[Became a bit of a long one, I now realise... Recompartmentalised it, but left it largely unedited, except for speeling eroors.]Two-and-a-bit for the price of one, Being written up at 4AM (more to come?) due to general restlessness after having gone to bed fair too early, last night.
Largely concerning train journeys, in a dream segment from just before a prior awakening. Unusual trains these, as in the interior of the carriage was a full supermarket. A series of isles with cooling cabinets for yoghurts and milk, as well as your standard racks for crisps (US: chips) and other produce. Usually as one end of a carriage, with an equally 'aisled' configuration of 'standard' train seats for the "non-buffet" sections, but on the final journey (having changed changed trains, and/or made new journeys, and not recalling much about the in-betweeny bits) I was surprised to find my carriage almost entirely set up a a supermarket, no seats at all.
At this point, most of my preoccupation was with maintaining my 'ticket', this being something like a swipe-card that was worn attached to my body on a length of cable that was wrapped around in a continuous loop in a butterfly pattern about the shoulders and arms so as to (apparently) pick up power for the card by electrical induction. Because of some perceived failing or other, I had to keep unwrapping and re-wrapping the cable around myself, but dare not leaving it disconnected for too long. I also passed by the guard (down one of the supermarket aisles) and discretely nodded to him. Partly as deference to his job, partly because he was the famous (YMMV) comedian Rob Brydon and I didn't want to pester him as someone famous and (yet, simultaneously) partly because he (Rob Brydon) was a good friend (NB: IRL we have never met and he doesn't know me at all) but we both didn't want to make a fuss while he was on duty dealing with a woman he was helping with enquiries over whatever issues she had with the train/supermarket. (Another IRL note, while I know that he probably has been on TV recently, I can't recall anything I've seen him on in the last week (mostly because I watch very little TV at the moment), so no idea why he featured as a 'named' character. Not that I mind, but apologies to him should he ever Google himself and discover me mentioning him so weirdly.)
Unusually (at least for dreams I remember), this appeared to be narrative/audio only. I gathered though either an audio re-enactment or from the voice of someone (or several 'someone's) telling me directly the tale of a "lone yachtsman" of some kind who had 'cheated' by actually having had his twin brother secrete himself into the boat (from the bottom, presumably through some hatch) in the boatyard, and then in the gloaming of the dusk as the boat set off he "popped up" in front of his twin quickly so that nobody on the shore would notice this new "man in the middle", and then... no, not sure.
(To add to the off-hand comment about watching very little TV, I'm largely a listener to radio, having (as usual) fallen to sleep to the sounds of pre-recorded radio from the last day or two that I don't get time to listen to during the day, or while listening to items I had recorded from the day before that... Thus a lot of the information I receive during waking hours is audio-only (wiether fiction, current affairs or comedy of various kinds), and yet I don't recall dreaming in audio-only before. What images I do recall were as intangible to the dream as what I'd normally be 'visualising' during waking hours when following a narrative from the radio. IYSWIM.)
You're in the army now. Imagine Post WW2 British army uniforms, of the kind popularised in Carry On Sergeant and slightly later (in full technicolour). Wel, there seemed to be a rag-tag bunch of 'us' soldiers (back to me being "different characters" again, surprisingly not how any of the above was played, and you can also now add the traditional 3rd-person viewing perspective) gathered together in an isolated camp in a clearing in a forest for 'special duties'. Moments of dread because there's something religiously significant stalking the land (at one point, under the surface of a lake, during a flashback sequence concerning the history of a hard-nosed woman officer (observed as combined 1st/3rd-person "there and then" by myself) who never did complete her tale)), and 'we' were the ones tasked to deal with it. Mostly it was a matter of parading and training. The "tough as old boots" 'grandad' character was picked uon by the shouty sergeant, with the clear narrative implications that he was tougher and bootier than he seemed and knew how to defend himself in a brawl. When an alert came through that the 'threat' was in our vicinity, we were all ordered into the barracks (a strange affair, given it was transparent from the inside, but not from the outside, and had nothing but some glowing corals inside which left us to just mill around inside not knowing what we were doing (even less than usual, I think)), to hear how it's possible that those of us who had "disappeared" to be here were being remembered by our old colleagues, and that this might have a bearing upon the whatever secret recruitment drive had been performed to gather us (the 'threat' would know from the memories of those that knew us that we were missing, and presumably work out why, and thus seek us out???).
The 'threat', BTW, was never a cold-sweat inducer, merely a plot device never really actualised (except in the aforementioned 'pre-history' segment).
