Benedict Cumberbatch ... and George Formby?

Not often do I dream of a celebrity - when I dream of people I know, I usually dream of ordinary people much closer to home. People I know, or relatives.

So you can imagine how weird I felt when I dreamed that Benedict Cumberbatch was some sort of villain with world domination on his mind. Not as some character in a forthcoming JJ Abrams movie - the actor himself.

At first, he thought I'd be useful because of my dream ability to phase through walls. Some people fly in their dreams. I phase through walls, and even swim through the ground. Go figure. But later in the dream, I was apparently surplus to requirements so he was content to leave me sidelined in a room that I supposedly couldn't phase through.

You'd have thought he'd have learned to lock the door of the room, though.

In the next dream, I was a passenger on a bus. I wanted to stop at a clearly-marked bus stop, but apparently the driver didn't want to stop there - in fact, he seemed a bit hysterical and actually floored it as I asked him repeatedly - so again, I phased through the wall of the bus. I ended up about half a mile from where I had to get off, so I had a bit of a walk.

And on the way there, I bumped into another famous face - this one a bit more dead: the late George Formby. For some reason, he was leaning against his lamp post, playing his famous ukulele ... and for some reason the tune he was playing was a cover of The Police's Roxanne.

Roxanne

You don't have to put on the red light

Those days are over

You don't have to sell your boy to the night ...

Book Vandalism

Only a short dream today, but it was bad enough.

A relative of mine - naming no names - popped into the house for a visit. He said that he had brought along a mountain of books, and asked me if I'd like to look them over and see which ones were valuable, which ones I'd like to keep and which ones to give to Oxfam. The books were on the table in the dining room, and a mighty stack it was - Niven, Clarke, Asimov, Heinlein, Lovecraft, Ramsey Campbell, William Gibson, Olaf Stapledon, John Wyndham, Geoff Nelder's book Aria: Left Luggage, Stross, Mieville, Greg Bear, Kim Stanley Robinson and more.

I heard this awful sound - tearing paper. I looked in in incredulity as I saw the relative tearing out a page of one of the James Blish Star Trek TOS adaptations. To a Trekker, that is utter sacrilege. The damned thing was a first edition, and hadn't even been taken out of the packaging - the plastic sleeve lay on the floor at his feet as he began tearing off the back cover.

So I threw him out.

Nobody damages books in my house. Nobody.

The Roman Banquet

I hate it when I have to get up early.

What little dream I had was lavish. The setting was a traditional Roman house, with an open courtyard, crescent benches of marble situated among peach and pomegranate trees, a central fountain, what looked like canaries - the green ones with grey wings, not the inbred yellow ones - and a small shrine for the household gods and ancestors, with candles and incense kept burning.

There was a ewer at my feet, filled with oil, and I was awaiting a slave to come along and anoint my feet with the scented oil. I was curious to see what her reaction would have been to have seen my right foot - I'd been called "Saturn-footed" before, it seemed - and I'd been entertained by household slaves playing a lyre and some sort of woodwind instrument.

The table was being set up for a banquet. I was wondering what they were going to serve, probably a steady stream of exotic meat dishes and frequent trips to the vomitorium to puke it all up whilst being entertained by a never-ending stream of prostitutes, when the damned alarm went off and I had to get up and get to the Museum for the tour.

The Seer Princess

This one comes over as kind of a fairy tale, but I was statting up the characters for the Legend fantasy roleplaying game like crazy today.

The story begins halfway across the world where I, a lonely poor wanderer, stumble across a silver ring lying in the midden pile onto which I'd been thrown from my erstwhile lodgings, along with all my worldly possessions - most of which I was wearing.

The silver ring had a large cabochon amethyst mounted on it. Putting the ring on, I admired it - then decided it needed a clean, so I rubbed it with my sleeve.

Guess what popped up next ...

The genie offered wishes to me. I asked it if it could take me to my true love; and I was whisked off to some far-off land, with another kingdom on its border. The difference between both kingdoms was easy to see - the kingdom next door was ruled by a sullen, angry King, ruling by force of arms; but the kingdom I'd been transported into was much fairer, ruled by a much nicer King; a kingdom of blue mountains rather than dark, forbidding crags, blue skies and rolling meadows rather than its reflection's dark forests and twisting roads.

Apparently, the bad guy next door had poached something of great value from the good King - his daughter, the Seer Princess. A young woman of cold, haughty demeanour, born blind at birth, but gifted with remote vision through an eyeless domino mask, a ceramic milk-white thing attuned to her which only she could put on, use or remove.

