Outliers

I was outside the folks' house, out by the back road. There was what looked like a butterfly fluttering near the back wall, with large pale wings, looking slightly translucent. It looked so delicate. I swear, its abdomen glowed greenish-blue.

Later, it was late evening; the sun had set, but there was still a glow in the West, past the houses on the opposite side of the road. For all intents and purposes, it was more or less night.

The butterfly came back, still with its abdomen aglow - but now I realised that its wings were also glowing, lit up with this same blue-green radiance. As I watched, another glowing butterfly came along, joining the first in an intricate dance. A third one flew in, looking to fight off one of the butterflies - a rival, it looked like. I wandered onto the back road, wondering if there were any others around. To my astonishment, there was a small cloud of blue-green dancing lights all the way down at the far end of the road, and nothing between there and where I was standing. It looked as if all the noctilucent butterflies were clustered down at the far end. The three hanging around my house were just the outliers.

Hotel Invasion

I was on holiday with some people I didn't know. I think it was a prize I'd won or something.

The coach turned up this road going up a grassy hill in lovely countryside. The hotel at the top was hilariously ramshackle.

Something else, too: it was haunted. Strange things were happening: doors opening and closing of their own accord, windows and curtains opening and closing, cupboard doors, drawers ...

I had with me what looked like a carbon rod mounted in a silver hilt, like a dagger but with a thick pencil lead instead of a steel blade. Apparently, one touch of this "pencil," which was actually as thick as a cigar, was enough to dispel whatever magic or possession had control over the object; so I was putting big black marks on everything.

The weirdness, however, was caused by something external: and the minute it dawned on them that they were losing control, they sent in goons. First I heard was a crashing as the main door was brokrn open. I was upstairs, having reduced an Ikea table back into its component flatpack, and I'd left the three old people whose room it was and was making my way along the corridors and stairs. I bumped into one of the staff, a room service person, and greeted her cordially. I barely had time to register when I heard her give a cry, muffled. I peeked back around the corner and spotted her in the arms of some thug dressed in black. He had a rag over her mouth, and she was going down, her eyes closing.

Time for me to split; and I did that thing I seem to enjoy doing in all my dreams - find a thick wall, and phase into it. Then I heard more people converging on the thug's position. He'd obviously called it in. It was me they were after - me, and the secret of my thick carbon rod.

Freudians, the queue starts back over there.

Songs and Encounters

I was walking along towards King Street bus station down this road.

For some reason, I was singing "Serenade," the song by Ultravox from their album Quartet (1982) - and curiously enough, the bus station was exactly as it was back in 1982, long before the modern renovation.

I can't show you what King Street looked like, back in the day. I can show you what it looks like today, however ... (King Street is where the video starts):-

Now for some reason, I found myself by the bus stand for Chester buses, still singing this song, and I was interrupted by a large young man - an adult, not a child. He looked nervous and asked me if I was singing an Ultravox song. I confirmed this, and told him it was "Serenade." He then finished off my sentence with the correct information - and inexplicably turned and beat his forehead against the wall.

I asked him why he would do that. He would not say. I asked him if this was something he'd had done to him in school, and his eyes began to water. He said 'I'm sorry.' I caught him as he turned to face the wall again, and turned him back to face me.

I looked at him, and cupped the side of his head in my hand. 'Just because that was done to you in your school,' I said, 'it doesn't mean it's the way things are in the real world. School was a long time ago, and the bully left his childhood behind at the school gates. Time you did too.'

Then I rested my forehead gently against his. 'I am not sorry for you. I am not sorry for you being the smartest man in the room. Well, second smartest while I'm here.' I grinned. 'I am not sorry for you having that magnificent brain in your head, and for wanting to use it. I am not sorry for that at all.'

The man began to sob.

Are You Being Served? Episodes

The following is an episode from the legendary 1970s BBC sitcom Are You Being Served? which I'm posting here in honour of the late Frank Thornton (Captain Peacock) who died 2013 03 18, aged 92.

The theme tune is pretty iconic. Composed, of course, by the late, great Ronnie Hazelhurst, the BBC theme composing legend.

And here's another - YouTube seems to have pretty much all of them, as far as I can see:-

Rest easy, Captain Peacock.

Catering

For some reason, I was inside some sort of catering marquee, and I was in charge of catering at a wedding or some sort of polite outdoor garden do. I never saw what it was; I was just catering for it. I've zero experience of catering for public events, so why I was doing this, I cannot even guess.