Perhaps as part of the mitigation, I was sent out from the camp to the country house training place. Along the way (for no good reason, that I can recall) I was now tasked with walking down a street (a on-main street in a Middlesex-like county town, whitewashed stone houses, albeit outfitted with all the modern acoutriments of white lines in the road and modern signage) and taking photographs of the road signs that had been placed there. Some of them apparently by Google, who had made signs with totally[/] the wrong size font, and in the wrong format.
(Among all the things that are beign recalled, this is the one thing that I can tie down to an actual experience yesterday. I had been wondering why the relevent organisations responsible for various road-signs around my area had let slip a rogue apostrophe in a sign warning about "Roadwork's on the <named road>", and yet omitted one in the more permanent sign set up for those arriving at a local football (US: soccer) club's stadium that was labelled "Visitors Coaches". Anyway...)
Whilst taking the photos, I witnessed someone (badly) assist an old person a mobility scooter to get up and onto a flatbed trailer being towed by his house. A strange sub-sub-segment, but so vivid. (And so illogical.)
Onto the country house. I largely recognise this country house as being one of my regular dream-sites, though usually my time is spent trying to navigate its impossible and irregular and down-right Escher-like stairwells. This time I was mostly confined to the corridors, once I entered, although entry (due to the house being on a slope, unlike its usual flat plot) was across a small bridge into a first-story (US: 2nd story) corridor. I found a a map of the house, and also a military map of the UK, with army bases marked on it. (This second map indicated that either my prior posting or my new one was somewhere in southern Wales, but most notably also included a strange set of hills, where none actually exist in the UK, where there was a base called "Discweald" (As in "Weald of Kent", although it was nowhere near that.) In-dream, I was cogitating whether this had been inspired to be named as such by Terry Pratchett's fictonal "Discworld", or whether its name had inspired him.)
...Anyway. On the house map there was a TV room, which I immediately went to. Loads of people, no TV, and I felt awkward poking my nose in, so I wandered further. Some of the corridors (Escher again, no doubt) were obviously truncated and blocked off by some serious home improvements, which i deduced was some sort of maze (like a museum may have created a walk-through geological exhibit with carbon-fibre 'rock tunnel walls'). At that point an officer came along and I asked permission to go into the maze, but I was refused. (I had the impression that this was a training set-up. Probably the reason I was refused early access is that later on me and 'my unit' would be trained in there and advanced information would be counter to the purpose of the exercise. I believe my own reason for wanting to have a look was pretty much for the same reason.)
Instead, I was (on my own) paraded out to some large internal area. (I was surprisingly good at army drill, it seems, following the unintelligable orders of officers to the unintelligible letter.) There another officer negotiated my temporary transfer to other dutues, which involved me going to see "The Bishop". I enquired whether I should be addressing him as "Your Grace", when I met, and I think the rather bemused response was that I /could/ do, with the implication that this was not a real bishop I was to meet (and, for some unrevealed and even unspoken reason, it might have been a dog).
The next scene was, therefore, me marched onto a stage, and now I was apparently seconded to a troupe of ENSA entertainers, or the like. This dream concluded (as if any of you reading this actually care any more!) shortly after I was unsuccessfully being coached on how not to stand stiff-shouldered like the conscript that I was dreaming I was... (I could only get "half-stiff shoulders", and was apologising, but saying as how I'd get better.)
That's it. No idea if anyone will find that useful. I wonder if I'll try to edit it down before I transfer it to the forums. Also, there's potentially another period or three of dreaming still to be had, tonight, except that now I'm all creatively fired up and can probably find better things to do than go back to sleep, however much I'll regret it later.
I now proudly give you
Having actually drifted off to sleep, but forgetting that my alarm was on for a much easier time than before, in one particular eight minute gap (the length of time between the alarm going off and the snoozed alarm reawakening me) the sole apparent occupation of my mind was dedicated to something that looked (and tasted) like a roast chicken, but was actually roast cat. I wondered whether to go back to the keyboard (in real life), but did not yet, as I remained in bed (within reach of the snooze button) and had a succession of three further 'within eight minute dreams' with about as much sense and content them as the first, except that in the final one of
then I started dreaming that I had been informing someone about the prior dreams. (Let me make this clear, the alarm clock and the snooze-button were real, the informing people of my dreams was
not real, and neither was the roast cat. That looked and tasted like a chicken.) I surmise that my prior recording of the initial scenes that I dictate to you sparked off some of this in my (sub-)consciousness (not the cat bit... I've /no/ idea where this came from).
