Weird confusing nonsense

07-09-06 Dreams

I’ve rented a house with Louis, Dino and someone else (probably me as I can’t recognise them). We move all of our stuff in and go for a walk to get a sense of the area. We’re escorted by some local youth who shows us the sights and talks constantly. On the way back I suddenly realise that I haven’t unpacked my cat! I rush back to let her out of her box. She’s fine, but pleased to be unpacked. I open one of the giant glass doors that make up one wall of my room and let her into the garden. There are eight stone slabs arranged in a rectangle fringed by grass; the other third of the garden is just a tangled mess. The doors don’t seem to lock, there are three panels, with thick glass toggles between them but I can’t see how they either hold them closed or lock them. I wander into the lounge where someone’s skinning up. Then we have breakfast together.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It’s Christmas at school, I and some of the other teachers are watching the students come through the main doors. There are very obvious teacher cliques, some groups of staff also enter and exit without speaking to us. We’re just mocking the kids quietly to amuse ourselves. Then the youngest teacher there comes along bearing a tray of mince pies. He seems tiny, with the most precise tiny triangular grey beard. He has no nose, instead there are several lines of writing, like a tattooed moustache, but they can’t be read. He’s trying really hard to fit in, but we point out that the kids wouldn’t even recognise a mince pie, let alone eat one. So we eat them instead.

Class starts so I wander the corridors looking for truants or a rogue lesson to deliver. I come across a group of kids eyeing the video games on sale in the entertainment section of the school. I strike up a conversation about some strategy game they’re interested in, although they can hardly believe that anyone as old as I am actually plays games. I tell them about how you have to design your own robot and then stamp on things. There’s also a brilliant looking pirate game for PS2, although it’s a completely different game if you get it for the PC.

I walk home from school with a friend. Up a long road ahead of us is another friend from the staffroom. She hasn’t seen us, so we follow her to see what she’s up to. She goes into an alleyway where a car is parked and greets the man getting out. They kiss passionately, but stop when she notices us. She seems very annoyed, perhaps we’ve caught her out.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

At the top of a hill, overlooking a big sandstone quarry, we’re making a film. The director is leaning over the edge, looking down at the stage below. He wants a smooth, rolling shot from this position down to the actors below. We’re discussing how to best achieve that with the cranes and cameras we have when a lady and her child approach the director. She asks him if they can have his autograph. The boy explains that he’s a ‘mesolyte’ (or something like that) and that if the director likes, he can ‘do something’. The boy looks at the cliff and recites some weird doggerel poetry.

The next I know, the cast (and some of the teachers) are standing close together in a small shiny blue room. There’s a slightly raised stage at the front, on which the boy stands. We’re all waiting for him. He raises his hands like a puppeteer and the crowd respond. Alison (?) tried to get into the heart of the crowd “it's the only way he’ll let us go”. I say “hell no” and drag her out as the crowd begins to dance under the boy’s instruction. It’s really creepy and the rhythmic dancing and the sound it makes is oddly compelling. We go round the corner into a corridor that runs along the back of that room. There are a few other people who have escaped the dancing for now, but it’s awfully tempting and there seems little alternative.

Frustrated, I kick at the wall. It breaks, like sheets of safety glass it crunches and folds like it’s backed with plastic. When I stop the stuff heals back up, but it feels important. I get the others to kick and hammer at it, we start chanting to help resist the puppeteer’s song and smash the blue glass walls. It keeps healing up on us, bit I’m able to grab the bottom before it does and climb under it.

Everything is very dark and quiet for a while, and then I’m wet. I appear to be in the sea, although I don’t have to swim or tread water to keep afloat or move around. Not far away from me there’s a shape which keeps reappearing out of the water, grabbing a swimmer and disappearing again. It should be a shark, but it looks more like it’s been hastily disguised with a cloud of spray paint in a low quality Photoshop.

There are lots of other people in the water, some on rafts. Those on particularly small rafts, barely larger than their own feet tend to be singing. There are a few people on top of a vehicle having a lengthy discussion about why smaller format video games machines tend to have the largest packaging. I climb on top of a camper van and try to help some of the swimmers to safety before the obscured shark gets them, although it doesn’t feel like a massive priority. Another man is hurling DVD cases and tin toy boxes into the water to support the swimmers. One of them is shouting “I’m Ally McBeal’s husband” repeatedly. Someone asks me who he is and I reveal in a conspiratorial manner that it’s Ally McBeal’s husband. The comedians Webb and Mitchell are dressed in unidentifiable costumes, thrashing about pretending to be kept afloat by tiny objects.

It all fades away and I wake up with a headache lying in a broken book case. People are sprawled across cushions, furniture and the floor amid a range of household and party debris. I realise that of course, it was a party – we were all so wasted we thought we were at sea and needed the cushions for buoyancy. The hosts are attempting to tidy up, so I lend them a hand by washing the bowls and things used for floating. There are two other TV personalities there who explain that their Fringe show went really well, “no laughs, no slaps – definitely an improvement”.

I sit down and try to explain this dream to Ian, but am unable to convince him it was a dream and instead say that he was one of the housemates to begin with, which makes him listen.