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.
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OK, well, hostiple. Here we go.

What fun. I’ve been waiting for an appointment for months, and today I had to go on my own. Everything crappy and stressful happens at once, it seems. All we need now is a redundancy and a divorce and we’ll have collected the full set. Bingo!

Last night the next door neighbours were burgled. Did I mention that? Anyway, they were and they were so upset. The girl is only about 22 - she was crying her eyes out on the stairs next to my front door when I got home. I made her a big cup of sweet tea. So British sometimes.

Where was I? Oh, the hospital. Well, let’s just say that they’re not very good at being reassuring. Also, I learnt today that when they say “I’d like to get someone else to have a quick look” they actually mean fourteen earnest looking medical students. Which must be very educational for them (good), if a little embarassing for me (bad). Ah well, all in the interests of science, I suppose.

I left, a bit confused, a big shocked, a bit worried, got home in order to shower and try and get rid of the feeling of being poked and prodded, got online and promptly freaked out. Too much information on the interwebnet, you see - it enables the frankly prone to leap to conclusions which may well be well worth leaping to, but not alone and on a friday. Hmm. Bloody information.

So now we enter a round of more prodding, more tests, more medical professionals (though not students, hopefully) and more uncertainty. Hoorah. Nothing more distracting. Oh, and I’ve got a whole weekend to stew a seul, too. Great.

I went to sleep when I got home, in my socks, and had strange, intense and colourful dreams about being in a deserted church/theatre/cinema straddling Hampstead Heath station, and hiding in a loft with Paul while strange people in masks danced in my socks. Woke up with a dry mouth and a headache.

So I’m not really going to talk about this at all - there’s either too much to say or nothing at all, and either way this probably isn’t the best place to ponder anyway. That’s what heads are for, and pillows, and stuffed dogs.

I dreamt last night I had a chunk of glass in my ear canal, such as you might get from a safe-breaking windscreen - small, square-ish, relatively smooth edges, and firmly embedded in my ear.

I was talking to Paul, poking about in my right ear with my finger, trying to concentrate on what he was saying, and then suddenly I caught the edge of the chunk, and managed to extract it with my fingernail. The feeling of it plopping out of the cave of my ear and into my palm was immensely realistic and satisfying.

Suddenly, everything became much more comfortable - I could hear again, clearly, and it felt great. I fingered the glass chunk on my palm and cut my fingertips.

I only remembered the dream this afternoon in Waitrose, when I got an itchy ear in the household products aisle, and put my fingertip in the right canal. The dream came rushing back, and I half-expected to feel smooth-edged glass against my fingernail.

Interpretations? Significant, you reckon? Or perhaps too much rich food before bedtime?

More fun in bed:

Last night’s dreaming involved one in which I was promising to take the residents of Iona packets of biscuits at christmas, if they promised to keep the pub open over the winter season (it usually closes from November to March).

There was another, too, in which my site was coded entirely from string and gaffer tape (quite lideralee) and I was stuck in the middle, trying to extract myself from the knots. Oh, the symbolism.

In the middle of this dream, I woke up, because Paul rolled over and said in a matter-of-fact tone, “Meg, you have to stop using IE.”

“What?” I said, because he was mumbling.

“You have to stop using IE,” he repeated, “because mumble mumble mumble“

“Paul? Why do I have to stop using it?”

Paul rolled over again. “Doesn’t matter,” he said, settling his head against the pillow.

“Are you awake?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, quite clearly.

“Then tell me why I have to stop using IE. I’m confused.” I repeated.

“Well,” he said, turning to me with his eyes firmly shut, “It’s going to crash any moment, and you’re going to lose all the work you’ve done. It’s not looking very stable. You’d better switch browsers now,” he continued, “while you still can.”

And with that, he zonked out again, still as fast asleep as he was while talking. And this morning, despite claiming to have had spoddy dreams, of this conversation he had no memory whatsoever.

I think some people may have been using the Internet too much recently. Just a wee bit, maybe…

Can you actually catch a high speed train across the water to Greenland, threading through the icebergs, looking out for Polar Bear pawprints along the way?

No, I didn’t think so. Cool dream, though.

I dreamt very strangely and vividly last night, and all day it’s been haunting me.

I dreamt that I was at my own wedding, waiting at the door, in a claret corset and white skirt (so not my style). And I was waiting.

And waiting.

And then I had to run to a conference on macroeconomics. Curious.

Mad, vivid, disjointed dreams in which my mother featured as a mad serial killer cannibal, hunting people down on her island, and my father featured as a camp Armistead Maupin-type, picking up bears in the forest. Not the grizzly kind, either. And I was driving down the Trans-Canada highway in a stolen car.

And when I woke up, I could barely (can barely) open my eyes. I feel utterly groggy and sleepy and bleargh.

Last night I dreamed I was making bread - brown bread, with a little bit of honey, for taste, the way my mum used to make it - and feeding it to someone I love, breaking warm chunks off with my fingers and popping them in his mouth.

That was the whole dream - no excitement, no fuss, no great drama. And yet it was immensely satisfying and cosy and wonderful, and I wanted it to go on forever.

I had a most concerning dream last night about suddenly being forced into the lead role in a promenade perfomance of a piece of physical theatre, ranging across a valley in the north. Even though it was supposed to be improvisational, I was most concerned that I didn’t know the words. Got a standing ovation, though.

Then I got home, climbed a ladder and discovered that my ceiling was actually made of ten inches of flour, and that under all that, which just crumbled away under the slightest bit of pressure was a layer of family history - photographs, books, harlequin romance novels (not my family, someone else’s) - and then the real ceiling.

And then I was in a forest, and a ghost said “remember me? I’m going to terrify you” and I said I’d like to see him try, so he went “well, fuckya, then” and exploded my house.

And then I woke up.

Could have been the alcohol, I suppose….

Had a very odd experience this morning. I had a frenzied dream about standing in the middle of the Musee d’Orsay in Paris, making a long-distance call on my mobile to the US, talking to the owner of a website. I had to give a justification as to why I should be included on her list of links, only I was getting a bit irate and confused about the whole thing. The name of the site? DebbieCollins.com.

So when I woke up and logged on, late morning, I thought what the hell, I’ll try it. I typed in DebbieCollins.com, and nothing came up. Phew. So I tried DeborahCollins.com on the off-chance, and lo and behold, a weblog I haven’t seen before. It must have got lodged in my subconscious, somehow. Weird. And there I am, already on the links list, without needing to do a telephone interview. Even weirder.

So I had a little poke around her site, and then I stumbled over her about page, which bears a striking similarity to mine, not in terms of design, but in the facts listed down the left hand side. I think Debbie and I would get on alarmingly well, considering we have so very much in common. Interests, passions, things that get us into trouble. Hell, even some of the words are the same. Uncanny. Hmm.

Anyway, this got me thinking about revamping my own about page, because it’s a bit tired and besides, why not? I was thinking about doing a MEGFAQ, if possible, so can I ask for your help, please, in submitting questions you would like answered? Thank you….