I was in a hurry to make sure that there was enough food on the buffet to cater for a very large crowd, so I was running around making sure that the food was being prepared, and keeping what looked like a small army of cooks and staff in line. On occasion someone would come in, grab a covered platter of fresh hors d'oeuvres and disappear out of the catering marquee; and one old man stumbled in, dressed in a tuxedo, balding, looked like the actor Leslie Phillips, and he could not seem to understand that this was not the beer tent - that the beer tent was next door.

I never even got to see the happy couple.

Shortcut That Led Nowhere

Once again, I was Out Of Town somewhere, in some strange city, trying to get home. I was, inexplicably, wearing a black vest and jeans - nothing else. Not even shoes.

I knew I had to catch a Number 1 bus heading for the railway station, and that there was a stand across the way - but there was a park in the way, and between the park and the road there was a huge gap: I think there was a railway line underneath, and the road was some sort of flyover. The building behind the bus stop was some sort of large building, all columns and statues. A bit like St George's Hall, Liverpool, for some reason, though this was not Liverpool and Lime Street was nowhere near in this dream.

All I knew was that I had to catch a Number 1 to get to the train on time. And night was already starting to draw on. I even watched a Number 1 coming along and driving past the stand.

Then someone came up to me. She looked like the actress Anna Chancellor, for some reason. She asked me if I needed help. I explained what I needed, and she explained that she could help - but that I would need to take a little shortcut.

What is it with me and shortcuts in these damned dreams?

We stood beside a tiled wall - it looked like the entrance to an underground station - and Anna touched a tile. It moved with a slight click, and the part of the floor we were standing on sank into the ground. We reached the bottom, and Anna drew something on my vest. She said it was "for protection," and then she was gone and I followed the signs.

I found myself in a crowd, and people kept bumping into me - and for some reason, everybody suddenly began fighting with one another. A moment later, I had rounded a corner and I was alone in the corridor, but the fighting was just outside and it was starting to get nearer. I got the distinct impression that the fighting was spreading.

A man in a grey suit appeared. He resembled the grey-suited Government guy from the last season of Being Human and apparently he was very concerned. He had two or three grey-suited men behind him. He looked at my vest and touched the diagram on the cloth. He ordered me to remove the vest and gave me a shirt to put on instead.

Then he told me that the diagram was some sort of spell which had been miscast, and that it had turned into contagious aggro - and that while I, the creator of the spell and he and his men were immune, it was clear that nobody else was: so they were going to have to cordon off and quarantine the area before it spread beyond the Tube. He gave me a chance to get away: there was an emergency stairwell nearby which led to the surface. The stairs and railings were all painted deep red. I could hear the fighting getting closer, and decided to waste no more time dallying.

I climbed the stairs hastily, passing by some people along the way - they looked like transients - and instead of just climbing the stairs, I had to clamber up from landing to landing, grabbing hold of handholds - because apparently the stairs had been designed by M C Escher and if I'd tried using them I'd never have been able to reach the surface because they'd have gone on forever.

And so it was that I found myself, finally, outside on the surface. The sun was low on the horizon, and it all felt washed out like viewing film footage taken in the Seventies. I was in a park, rolling meadows, people hanging around, trees off in the distance - and not a sign of a road, or a Number One bus, anywhere.

What is it about these damned shortcuts?

The House On The Railway

My buildings often have some strange architecture.

I was with a woman, who was dressed in a dark blue dress, inside a house with one room, and a front door which opened up directly onto a railway track. As in, the track was right in front of the door, with trains roaring past not ten feet away. I opened the door - it opened inwards (how strange ...) - and this friend wandered outside and crossed the tracks.

The tracks remained empty, until she made it to the embankment on the other side; only then did the train speed past the entrance, blasting by at speed. I kind of felt a little trepidation about exiting the room at that point, but what the hell - it was that or stay for the fire. So I left.

I crossed the track, encountering nothing thankfully; but at the top of the grassy embankment were more train tracks. Lots of them, both in current use and abandoned and grassy and overgrown. And I was under the distinct impression that I had to hurry to make it across all of these tracks, because there was going to be another one any minute.

The Special Spectacles

A particularly intense one, today.

While visiting my folks, they called me into the living room, and told me that an item they'd bought mail order had finally arrived in the post. They wanted me to have it as a present.

I opened the parcel and discovered a spectacle case and a pair of special spectacles inside. These specs, which looked like the 3D specs you can buy in a cinema, allowed the wearer to see through the heaviest clothes - real Superman-style X-Ray vision. Taking care not to look at the folks through them, because some things one really does not want to see even in a dream, I called my two exes downstairs - apparently they'd both dropped by to visit me and come with me to visit the folks, and they'd both gone upstairs for some reason.

