dream diaries… 119

08/08/23

I wander a Spanish apartment. I wonder why a Spanish apartment. By Spanish, I mean, I suppose, Mediterranean, and by apartment, perhaps, villa. Inch square blue and white ceramic tiles checker the floors. The walls are chalk-plaster smooth. Cool-white ceilings, too. The furniture is simple; quiet; hand-turned pine and raffia. Their shadow backs and legs and feet lean into the afternoon. The windows are open, square, no glass. The sky beyond is blue and white; the horizon, blue. The air is citric. I wander a Spanish apartment.

Beyond a wooden door – a simple bathroom. Blue and white tiles again. A high, square basin, hewn of stone. In the basin discard paper wrappings of a bouquet, brown. A warm, brief breeze passes me and leaves the room. The paper rises in the basin; rises and then falls. Another simple door opens out onto a small, walled yard. It is flowered and the air tastes of oranges and lemons. The hum of bees, busy, thoughtless. A storm roils in the distance; a silent, darker blue.

23/08/23

Bob Mortimer in Waterstones. He sports a bobbed wig of luxuriant chestnut brown horse hair. The hair brushes the shoulders of his tweed jacket. He mumbles nervously to himself at a table, stamping a brogued hoof on the carpet. I guess he’s practicing something to say about his new book, copies of which are spread before him. I watch him from the Self-Help section. I pretend interest in a hardback there. A short queue has gathered near Fiction A-F; each figure holds a copy of Bob’s new book, Wot! No Was? They are waiting for the diminutive shop assistant to give them the signal to approach the skittish author. The stamped brogue and the mumblings have become insistent, and now Bob’s knees of corduroy start to tremble, tapping the tubular table legs. We are under starter’s orders.

05/09/23

The field whispers. A wash of waist-high wheat. The earth beneath my feet is firm and dry. I lean toward the distant blue cone of Kettle Hill. Before too long I am rising, the wheat is behind me, and the path, well-worn, encircles Kettle Hill. The air is sweeter, and a cool breeze strokes my throat. Round and round I go. Cornflower detail. As I rise, the countryside below and behind me is revealed to be an almost endless vista of silent fields, copses and dotted cottages. The distant clouds are elegant; giant galleons at peaceful war. At the summit, I sit. I pull my knees up to my chest and breathe. And, with every breath, I seem to draw, from the horizon, toward me, a tide, over the country. When the water reaches the foot of Kettle Hill, I rise and make busy; I build a church – quite effortlessly – and, as evening closes in, I can hear the rising water below me and Kettle Hill has become Kettle Island. The galleons sink gracefully beneath the sea and I take to my chamber. The bronze bells of Saint Kettle, my lullaby.