Dreams

Dream, 19 November 2024

It is the first day of my new contract, with a large government department, and I report for duty, along with two other new starters. The contact who meets us hands each of us a slip of paper with a desk number on it. My number is 527. He waves his hand over the large office area in front of us and tells us to each find our desks. The office consists of open areas, rooms and corridors It contains many desks, some of them with people busily beavering away in front of computer screens. The other new starters and I head off in different directions to find our respective desks. 

It is not an easy task. The desk numbers are hard to locate -- they're tucked away in hard to get at places. I assume that the desks are numbered consecutively, but just when I think I'm getting close, with the numbers approaching 527, the sequence suddenly jumps. I realise that I will have to check each available desk in the office, a mamoth task.

Eventually I'm sure that I must have looked at all the available desks and I still haven't found 527. I find the contact who takes my slip of paper and shows it to the person responsible for desk allocations. She takes a look at the slip and says that the number isn't 527. If you look closely you can see that the top of the 7 is actually a loop and the number that I thought was 527 is in fact 529. She points to an area where the desk should be. 

I look at desks around the area and I still can't find desk 529. I reflect on what bad luck it was to be allocated that desk. I bet the other new starters are happily ensconsed at their desks by this time. I ask someone in the area if they know where desk 529 is. They tell me they think they have put a bookcase where 529 was, and that's why I can't find it. They say it's not a problem, they'll move the bookcase out and replace it with a spare table that they have until they can get the proper desk back. They leave and return with a table and a stool. The table is old and the top is worn through in places, and it wobbles. The stool is old too, and low. I sit down and my eyes are barely above the table top. I notice that the stool wobbles as well as the table. Just then, the other two new starters walk past. They are still looking for their desks. One of them looks enviously at me seated on my low, wobbly stool at my wobbly table.

Dream, 18 January 2024

It's the middle of world war 2 and I am working in a prisoner of war camp in Australia. The camp holds captured Japanese prisoners, and I'm working in the section that arranges prisoner activities, to keep them amused. One of the activity projects is compiling a book on local birds. One of the prisoners has a particular interest in local birds, and is collecting the information. He has taken photographs of lots of local birds and is collecting them into a chart. Another prisoner, a superionr officer to the first prisoner, is helping with the chart layout and the descriptions. The layout that they have come up with is unimaginitive and old fashioned looking, and I want to change it to make it more attractive and readable. I have to be careful though because some of the fonts and styles that I want to use haven't been invented yet, it being the World War 2 era. Also I wonder how I'll go putting it together because desktop publishing and personal computers haven't been invented yet.
The head of the prisoner activity section is worried that if I suggest too many changes, it might offend the prisoner and his superior. I tell him not to worry about that. My father is a prisoner of the Japanese, and I assure him that the Japanese do not worry at all about offending the Australian prisoners. 

Dream, 6 September 2023

I had this dream on the night of the day where I had to collect lots of personal identification documents to send to Melbourne, to verify my identity. In the dream:
I  have a list of things to collect to confirm my identity, things like birth certificate and a copy of my passport. One of the list specifications is that I have to include an item of my clothing. I presume they would use it to do some sort of DNA or olifactory match up. It had been a hot day and I was wearing my black cargo shorts, so I decided to include them. 
I have worked through the list, assembled the rest of the items and just sent them off. I am having second thoughts about sending the black shorts. I am pretty sure they would be suitable since I had just worn them that day, but they are my favourite pair of shorts, what with all of those pockets. It occurs to me that it would have been good to have the shorts to wear tomorrow since it's supposed to be hot again. Maybe I can retrieve the items and swap the shorts for a shirt that I don't particularly like, or maybe another pair of shorts that I didn't wear very often. 
I check to see if I can swap the shorts for another item of clothing, but it's too late. They're gone.

