Water Carriers

A narrow street. A man walks towards me carrying a glass box of water on his shoulder.  Another man carries more water in the opposite direction.

Monster In My Pond

In my garden pond I notice what looks like a giant toad about 2 foot wide. It can hardly move- the pond just about accommodates its size. As I look closer I see there is an even bigger monster opposite it - a huge slimey octopus with three extra extensions on each of its eight tentacles. It rises up and lurches towards the toad. The most horrific battle ensues. What am I going to do with this thing??? I can hardly fish it out. Euurghhh! I feel sick...

Happy new year gentle reader!

Home Is Where The Heart Is

I find out that my home is built on a vast net of wellington boots, camouflaged to appear like a craggy cliff. My partner lives here with me in the middle of a landfill site by the sea - he is a hybrid conjured up from (long dead) Kev and a couple of other unrequited loves. He munches on a chocolate donut made from wellies. Parallel to us hangs another fake cliff. This is all we can afford. I know we should move - it's all far too precarious. Having said that, we have made this our home and it's the best we could improvise from what is an imperfect situation.

Culprit Revealed

I've got a show in this big old warehouse. Water is streaming down walls of about three floors. We need to fix it. We need to turn it off. The water is pouring into the huge electricity generator. It's all going to blow.
"Everyone get out NOW!" I can't find the levers for either the water or the electricity. "Get out now!!!"
I wake up and then when I fall back to sleep the dream continues. I discover that a boy of seven, his name Robin, is responsible for the breakdown of this system.

High Diver

A film director plays back the last scenes of some footage she has put together showing what appears to be a busy Californian road. In fact the film is an illusion, a carefully constructed model. An earlier scene shows two sets of high divers, male and female, and although the setting is pasted in, the diving is for real. I am one of the male divers- I'm not the best but I'm ok at it. I climb a steep bank removing my clothes, and in front of an uninterested crowd I look for the male diving stump. Although I have made this dive a few times in the dream I cannot recall the actual diving sensation.

World War 3

Yet another bomb attack somewhere in the Middle East. Each day more blood is shed. It's like a wave rolling over that unhappy part of the world growing in size swallowing its victims leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. This is World War 3, Mum says, and it will keep growing until it engulfs the whole world. I see an image of the word SURGE as the wave moves back over Europe in years to come. I know that now is the time for us to intervene and stop it from happening.

A Bad Row In Scunthorpe

It is a cold grey day in Scunthorpe and a friend and I have been dropped off from a bus at the top of a long slide that descends to the sea. It is too cold to swim so we wander around and end up having a blazing row. He tells me that all I do is witter on and on. I retort that perhaps it is about time we stopped our friendship. We pack our bags at the hotel in grim silence. We are told there is a room upstairs where we can wait for a cab back to the station. Can we drink tea there? I ask. No. Then I'm going to find a cafe in town. I go down the path and look back . My friend is laughing now - looks like we are going to make up.

Sabotage!

Someone has sabotaged the overflow outpipe of the cistern containing the life blood of this building. When I climb up to the loft to investigate I see the ball cock has been removed. The pipe has been deliberately severed and water is seeping down through the ceiling. Not only that but the rich life blood supply for the building has been cut and is dripping slowly from a kind of battery. This is the equivalent of a terrorist attack. I work out how to repair the damage by getting others to help, connecting the blood battery to the water supply. We find a scrap of paper left by the saboteur- he hated change and anything that didn't fit in with the norm.

Bed On The Shore

Sal and I are visiting Richard Briers in his old house on an island, but the route is treacherous. I climb steep rocky steps and squeeze through a tiny window feet first pulling myself up into an odd metal contraption where I am held Houdini style. Now I am hopping from rock to rock across the island. At one point I am in a bed in an open wing of the house. The bed sits at the edge of the shore. I am told that if I sleep here at full moon all kinds of birds will appear and swim around me. It's a lovely image although I am a bit nervous the tide will rise and the bed will be swept away. I am assured there is no problem.

Snow In Summer

I am staying over in Tor's grand old English farm set in hilly terrain. The sun is shining and it is a beautiful summer's day. A school party of primary kids are descending the hill. We hear a big crash from the courtyard and go to investigate. The snow has melted and slid off the roof flooding the yard. Bulbous icicles hang from the trees. You'll have to go round the back, I tell them, its too dangerous here.

Collapse Of The London I

One huge yellow ring springs off the London Eye into the Thames. From a flat on the opposite side of the river Ra's sister (although she is not) and I clutch hands and watch with horror. People leap off in an attempt to save themselves. I am shouting "Jump jump!" although they can't hear me. As the construction (it is made up of concentric circles so looks nothing like the actual Eye) collapses further, there are electric sparks. The people are carried away by the now fast flowing water.
I know this was always going to happen. It was such a crazy thing to build it by the water.



This was such an extraordinary dream I think I have to write a little about it. I had the dream on the last night at the conference for Dreams and Culture in Lincoln and was fortunate to be able to tell it to a group there.

