#oneaday Day 158: Obligations from 30+ years ago

I have a recurring dream. I am told it is quite a common one — or variations on it are, anyway — but I’m going to talk about it regardless, because I’ve been sitting staring at a blank page for half an hour and haven’t been able to think of anything else to write today. So indulge me, if you will.

In my recurring dream, I am back at my secondary school. I am hanging out with my friends from that time, which is 30+ years ago. And I am not attending one of the music group rehearsals that I’m supposed to be participating in after school. I am, apparently, deliberately not attending it, and I am standing in a place with my friends that is within line of sight of the music block. My music teacher Mr. Murrall is standing outside the music block with his arms folded, just staring at me with a disapproving expression on his face. I feel bad. I feel guilty. And yet I do not — cannot — walk over there, apologise for whatever reason I have not showed up to rehearsals, and get back involved.

This dream is sometimes complemented or accompanied by a scenario in which I am preparing to go on stage, either to perform a piece of music or act, and I absolutely have not practiced the thing I am supposed to be performing. If I’m supposed to be acting, I don’t even know my lines a little bit. If I’m supposed to be performing, I don’t really know the piece of music and, usually, my instrument is not in any condition to be played. For some reason, the musical variation of this dream always involves the clarinet, which was always my “second instrument”, and the problem is usually that the only reeds I have for it are in an absolutely awful state that would make playing near-impossible.

These sorts of dreams are clearly anxiety-related. I suspect they may also stem from a sense of mild guilt that I don’t do as much music in my free time as I used to — though I have been a bit better since we got the new piano, and my Mum has been kind enough to purchase me a frankly absurdly expensive new stool as an early Christmas present, so that will make me even more likely to make time to play. I haven’t touched the clarinet or saxophone for years, however; since both are instruments best played in a group situation and I have no suitable group to be part of, I haven’t used either of them for a long time.

Times and lives change, of course, but music has always been an important part of my life, even when it comes to my other interests. One of my favourite things about video games, for example, is listening to their music and coming to understand all manner of different styles — and, if I’m lucky, tracking down some piano arrangements to be able to pay homage to my favourite tracks in my own way.

Once that nice piano stool arrives (which may be as soon as tomorrow), I wonder if I will be free of those dreams? I doubt it, I suspect, as dreams are rarely so literal; I suspect these particular scenarios come from a more general sense of anxiety than something specific. But at least I can say to myself that I’m making an effort to make the time for something that has always been — and always will be — important to me.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

#oneaday Day 29: Dream Education

I had one of those dreams that it’s difficult to wake up from this morning. It was a variation on a dream I quite commonly have, which involves being back in some form of education, knowing that I’m not doing something I should be doing, and not being able to make myself sort that situation out.

The most common form this dream takes sees me back at secondary school, knowing that the school’s music groups (typically the orchestra and concert band) are rehearsing and that I should be there, but I am not going. My old music teacher Mr. Murrall is standing outside the music block looking disapprovingly at me standing some distance away, often with my friends from the time, but I can’t bring myself to admit that I’ve made a mistake, and that I should go along and resolve the situation.

Last night was a little bit different, as it revolved around university. I had just moved into a new flat — not any of the flats I actually lived in during my time at university, but something my mind dreamed up — and was settling in, but I realised I had no idea when term started or if I should have been going to any lectures. Any time I thought “I should look up when term starts”, I was distracted from doing so, and I became more and more convinced over time that I was missing significant parts of my course. But, again, I couldn’t correct the situation.

Education-related dreams are, unsurprisingly, usually interpreted as being something to do with learning, and variations on the theme such as those which I describe above are usually tied to various forms of anxiety — often imposter syndrome.

If I’m being honest, I can tell where some of those thoughts are probably coming from. The recurring dream about not showing up to orchestra rehearsals is likely due to how I’m aware I don’t make nearly enough time to practice music these days, and should probably do something about that. I think I want a new piano, though; our current one is fine apart from a few seriously dodgy notes in the octave below middle C, and unfortunately those notes appear to be some of the most frequently occurring in almost everything I want to play! New pianos are expensive, though, so you can probably see where some of that anxiety comes from.

