Dreams

1982

25-26.3.82
The Mongoose.
I'm a slave/servant in a household with large gardens. The house owns a mongoose called Rikki Tikki Tavi who escapes. I'm sent after him and chase him through a garden which is mostly scabby trees and shrubland. I've escaped myself by the time I find him and weep with emotion asI carry the mongoose away with me. Small boys and girls laugh at me becauwe I'm crying like I've just seen a sad film. I find Mark Backett and tell him the good news about our escape. Two places in the dream are recognisble : part of the garden is near the infant school where Kev had his wedding reception and the small children are in Ruins Lane where keve Bates lived.

29.3.82
The Seance.
I'm 'MC' at a seance. We think we've contacted a spirit because there's a strange whining sound then a click which we all hear but ignore. Then there's a second click which sounds like something hitting the window. This petrifies us and I wake up.
The SFX of this dream are attributable to the whining and clicking of a tape I'd left on and fallen asleep to.

15-16.4.82
The Water Rat.
I'm sitting on a plank which goes across a stream and a water rat (which I'm waiting for) comes out of the water. I wonder if it's the right one. I let it nibble at my finger, scared that it will bite it off, but it doesn't. The water rat dives back into the stream and I go inside and turn on the radio. The reception is bad. I look out of the window (the view frome the back upstairs window of my hosue in Bolton) and the sky is flickering.

16-17.4.82
Chelsea V Oldham.
I'm watching Chelsea v Oldham. Chelsea are winning 2-1 and they bring on a black player as a substitute. The crowd jeer and I find myself commentating for a radio station. The black guy pushes one of the opposition players in the penalty area but the referee deliberately ignores it. In my commentary I don't mention that the crowd are jeering and I say the obvious push was accidental, sympathising with him in the same way as the ref.
Most of this was a re-run of C.Palace 0 Chelsea 1 which I saw last Monday. Paul Canoville made his debut for Chelsea.

18-19.4.82
Amsterdam.
I'm in Amsterdam, wandering around, and I buy a ticket for a Led Zeppelin concert that evening, then Anne Parmeter and Pete Winterbotham bump into me. She says she's going back to Reading that afternoon and I say I'm going back after the concert. She and Pete get lost in the crowd. I begin to wish I'd gone with them and think about selling my ticket. As I walk back to the theatre I see a row ofpolicemen stood in a ring around someone. It turns out to be a motorcyclist who's had an accident. The police are questioning him as if he is a criminal. I watch with the crowd for a minute before deciding to move on. By now I'm wishing I'd accepted the lift home because I know I won't like the concert anyway.

26-27.4.82
The Spitfire.
I'm watching a film and the last scene is a woman trying to escape from a runaway car down a snowy slope. It crashes into some trees at the bottom along with a Spitfire that appears from nowhere. Back in my living room I hear someone remark that the sky is streaked pink and yellow. I tell them "That's what colour it should be when a Spitfire crashes.!

28-29.4.82
The Knife.
I'm watching a play fight between Carolyn and Joanna, thinking it's only a game and laughing, but suddenly there's a knife and Carolyn stabs Joanna to death. I remember a change of emotion here, but nothing more than surprise.
More briefly, I dreamt I got bad marks in my philosophy exam. (I got a 2.1)

4-5.5.82
The Russian Horror Film.
A gothis, bright red horror film in which Joanna plays a witch with red wings. Very complicated, unremembered plot. No explanation. A castle with red flags flying. Snow, light and air.

9-10.5.82.
The Football Match.
I'm playing football on the park. After the match I talk to one of the opposition, who's a bit of a yob and supports Liverpool. I tone down my admiration for Chelsea and talk about how good Liverpool are instead. We walk off to the pub for a drink.
Lots of football memories mixed up, from yesterday's game right back to being 10 and playing football on the rec. in Harwood and on our old Harwood Academicals pitch at St. Anne's.

13-14.5.82
Exercises.
I go round to Pete L's house and everybody is doing exercises. I go downstairs to fetch a paper and when I come back upstairs Laurence is there. After some debate, we all go off to do different things. Me and Pete L. and Graham all end up going for a ride on a big dipper. It's indoors and hasn't got a roof. It feels dangerous but we all get off safely in the end.

17-18.5.82
The Table Football Match.
I'm playing a table football match against Paul Donlan. I'm Ipswich Town and he's Barcelona. It seems to be very important. I'm always one in the lead. (He equalises, I score again). His team's blue and red shirts are dazzlingly bright. I comment on the ease with which I score the winning goal. The final score is 7-6.
Paul had rung me earlier that evening (for the first time in ages?)

22-23.5.82
The Capsule.
I'm on board a spaceship in a large, bare, grey, metallic room with Angela (Patrick's ex?). She has a capsule like this (see drawing) which she says is a heat bomb. I don't believe her. She tells me the next star is x light years away and throws the capsuleout of the window. Then we begin to talk. Four hours later the conversation is still going on when the whole sky is lit up silently by a pink/purple flash. She tells me this is the star exploding. I am impressed. In the next 'scene' we're noth back on earth making a psychology film of some sort. I begin to think the spaceship episode was part of the film.

