nicely with my little black dress on New Year’s Eve – not).

I wonder what peaches and egg white would be like…

Matching dreams

I had a lot of difficulty sleeping last night. A couple of years ago I had blocked salivary glands and, the doctor told me, a touch of arthritis in the jaw. When I’m stressed I lie in bed wondering if I’m holding my jaw in the right position (The opposite of grinding my teeth I suppose), then I tense up and it starts to ache which makes me worry more and the circle continues. My legs were restless too. I finally drifted off to sleep with the help of some paracetamol and started to dream. Rob was in the car and kept on getting out of the car without putting the handbrake on so the car was rolling backwards as he walked away. He did it three times even though I told him not to do it again.

This morning I was half awake when Rob told me he’d just be dreaming about me driving a bus, but I kept on leaving the handbrake off.

I wonder what that means…

Bad dream

I woke up at four this morning having had the most terrible nightmare: The computer was making awful noises so I thought I’d better turn it off in case it blew up. I turned it off, but the screen stayed on and I could see images of people in slavery and destruction, ruins of buildings. The people in charge weren’t quite human and I started to realise that we’d been invaded from another planet. The dreadful realisation set in that there was nothing anyone could do about it. I felt like going outside to look at the sky and then thought better of it and stayed inside.

It was all quite logical once I was awake (though I didn’t get back to sleep again). The computer noises were Rob’s snoring! I think the scenes of labour and destruction came from the Lord of The Rings films. I can’t shake that feeling of dread though.

The dreams coincide

Olivier is home for the weekend and we’ll be picking up Dom and J-M later. I was telling Olivier about my dream (see Grumble, Grumble post below) which made him laugh, he liked the thought of sitting there while I peddled away. Then he asked me about dreams of teeth. I found my book about dreams and the dreams he is having indicate a passing from one stage to another i.e.: he’s growing up. I think that my dreams are about letting him go – it’s becoming more and more difficult for me to look after him in the way I used to.

Then we were talking about the importance of silence between friends. You don’t have to fill every second with noise and it’s a nice feeling, shared quietness, he said. Yes, he’s definitely growing up.

Grumble, grumble

I feel really grumpy today though grumpy is too nice a word for how I feel; murderous perhaps.

I dreamt that I had to take Olivier to his usual lift back to Poitiers. We were running late and he hadn’t packed or changed, he was in shorts because the sun had been shining. He said he wouldn’t bother to change and had I bought his new shoes as his others had holes, I told him I thought he was going to buy the shoes. He changed his shoes with holes for a pair of flip flops. Our means of transport was a bike with tiny wheels like a child’s scooter. I had to pedal while he perched on the back with his nearly empty bag. It was such hard work, lots of fast peddling for very little progress and we were late. When I got to where we were going I missed the turning so I had to find a place where I could reverse to turn around. I nearly reversed into a ditch and there was a tiny bird, a wren. I dropped Olivier off and set off for home, it was dark and my tiny light at the front was almost falling off and I had such a long way to go alone.

Fortunately the alarm went off.

The road we went along wasn’t the real road we use, but it is a road I’ve travelled along a lot in my dreams and I’m usually late or lost on it. Does anyone else have familiar dream places?

I’ve been out of sorts all day. Rob and I went into town this morning and had breakfast on the port – Rob wanted to sit outside which was a bit cold but not windy so I didn’t mind too much. Then we did a bit of shopping. Christmas pudding and mince pies and some Christmassy bits so that was nice, but it look up the whole morning. It’s cold and wet and windy so we set off for a walk and it started to rain and so on…

Have you seen this girl?

Our time traveller has cropped up again. Keith said in a comment:

“Remember the 'time-travelling girl' in on one of your old postcards? I was watching the news on Yahoo last week about the rioting in London and I saw a girl in the crowd wearing the same clothing. I noticed her particularly because everybody else was dressed for the cold weather except her. I searched your archives and sure enough she was the spitting image of the girl on the card. I know it was just a coincidence and I had a vivid imagination, but I thought it was very strange at the time; and no, I hadn't been at the meths bottle either!”

Which left me wondering if anyone else has noticed her around the world. Have a look at the picture from a postcard which is from August 1925 below. If you have seen her please leave me a comment saying where and when.




In the meantime have you seen this man?

Dreams and Robots

I dreamt that Rob had a very rich aunt who died and we all had to gather at her huge house for the funeral. For some reason she decided to frighten us all by making lots of banging noises, slamming doors and tuning lights on and off. A female relative (non existent as far as I know) and I were being chased through the house and garden by a robot – we were terrified. Fortunately I woke up. I could hear shhh, shhh, shhhh in my ears, I realised it was my pulse, it disappeared as I relaxed and calmed down again.

I remember the robot film from when I was small. A little boy was chased around by an unstoppable robot who rescues him in the end (!). It really frightened me and I still worry about robots coming onto general use – even though I used to know the three laws of robotics. Isaac Asimov died in 1992 so he isn’t around anymore to sort things out for us...

"Last night I had the strangest dream..."

