mrry (Happy New Year)
 
Dreams 28/Aug/2002

I am in a country park, redolent of Chatellerault near Hamilton, but situated at once in both Falkirk and northern California. Two groups of seemingly random people, to whom I have little connection, embark on a race along a path through the adjoining forest. The path is circular, so my team goes anti-clockwise, and the other team goes clockwise around the circuit.

We do this several times, always passing each other at the halfway point - a bridge over a small river. However, despite being equally-placed at the halfway stage, my team loses each race. On the final race, my teammates and I - feeling a little disaffected - decide to hide (with the apparent intention of surprising our opponents) at an abandoned, wooden pithead. It is found down a path on the edge of the forest, near the far bank of the river.

Inside the pithead, the new Stamperland Church bell hangs, above the mineshaft. One of my teammates, a vague acquaintance, decides to jump onto the bell, and swing about on it. Naturally, as the bell was about to be installed in Stamperland, it wasn't secured, and the bell, and my teammate, fall deep into the mine.

I run out of the wooden box, towards the visitor centre (which resembles Chatellerault House). I take my mobile phone in hand, and dial 999. As in so many dreams, I cannot think of what to say.

 
Dreams 12/Aug/2002

I am on a westbound train, heading for my work in Dalmuir. I alight at an unfamiliar station, which I take to be the closest to my workplace. I walk along suburban streets, hilly and lined with bungalows, whereupon I meet one of my colleagues. We discuss the days that we will be working this week.

When I arrive at my work, the location is unfamiliar. It seems to be a cross between a traditional hospital, and Netherlee Primary School (my alma mater). I arrive to find that the cardboard-folder-drought-situation has not been rectified over the weekend, and, as such, we are unable to do any work.

We carry boxes along a dark, narrow corridor, that has steps up at either end, meaning that it is sunken. It is redolent of the corridors in Carolside Primary, where the table tennis was played on games nights at the 712 youth club. Once we reach one end of the corridor, we turn around, and carry the boxes back to our work space.

I am shocked and a little angered to discover that we are being temporarily managed by my least favourite teacher from school (Williamwood, that is). He asks for our timesheets, and I cannot find them amongst our folder of paperwork. He mutters something, and then goes away to find some spare sheets. He returns soon after with normal sheets for my colleagues, and a different, crêpe paper sheet for me. This annoys me greatly.

Our working space - normally a bare, uncompleted room, with two tables - is transposed to a desk for four people in the corner of a primary classroom. I am sitting down, to prepare some files, when a former classmate (whom I never particularly liked), tells me that I am in his way. I retort that I cannot get out of his way, but he is determined to sit down right behind me and eat his sub sandwich. I point out that we can both sit down, and he does.

I spot my nefarious new boss through a window behind our desk. He is washing the window. I jeer, "What cost-centre does that fall under?" (a timesheet joke that proves I am even less funny when asleep than when awake). I curse the fact that he is not my real boss, and walk out of the room, and the building.

The hospital (in my dream) sits at the top of a grassy hill, which seems to be a public park. It is a sunny day, and the park is bustling with families, flying kites and the like. I trudge down to the road at the bottom of the hill, and when I get there, I turn back.

I return to the hospital through an entrance very similar to the Primary 1 and 2 entrance of (the old) Netherlee Primary School. I pass through cloakrooms, and into an open area, which is like a hospital reception. At this point, I realise that I have lost my crêpe timesheet. I ask a passing nurse where I could find one, and she is very helpful. Everything is resolved.

 
Dreams 10/Aug/2002

It is Monday morning, and I am running late in getting ready for work. My aunt is, peculiarly, waiting outside to give me a lift. I go outside, and discover that she has driven halfway along the road from my house, in order to be closer to our destination. I accept this, and get in.

When I arrive at my workplace (which should be the National Waiting Times Centre, but it actually seems like an American college), there are crowds of young people milling about outside. I realise at once that it is exam day: my first fortnightly exam to check on my performance at work. I have not studied for it, but it is the sort of test for which one does not have to. However, not only do I have to take this test, but my friends are also amongst the throng. I say my helloes, and we are ushered into a classroom.

In the classroom - in which the desks are arranged in a horseshoe shape, with the apex at the far side of the room - it emerges that something sinister is going on. We are actually slaves to the company (cf. VersaLife in the game Deus Ex), and if we fail the test, we will be imprisoned. We are herded into a hall, and our nexts of kin and employers block the doorway and prevent us from leaving.

 
Dreams 10/Aug/2002

I awake on Thursday morning, thinking that I have the house to myself. However, my dad has not gone to London as planned, and he is pottering about the house. I am expecting a visitor later in the evening, but another of my friends appears at my door at ten in the morning. It turns out that I have previously invited him round, and then forgotten about the invitation. I let him in and allow him to play on my computer.

Along the side of my house, a stagnant river of effluent sits. There is a lilo in the middle of it, and I wonder why I ever put it there. I return inside, and the settee has a purple stain, the colour of methylated spirit, in the middle of the cushion. I worry about getting this stain out, and it turns out that every cushion in the three-piece suite is similarly defiled.

[I was quite convinced by this dream, and I was relieved to find that my dad had, in fact, accompanied my mum to London; and that the suite wasn't ruined.]

 
Dreams 31/Jul/2002

I am in the departure lounge of Heathrow Airport, trying to book a ticket back home to Glasgow. I find a sly Irishman, who offers me a Ryanair ticket on that very route (which is odd, considering the airline operates flight to neither London Heathrow, nor Glasgow International). I leave the tiny departure lounge through frosted, sliding doors, with green stickers in the middle of them.

I emerge into a scary-seeming Terminal 1 check-in area. The ceiling is at least as high as that of a hall in the SECC, only it is painted a sickly colour of white, with pillars of the same colour supporting it. In between the pillars are immense trapezoidal walls of brown and black brick. Dwarfed by their surrounds, in the middle of each of these walls is a tiny set of double doors.

[On seeing this scene, I remember a recent dream that I had, in which I was walking along the outside/taxi rank of a terminal at Heathrow, and unable to find a way in, except down a precariously steep staircase into the Underground station; another in which I was in Heathrow, and I found a disgusting, red-tinted restuarant; and another one in which I wandered around the same airport like a lost soul, having got a ticket, but nobody with whom to travel.]

I head northwest, or right, along the inside of the wall. I keep following this path, expecting at any moment to arrive in Terminal 2, and the place I believe the abovementioned restaurant to be (as I vaguely remember it being a Pizza Hut). However, I continue on through an undulating corridor, with windows on the wrong (ie. right-hand) side, and painted institutional. I pass some people, having a contretemps, and eventually end up at the bottom of a flight of stairs, before a metal door, with a peep-hole in it.

The scene is instantly familiar to me, from a (fictitious) e-mail that my brother sent me. The caption had something to do with it being an entirely pointless door. I look through the peep-hole, and, as the e-mail predicted, I see the upturned bare foot of a trailing leg in the bottom-right corner of the lens.

Somehow, I end up on the other side of the door, and I double back on myself, in order to return to the terminal. My trek takes me over terracotta- and slate-tiled roofs that would be more at home in Italy or France. I eventually end up at the roof-top taxi-rank that I alluded to in the first of the three remembered dreams.

 

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