24-25.5.82
Woodlice and Football.
I'm standing on a plank attached to a wall, six feet or so away from another bloke in a similar situation. We're being asked questions about football and I'm answering them. A piece of rotten wood falls away from the wall between us and 'woodlice' crawl out, though they look more like spiders or scorpions. I'm afraid of them. My brother appears beneath us and picks one of them up. "He may be all right at football" he says, referring to be "but watch this" and he waves it at me. I fall off the plank.
Last night I also dreamed that Mark beckett went on a round theworld tour but was back just 2 weeks later, which was a source of some surprise for me.

2-3.6.82
5-a-side and Boating.
We're entering a 5-a-side competition in 20 minutes but we still haven't got a team together. We're sitting around in a room (like my parents' bedroom in Bolton) and I ask for volunteers. Five people volunteer, then I get on a bus which goes a long way round to the university, get off and discover that the match isn't till 5.55, but we do have another one before then.
Later on I'm sitting by the side of the Thames with Mark Beckett and another Mark backett is on the bank with a memberof the baot club. MB No1and me are preparing to do a pin. MB No2 and his friend are preparing to do some sport which involves launching oneself out in the boat very fast and taking a photogrph of it. They make some comment and I make a joke about it which only me and the two mark Backetts get.
I dreamed this just before MB started going schizophrenic. Scary, or what?

4-5.6.82
The Boat Club Dinner.
I'm wandering round Redlands Road with a friend (Paul? Mark?) and we decide to trespass in the University (London Rd. site). We notice posh people beginning to arrive and folow them into a banqueting hall where we sit down. For some reason I expect to see Philip Gallagher and Mandy Beddows (Head Boy adn Girl at Canon Slade). After dinner everyone goes out except for us two and Jo, who is also there, and another girl. A good record is playing in the other room and I want to hear it so I prop the two adjoining doors open, but Jo keeps making a draught, which I get fed up of, so I petulantly close them after a while and sit in the other room wherre the record player is. A girl comes in. I want to be attacted to her, but I'm not. I go outside and find myself in the start of a marathon race. I run it, just to appear part of the crowd and not stand out. I win it. "Two hours and fourteen minutes" someone announces as I cross the line. I don't know if that's good or bad but it turns out to be a world record. It doesn't mean much to me but, for appearance's sake, I throw myself jubilantly into the arms of a man wearing a dinner jacket.

10-11.6.82
After the Event.
Jo and I are walking by the side of the East Lancs. Road and it's nearly night. We sit down to watch the sun descend through the rain clouds and set over an explanse of dark gravel full of pudles. It begins to rain and we shelter behind a coach. Lots of black people get out of the coach and one of them alarms the others by calling their attention to a policeman he's spotted on the other side of the road. They get back on the coach. I'm on my bike, then,and trying to find a house which is No.65 (Barry lives at No 65) on one of two parallel streets. I find myself back behind the coach at the side of the road with Jo and a policeman is about to search us. I have some dope in my left trouser pocket which I tried earlier to leave in a bin down the road, but I engage in affable conversation with the copper about computer tapes, and this puts him at ease. He doesn't search me. I begin to retrieve my shoes and clothes which have somehow become scattered along the ground.

9-10.6.82
The Frog, The Fly and The Newt.
I go into a garden shed (the one in my house in Bolton where we used to keep newts in an old fish tank) with a friend. We bring a frog and a newt into the garden. We try to make the newt eat the frog so it will be bigger but it won't. We put them back in the shed and the frog begins to eat a fly which is caught in a cobweb hanging from the angle of the roof. I shut the door, but as I do so the thought croses my mind that if the frog eats too many flies it will turn into a giant and will be too big to handle.

6-7.7.82
The Doctor's Receptionist.
I am (I think) watching a play being acted out in front of me by four males on a very linear wooden stage, like a trough. One of the actors is Phil (Gallagher) and the others I don't know. The plot is that two men (one of them is Phil) have to get past the receptionistto see the doctor who is on the left of the stage. They try various methods, getting more and more frantic and always failing, then they rush on with a letter bomb for the doctor. The receptionist flees and they dash in to see the doctor and deliver the letter bomb, which explodes as they put it on his desk. As it does so I wake up.
This dream is based on thelittle plays we used to have to write and act out in Russian for our Russian classes in Canon Slade.