As for the imposter syndrome side of things, I’ve definitely felt that before. I’m not sure I’m feeling it a lot right now, because in my current position I feel like I’m valued and that I contribute something meaningful — although thinking about it, there are still aspects of the daily work life that do cause me anxiety, such as having to deal with the social media side of things. But I’ve definitely felt it in the past; feelings that I “don’t deserve” to be where I am, or that I’m worried someone will “find out” something about me that I don’t want to be found out — exactly what, I’m never sure, because I don’t have anything particularly shameful to hide.

I suspect, as someone with a natural undercurrent of anxiety flowing through me at most times, I will never be completely free of these dreams. I actually don’t mind them all that much, as they sometimes have an interesting, nostalgic element to them. I do wish my dream self could break free of whatever is holding him down and resolve the problems at the core of those situations, though… that way I could just enjoy being back at school or university!

#oneaday Day 5: Trapped Inside

Do you ever feel trapped inside your own head? I mean obviously we’re all trapped inside our own heads, our eyes our only windows out of our self-imposed prisons, but what I mean is, do you ever find yourself finding it, say, difficult to wake up because of what your imagination is conjuring up?

I’ve been feeling this for a while. I’m not entirely sure what causes it, whether it’s a side-effect of the medication I’m taking, whether it’s a symptom of my mental health conditions or if I’m just naturally predisposed towards this sort of thing. Regardless of the cause, though, there are mornings where I genuinely do feel absolutely “trapped” inside the scenarios my imagination has conjured up for me; part of my consciousness is saying “wake up, get up, you need to go to work”, but my brain is saying “no, you need to stay here and resolve this completely fictional, made-up scenario before you do anything else”.

Another way of putting it might be that I feel sort of “addicted” to dreaming. I have quite vivid dreams — always have done — and those dreams tend to be at their most vivid in the morning, particularly if I’ve already woken up once and fallen asleep again. In those circumstances, I suspect they’re probably an interpretation of my brain being aware that I need to get up soon, if not now, and expressing that source of anxiety through somewhat surreal means. But it ends up being counterproductive, because I inevitably find the dreams so interesting that I don’t want to leave them behind and wake up.

I’ve genuinely had mornings where I’ve felt like I didn’t want to get up because I thought I needed to “finish” whatever was going on in the dream first. Except because the dreams themselves were so abstract, there was no real “win state”, for want of a better word; no means of “completing” or “resolving” them. And so I just end up being drawn back in, often repeating the same situation over and over again rather than making any real “progress”.

The human mind is fascinating. I wonder if one day we will be able to better understand and explore the things that go on in there. I’d certainly be fascinated to explore the worlds within in a more “lucid” manner. But for now, I guess I’ll just have to be satisfied with sleeping in slightly longer than I should in the morning, in the vain hope that I might actually “finish” a dream.

Last night, I dreamed I was ejaculating like a hosepipe in my childhood bedroom.

I love dreams. I’ve found the concept of them fascinating since an early age, to such a degree that when I was a child I used to deliberately try and think about something really hard before falling asleep in the hope that I would subsequently dream about it. It rarely worked quite so simply, although I have had enough dreams about, say, the video games I was playing immediately before bed to make me think that there probably is something to influencing your own subconscious while you’re still conscious.

My favourite dreams are the ones for which there is no rational explanation, which make no logical sense and which sound ridiculous when you talk about them. Take the example of the dream from the title above as just one of many.

Like most memories of dreams, my recollection of the circumstances leading up to the incident in question are hazy at best. But I do vividly remember the conclusion, which was, as has already been noted, the fact that I was ejaculating like a firehose all over my childhood bedroom.

I also vividly remember the fact that I knew I was about to ejaculate, and that I was thinking two things: firstly, the slightest bit of pressure on my todger would set me off, and secondly, that if I aimed carefully I’d probably be able to clean things up without anyone ever knowing that I’d done anything quite so obscene. The reality of the situation became abundantly clear shortly after an inadvertent mild impact caused the incident to commence in earnest, and before long, the question of cleaning things up was… well, it wasn’t a question any more.

