I am not a big one for dreaming - well at least not for remembering dreams. They float away and disintegrate like smoke. I just cannot hang onto them. However, this morning as wakefulness approached, a disturbing dream happened and some of it has remained with me.
I was sitting in the corner of a sunlit cafe with some other people. I don't know who they were. Then who should walk into the cafe but the legendary Welsh blogger , John Gray.
He was a slightly younger version of his present self. His beard was neatly trimmed and he smelt of scented shower cream and shampoo. His skin gleamed as if it had recently been oiled.
This was the first time that I had ever met him and I reached out my right hand for a manly handshake, saying, "John, how lovely to meet you!"
But he ignored my gesture and silently swooped down to kiss my cheek. It would have been my lips but I managed to shift the target at the last moment when I realised what was happening.
He seemed affronted when he sat at the table and I was so shocked that I didn't know what to say. This was, after all, the first time in my adult life that I had ever been kissed by a man.
I suppose it wasn't really a dream. It was veering towards nightmare territory. I hope that readers of this blogpost will not read stuff into it by suggesting murky psychological undercurrents.
Anyway it shook me out of my slumbers and I came downstairs for a pint of tea and a bowl of honey nut cornflakes with slices of banana to watch recorded images of the amazing Platinum Jubilee concert from Buckingham Palace on our television set. Even so, the dream refused to disappear entirely.
"I hope that readers of this blogpost will not read stuff into it...". I am laughing at your suggestion. Of course we will read things into your dream. Mind, I am a little jealous that you did not dream about me.
ReplyDeleteSorry. You are just not my type Andrew.
DeleteYes, it's odd how some dreams and their atmosphere stay with us long after we have woken up and started the next day. According to Keith, I do a lot of arm waving and shouting when I'm asleep but I think he's just making it up. :)
ReplyDeleteNice of you to call round again Jenny. Perhaps you dream that you are an air traffic controller guiding planes onto the "apron" by the terminal.
DeleteNo, most of the dreams I remember are teaching related - more like nightmares really!
ReplyDeleteNo wonder you were thrashing about!
DeleteStrangely enough, I have never dreamt of fellow bloggers, or of blogging. I often remember my dreams, and one that has stuck with me was about my sister. The family were meeting at my grandparents‘ house, and my sister did not turn up. We were worried and wondering where she might be, until we learned that she had fallen out of a window from her attic flat and died. The dream left me with unspeakable sadness for days afterwards, even though I instantly knew it had only been a dream the moment I woke up. Even now, just thinking and writing about that dream which happened decades ago, I could cry.
ReplyDeleteAwful. When I was about nine or ten, I dreamt that my parents had been killed in a car accident. I felt lost and utterly distraught when I woke up. I think of it as a key moment in my life even though it was "only" a dream
DeleteYikes! I've had a few weird dreams but usually they don't involve other people, just places.
ReplyDeleteNo people? A psychiatrist might have a think or two to say about that River!
DeleteI'm searching for "home". Every place I have ever lived in is just a place to live. I am never "home".
DeleteInteresting that you have analysed your own dreaming pattern.
DeleteI have very vivid dreams and remember many of them upon waking. i don't often understand them, but I remember them.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a camp counsellor in Ohio in the seventies, the guy I shared my cabin with often woke up and said that he was exhausted or shattered because he had been dreaming so hard.
DeleteI hope you were flattered that you were considered someone who warranted a kiss.
ReplyDeleteFrom you I might have felt that way but not from a hairy Welsh bloke.
DeleteI once drank wine then whisky then wine and whisky again. Suddenly I was seeing two cats instead of one. That was like a living nightmare.
ReplyDeleteStick to cherryade Dave!
DeleteChallenge accepted! I'm hereby suggesting murky psychological undercurrents (what a lovely phrase)! lol Seriously, however, it is nothing but your mind putting random things together while your logic centre is goofing off somewhere else while you are asleep and can't make it work. Nothing to be disturbed about. It is strange, though, how "real" dreams can be and how they can linger. I have had dreams so sad I have woken crying and even realizing they were only dreams I still cry after waking. It takes a while for those to fade.
ReplyDeleteSounds like you could be a dream analyst Dr Jenny! Thanks for reassuring me that the dream means next to nothing.
DeleteYour bill is in the mail :D
DeleteGulp!
DeleteI think it was a very sweet dream. Why shouldn't men kiss? Humans are so weird.
ReplyDeleteItalian men kiss nut I am not Italian - even though I am fond of farfalle.
DeleteItalian men kiss "nut"? Do we need to call in Dr. Freud here?
DeleteI regularly have vivid dreams which sometimes wake me up in the night and keep me awake trying to puzzle them out. To top it off, I talk and even yell in my sleep. Thank goodness I don't walk in my sleep. My father talked, yelled and walked in his sleep. "Pleasant dreams" don't seem to run in my family.
ReplyDeleteI wonder what you yell out? The mind boggles. I hope that it is nothing vulgar.
DeleteI have very vivid dreams and still remember some dreams I had as a child. When I was married to my ex husband I dreamed my children and I were all in a prison camp and the only way out was to swim, underwater, through a maze that was filled with acid. I made it out but went back because I wouldn't put my children though that. Yeah, my dreams are usually straight forward:)
ReplyDeleteOnce I cared for a very sick patient on evening shift. He was vomiting up huge amounts of blood and had bloody diarrhea, liver failure and a GI bleed. When I went home and slept, I dreamed I was taking care of him all night. The next day I had him again and told him about my dream. He was an indigenous man and told me that his grandfather, who was dead, had sat with him all night. That patient survived.
As for your dream? Well, what can I say?
As for your last question, say nothing Nurse Lily!
DeleteIncredible that that patient survived!
I wouldn't mind if John Gray kissed me in my dream. I would be happy to meet him! I would kiss any of my blogger friends as I do feel some affection for the regulars I read, Neil.
ReplyDeleteIf you swooped in, I would use my tongue Ellen!
DeleteYou made me blush! :)
DeleteI would use my tongue to lick an envelope!
DeleteIf I've ever dreamt or dream now, I haven't remembered when I wake.
ReplyDeleteI suspect that you dream of Sid James from the "Carry On" films. "Oh Sid! Please be gentle!"
DeleteSid James? I'm not that old YP!!!
DeleteOkay - Brad Pitt then!
DeleteMany gay men do kiss cheeks when they meet up with a close friend. You should be so lucky, YP!
ReplyDeleteIf I ever meet you Steve, please don't be a-kissin' me! A firm shake of the hands should suffice.
DeleteA pint of tea - I like that; very Yorkshire I think. Not so sure about honey nut cornflakes though. Sweet dreams, as they say...
ReplyDeleteForget the honey nut cornflakes Mark, I had a pig's trotter and some tripe.
DeleteDreams are weird (most of the time) Good that we forget most of them.
ReplyDeleteI just think of dreaming as the brain processing and re-charging.
DeleteI hope John won't be offended by your put-off-ish-ness. I have learned to hug and perhaps an occasional peck on the cheek but . . .
ReplyDeleteYou are a modern man Bruce!
Delete