dream diaries…38

September 19th 2018.

Nick B has had his hair cut; nothing strange there. However, he’s had a rather striking bleach job, too! He reminds me of an early 1970s Michael Caine – though, I can’t recall seeing him with such a hair style. “It’s not such a brilliant job,” says Nick B. “I have very difficult hair.”

September 20th 2018.

A feasible, autumnal & dusky Berlin. A slight & pretty woman in second-hand clothes, riding a regular Berliner bike (oversized, heavy, also, probably, second-hand: ah! Perfect!) along a wide & dimly lit avenue (I should say ‘strasse’). Her hair flags in the breeze as she strobes between the other bikes & cars. As she passes something falls from the rack at the back of her cycle: an article of clothing. I shout to her. She glances round for a moment, but doesn’t see or hear, and, suddenly, she is far away; ghosted into the homebound traffic.

I cross the street. It is a heavy coat of blue wool, flecked with brown. It is quite like a coat that I (or someone) would have worn in the 1980s; someone who listens to, lives & loves ‘alternative’ culture. I pick it up & cross to the far pavement.

Stood at the open door of a large house, talking to a woman inside. She is sat at a kitchen table with several children, eating a meal. The children are dressed for school. I explain that I have found a coat. Could I borrow a coathanger so that I can hang it from one of the trees at the front of their garden? Perhaps, I say, the cyclist will come back this way & see it.

The coat hangs in the tree. It floats on the breeze. I sit down on the wall & wait.

September 21st 2018.

“It’s OK to swim here at night. The sharks won’t bother you.”

“I don’t think I’ll take that chance!”