I’d started by firing at the window. This seemed logical and sensible, as I thought it would be easy to clean up the glass. It apparently did not occur to me to open the window and simply aim out through it — hoping that there were no unfortunate passers-by in the street below, of course — but it made sense in the heat of the moment. Before long, though, it was clear that a single rather narrow sash window was to prove an inadequate receptacle for my product, and I somewhat lost control of the situation.

Teddy bears, books, old cloths that had been draped over things, the wardrobe door — before long, everything was covered, and there was no sign that the tide would be stemmed any time soon. I began to panic — up until this point, for some reason the situation had not appeared to be all that unusual — and, oddly, found myself less concerned about my apparent inability to switch off the flow from my apparently bottomless ballsack but rather more worried about how I was going to explain the situation once it had concluded.

I never got an answer to that, as I woke up shortly afterwards — dry as a bone (no pun intended), if you must know — thoroughly confused by what I had just witnessed and/or experienced.

Since “dream science” is hardly an exact art, there almost certainly isn’t a “fixed” definition for this, but most people who claim to know what they are talking about claim that dreaming of ejaculation in some form or another, unsurprisingly, represents a desire for “release” of some description — not necessarily sexual, but perhaps emotional. Specifically, one article I read noted that dreaming of “excess ejaculation” is a sign that you are “in immediate need of emotional and sexual release” and that you are feeling a “loss of control and power over your life”.

But then elsewhere on the page it notes that dreaming of “male ejaculation” is a “bringer of good luck and success”. Which suggests to me, as I already suspected, that any and all interpretations are largely bollocks (again, no pun intended) and that dreams like this are just your subconscious having a bit of fun with things that would never happen in reality.

Just to be safe, though, I probably better go have a quick wank.

2023: The Infinity Dreams Award

So I don’t do a whole lot of “networking” on this blog, since I primarily use it as a personal outlet/journal sort of affair. I should probably do a bit more, though, particularly as I’m quite active on other forms of social media such as Twitter, where I’ve found a great number of people who are interested in the same sorts of things as me — which, believe me, is really important.

These blog “award” things are posting prompts that I’ve seen before, but never really participated in. They can be fun, though, so when Nick of The Skycorps Blog mentioned The Infinity Dreams Award on Twitter yesterday and was looking for people to pass it on to, I volunteered. So thanks, Nick! Me stepping up may not be quite the same thing as someone nominating me without prompting, but I’m grateful for you following through (and the links!) nonetheless.

So what is The Infinity Dreams Award? Well, unlike other blog awards that do the rounds, this isn’t a list of questions to answer followed by the opportunity to send on some of your own questions. Instead, it’s much simpler: all you have to do is list seven dreams — as in ambitions, not night-time dreams — that you have, and be as personal as you want about it. Well, you all know I have no problem in laying myself out there on this here blog, so let’s get intimate.

In no particular order, then, here are my seven dreams.

Dream 1: Finish and publish one of my stories

Shamelessly stealing this from Nick here, but since his first couple of dreams resonated strongly with me, too, I thought I’d give my own thoughts on a similar situation.

I absolutely love writing, particularly creative writing, and so it would be fantastic to actually finish a complete novel-length story and publish it somehow. As long-standing readers will know, I have actually finished several stories in blog format on this here site, but those are largely improvisational and unplanned in nature, and as such would require some heavy editing in order to be publishable.

I do, however, have a number of different stories floating around in my head, some of which I’ve started writing and others of which are just an interesting idea. The main barrier to me actually knuckling down and finishing one is the fact that I can do Beginnings, and I can do Endings, but it’s the middle bit that leads from one to the other that I find myself struggling with a bit. My absolute favourite story that I’ve been writing for years now has a very clear beginning and a very clear end, but I have absolutely no idea how to join them up together.

Dream 2: Find a good job

Nick’s second dream also very much applies to me, as regular readers will know. I’m currently in a situation where I know that “conventional” employment is not a particularly good fit for me, but where freelance work isn’t enormously forthcoming for one reason or another. As I noted the other day, there’s the possibility of going into business by myself as a Slimming World consultant, and that’s something that very much appeals — though the start-up costs for that are significant, and that, frankly, frightens me a bit. As the days go by, though, I’m starting to think more and more that I need to face that fear and just jump in; the job itself, I feel, is something I could do well at and be happy with, so I’m inclined to pursue it and see what happens.

