A Dose of Reality

We all have foolish dreams and fantasies.  You know the sort of thing: those flights of fancy we use to idle away a few minutes from time to time, as we imagine the things that might have been, how our lives could have gone down a different path or some future where our circumstances are different.  But all too often these idle pipe dreams can come crashing down around our ears when they collide with reality.  You know what I mean: all those years that you've fantasised about meeting that girl you used to idolise again and starting some kind of relationship with her, for instance, only to discover when you do meet her again by chance that she's happily married to someone else and has two kids.  Suddenly that future with her you used to dream about collapses into dust.  Somehow, the dose of reality you've just suffered prevents you from ever rekindling that once pleasurable fantasy.  Well, I suffered such a dream dampening dose of reality the other day.  Not to do with some extended fantasy crush on some female acquaintance I'd pined over for years, (although I have had at least one similar experience), but to do with a house.

That's right, a house.  For several years, in a village just outside of Crapchester, I'd drive past this detached house, set in its own garden, a driveway leading up to the front door.  It seemed to be empty, (although there was never a 'for sale' sign outside), as the garden always looked a bit tatty, with the grass on the lawn too long.  It was significantly larger than the house I own and live in, having, at a guess, three or four bedrooms.  But it wasn't the size which attracted me so much as the 'look' of the house.  It was the sort of place I could imagine myself sitting in the garden of, relaxing in a deck chair on a Summer's afternoon, or lounging in the living room, watching the shadows gather on an Autumn afternoon.  There was just something about it which piqued my imagination and I quickly started dreaming a fantasy future living there.  The other day, I as in the area and realised that I hadn't looked at 'my' house in some time, so I took a slight detour down the road on which it was situated.  To my horror, it had been demolished.  The land it had sat on was now for sale - no doubt to be bought by some developer who has seen too many episodes of Homes Under the Hammer and will spend the next three years trying to get planning permission to build a whole village of cramped houses on the plot.  Needless to say, my dreams came crashing down around my ears - my whole imagined future in that house vanished in an instant.  I just felt so disappointed.  Worse than that actually: devastated to have that dream snatched from me.  I still haven't really recovered.