I sneaked across the border and entered the bad guy's castle, quickly locating the Seer Princess alone in a well-lit room, a magnificent blonde woman wearing a voluminous kingfisher blue silk gown, the ceramic seer mask firmly attached to her face. She greeted me and told me to enter, and told me to close the door.

I didn't need to explain what I was doing there - she already knew. When I asked her to come with me, she agreed - but told me to wait until the coast was clear. Two guards were heading along the corridor, but apparently they were only interested in a freshly-opened cask of ale down in the kitchen. Apparently, her seer abilities extended to divining the motives of people she spied on, as well.

I stole a horse and rode with her back to the kingdom, where she explained to me that, while I was most pleasing fair to her, she could never be my true love. However, she did arrange to gift me with a suitable reward - a place of my own with wealth, courtesy of her father the King, who sought to reward me for bringing home his chief Minister of State Intelligence.

It was then that I called up the genie and asked it if it had truly delivered me to my true love. It told me that it had - that my true love was adventuring.

The See-Through Invasion

Apparently, there were these two species living here on Earth, invisible and intangible to humans - more or less. The first lot were benign, dwelling in copper-hulled phallic flying ships propelled by grav suspension and rotary wings, and they'd been visitors here for many years, living among humans in peace.

The others were new arrivals, destroyers, hunters after the first, benign species. Their silver-hulled ships were of a similar design, but boasted more advanced propulsion and powerful electric arc weapons. There was a war, and the copper-hulled ships were losing in spectacular Space: 1999 level fashion.

As a refugee of the benign species, apparently I was on the road, watching the war going on all around. Cut off from my people, I stumbled across a narrow road leading off to the side, bounded on both sides by thick hedgerows. A car was barrelling down towards me, and I had no choice but to tun to the end of the road, where there was this shack and a bunch of guys, what looked like farmers, who were surgically sterilising livestock. I got the distinct impression that they may have considered me to be livestock too, and that the whole place might be a trap, something they had set up for many years - so they had lots of practice.

I phased through the back wall of the hut, and found myself amid more undergrowth. Then someone hauled me up onto the roof, attached a harness to me and hauled me up into the sky. I looked down, and saw three bodies lying still in the back of the farm. Apparently the back of the farm was ringed with a thicket of "rage trees," intangible alien flora from the invaders' home world, impassable to either of our species. The trap was the back yard, where three of the invaders would close in on their prey; with no way out but through the back wall of the shack and into the waiting arms of the rest of the invaders, their prey would have had little hope.

Apart from the stranger who was now hauling me up to safety, to an invisible ship hovering overhead, using stealth rotors to mask its sound. An invisible ship which was not only intangible like my species, but also imperceptible and cloaked to everyone.

I got the impression that, as soon as I was safe on board, this ship would have proceeded to use its weapons to reduce that farm below me to ashes.

"Were It Not That I Have Bad Dreams" - LJ blog post

This comes from this Livejournal blog entry here, dated 2012 08 10.

I dreamed I was part of a small group travelling through somewhere, overland, and that we'd been forced to stay at some seemingly deserted village that was little more than a collection of buildings on either side of a little-travelled side road.

You can already guess this might not be one of the nice dreams.

The homes were surprisingly well-maintained, for all that nobody seemed to be around during the hours of daylight actually maintaining anything. Round the corner was a small bush of some sort, growing against the wall, with seven small flowers blossoming and a bunch of withered ones.

Inside that house, the party of seven, including myself, settled in to wait out the night. The main corridor showed a picture of a beautiful woman with a mane of blonde hair and proud blue eyes.

I entered a room and found what looked like the inhabitants. They were all lying about in cots, dressed in dark mourning veils, twitching spasmodically. I thought that it would be a really good time for everyone to pack up and get out, but darkness had already fallen and the first of the party was already gone, and one of the flowers withered on the bush outside as fireflies danced around them.

The other buildings turned out to be empty. Only the building we were in turned out to be inhabited, and for some reason none of the party even knew about the room with the twitching people in mourning veils.

One of the victims decided to abandon his fellow travellers and head on out. He heard a shuffling sound behind him. There was no further sound. It cut to the bush outside, and five blossoms remaining.

Back in the room with the twitching people, I saw a scroll on a bureau across the room. I had to go through the room to get it. It had a long list of words written down it. I knew I had to translate those words, but I had no idea what language it was.
That night, one more person vanished. She let off a blood-curdling scream.

Four flowers remaining open; the first three were already withered.

The party was now fighting amongst themselves, arguing that it was every man for himself. One by one, they tried to get away - none of them made it.

Then there was just me, trying my luck with the door. I made it outside, and it was broad daylight, the sun shining yellow through some dark clouds. I turned, and the people in mourning veils were in the streets, standing still, blocking my exit. Turning again, I saw their leader standing behind me. I pulled up her veil.