This is, of course, assuming that they interview me and want me in the first place, which remains to be seen, so all of the above may be a moot point.

Dream 3: Publish a successful magazine

Matt at Digitally Downloaded and I have been working hard on our first edition of our magazine, which we’re aiming to try and get out of the door at the end of this month. I’m really pleased with what we’ve developed so far, and I’m very, very excited about the future.

I believe there’s absolutely a market for what we’re doing, because it’s very distinct from what websites offer. I much prefer the sort of thing we’re doing — in-depth readings and criticism rather than questionable journalism — and I feel the whole “make the sort of thing you want to see” philosophy is a good basis for creating something. Because chances are you aren’t the only one to feel the way you do, as lonely as opinions outside the “norm” can feel sometimes.

Dream 4: Build up my music teaching client base

I already have two piano pupils, with a possible third and fourth coming later in the year. That earns me a few quid each week, but by no means enough to actually survive on. I would love to have more pupils, though in order to do that I know I need to make more of an effort with promotion — it’s figuring out where to start with all that. This is one area where the Slimming World job could potentially help me out — a big part of that job is promotion, so it would give me some great ideas on how to get noticed.

Dream 5: Become fluent in Japanese

This is a long-term one, but I’m making the effort. Since my evening classes are no longer running, I have to self-study, which at times can be challenging, but I’ve found the online courses at YesJapan.com work well with the way my brain works and offer a variety of activities to learn in different ways, so I’m going to continue with those as long as possible. The natural realisation of this dream is the point where I can import a game from Japan and be able to understand everything that is going on in it at the same speed I can do with an English game. In the short-term, I’ll just be happy with getting my head around both hiragana and katakana, the former of which I’m getting reasonably confident with, the latter of which is still a mystery.

Dream 6: Reach my target weight and continue losing

I’m still a few stone off the “target” I set for myself when I joined Slimming World, but I’ve already lost over four stone since February and am continuing to lose, on average, at least a pound every week. I already feel way better about myself than I have done in years, and I can’t even imagine how much more self-confidence I will have with a few more stone off my body.

Dream 7: Conquer my depression and anxiety

I don’t know if this one will ever come to fruition, but in many ways it’s the one I most hope will come true. Depression and anxiety have absolutely crippled and almost destroyed my life up until this point, and I despise them for it. I am better than I was, but my horrible experiences with my last job set me back a good year or two in the “recovery” process — a fact for which I will never forgive those responsible. One day, I would like to be free; for the moment, however, I’ll be happy with the odd day of contentment.

I’m supposed to nominate some people now, who will then run with this and continue in their own way — or perhaps ignore it completely. Either way, then, I nominate the following people and blogs:

Pete Skerritt of Consoleation
awesomecurry of カレーまみれ勇者の冒険 Curry Chronicles
Chris Schilling of rudderless
Jud House of Jud’s Game Reviews and Jud’s Jottings

Not sure quite how many people I’m supposed to nominate, but four is probably fine for now. Drop me a comment or pingback if you decide to participate in this; I’ll be very interested to read what you have to say.

1767: More Weird Dreams

Had another in my increasingly lengthy line of peculiar dreams last night — the kind that somehow manages to stick in your memory after you wake up. There was nothing lavatorial involved this time around, however.

There was, however, nudity.

I dreamed I was at work. Boring, sure, but I had just returned to work after a few days away, so it’s understandable it was on my mind. My dream work wasn’t quite the same as my actual work, however; for some reason, I was doing my day job as normal, only I was sat at a computer at a work surface on the outside of the “Maths area” from my secondary school — the large, open-plan area that was often turned into one or two improvised extra classrooms depending on the size of that particular year’s cohort.

I was also naked.