A couple of nights ago I dreamt that I was in a clearing in a woods sat at a table with some other people. In front of me I had the narrative to a play I was in. I knew that the lines I had to read were in the form of a poem. I couldn’t learn them because I didn’t understand the words. The rest of the cast were cross with me because they could see that I intended to have my script in front of me when I was sat on the stage.

The reason why I had this dream was all thanks to the computer. The clearing in the woods was on one of the postcards I’d been preparing during the day. Then, when I was having a stroll around my blog friends I came across a word I’d never seen before and had to look it up. Next, I popped via the comments to a new blog where I learnt that the lady who used to organise the poetry&words tent at the Glastonbury festival had died. Strange the things that stay in your head.

When I woke up I remembered a play I was in in my early teens; I was the narrator in The Pied Piper of Hamlin by Robert Browning (I didn’t remember it was by him!), I tested myself and I remembered the first verse. This took me on in my thoughts to a Canadian film, *The Sweet Hereafter, with Sir Ian Holm about a school bus which crashes and kills most of the children in the village. The poem runs through the film (The survivor used to baby-sit and read the poem to her young charges.). Sir Ian Holm is the insurance investigator who is sent to decide whether the survivors should be awarded any money. He is also trying desperately to reconnect with his daughter, who is a drug addict, at the same time. It’s a very sad but beautiful film. I remember the lady who drove the school bus saying that when she picked up the children for school every morning she felt like she was picking berries and putting them into her basket. If you haven’t seen it I recommend it.

*Adapted from the novel by Russell Banks

Life is a bunch of numbers

The alarm woke me this morning just as I was discovering in my dream that I only had 14 emails in my inbox. I knew the figure is really closer to 41 so I was cross with Rob for getting rid of them (in reality he never touches my in box) Later I checked my dream book which I didn’t find very helpful as far as dreams of numbers are concerned; I was left with the parting statement “ Numbers are the link between man and science”. “ Now just what is that supposed to mean?” I asked myself as I’d just woken up. After I had made my cup of tea my brain booted in and I thought of what it meant; all of those formulae that we use to calculate this and that = numbers. All this really was too much first think* in the morning so I went back to sleep for a while…..

*That was an error but it fits in better than 'thing'.

Dream time

Olivier had a strange dream, he dreamt that Rob bought me a motorbike, a big one like a GoldWing. I was hopeless on it and kept nearly falling off it. When I wanted to turn a corner I’d let go of the handlebars. When I offered Olivier a test drive – he woke up!

If something can go wrong it will
That’s how life feels to me at the moment, though every black cloud does have a silver lining. I hadn’t been sleeping well for a couple of nights because I found a lump in my armpit. I made an appointment with the Doctor as soon as possible to get it checked. There wasn’t anything to worry about, just a sweat gland a little swollen. I did feel a bit of a twit, but he said I did the right thing.

Woke up in the small hours on Wednesday to a very load crack. The bed frame had broken. As it was two in the morning, we just moved the mattress into the living room and slept tried to sleep there. I just couldn’t get comfortable and the computer appears to be lit up like a Christmas tree, even when switched off. When I finally did sleep, I dreamt that David Schwimmer (Sorry it's in Norwegian, but it really was the best photo I found) was kissing my foot. What a pity the alarm clock went off! I was a little bit disappointed he didn’t come back again last night.

I’ve stacked up Rob’s side of the bed with old files so it can’t collapse again and while the room was a little bit clear cleaned the ceiling, the light shade and all the places I can’t usually reach. Is that (housework) what they mean by a silver lining?

One of the headlights and an indicator on the car don’t work properly either.

Dream time
I had the most amazing dream a couple of nights ago. I was in London and had a telescope to look through. Although the telescope didn’t make things look bigger they were definitely clearer. I could see the details on a tiled floor and the mud on a football some children were playing with. I looked up the telescope in my dream book; “….suggests that we are taking a closer look at something” (I think I might write a book about dreams too ) A telescope can symbolise clairvoyance, so be careful what you’re thinking when you visit this post..

Dreaming of mud suggests we are bogged down, lol. Sorry but I find my book really funny at times.

Happy Thanksgiving
to any who pass by that celebrate today.

I was interested to see that I had a visitor via Google who’d Googled a date and I’d appeared because I’d written a post on that day from my handwritten diaries. I had a look to see what else had come up on that day; odds and ends, nothing historical. I suppose there must still be days left in history where nothing much at all happened.

A couple of nights ago I dreamt that Dominique had started to smoke cigars, not discreet slim ones, but fat Cuban types. I couldn’t smell the cigars in my dream which was a pity. Last night I dreamt I could play the mouth organ. I’m sure that Freud would have plenty to say about these ‘oral’ dreams.

Back in the real world, it’s blowing a gale today. I got soaked when I went to collect the post. We still haven’t used the heating yet except for the bathroom very early in the mornings. As I write, we're having sideways rain (as Phyllis would say) and it's very misty, low cloud I think, sea-level cloud? What’s the weather like today where you are?