Dream, 4/11/2022

I’m delivering a flat screen monitor. It’s unwieldy to carry but it’s not heavy. The delivery address is on the corner of Glenn Stubbs Drive and Honesty Avenue. I’m pretty sure that  Glenn Stubbs drive is the street that I’m walking along, but I don’t know where Honesty Avenue is. I need to find a place to put the screen down and look it up on my phone. I happen to be passing a church. The church is old and dilapidated and looks like it’s not used any more. The church yard is overgrown with weeds and long grass. I go through the gate and approach a wall. I can see that there are some of those ornate cast aluminium chairs near the wall. They are old and the paint is worn. They are never a very comfortable seat but it’ll do as somewhere to sit while I look up where Honesty Avenue is. I grab one of the aluminium chairs and manoeuvre it around to a spot close to the wall. The chair’s legs get snagged in the undergrowth but finally I get it to a spot where I can sit on it.

Dream 6 May 2022

I am wandering around a university with my two early teenage boys. The boys are apparently my sons but they are nothing like any of my sons. Anyway we have all finished what we came here to do and now it's time to go home. I walk to the spot where I parked the car but the car isn't there. I'm fairly sure I parked the car here, but maybe I have been turned around and it's in a similar spot on the other side of the university. I cut through the university grounds to the opposite side, but no car is there. Neither of my sons can find the car either. OK, so the car could have been stolen or I have parked it somewhere completely different. I circumnavigate the university and look in all of the available parking spots without finding my car. OK, that means it must have been stolen. I'll have to ring the police and report it, and then get public transport home. Bit of a pest but not the end of the world. 

Dream 9 August 2021

I am at a concert featuring The Carpenters. I wonder what the hell I am doing there since I don't particularly like The Carpenters, not my style of music at all. Once they start performing, I can see that they are competent enough but the songs don't appeal at all. After a song, Karen announces a break. They go offstage and are gone for what seems like ages. They finally re-appear and Karen Carpenter announces that for the next song, she wants the audience to sing along in two part harmony. My heart sinks as I don't like concerts when they ask for audience participation. Karen divides us into two groups and allocates each group the harmony to sing. The song starts but I have forgotten which group I belong to, which harmony to sing. I pick one at random and start singing. I'm sure that I have picked the wrong one, but to my surprise it actually sounds not bad .

Dream 3 May 2019
Judy and I are touring North Korea. We are in a souvenir shop and I'm examining the wares. The shop is full of interesting old things of the type you'd expect to find in an old communist-era country. I'm taking a close look at a hanging mobile of a world war 2 bomber. It's made of sheet metal, and the pieces slide apart to form the mobile. "Very clever" I think. "And it folds up into an A4 size piece of sheet metal. That'll be fine in my luggage." On another table, I spot a small crystal figurine of a man that looks interesting. It's about the size of my ring finger and I decide to buy that too. But when I reach the cash register, the figurine has grown to the size of a house brick. It's all crystalline and chunky now and not quite as appealing as it was when it was small. But I think it's still worth getting, and it should just fit into my luggage. As I take out my wallet to pay, I realise that my credit cards are missing -- must have been stolen. The place in my wallet where they normally are is empty. No world war 2 bomber or crystal figurine for me then! Judy phones the bank to cancel the credit cards. I think it'll be a bit inconvenient in North Korea without credit cards, but it's not the end of the world.

Dream, 15/3/18

I am at the Woodstock festival. Frank Zappa is on next. "Funny," I think, "I don't remember Frank Zappa playing at Woodstock." I am to play in the band. As I approach the stage, I wonder which instrument I will play. I hope it's the saxophone, especially if The Gumbo Variations is in the set. I mount the stairs to the stage, but the only band member present is the bass player, distractedly running through practice riffs. 


Dream, 19/2/17

I've been employed as a spy at a famous international bicycle race. To carry this out,  I've been entered in the race under a false name, Starsy. It's early days and the other contestants and me are all still getting used to the track. I'm slightly concerned that my cover might get blown as I'm no professional cyclist, and to complicate matters, there are a few people I know in the race who will recognise me. I don't expect this will be too much of a problem though, as I'm sure they will play along once I explain to them that I'm spying and they mustn't blow my cover.