It was the woman from the portrait, her hair still gorgeous, but her eyes filmed over and her face pallid, sallow, lifeless.
I felt the material of her clothes, the fine fabric of her mourning veil, the cold of her hard arm beneath the fabric of her sleeve, and I said "I'm sorry." I didn't know what she or her people had done to be condemned, but I was sorry that this was done to them.

She gave me the scroll; and this time, I could see what the words read.

PRIDE
ENVY
SELFISHNESS
PACT
ACRIMONY
ACCURSED
SHUNNED
DEATH
PAIN
ETERNAL
I had a pen, and I drew a line through the last word:-

PRIDE
ENVY
SELFISHNESS
PACT
ACRIMONY
ACCURSED
SHUNNED
DEATH
PAIN
ETERNAL
following it up with other words in the language which I could now understand:-

PRIDE
ENVY
SELFISHNESS
PACT
ACRIMONY
ACCURSED
SHUNNED
DEATH
PAIN
ETERNAL
forgiveness
love
sacrifice
parole
rest
peace
Then it was just me and the Lady. The others had gone. She touched my chest, whispered one word, "WITNESS," and she was gone.
I turned to leave, but then I noticed that all of the blossoms had withered.

I'd gone to bed at 00:00, hoping to get a good solid night's sleep. I woke up from this dream at 05:40.

Gaah.

Gaaaaah.

Orcish Dream

Sometimes, the dreams I have turn out to be inspirations for some of my writings. This one comes from 17 June 2012.


I had a dream this morning, based roughly on the Legend fantasy roleplaying game.

I was a sorcerer working with a party of adventurers I'd hired for some quest. En route home to Greentown, I and my party were coming home after a successful quest when we encountered a band of orcs. We'd surprised them; they'd surprised us. Swords drawn, growling, everyone getting ready to roll initiative.

I stepped forward and yelled "Parlay!" in Orcish. The orcs stepped back, weapons still drawn; the Orc leader took a step forwards. "Speak."

I pointed out how he had Orc glyphs drawn on his armour in what looked ike Orc blood. His own blood. I read "Honour" over his heart, "Seeking" below it and "Justice" on his right arm. I asked him if he and his party were on a blood path, and he replied that he was.

The Orc leader, Grugruk, belonged to the Bregnar family, which had been slaughtered and the two last kids abducted for unknown purposes by humans. The glyphs were "Seeking" and "Honour," meaning that he was charged with locating and retrieving these children; and "Justice," meaning righteous retribution for the family's murder.


"Honour" in blood over his heart, drawn in his blood, meant that he would either fulfill the oath or see his life's blood spilled; "Justice" on his weapon arm meant that he would not be held in fulfillment of his oath until the signs were obliterated by the blood of the enemies he'd sworn to kill. This was a matter of justice and honour, not petty vengeance; and this meant that if we'd engaged these Orcs in battle, we'd have lost.

I remembered something I'd overheard previously, before the quest we'd finished; a conversation between a ginger-haired man - blue eyes, small beard, buzz cut - and another man - black hair and beard, dark eyes - in a pub called the Stone Branch; just a snatch of conversation; "Rock Creek Park. The abandoned pavilion. They'll never find them." I thought that the orcs could start there, so I said I'd vouch for Grugruk the Orc leader and his party in town.

I and the party made our way to Rock Creek Park, where in the back of the abandoned pavilion we found two sleeping Orc kids, tied up, drugged, surrounded by chalk marks and candle stubs on the ground. I untied their bonds and woke them up with a spell; they looked terrified until I told them that Grugruk was here. I reunited Grugruk with his family, and told him we'd set a trap for the men. Grugruk said that the murderers would taste his blade; I had a different idea.

Neither of the men had the sorcerer's look about them; but the markings were sorcerous in nature. I had a feeling that the Orc kids had been the intended target of the men, and that they had been sponsored by someone in the city to procure these kids for muti.

So we needed to get the thugs, and their sponsor.

Back in town I made a point of asking around for someone who could supply me with the ingredients I needed for a powerful ritual; a ritual which requires Orc child's blood and eyeballs. Then I set up the trap in the pavilion and waited.

Presently, the two men and their sorcerer sponsor arrived, and walked into the trap we'd sprung. I Palsied the grey-haired sorcerer before he could let off a spell. The men fell to the Orcish blades; Grugruk himself made the fatal blows that despatched the mercenaries, fulfilling the Blood Oath and restoring his honour. Their blood obliterated his markings, and restored his soul.