For some reason, my nudity didn’t seem to bother any of my colleagues, who were coming and going around me much as they do in my actual office. None of them were naked, but it was almost as if they didn’t see the fact that I was. I, on the other hand, was very much conscious of the fact that I didn’t have any clothes on, and it felt like it wasn’t an entirely deliberate decision to be there in the nip in the first place. It’s not that someone had forcibly taken my clothes off or anything; my clothes had just simply ceased to be at some point during the working day, and I had seemingly figured that the best means of dealing with this was just to sit down and get on with my work as if nothing out of the ordinary was going on, despite the fact that almost everything save for the work I was doing and the people around me was out of the ordinary.

Eventually, my colleague Tony came up to me, and I stiffened — not like that, you filthy pervert — in preparation for, if you’ll pardon the obvious pun, a dressing-down due to my lack of clothing. It didn’t happen, however; Tony had come over to me to offer a different kind of feedback, and it had nothing to do with my bare bum or winky.

It turned out all the work I had been doing all morning was in the wrong language. I don’t know how this would have happened, given that all the work I do is in English anyway (with the odd document in Welsh when appropriate — though thankfully for my total ignorance of the Welsh language I don’t have to actually write these) but it had somehow happened today, the day when I was working naked. I’m not even sure which language was the “wrong” language — thinking back on it now at the end of the day, I have German in my mind for some reason, but I often have German on the mind because it’s an inherently entertaining language to me — but Tony was absolutely adamant that all the work I had done was in the wrong language, and needed to be sorted out.

I then woke up before I could sort it out, and it was time to go to work. I made doubly sure I was wearing trousers before I left the house.

1723: Sword of the Mind

I’m really not looking forward to the day that my imagination doesn’t work any more — if indeed such a day will ever come.

That day will be a dark one, in which I can no longer carry an umbrella and imagine it’s the legendary sword Curtana, hacking and slashing my way through hordes of enemies (or, indeed, zombified shoppers who just want to get out of the rain but who are too cold and wet to actually exert themselves).

That day will be a dark one, in which I can no longer get on a piece of gym equipment accompanied by the Shadow of the Colossus music and imagine that, rather than simply engaging in the eminently pointless waste of time that is lifting a heavy thing then putting it down again lots of times, I am actually battling some monstrous foe that can only be defeated by lifting bits of it up, then putting them carefully down again.

That day will be a dark one, in which I can no longer imagine what it would be like if my car could actually take off and fly, rising high above the surprised, bewildered and frightened heads of the other occupants of the traffic jam I’m in before shooting off into the distance via a far more direct route than any road ever offered.

I do wonder to myself whether or not my imagination will ever stop working. I doubt it will; after all, many creative types continue being creative well into the twilight of their life, though the exact form of what the imagination conjures up doubtless varies and changes as the years pass by.

I’m conscious of the changes to my own imagination, though in some cases these are due in part to other mental changes rather than the imagination itself. Take that period between going to bed and going to sleep, for example; when I was young, I could happily conjure whole worlds up for myself, exploring them and having all sorts of strange and wonderful adventures, blurring the lines between conscious thought and dreaming until eventually I’d awaken the next morning to the rather unwelcome sound of the alarm clock.

These days, however, I haven’t lost the ability to conjure up mental pictures, but the darkness that resides inside my head occasionally uses this time to show itself: instead of strange and fantastic worlds, my mind shows me far more mundane things, but often with the worst possible outcome; sometimes it’s nothing but words as I think about a conversation I’ve had — or need to have but am afraid to — while others it’s a mental picture I simply can’t look away from, no matter where I turn.

This isn’t a decline of the imagination at all, since my brain still conjures up very vivid pictures — and, I hasten to add, it’s not every night that I’m wracked with dark and terrible images that if not terrify me to my very core at least make me a bit anxious — but it is a change. I feel like I have less conscious control over my imagination: I can’t simply send myself to another world any more, at least not all the time; there are occasions where I have to let my mind take the lead and follow along after it. (I realise that makes no sense, but little to do with the strange inner workings of the human mind and consciousness does.)

There are other times when I can happily immerse myself in a world of my — or indeed someone else’s — creation, however. Reading a good book still makes glorious technicolour mental images appear before my mind’s eye. Writing something creative has an even more powerful impact on my imagination, stirring it into action. Closing my eyes and listening to pieces of music can either stir up imaginative scenes or conjure memories that I haven’t thought about for a long time.

