dream diaries…92

dream diaries, Uncategorized

05/07/20

Edinburgh, but not.

I’ve been once for a weekend and it was aces: it remains now a city of love & luck. But this wasn’t really that city and I’ve never been there with this person.

J.C & I are stood at the bottom of a steep granite staircase in Edinburgh. I recognise the steps – they are real and somewhere near the top of this city. We are talking. Over her shoulder I see Scottish Willy [who is Scottish, but hailed from Paisley, not Edinburgh. Still, it is irritating to see him in a dream. Everyone used to think we were brothers! He was, to me, the anti-Nick Reeves, of course, and I suspect, he thought the same of me. He was younger and the sort of guy who’d wrestle you to the ground instead of saying hello]

JC and I climb the steps. But he keeps appearing in every doorway! We duck into shops – he’s serving or else is in the queue!

06/07/20

NB comes to visit. He has never been further north than Liverpool and if you ever ask him of that trip he shudders. Liverpool though, geographically, is south of here and west, too. He expects to see whippets and ferrets and flat caps and smokestacks and grime and poverty and miners… but, of course, the north east is not that as this is only a stereotype…just as some northerners think of Londoners as rude and edgy and fast and uncaring and posh.

So, NB comes north and stays. I am still married and my wife is moody as she didn’t realise that he was coming (which, in real life, would be fair enough – but in the dreamlife she is quite over the top – an exaggeration of herself).

NB and I wear brogues as we would sometimes do in real life. I wonder what brogues represent? – perhaps some kind of yearning for a past that we never knew, perhaps a reaction to trainers? – something. We call a cab and travel to a city for a night out. The city is far away and the journey is long and expensive. I begin to question the sense in going to the city when a perfectly good night could be had on the coast.

I sit in the passenger seat and watch the countryside fold up.

The driver drives the wrong way up a one way street – there are plenty of signs to warn him of this, but he just chats away nonsensically as cab drivers do in cliché comedies and films…and real life. At one point the street is filled with dog walkers. He swerves to avoid sausage dogs. He swerves to avoid little alsatians. Dog owners shout at the car as we pass! Dear god, why doesn’t he slow down!

07/07/20

CA wakes up. Hello, she says. And I have to look around myself before I realise that I am stood beside her bed. Hi, I say. Did I sleep long? she asks. Well, you seem to have survived the plague, I say. Plague? she says.

I pull up a chair. There is a ball of yarn on the carpet and I pick it up and pretend that I know how to knit… “well, it’s been a strange year…”

I am not knitting, just tying knots. She watches intently and so, a little embarrassed, I put down the needles and perform a trick with the yarn that only a northern farmer with a penknife would know.

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36 thoughts on “dream diaries…92”

  2. Hahaa I am laughing aloud at so many scenes as you describe them…. and the anti-Nick Reeves, what a punk! 🙂 Also, it is additionally amusing to read these fantastic accounts as we are sharing a *virtual toast* out in the ether somewhere right this minute! As if I am listening to you recount your dream tales in a local pub… (which I admit perhaps I am fantasizing about because it is very unlikely I will be able to return to a bar here in the USA for a very, very long time, but I digress…) 😉 Well done, real Nick Reeves! xo

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    Reply

    1. What a lovely dream.
      In a way, over the plague, I have come to see that Reeves Arms is in fact the best pub (as, no doubt, the A. M. Arms is too) – no queues at the bar, great drinks, great jukebox, great crowd. No cabs home and I always get a lock-in if I want one!

      The drinks are on me.
      Cheers 🙂
      xo

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      1. You are right on, Reeves. Best company in town, if you ask me, which I think you may have, or may not have, but I can’t be expected to remember so many things when you keep buying the rounds! 🙂 You are terribly kind and a most lovely pub companion (as my Irish Uncle William would say, we are now officially “glassmates” …) I’ll meet you anytime, my friend. Cheers to the rascals, the dreamers, the poets, etc.. x

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      3. Is it my turn again? Please let’s do *Somebody to Love* by Queen… I’ve just finished watching the film Bohemian Rhapsody (don’t tell the boss!) and I cannot get them out of my head. Now I am a little embarrassed, I don’t think I know what this means a ‘lock-in’… does this mean I can carve my name in the bar stool? on the bar?
        (….”ethereality, etc” … so cavalier about your slick, clever wordsmithery!)

        Liked by 1 person

      4. We all like a bit of Queen! Get it on!
        *shouts at staff – turn it UP!*

        Lol at lock-in! Well, normally that kinda behaviour is frowned upon…but, eff it! I’ll join ya!

        Lock-in…is that just an english thing? Like when the bar is supposed to be closed and they close the doors, lower the blinds and the select get to stay…
        what would you call it?

        xx

        Ps. When you say the boss, do you mean B. Springsteen?? Or, quite literally your boss?
        Neither are invited anyway. So, knives out and start carving furniture 🙂

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      5. We are absolutely singing this song now, right? Loud and passionate! Also a good reason to turn it UP, incidentally 🙂
        Haha, oh do join me, otherwise I will feel I’m the American fool who doesn’t understand lock in and gets hauled off for defacing property. What a scene! Maybe you can dream us up a way out of it…. but why would you want to, that’s silly, nevermind – have you a knife? … I love lock in! If I am ever allowed out, it’s straight to England for me! 🙂 xx

        P.S. I hadn’t thought of The Boss, but maybe we should queue him up since we’ve now thought of it? ..

        Liked by 1 person

      7. Here you are, then – my keys… to what I’ve no idea… but they should do the thing fine. Carve away. We’re locked in, then I’ll be locked out… or locked up? … how’s that 😂 In any case I’ll get us another.
        P.S. Bad news, Nick Reeves, they tell me it’s already as loud as it goes which means WE MUST BE LOUDER?!

        Liked by 1 person

      8. 🙂 Very good!
        “Thanks!”

        *…with a look of deep concentration, begins very carefully scratching initials into the veneer, only vaguely aware that this is his own table.
        Springsteen blares over the speakers…*
        “Born down in a dead man’s town
        The first kick I took was when I hit the ground…”
        – what an ace evening this is turning out to be!

        Liked by 1 person

      11. WE TOTALLY DID! The pleasure was all mine, Nick Reeves, my very first lock-in was a grand occasion and I must thank you for your generous hospitality! Hope we get to tramp around again sometime soon. Meanwhile, I must wash the seaweed out of my hair and fish the sand from my bag… *takes one last swig of gin, lights cigarette, dons sunglasses, exits stage left* xo

        Liked by 1 person

      10. It’s all a bit of blur! Pretty sure we got a lock in at the Conway-Reeves Arms. Er, something something something. I seem to remember the beach? Is that right? Ah, that would explain…er nothing!

        Liked by 1 person

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