I do a few warm-up laps. The first couple are slow because there are many obstacles on the track -- people reclining in deck chairs, random card tables and other miscellaneous detritus, not to mention other cyclists warming up. But I discover that if I plan ahead and work out the best line to take through the obstacles, I can whizz around the circuit quite quickly. I do a few laps and it's exhilarating. I'm flying along, effortlessly zooming past other cyclists, just missing the deck chairs and card tables. This tactic of working out the best line to take in advance seems to be going well.

AFter a few laps, I stop and return to the collecting area. They are posting the best practice lap times -- just the fastest few cyclists. I see my name go up in fifth spot. There it is, Starsy on the board. Very respectable time too. Hey, I'm not going to blow my cover with times like that. 

There is a lot of hubub going on; a new cyclist is arriving. It's a bloke from my high school, a good athlete, from a couple of years lower. He has his bike on a trailer and it looks impressive, all shiny chrome even though it's still all folded up. He smiles from up on the bike trailer and says "Watch this." He presses a button on the handlebars and the bikle slowly unfolds and takes shape. It looks like the latest thing. The front wheel slowly extends and drops into place. The wheel is highly elliptical, seriously egg-shaped. "The shape must be scientifically optimised," I think. H'mmm, maybe it'll work, but I'll back my best line tactic against those crazy elliptical wheels any day.

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Dream, 12/2/17

I'm living in London, and I work quite close to the building where The Guardian is published. It's a short walk to work, and I'm in the habit of stopping at The Guardian and picking up the daily paper, hot off the press. I enjoy the walk through the building to the counter where you can pick up a paper.  

I've been away and this is my first day back for a couple of weeks. I enter the building and walk down the long corridor, past the looming printing presses that churn out the newspapers. I front up to the counter where you pick up the papers, and notice that the team behind the counter is new. They look the same as the old team, elderly men and women, shirt sleeves rolled up or held in place with sleeve garters, granny spectacles glinting out from under their visors, but they are different people from the ones I remember. 

I ask for a copy of today's paper and the elderly woman behind the counter hands one over along with a green, two dollar note. I'm puzzled -- I had my change ready to pay for the paper. I ask why she is giving me money with my paper rather than accepting my money. She replies " Well . . we normally only give out newspapers to the destitute who can't afford to buy one, and we sometimes hand out small amounts of money to these unfortunate folk." I say that I just want to buy a paper, I'm not destitute and don't need the money. She looks puzzled and asks if that's the case, why I would bother coming into the building? It'd be far easier to pick up a paper from one of the many newspaper stands that abound in London. I'm stuck for an answer. How can I explain that I like the atmosphere of a big newspaper publisher, the walk past the looming printing presses, the smell of ink and paper, and the newspaper still warm in my hands.


8 Sep 2012

I find that I'm working in the country town of Korumburra, which happens to be the town where I attended high school. It's getting towards lunch break, and I notice that Roy Glover, an old neighbour from when I was a child, who was a couple of years older than me, is employed at the same place. We get to talking, and exchanging news. I thought he was dead, but here he is, alive and well. As it's coming up to lunch time, Roy and I arrange to have lunch together at a restaurant on the main street to continue our reminiscences. We head out the door together and into the street. 

I feel my pocket and discover that I have left my wallet behind. "I'll just duck back and grab my wallet" I say, and head back to where we work. I've just turned around when I realise that it's my keys that I have forgotten, and not my wallet. I don't need my keys to go to a restaurant, and if I turn around I can probably catch up to Roy Glover. That's good because I haven't spent much time in Korumburra since school days, and I don't really know where the restaurant is. 

