Mental

Sometimes dreams can be an amalgamation of your memories, fears and plans. Sometimes they can be a mishmash of bizarre randomness that leaves you scratching your in-dream head before waking up to spend a day thinking ‘what the f*** was THAT about?’

Other times though – certainly in my experience – it’s very easy to trace back the origin of a dream to a specific thing you might have done the day before.

Case in point – last night I was sitting on the sofa begging for tiredness. As a thirty-something man oft-racked by insomnia I recognised the signs and knew I would not be drifting off to ByeByeLand anytime soon. So I fired up the iPlayer and found a documentary called “Being Evel” – a 90-minute special all about the life, and general insanity, of the daredevil motorcyclist Evel Knievel. I’d heartily recommend watching it, but the point is it obviously nestled itself in my subconscious and then exploded out again when I DID eventually drop off to slumberness.

Leading to this dream:

I was in a huge sports stadium, but it was virtually empty. There were about 300 people sitting in an elaborate curving amphitheatre that could almost certainly house 100,000 spectators comfortably. I was at the top of a huge ramp, sitting on some weird three-wheeled contraption that seemed to be a combination of a Harley Davidson Goldwing and a Space Shuttle, and I was so high off the ground that I couldn’t even see the obstacles at the end of the ramp that I was presumably supposed to be jumping over. Someone handed me a bottle of Johnnie Walker Game of Thrones Whiskey (which I guess is a real thing that I must have seen an advert for) and a crash helmet that had a picture of Spongebob Squarepants on the side. I accepted the whiskey, declined the helmet, and then waved to the (small) crowd before sticking my foot on the accelerator and storming off down the ramp to face whatever was waiting for me. When I got to the bottom I realised that it wasn’t a ramp at all – it was just a curved bit of track that became flat at the bottom – and that the ‘obstacles’ were a row of children, dressed like Victorian urchins and ranging in age from 5 to 10, all of which I somehow knew were my own offspring. With no ramp to lift me over them and no idea of where the brakes were on my vehicle I ploughed straight into them, scattering them in all different directions with all manner of injuries while hearing them shout “Why, daddy, why?”

Needless to say, I am not looking forward to bed tonight.

RC 18-10-18