meish dot org: life, unfolding

For the first time I can remember, I woke up last night after being physically hurt in a dream.

I don’t remember all the details; only that at one point I was sitting with a lot of people at a long restaurant table, and someone I don’t like very much came over and, just as I was silently wishing she wouldn’t, sat down opposite me. I felt despondent.

Then there was other stuff which is all a bit blurry, but somehow I remember quite specifically that I was at a cash machine on a corner, though it may have been inside, as there was overhead lighting around. Maybe in a shopping centre?

Anyway, I was just about to get some money out when I saw out of the corner of my eye two youngish blokes approach, both wearing baggy parkas and hard stares. I know I’d recognise them again, which is the weird thing. I turned back to the machine, determined to get my money and finish up and clear off, because I sensed trouble.

Suddenly, I felt a paralysing blow to the stomach – I remember falling to my knees and receiving another kick, and the world – well, the dream world – turned extra bright, as if the contrast had been suddenly whacked up, then black and white, as if all the bright hues had been drained out. And that’s when I woke up with a start, eyes wide open and clutching my stomach.

Very odd.

Strictly speaking, it was a nightmare; though not the worst nightmare I’ve ever had, the one that has haunted me since I was eight.

I have it maybe once a year or so – less frequently in the last decade – and I always wake up screaming and in a cold sweat:

I’m walking on my own through a deserted Victorian bath-house – there are three pools in subsequent rooms.

It’s daytime and it’s very light – I know I’m in England because of the watery sunshine coming in through the dusty glass roof.

I walk past the first pool, which is empty. It’s about half the size of a tennis court.

There’s litter everywhere – newspapers, crisp packets, cans, that kind of thing – and I’m kicking it up as I walk along the edge of the pool, like autumn leaves. It makes a dry rustling sound, and a hollow echo as the cans and harder litter roll away across the dirty tiles.

I go through a doorway and walk past the second pool, which is exactly the same, if a little grander, and slightly larger.

There’s no water in the pool at all, but there’s litter everywhere here, too, obscuring the mosaic floor of the pool. The walls are clad in bottle-green glazed tiles below a faux dado rail, and cream glazed tiles above. The tiles are cracked and worn, and grubby.

I go through a door at the end of the room, into the third hall. This room is exactly the same, but a bit grander still.

There’s rubbish all over the place here as well, and as I walk along the side of the dry pool, some crumpled newspaper falls in.

Then I look into the middle of the swimming pool, which is slightly larger and deeper than the others, and on the floor of the pool, amid the newspaper and litter, is a perfect, white, gleaming igloo.

That’s when I wake up screaming.

There’s no-one else in the dream, it’s all quite calm up to that point – there’s no sense of looming suspense or hastening doom, and I can’t for the life of me figure out what it means. Any interpretations welcome…

I know that the location is probably based on Silchester Road Public Baths, in Notting Dale, just aroud the corner from my primary school. I don’t recall ever going in, but I suppose I might have been, once, on a local history trip or something. I do remember that we studied it, which is how I know how it may have been structured inside.

The Victorian bath-house, which was opened in 1888 has long been demolished. There’s a sports centre on top of it now – astroturf pitches, or similar, I believe.

Notting Dale was a very poor area, nicknamed the Piggeries and the Potteries. The public baths and wash-house was a place to bathe, and do laundry, but also a great social occasion. Photos of similar buildings can be found here.

There were three pools in Silchester Road public baths and wash-house. The first was for the very poorest class, and the water drained out from the second class pool. The Second pool was for the slightly better-off, and the water drained from the higher class pool adjacent. The first pool was for those who were even better-off – though it’s all relative, as the water to fill the first class pool was taken from the local canal.

There was a story, when I was at primary school, that a tramp had been found dead in the baths. Another tale – probably just as apocryphal – related that a severed hand had been discovered in the long-closed building, gnawed by rats.

When we were on our way for a swim at Kensington New Pools on Walmer Road, just on the other side of the old red-brick, derelict building, we would hurry past without looking at its high windows and boarded-up doorway, in case we saw something we didn’t want to.

We never once, however, saw an igloo. Damn my over-fertile imagination.