I turn back to the street, but there is no sign of Roy Glover. "That's OK," I think. "There can't be too many restaurants in Korumburra  so it shouldn't be hard to find him. But the streets are crowded and also every second shop seems to be a restaurant. That's OK -- I'll just phone Roy Glover on my mobile and find out where the restaurant is. I open my mobile address book to look for his number. Damn!! I bought a new mobile recently and a lot of the numbers didn't come across from my old mobile. Roy Glover's must have been one of those because he isn't in my address book. 

But wait. I spot a mutual acquaintance among the crowds on the main street. He'll have Roy's number for sure. I call out to him but he doesn't hear me. I'm madly pushing through the crowds trying to catch him but it isn't easy. Just as I get close, the crowd closes in and I can't reach him to tap on his shoulder. Finally after a superhuman effort, I manage to attract his attention. But he doesn't have Roy Glover's number either.

Bloody hell, time is passing. Our lunch break will be over at this rate, before we can get a chance to eat. But look, there further up the street, up the hill is Roy Glover, waving to me and pointing to the restaurant. He must have realised that I couldn't find him and so he came back out onto the street. Aha. Right. I head off up the hill with purposeful step. 

But when I get to the spot where Roy was, he is no longer there. He must have gone into the restaurant. But again, there are three or so restaurants around where he was. Oh well, I'll just have to try them all. I pick out the one that looks like the sort of place that Roy Glover would like, which happens to be a pub, and go in. The dining room is down the back and not easy to find. I finally find a room that has a pool table in it, with four or five men standing around playing pool. "Anyone seen Roy Glover?" I ask. Each of the group of men look up with a quizzical expression. None of them know what the hell I'm talking about.

The Allegro

I have owned or part-owned quite a few cars and motorcycles during my time on Planet Earth. With each, I resist but often end up forging some sort of a relationship with these vehicles, inanimate objects though they may be.  For example, the Allegro.

The year is 1989. Judy, myself and our three children are in England. We have arrived three days previously, and intend to spend a year here. We are staying in a B&B we had booked from Australia. We had picked this B&B out from a book of English B&Bs entitled "Off the Beaten  Track." It is a good three mile walk to the nearest town with a railway station, and it occurs to me that perhaps a book with a title of "Off the Beaten  Track" might not have been such a good idea for a family of five in a new country with little money and no car. 

By luck, we quickly find a house to rent in the nearby town of Lewes, and when Judy is at the Lewes Town Hall arranging school for the children, she discovers that one of the council workers has a car for sale. A little brown Austin Allegro for 100 pounds. One hundred pounds!! A crazy price by Australian standards. It's a bargain, and after a test drive around a car park, we snap it up.  The line from The Who song "Magic Bus" rings in my ears: "You can have the magic bus for 100! English! Pounds!!" 

On a wet and drizzly day, we take delivery of the Allegro and pile in en famille, I switch on the heater, flick on the wipers, press the switch which I guess de-mists the rear window, and we head off through the steaming drizzle towards Brighton, a family in an enverlope of dry and cosy warmth, the closest thing we have to call a home in this country. 

Thus begins a relationship with the car that we come to know as "The Allegro." The Allegro soon demonstrates that it is a quirky beast. For example, on that first day, once in Brighton, funny things start happening with the electrics. The engine begins cutting out for no reason, and the wipers seem to be trying to send us a strange cryptic message in halting semaphore. After about 10 minutes of this, it occurs to me to try switching off the rear window de-mister. Those things really chew up the power. Sure enough, once that is switched off, normality returns for the time being. Never the less, it's a wake up call, and I join the RAC at first opportunity. 

--

Over the following months, often the Allegro would experience a bad behavior event. It would simply decide to run very badly and act like it was firing on two cylinders. But the bad behavior would stop just the right side of conking out completely, and it would always let you limp home at no faster than 20 miles an hour. After a day's rest  though it would burst back into perfectly well-behaved life and continue on as though butter wouldn't melt in its mouth. As if to say "Running badly? Me? I don't think so. You must have imagined it."