The inside of my head isn’t perfect, and there is much about it I would probably change given the opportunity. But at the same time, it’s become a strangely comfortable place to be, dark corners and all; it’s a defining part of who I am, which is why I doubt that the door into that wonderful, terrifying place will ever truly be slammed shut.

1714: Arachnid Dentistry

I had an enjoyably bizarre dream last night, or possibly early this morning — I’m not quite sure. It doesn’t really matter when it occurred; what does matter, however, is that it was most peculiar, and has somehow stayed in my memory for most of the day rather than, as dreams are often wont to do, dissipating in a puff of imagination shortly after getting up.

I will preface this by saying there was no poo involved in this dream. I’m sure you’re devastated.

Anyway. The main premise of the dream was that Andie and I were living somewhere that was not the house we now own between us. Instead, we were the proud owners of what appeared to be a rather house-like flat that was actually inside another building. In other words, the flat itself was multi-level, like a house, but its “front door” actually opened into a corridor of the building which contained it rather than onto the street. I recall commenting on this to dream-Andie, noting that she had been adamant about getting a house rather than a flat (she had; it was one of our few “musts” when looking for a new place) and that we’d somehow ended up with a flat instead.

For whatever reason, I elected to step outside what was seemingly our newly acquired flat to go and explore the rest of the building. I followed the corridor from our front door through another set of doors, and discovered that just a little way down from where we now lived was a dental surgery. This struck me as a little odd at the time, but I just shrugged it off. We lived next door to a dentist, and that was just how it was.

I’m not sure how long I walked for, but the building itself appeared to be rather large, with different areas fitted out in noticeably different manners. Lower down — apparently our flat was quite high up in it — the building appeared like a classy hotel, with ostentatious decor and lush carpets; higher up, meanwhile, the drab walls, endless fire doors and strangely arranged staircases called to mind some form of student accommodation I’d spent time in in the past. It wasn’t the halls of residence I lived in; I have a feeling it was either some friends’ halls, or possibly a sixth form college where I stayed for a residential music course while I was a teen. Either way, it was somewhat out of place when compared to the richly decorated lower levels.

At some point, I got lost. I found myself somewhere on the lower floors in what appeared to be the headquarters of an affluent, successful company — all leather sofas, marble-effect (or possibly just marble) tabletops and shiny floors. Whichever way I turned, I couldn’t seem to find the way back where I came from, and eventually ended up on the street. Apparently this building was in Toronto, somewhere near where my friends Mark and Lynette used to live, as I recognised the street corner on which I found myself.

I went back into the building and found that this time I was able to successfully navigate my way back into the hotel lobby-like area, up the stairs into the dorm-like area, and eventually past the dentist back to our flat.

When I came back in, I’m not sure if the arrangement was different or if I just hadn’t noticed it before, but bizarrely, there was a shower room right by the living room. Even more strangely, there was a hole in its wall where bricks had seemingly just been removed, leaving an open “window” between the shower and the living room.

For some reason, I opened the door of the shower room and lay down on the floor. There was a computer keyboard in front of me. I started typing, and as I did so, hundreds of small spiders started emerging from the shower’s plughole, then crawling into the corner of the room and disappearing. As I continued to type, the spiders kept coming, but they always seemed to be going the same way. I wasn’t sure what I was doing, and I didn’t really want to know. All I knew was that I needed to keep typing and typing and typing and typing… you know, much like I’m doing right now.

Then I woke up in a state of some confusion that was swiftly followed by disappointment that I was probably too late to go out and get a McDonald’s breakfast.

Explain that one, then.

1625: From the Subconscious Mind

I had a weird dream last night, or possibly this morning, I’m not sure. It’s been a while since I had a truly weird dream, so this one sort of stood out a bit. It wasn’t quite a nightmare, but it wasn’t a particularly pleasant experience, either. It was vivid, though, and unlike a lot of dreams it appears to have stayed in my memory for longer than five minutes after it happened.

