Yet another fragmented dream night, with fragments only having initially survived awaking (but apparantly one, albeit loosely, sequential dream rather than the several I sometimes have), but parts keep leaching back as I'm putting this down. Let's see how as we go.
Try as I might, I can't remember
how or
why I was in Cathedral city of some kind (but that fact was important). And the retail park within it. And trying to decipher a
huuuuge billboard with advertisements on which were set out like an ads page of a broadsheet newspaper. And I'm a bit hazy about the navigation system in my car being set for the wrong date.
...but then I start driving my car. Perfectly normal when I got into it (actually, more a flatback station-wagon type, which is not what I drive IRL, but hey), except that once I started driving it there was a bit of a big flaw. The vehicle was now a great big wooden caravan (old style 'static caravan', not Romany) and the driving-seat was set to one side of the door with no window in front of it. To add to my difficulties, part of the door had been boarded up (the bit closest to me) so I had to crane over even
further. This made driving difficult, as you might imagine, and the weather outside was atrocious (but then this part, at least, is probably taken from RL). Naturally I miraculously did no crash, despite only having limited ability to see where traffic was (in my lane, in a parallel lane or even
oncoming, or even where the lanes and road itself was going until I'd shuffled to one side every now and then and corrected my errant course.
I then came to some tunnels. Not through a mountain or hillside, but of the type to dive underneath a river perhaps. Ingeniously (or so it appeared to me at the time) shortly after entering at ground level the aboveground structure, internally lines with metal-plates if not entirely made by them, there were several side-doors (not actually fit for purposes, in hindsight) labelled "Catering", "Home Furnishings" and the like, that were there for trucks carrying such supplies to filter out of the queue and take either their own tunnels or get (or lose!) priority relative to every other vehicle as they re-merged into the tunnel-system proper.
Keeping an eye on the notices, I found that I remained unfiltered until the full-on entry to the tunnel, which was a vehicular lift. With an attendant. That was sideways on to the incoming traffic (i.e. me, the business of the road having miraculously abated since a few moments previously, so that there were no other cars on the 'road'). Manoeuvring into a sideways position (I may well have been reverted to a more 'standard' vehicle by this time, too, as I definitely had shortly afterwards) I was taken down maybe just a single story in height(/depth) and then had to drive along underground service corridors more reminiscent of a hotel than of any tunnel. At the end (after avoiding waiters) was another lift, but the attendant informed me that this wasn't my route out (probably
was a lift into a hotel) and that another unsigned, but seen) lift I'd passed a few yards back was the one I should take.
Long story short(er than it could be!), I pop up into the open air. It looks like whatever infrastructure surrounded
this end of the tunnel has been removed by storm damage, and I'm emerging from a hole in the ground (the lift now without walls) as if on an elevator similar to that used by planes on an aircraft carrier.
I then had a little tussle with another vehicle. I blamed how I'd rewired car's gearbox, all this apparently being controlled from a hand-unit at the end of a cable that passes (without any real way of stopping it dragging upon the ground, or even being run over by the wheels) underneath the car itself and into the engine-block. Anyway, I still wasn't in full control.
Now it's a fuzzy part, but eventually me and a companion of indeterminate type (may have been a Whovian relationship) were now staff in a hotel (the hotel of the lift and corridors?). Confusing architecture, again, even though we largely stuck to one level (that we knew). Other things happen, but some dude was negotiating entry into the dining room who was (apparently, I've no idea if he even
looked like him) "JZ". And we were tasked to get a to-be-signed-for letter to him. Two problems being that (even as staff ourselves?) we couldn't get into the dining room area without a reservation, and something along the lines of the fact that going up to JZ and saying "could you sign this please" was obviously rude and would look like we were autograph-hunting. Which wouldn't do at all!
The solution was (apparently) to get a kid (a guest's kid, randomly encountered further along the now-busy corridors, who still had no reservation, and who would doubtless make the "can I have your signature?" even
more pestery in nature, but that's dream logic for you) do the delivery instead.
Now we can look outside the windows. A bit of a storm blowing up. And across the service road alongside the hotel and across the railway embankment (because we're now definitely on the first floor (US: 2nd floor) rather than the ground one... yes! It's a twister! Going exactly parallel to the hotel. We're in no danger. In fact me and companion dude/dudette (not entirely sure which they were, at least permanently) go outside down a fire-escape to... not sure. Do something important.
After we do whateveritwaswedid, we're back in again. Stationed at our exit door there's a group of staff of evidently military persuasion. Brusk and proper and disciplined. They are there for some purpose that I do not recall (though I know I knew it). And then I flicked some sort of mental switch in them and they were now all "Cockney Geezers" talking all effusively, laughing and joking in a testosterone-enhanced "lad's lads" type of way, and... ummm, yep, "singing along to the
old Joanna". They were still military and
still had their job to do. I don't recall if I made them more or
less capable of this, and I woke shortly thereafter.