After some time though, it began to misbehave consistently, so I booked it into a garage for a service. I returned late in the day to pick the car up. I rocked up to the counter and asked after the Allegro. The receptionist said "The Allegro. Yes. The mechanic wants to speak to you about that car." She then ushered me into a darkened room and showed me to a seat. After a time the mechanic entered. He didn't turn on the light. He sat in a chair opposite, a dim figure in the gloom, and proceeded to reel off all of the things that were wrong with the Allegro. "I've done all I can for her, and you might get a few more weeks out of her, but no more than that. As you can see, there's no point in spending any more money on her."

I drove off in somber mood. But the Allegro lasted three more relatively trouble-free months, or at least three months where it was fairly well behaved. And when I bought a replacement car from a dealer, with one hundred english pounds as a trade in price for the Allegro. 

Between the time that the replacement car purchase was finalised and the time that we could pick the new car up, the Allegro blew a head gasket. But it was still up for the limping trip at 10 miles an hour to the dealers where I could pick up our replacement car. Luckily it wasn't far. 

Our Louise dish

For years, our Louise dish has languished in dusty corners of various cupboards in the various houses in which we have lived over the past 11 years. I have never particularly liked it until now, and I don't know how it has survived the nine or so house moves since we bought it, on our first trip to France in the Easter of 2001.  

In Easter 2001 we had only been in the UK for a couple of months. On the spur of the moment we hired a Gite near the town of Chateaubriant in France for the easter break. We took the overnight ferry from Portsmouth to St Malo. Because we booked late, we couldn't get a cabin. With the spirit of adventure, we boarded the ferry, packed with Easter holidaymakers off to France.  I bought some duty-free whiskey and we attempted to find somewhere quiet for the night. But seat space was at a premium, and even floor space. I couldn't get comfortable, but was able to console myself with the duty free whiskey. It felt like a good arrangement at the time, and by the time the wee small hours arrived I remember vaguely being rather surprised at the low whiskey level  in the large duty free bottle.

I probably got a couple of hours' sleep before the morning call to return to our vehicles. By this stage I was feeling decidedly hung over and nauseous. We drove off the boat and through the town of St Malo. Driving on the wrong side of the road in the early morning feeling sick and with a splitting headache was not pleasant. The only good thing about it was that, with a right hand drive car in France, I could easily pull over, half-open the door and barf discretely into the gutter 

But as the day wore on, things improved. We drove through some lovely villages and finally arrived at our Gite. It was comfortable if a bit out of the way. We settled in and relaxed.

The nearest village was a mile or so away. It had a grocery store, a couple of primitive take away food stores and an antique shop. Before we explored the antique shop, Judy said "If they ask, don't say we're from the UK -- tell them we're Australian. The French don't like the British but they like Australians. They still remember the first world war apparently.

We entered the antique shop and looked around. The aged French woman owner bustled over and hovered around. "EEnglish?" she offered. "Non, nous sommes Australians" I replied in halting French. The woman suddenly got very excited. "Australians" she muttered and started hunting through her pockets. "Australians, Australians" she continued to mutter as she emptied the many pockets on her apron, hunting for something. Eventually she found a key and held it up, with a gap-toothed smile, and proceeded to a glass cabinet at the back of the shop. 

"Great," I thought. "She is going to offer us something special from the Special cupboard, in honour of our Australianness. She is about the right age to be a world war 1 war baby."

The old woman finally  opened the glass cabinet. It was full of the cheapest looking porcelain pieces in the shop -- animal statuettes of the type you can win at any fairground and the like. She excitedly took out items and held them up for my closer inspection. I realised then that her excitement at having some Australians in the shop was caused by the prospect of unloading some of her junk pieces. 

But she looked so disappointed that I wasn't interested in anything in the "Australians" cupboard that I bought the Louise dish, it being the item that was the least unappealing in the shop. And now it looks nice. I love the Louise dish.