It was a very frightening dream and left me quite troubled. Recently I have been feeling positive and happy, convinced that connecting to my dreamlife is a way of building some kind of inner strength and that it is something our society needs to embrace. A real way of learning more about who we are.
One of the main thoughts going through my mind following this terrifying dream was a questioning of this whole business of looking into my dream life. Had it got too intense? Is it, as one man had suggested, like opening a can of worms? Should it all be left well alone?

I really wanted to understand this dream. I am convinced we can use dreams to help us, and that when the dream is so urgent then we need to heed it. There were two psychoanalysts running the group workshop. They used what is known as the Montagu-Ullman technique, which does not aim to interpret the dream, more asks the other members of the group to imagine the dream was their own and to PROJECT their own feelings and understanding of the dream back to the dreamer. So treating it like a story if you like.

I won't go into everything that came up as the session lasted for an hour and a half . Just to say firstly that it was the most amazing experience and I walked out on cloud nine.

The group suggested meanings within the dream. Some didn't seem quite right but the majority clicked and I was able to see the dream clearly and realise the extraordinary complexity within it.

To give a couple of examples: one person recognised from the start the double meaning of the "Eye" and "I". This had completely missed me, but immediately it was said I realised of course yes that feels right.
"Ra" is actually the name of a good friend of mine, but someone suggested that there is also an EGYPTIAN SUNGOD by the name of Ra and could that have any significance?! It felt right again- so weird - I know very little about the sungod but have read something about him in my past. And the yellow rings somehow seemed to tie in with that. And the sun is a symbol for the self. These are not just academic notes but things that felt emotionally right.

The "London I" now made a bit more sense. I had this dream on the night of the day I was returning to my home in London after having been away in Ireland for two and a bit months. I was anxious about returning. I feel I have learnt so much from a concentrated time there exploring my and other peoples' dreams that I was scared about returning to my old humdrum life in the city.
One person suggested that because the woman I was with in the dream was someone I scarcely knew I was getting very little support in the face of this tragedy happening before me. She suggested that's what I needed - more support in London. And that just really hit home. I had so much wonderful support in Carrick in Ireland whereas in London my friends are all dotted about and we see each other too seldom.
There was a lot more to it. But suffice to say I felt something lift and was invigorated by the whole thing. So I will heed this dream. I want to set up a regular dream group in London as a starter. So if you are interested let me know.

The New Religion

We are creating an installation of diagrams with a group of kids aimed at exposing the cynical new development along the Shannon. Everyone is working flat out, copying biblical texts onto a map of the river dotted with names from the London underground. Big circles demarcate the deadly preaching zones where the new developers are planning to strike.

Thin Black Ice

There are sheets of thin black ice on the water. I stand at the edge of a lake that starts at chest height. I lift up one brittle layer of ice to reveal another underneath. A forgotten dream lies beyond the bushes to my left.

The Purple Parsnips' Mother

A man shows me a group of purple parsnips in the ground and explains to me that they will have a purple turnip as a mother. As we dig down, the soil turns to thick black liquid and I find myself under the surface closely inspecting these parsnip/turnips. They are choked with ivy and water weeds. I pull one and deliver it up to the surface. It is now a small dog's tail and wags with pleasure at having been set free.

Water Water Everywhere

It is a cold grey day by the sea and one of the twins from the 80's boyband Bros turns up in a sports car heading to the beach for his regular swim. I decide to go for a swim too - I haven't been for a while. The sea is too cold even for a Bros twin, and he goes into the swimming pool instead. I go downstairs into the basement to the changing rooms. They seem empty and waterlogged. "Is it open?" I ask one sleepy guy. He nods pointing to an unmanned cash desk.

Brown Water In The Algarve

I am on holiday with the family in the Algarve. Mum sits at the top of a steep bank crowded with sandy towels. Dad has already gone for a swim. I leave my towel with her but realise I have no trunks so need to go and buy some. The water is brown like the Thames and although we are by the sea we are also at the start of a long river.

The Rats or The Rebels

I am setting up the opening sequence to a film or game I have made with X, one of my severely disabled students. He has painted the title THE RATS or THE REBELS on banners. Two divers drag them under water alongside a submarine for a video promotion. Someone bundles up the banners and tells X to stop making a mess.

I Let Three Women Drown

Walking back from a trip to a country museum, the rain starts to pour down, and my shoes are not waterproof. I see a group of people crowding round the edge of a waterfall. In the clear water below at least three old women are drowning. There is no struggle - they sink slowly and I am too scared to save them.

High Speed Sailing

A friend and I are on a massive sailing contraption, hurtling towards the Thames barrier. It slows down just at the last minute and then swings round heading back so fast that the scenery disappears into a blur. The speed is exhilerating. When we come to a stop I calculate that we covered a mile every 1.25 seconds. A passenger from a previous ride is being hoisted by a body harness having broken his leg from the pressure.

Elf In The Woods

I think I have taken some kind of hallucinogenic drug. I am in a marshy wood. A boy of about seven beckons- I know he is me. He turns into an elf and tiptoes on the top of the reeds in the water. Or is it me doing the tiptoing?