I’m not sure if there was a “setup” to the situation in which I found myself, but I was in a play. I was convinced it was Twelfth Night (which I have both been in and directed on two different occasions) but it clearly wasn’t, because I was playing a character called Lord Parry, who is not in Twelfth Night. I was then half-convinced that it was The Wizard of Oz (which I have also been in) but there is not a character in that called Lord Parry, either. (I played both Uncle Henry and Lord Growlie, both of whom only appear in the stage version and are consequently largely unknown to anyone who has only ever seen the movie.)

Anyway, the point was, I was in some sort of play. And I wasn’t ready for my scene. I wasn’t in costume. For some reason, I found myself putting on a suit, even though I knew somewhere inside me that the suit wasn’t my costume. I did up my tie and was ready, and realised that it was time to get on stage, but that I was at the wrong end of the theatre. I had to run downstairs and get into the backstage area — quite why I wasn’t getting changed in the backstage area is a mystery I guess we’ll never solve — and prepare to go on, but I was suddenly hit with stage fright.

This wasn’t normal stage fright. I realised that I had forgotten my lines and cues — and wasn’t sure that I knew them at all in the first place. I found a copy of the play lying backstage and tried to flip through to where the on-stage actors had got to, but was completely unable to find it, however frantically I searched. In the meantime, I could hear what was clearly a cue — someone calling Lord Parry’s name. It came again, and I still wasn’t ready. Eventually, the actors on stage started improvising — initially with some simple lines that drew giggles from the audience, eventually culminating in what appeared to be a full musical number that they had collectively pulled out of thin air.

Meanwhile, I was still backstage, frantically leafing through the book, hoping to find my scene, when I realised that I was fully visible to the audience. I was standing behind a chest-high wall — possibly a bookcase or something? — and I looked up to see the audience gazing at me, or were they paying more attention to the increasingly elaborate improvisations of my castmates on stage?

Eventually, the on-stage shenanigans had deviated so far from the plot of the play that it had become absolutely impossible for me to make an entrance, so I simply ran. And then I woke up.

How odd. Not the most pleasant thing to experience, but equally a peculiarly fascinating incident. And probably one that has disappeared into my subconscious, never to be seen again.

1328: Saturday Morning Ramblings

Look, I managed to blog in the morning rather than last thing in the evening! This is probably a mistake, as we’re supposed to be heading out to a wedding in about half an hour and I still need to have a shower and get dressed, but I have coffee to drink and I shower quickly. Yes, I bloody well do. So there.

In lieu of anything particularly massively exciting happening in the intervening hours since last night and this morning (largely sleeping) I thought I’d mention a peculiar dream I had. It is one of those ones that was very vivid but didn’t really make much sense, so as such I found it quite intriguing.

The main gist of it all was that I was using a computer of some description. For some reason, the casing for the computer (which seemed to be some sort of strange hybrid between a desktop and a laptop system) was open, and I could see into it. I dropped a piece of chocolate (I don’t know) onto a vent on part of the casing that was still covered, and I could see it was seeping in, so I wanted to do something about it. I opened the case further and saw that there was, for some reason, a screwdriver that had been left inside the machine. Against all of the advice people give you when you’re learning about computers, I reached inside to grab it, when…

ZZap!

I felt a slight electric shock, and the display on the screen went what can only be described as “wrong”. If you’ve ever seen what a graphics card with a loose connection does, it was that. Wrong colouring, fuzzy bits, pixels where they shouldn’t be. I hastily switched off the computer, removed the screwdriver, gave it a moment and then turned it back on again.

Instead of booting up normally, the computer switched to a second display that invited me to fix the problem with the main screen by drawing straight lines across photographs of walls. Except after I completed the first one, I somehow found myself actually drawing paint lines across a real wall with my big toe. I couldn’t make it all the way across one of the walls, so I gave up, turned the computer off and back on again. It went back to having broken graphics, and then I saw a leaflet on the desk explaining the wall-painting thing — it was a piece of software you could install to randomly pop up the wall-painting game randomly whenever you turned your computer on. It had no discernible benefit whatsoever, and certainly couldn’t fix a fried graphics card.

I have no idea what all that means. It’s probably some sort of metaphor for some sort of dee-seated anxiety or neurosis. But I don’t really have time to think about it now. Coffee. Shower. Wedding. Later!