Dreams are weird. Don’t try and pretend you’ve never had a weird one. We’ve all been there, however disturbed, slightly sick or moderately turned-on we might feel the morning after. I described some past experiences and childhood recurring dreams some time ago after a particularly vivid and surreal one that faded quickly. I have never been asked to “obey the grapefruit” as part of a dream, but it’s not beyond the realms of possibility, surely. (Phillipe must be stinging a bit, though, I imagine.)

This morning, I woke up after another especially “real-feeling” one wondering what on Earth had just happened. Your behaviour in a dream often makes you wonder exactly how you’d react if you genuinely found yourself in the situation you’d just been dreaming about. But then if you think about it a bit harder, it’s probably fairly unlikely that something like that would actually happen. And if it did, you’d probably just collapse into a corner and start crying until the ambulance arrived.

In last night’s dream, I was in a hotel. Fair enough. I was also naked. As you tend to be in many dreams. Banish the thought of my Adonis-like body from your mind for a moment and let’s continue. (I hasten to add at this point that it wasn’t a “dirty” dream, despite what I’m about to describe next.)

In this hotel was a pornography convention. I’m not even certain that hotels allow you to hold pornography conventions in them, but this hotel certainly was holding a pornography convention. Most people in attendance were also naked, but because of the sheer amount of material around the place which depicted naked people engaging in various fun activities (you know, like playing in a ball pool, enjoying a delicious hot dog, sucking on a lollipop or, well, fucking) the amount of naked bodies around the place didn’t feel at all peculiar.

I wandered out of the main convention hall; I’d obviously joined my dream self at a time when he needed a bit of a break from watching people enjoying delicious hot dogs. I walked around the lobby area and into a corridor and almost immediately found myself lost, with no sign of anyone else around, no sign of a way back to the convention hall and no sign of the lobby. It was getting a bit dark, too. Having played Silent Hill 2, I knew that hotels getting dark is rarely a good sign, so I picked up the pace a bit.

I passed through a door and found myself in a room with a selection of non-specific objects on a table, and a small bag. There was also a large window looking out onto another room that was physically impossible to be in the place it appeared to be in, judging by the shape of the corridor outside. There was someone in the room fumbling around with equipment on a table. I knew that I had to put all the objects on the table in the little bag without the person in the room seeing that I was doing so. It didn’t matter if he saw me, I just knew it was important he didn’t see what I was putting into the bag.

I successfully put the things in the bag without the other person noticing, and I then inexplicably left the bag behind on the table and ran out into the corridor. The corridor was still darker than “normal”, but just light enough to see by. I continued exploring the labyrinth of passageways which seemed to get more and more complex by the moment until I came, finally, to what looked like the end of the passageways.

There was a door in one side of the corridor. An old lady opened the door just as I was gazing at it, and I realised that this wing of the hotel was actually an old people’s home. The old lady was about to speak, then I woke up feeling more than a little bewildered and surprisingly exhausted by the whole situation.

I think I may have “issues”.