High-speed orange pips

I forget how old I was when I discovered an interesting thing about orange pips. During the process of eating an orange, there is a small window of opportunity before you discard a pip, when you can impart a large quantity of kinetic energy to the pip. Accelerate it to a high speed, a bit like a very small nuclear particle accelerator. Simply remove the pip from your mouth, place it firmly between your thumb and index finger, and squeeze hard. The innocent piece of orange gametes is transformed into a high-speed pip. And the miniscule movement required means that it is very rare that you are identified as the particle source.

After a surprisingly small amount of practice, you can send a high-speed pip sailing clean across a large room. I have found this to be a source of amusement in the office work environment, and as a side benefit, it is a practice rich in vitamin C. I usually aim for someone a long-ish way away. Since high-speed pips are very inaccurate, if you aim at someone, there is very little chance that you will hit them, and it's quite safe. Well, you might hit someone whom you didn't aim at, but they can be counted as victims of friendly fire, and apparently these days, they don't count.

Sometimes, to add a bit of interest, if I am sitting close to a window I will send a high-speed pip at the window glass, and it ricochets off in a completely random direction. Or, as a variation on this, I fire at the ceiling, and with luck, the high-speed pip screams out of the sky and onto someone's desk. It can be mildly perplexing for a fellow worker sitting in the privacy of an office cubicle when a high-speed pip fires down from the sky and thunks into his or her desk, and it is very amusing for me to cause such perplexment.

In all my years of experience with high-speed pips, I have only once been embarassed by the practice. In an office once, I sent a high-speed pip towards a target across the room, but the recalcitrant pip thunked into the cheek of a co-worker sitting a couple of yards away. She put her hand to her cheek, turned slowly, fixed me with a withering glare and said "Did you spit that?" How could I tell her in the short time available about the small window of opportunity, how unlucky she was, about the friendly fire, about the vitamin C, and the rest of the arguments that render high-speed pips relatively innocuous? I had to sit there in mortified, silent embarrassment and will time to pass.

My bike was pinched

My Claud Butler bike was pinched last week. I opened the front door to find a bike-sized hole on our front verandah, and the bike cable, snipped, lying on the ground. I bought the bike in the UK, and spent many a happy hour on it riding the back roads of South Oxfordshire. Exploring the byways and bike paths of which there were many. My favourite was a 24 mile ride into Oxford, about half of which was on a very pretty bike path and the rest was on country laneways through pretty villages.

We had my bike shipped over to Australia with the rest of our stuff. It had a black frame with "Claud Butler" in big white writing down the frame. It looked quite flash, which was probably why it was targeted by the bike thieves. Everyone has bikes chained to their verandahs in these parts. I had toyed with the idea of daggifying the bike by spray painting the frame, but never got around to it.

The  security cable that secured Claud Butler to my verandah had been a cheapie. But it looked quite hefty and strong, so I trusted it. But when I saw the snipped cable, I realised that it was the outer plastic sheath that was hefty, and the actual cable hidden inside the sheath was not very thick at all.

I liked my bike, and I'll miss it, but the next day, a chap who lives next door gave me a bike he found on a hard-rubbish collection. I think his ex wife or ex girlfriend spotted it on a throw-out pile and couldn't bear to see such a perfectly good looking bike going to waste. So the chap cleaned it up a bit and chained it to the stack of unridden bikes on his verandah. That was probably years ago, and he was keen for it to find a good home to justify the effort.

It  certainly has found a good home. It has 26 inch wheels which were fitted with very fat knobbly tyres. I replaced those with normal ones (puncture proof too, or at least extremely puncture resistant.) I purchased a Krypton D lock and I was back on the road in no time. I like the new bike. The gears are smooth, and I like the fact that it's a smaller bike. It's easier to throw around when you're negotiating traffic-intense situations. And also it's thief resistant and not just because of the Krypton D lock. It's a bike that not many bike thieves would want to steal.