Finally, their honour satisfied, I and my party escorted Grugruk to the city limits with their prizes; the corpses of their enemies, one mage alive but paralysed, and the last of Grugruk Bregnar's family, with promises of safety if we needed to talk to the Orcs again.

So. Sorcerer, adventurer, diplomat. And enough material for a complete Legend adventure.

Old Dream - 2012 09 14

This comes from September 14, 2012, posted originally on To Scape The Serpent's Tongue.

I dreamed of my brother Sean this morning.

We were in a room in our old house, and Sean looked more or less as he was when I last saw him. He was working on a complex computer program which was clearly beyond him. Some sort of puzzle, to work out the equations for a matrix transform that would connect some lines together to form a shape on the screen like a bevelled rectangle, or a picture of a chimneyless house roof seen from above.

I just changed a few parameters, and got one of the lines to go where it was meant to go. Sean looked up at me, and I didn't have to read his mind to know what he was going to say next.

He asked me then for my help, and his voice was not that of the adult, but of the boy I once knew, back when we were kids.

I realised that he was also kind of tipsy, and I told him "In your current state, Sean, I doubt you'd be able to solve this little puzzle without my aid."

And then part of me woke up, and the dream stopped but somehow I remained kind of asleep, in the dark behind my eyes, as if the curtains had gone down but I was still in the theatre.

And then I realised what I'd been saying, and where Sean was, and I continued, with infinite sadness and a great, crushing weight, "Indeed, in your current condition I doubt you'd be capable of doing very much at all."

Turns out both my parents had had dreams about Sean, too. His birthday is coming up very soon. We cannot go one day without missing him.

Music While Dreaming

On occasion, I put on my headphones and listen to music while I sleep. My unconscious mind incorporates the music into my dreams.

It can lead to some pretty epic dreams - like last night's.

I incorporated the snow into my dream, too. I was standing, looking over a town from a high vantage point. It was snowing, late, and the whole town seemed empty. The light from all the sodium striplights had turned everything orange, and everything felt cold and dead.

This was a flight dream - I took off and flew through the snow, looking at all the empty streets from above. When I landed, there was nothing but orange light and snow everywhere.

The Ugly Child - A Dream I Had This Morning

[X-posted to Livejournal and Dreamwidth]

I was a part of some sort of extended travelling family, run by a triumvirate of old matriarchs, adherents to this belief in something called "The Ugly Child." They had a mythology, relics, everything. The relics looked like scrimshaw sticks and little figurines, and they could have been very old ivory.

They and I moved into the house next door to the folks', the old place where we used to live before Dad was forced to sell the old place. I was in the kitchen, watching as the matriarchs laid out the various scrimshaw relics and placed them on a sort of shrine.

A while later, I bumped into a beautiful local girl, and took an immediate shine to her. For some reason, the matriarchs did not like that, so they arranged for the two of us to play a video game, and rigged it so she would win.

Next thing is, the matriarchs were all taunting me, saying things like "Go on. You wouldn't want it to be said that you got beaten at a video game by a girl, would you?" and things designed to drive a wedge between me and this unsuitable candidate for mating. It did not have the desired effect; I figured the game had been rigged, but not by the woman I fancied, and I told the matriarchs what to go and do with themselves. Next thing I knew, everyone was packing up their scrimshaw and making tracks.

In the next part of the dream, I was merely observing as the girl came into the house, which was now empty barring some small items on the kitchen table - a video game, a small figurine, a letter from me and the deeds to the house, signed over to her.

The letter told her that the house has been mine, but I had now signed it over to her instead, and that she should look after it well, and hopefully that it would give her good memories to cherish. I then told her that I and the matriarchs had parted company, and that I was off to find my own fortune. She would not see me here in this place again.

I also told her that the myths the matriarchs had been telling had all been about me. I was their Ugly Child, and they'd wasted half my life secretly trying to cockblock me from falling in love with, and becoming attached to, any woman who came my way because they, in their haughty arrogance, had secretly decided that no woman was ever going to be good enough for their chosen one - their Ugly Child.

To Sleep. Perchance To Dream.

Welcome to my brand new blog!

I've maintained a whole lot of blogs over the years, most of which are general purpose (To Scape The Serpent's Tongue, The Plainclothes Clown, Musings of the Welsh Warlock) but some of which are specialised (Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog, Hypnotic Erotic).

This will be one of the specialist blogs. Its purpose is to document and catalogue different dreams I have, and have had, over the course of my lifetime.

This blog will also look into various phenomena relating to sleep, dreams, nightmares, night terrors, sleep paralysis and so on, including articles covering myths, mythologies and legends concerning sleep and dreams.

So just sit back, knock back that camomile tea, take a last bite of that cheese and settle back. It's going to be weird tonight ...