In Dreams

Dreams always perplex me. The ones I remember, that is. Most, I don't. That said, amongst the most perplexing are those which seem vivid upon waking, but whose details fade immediately, leaving you with the infuriating sense of there being some profound experience lurking just out of your reach. But getting back to ones that we can actually recall, the problem with dreams is that we always like to think that they're trying to communicate some fundamental truth to us, even though, at face value, hey are utterly unfathomable. My favourite ever dream - which I might have mentioned before, in which case skip over this bit - involved Burt Reynolds. I dreamt that the star of such classics as Smokey and the Bandit had been drinking in my local pub. Not particularly off beat by dream standards, but the thing was that it seemed so vivid, that even after I woke up, for several minutes I treated it as a real memory. For a blissful, but brief, period I fondly imagined that I'd actually met Burt Reynolds, as he stood at the lounge bar of my local, sinking a pint with him. Then reality kicked in, and I asked myself just what a Hollywood superstar would be doing drinking in back street pub in the South of England? But it was just so real! To this day, I can show you the exact spot in the bar he was stood at, and the bar stool he was sitting on.

All of which brings me, finally, to my latest perplexing dream experience. This one involved a very good female friend of mine who I haven't seen in some time. (No, it wasn't that sort of dream, you filthy minded swine - get back to your own beds!) Whilst some of the details have faded, I recall that it started with me walking down a street of terraced houses. Where this street was, I don't know. I didn't recognise it. Anyway, I stopped outside a front door and knocked. The door was answered by my friend. However, she didn't look as she did the last time I saw her. Instead, her hair was short and spiky, as it was when we worked together, nearly a decade ago. Having entered the house, I found myself in a very narrow front room, which my friend and myself were apparently decorating - it was bare save for a sofa covered in a sheet. Whose house this was, whether it was mine or my friend's, wasn't clear. We proceeded to climb some uncarpeted stairs to a completely bare upper area, where I was apparently doing some kind of carpentry. Now, during the course of this carpentry, I somehow managed to embed the bit of an electric drill in the back of my left calf. How this happened is, once again, unclear. Nevertheless, it was painful, particularly as the drill kept running. I kept shouting at my friend to switch it off, but she took her bloody time about it, apparently finding several other DIY activities more important. After she finally switched it off, (laughing, I might add, at my predicament as she did so), I pulled the bit out and found the wound wasn't as bad as I thought. Relieved, I woke up. So, what did it all mean? What conclusion can I draw from this strange episode, apart from the fact that my friend's dream self is as dippy as she is in real life, that is? Who knows.