But! ...that is not all. Having totally disabled my alarm (IRL), I phased into a far more complex dream. Phrase and composed as if a Popular Science program, there were scenes of a presenter on a boat t sea explaining... something... Meanwhile a compatriot presenter was atop a lighthouse-like structure (although for directorial effect, the 'camera' through which I was viewing this documentary was being moved up and down to make it look like he was
also at sea. The structure he was on (it now may not have been a lighthouse at all, but a lighthouse with a wind-tbine on top if it, a wind-turbine with a lighthouse light part way up it or just a wind turbine with lighthouse-like features) was revealed to be vertiginously tall, the presenter on top desperately wrapping his hands around the nacelle (of the wind-turbine hub variety) at the top.
Until, that is, he deliberately went over the side and dropped... ...to now be holding the nacelle (of the jet engine variety) of an aeroplane. Clever cutting by the director, apparently. Hanging on to this (even more vertiginous) place, he again lets go and falls... only to produce a silk parachute (or parawing). A spider-man-type parachute from... wherever Spiderman produces silk. Safely 'chuting down, he is until he consumes the 'chute, falling rapidly before he 'produces' yet another parachute. Repeat three or four times. And, just like the fall from the high building (whatever it was) leaves him hanging off the higher-up plane wing/engine, now he's holding onto a weather satellite and talking about its high-gain antennas and dishes. (Possibly, could have been a telecoms one. And this is entirely the dream function, for I know what weather and telecoms satellites
actually look like, and this is neither the size or shape of one of them. Perhaps it's a new design I should patent, though...
)
I awake, then, I think. Yes, really wake. I again deny myself the opportunity for adding to this text (I am to add this entire "Part the Fourth(s)", and on until the utter conclusion of this account, another hour later, when I have half an hour of (true!) consciousness spare prior to actually needing to go to work) as the wakefulness lapses into sleep once more (although I note that I have somehow crammed into at least three separate dreams the fact that I desiring to record the prior dreams).
Let us call this next lapse the "final episode" of the night, and certainly I must hurry its recording as I have not much more time before work demands my presence.
Here's a semi-familiar setting. I am at my workplace. Well, my dream's workplace (some ex co-workers probably cameo, but the locale and building I am in are totally very much unlike where I have actually worked with them, or anyone else. Apparently working at an internal helpdesk position (a very familiar thing for me), I get a call about a printer not printing something, and the person at the other end of the call being absolutely unable to tell me who he is, where he is, where the printer is, etc... Moving into the end of the building, away from noise (despite the fact that I could hear him clearly, and for some reason it was he that could not hear me, I lose the signal altogether on the cordless phone I'm using, so come back into my area, only to find that I;m suddenly on a different floor. Let's see, I think I then sit down on a sofa in a meeting room/area, and various people I 'know' come and talk to me about inconsequentials of various kinds. One of the colleagues (with more than a passing resemblance to an actual ex-colleague) is dressed as Santa Claus, for no good reason that seems to have been remarked upon. Along comes someone else with some birthday cards "to be signed by everyone" for someone else, and Santa-dressed colleague remembers that he's got a card for everyone to sign, as well. It's a Christmas card, except this is an utter coincidence with his attire, actually, and yes, Christmas is several months away as well, but he's getting the card done early (no he remembers he has it) and there's still no real reason why he's dressed as Santa, but I have the 'brilliant' idea of signing the card "Ho ho ho, regards from <mysignature>". The pen doesn't work too well (a significant plot point, at the time), but it eventually doesn't look too bad...
So why is this sofa I am on no longer in the impossible office and now in a slightly less impossible hotel (which I 'know' is js a short way down the canal (don't ask!))? No idea, but that's how it transpires. I now have a sofa and a bed in a shared room, that seems to be shared with half the hotel (and the office, despite everyone supposed to be there, at work, as indeed I might well need to be). I have things in drawers that need to be in my bag, and things in my bag that need to be in the drawers, and we the usual space-distorting properties of how much (or little) each can actually hold, and once again some Escher physics as I wander between floors of my (one-floor) bedroom in the hotel. Oh, and another in-dream determination that I shall add a record of all (prior) dreams to the account that you are reading.
I'm not dreaming now (as I finish this record), I'm fairly sure, as everything is normal. (Or is it?) On the other hand, I'm perhaps cutting it fine in order to get to work on time, so I shall leave any editing of this little missive until later. Assuming I even post it, but it would be a shame to not do so, now, after all the effort, eh?
[Looks like I did, sorry. 
]
Author
Topic: The Dream Thread (Read 607681 times)