I expected to see the two of them walk into the room, and I really hoped I'd get to enjoy seeing whether or not these specs worked as per, well, spec. I only caught a glimpse of them as they came downstairs, and it looked as if they worked because I caught glimpses of flesh - and I knew they both had jeans and thick cardigans on.

The alarm, sadly, spoiled my fun before they could come into the room so I could see them fully.

Maybe tonight, I can continue the dream. Wish dreams came with save points.

Period Drama Dream from 2005

I originally posted this article in my Livejournal blog, here.

I had myself a weird, kinky dream early this morning, after a prolonged period of insomnia kept me awake from around 1 am till about 5.

In my dream, Jenny Agutter and I were working on a new British movie of some sort. It was going to be a period drama. All bustles and manners, and the men in frockcoats and top hats and stuff.

Trouble is, all the roads in the UK are modern - modern two lane tarmac, white lines in the middle. We needed an old single lane country dirt track so we could race horse and buggies and carriages along them.

So there we were, looking ... and we found one, leading across this open space, on the border of the Moors. There were trees all around, and in the distance all the trees petered out and there was nothing but moors.

Up ahead, though, there were some trees and undergrowth on either side of the road, blocking the view immediately past them. As I came up, I noticed that part of the ground ahead seemed to be pixellated, as if it had been blurred out in post.

I though "This is weird," and bent down to look at what was there. It turned out to be some discarded sheets of blue Bond paper, handwritten - they looked like pretty intimate letters.

And then, just past the brush, I heard noises, conversation, cameras and stuff.

I went up to the brush, and noticed discarded photos and what looked like full page photos torn from a glossy magazine. Pictures of women, dressed very provocatively in basques and stiletto heeled shoes.

Things started to get interesting as I went around the brush. Because that's where I came across the people. Half of them were sitting on folding chairs, shooting sticks, what have you, on a tarpaulin. They were all dressed in the manner of country gentlemen, in tweeds or green sleeveless jackets. One or two were wearing riding jodhpurs, and they were all wearing boots and flat caps. I only saw them from the back, but they looked as if they were filming what was ahead of them, either on video cameras or snapping away with digicams.

And the other half ...

Up ahead of them, there were what looked like six or seven couples, men and women, engaged in what I could only describe as a "wheelbarrow race."

The women were elegant, slender, wearing those provocative black silk Basques. Most were brunettes, and one or two wore stiletto heeled shoes ... although their position meant that those shoes were nowhere near the ground ...

The men pushing the "wheelbarrows" around were tall country gents. Dark hair, slicked back; grey waistcoats, shirts, cravats, handlebar moustaches. But between the shirts and their riding boots ... nothing but hairy legs and bums.

It looked as though the gents and the women did this sort of thing on a regular basis, for entertainment, way out in the open. I had the distinct impression that if the police were to arrive, they'd be all "Afternoon, Judge." "Oh, hello, John. How's the kids?" "Doing fine, Yer Honour." "Good, now do go and arrest someone, there's a nice chap." "Have a good day, Yer Honour."

And that's all there was to my dream, because at that point, I awoke again, it was day and I was laughing too hard to get back into bed again.

Department Store

Sometimes, I dream of this department store. In its way, it reminds me of the old John Lewis in Liverpool. Everything in this store is antique, right down to the lifts - you'd call them elevators in the US. Old-fashioned things with big levers for up and down and rattling metal lattice cage doors. The tills are old mechanical types with big, clunky keys, and the butcher shop is very old-fashioned, with a big, crank-handled meat grinder dominating one end of the room.

This store is a place I have visited many times, and in my waking life I've handled old equipment like this before. Even a meat grinder with a crank handle, and an old-fashioned butter churn. Don't ask where.

Tonight, I was trying to get through the store in order to get to the other side, and the bus stand just outside the store heading for home. For some reason, the only way to get through the store was to go through the jewellery department on the top floor. Why the top floor was the only floor to connect to the bus stand outside was anybody's guess, but top floor it was. The curious thing was, I was in the company of a woman at that time - she looked like the actress Anna Chancellor - and she was stuck on this floor, trying to get to the top floor. I decided to bring her to the top floor with me.

Because I could not get into the lift - I was being blocked by some of the store staff - I did my walking-through-walls thing and grabbed hold of something jutting out of the bottom of one of the lift cars going up, while holding on to my terrified female friend with the other. Fortunately, the lift was going straight up to the top floor, so once it reached that floor I passed through the floor of the lift car, with my passenger in tow, and made sure she was safe before passing through the walls.

The top floor was well-lit, with white walls and a minimalist look. The lifts occupied a row in the middle of the floor, and I had no idea which way to go to get out. I had a feeling that I'd have got to the bus more quickly if I'd just gone around the store in the first place.

And then the alarm went off, and that was it.