15-16.7.82
Targets.
I'm playing football (two against two) in a largish Scout hut. The goals are two large bull's eye targets chalked on the walls in white and when the game begins I dribble past the opposition and score straight away. They give in and go and sit down so I'm left to score as many goals as I want, but as soon as I'm on my own I can't score - every single shot or header misses.
(Memories of the previous evening's football match where I played terrible in the warm-up but well in the actual match)

25-26.7.82
London.
A film commentary describes how London is so big that many people are unaware there is a Hexagon theatre there. I find myself sitting outside it (it's under a motorway bridge) with Joanna. She goes for a walk and meets an old cockney boyfriend. He asks how she's doing. When he last saw here she'd given up her job and her boyfriend. She tells him she's training to be a nurse and he says that's terrible. Then they walk back to whre I'm sitting and he sees me and works out that I'm her boyfriend. Heconcludes that this is terrible too.

2-3.8.82
Poverty.
I'm very poor but suddenly I get ten pounds so I decide to go shopping in Tesco's. I walk past a large glass cabinet full of candles, but the smallest ones (red and green) are too large and too expensive so I buy some crisps instead. They come in a cardboard box and cost 97 and a half pence. I don't complain atthe price, though I want to. I find out that they containmicrochipsso that when you bite them they play a small portion of a film soundtrack, but I can't get them in the right order. Some bloke leans out of a window and tells me how much he enjoyed his Yellow Submarine crisps last week. The assistant apologises for not giving me them in the right order but I take them home anyway and, having no ise for them, I pour them in a bowl with some catfood and feed them to the cat.

4-5.8.82
Clint Eastwood.
I'm the hero in a Clint Eastwood style movie which involves me being chased by murderous bandits through the ruins of an industrial city in the desert. This goes on for hours until I come across a train, lit up and standing still on a new railway line. I leap on and join in with the passengers who are eating the last part f a three course dinner.
I get off the train when it's carried me away and find myself in a bare-ish room being asked for a dance by a tall girl. I accept until her even taller boyfriend arrives when I step asidepolitely and begin to talk to some people I know who are there.

27-8.8.82
Paul's Dad.
I'm working on my Nietzsche play 'Ecce Homo' at Paul (Donlan)'s house. He goes to bed and I carry on working. His dad comes down in the morning and is annoyed to see that I'm still there and haven't gone to bed. He pisses me off wkth all his usual comments and I get so fed up I start kicking him but I've only got socks on and no matter how hard I kick I can't hurt him and he only laughs.
A typical 'impotence' dream.

27-8.8.82
Cambridge.
I go to a concert and sit in a posh box next to a girl who I find myself getting on very well with. We arrange to meet at the Cambridge V Chelsea match. I go off to Phil's, where I'm staying, and go out for some chips. Looking at my watch, I find that the match starts in five minutes so I hurry to the theatre (which looks like the Albert Hall) and up to the second tier. Through one of the doors I can hear someone doing a radio commentary of the match, so I go down a floor and discover they have taken out all the seats: I stand up to watch the match and can't see the girl. Suddenly it's a King Crimson concert. They play Lark's Tongues in Aspic, Part One and all the people begin to dance in a very ballet-like fashion.

20-21.8.82
The Recreation Ground.
Mark Beckett called for me to see if I was playing football (I was living in No. 120, Longsight, Harwood). I walked down the road with him but as we were getting near the rec. he started necking with some girl, then said that I should go ahead and play anyway and he would be the referee. I asked one of the blokes who was on the park if I could play. He laughed and said that I wouldn't stand much chance on my own. There seemed to be a ruls that you had to be in a team before you could play and he wouldn't accept the argument that teams could be formed through different combinations of individuals.

2-3.9.82
Tennis
I was playing tennis vs. Mark and a girl. I thought I'd lost 0-6 but Mark told me it was 1-5. I prepared to serve and psyche myself up for the situation. I was rudely awoken by Liz's elephantine stumblings at 8.30 so I'll never know who won.

4-5.9.82
The End of the World
Liz arrived home and started moaning about the note on her door. I got pissed off and yelled at her about 2" from her face then I stormed out. I went for a walk up a strange, cobbled street and had the feeling that everything was coming to an end. There was a red glow over the place. A Pakistani girl approached me and we had sex, in the normal position at first and then, before I came, I withdrew and finished it off from behind.

16-17.9.82
Vivienne
I'm with Vivienne. We've taken a walk to the back of a house and are lying down in a field looking into its expansive garden which includes an ornamental pond with a wooden bridge across it. She says she is thinking of leaving home and I encourage her to do so. All the time we talk we are stroking each other in a sexual way but nothing more develops. (This time occurs at the time when my thoughts are full of Jo and Kate, etc...)

25-26.9.82
Africa
I am planning to go away somewhere and we are all packing. I go into Jon's (Andy's mate's) room to get some books to read and Jo's mum shouts at me. I feel very put out. Jo comes to borrow some money off me and I reluctantly lend her ten pounds even though I have over a hundred. I set off for a walk (it is about 3.00 in the morning) from Reading to Cemetery Junction where I plan to walk dwon West Africa street. All the roads are dark but W. Africa street is even darker. I walk down it (it turns out to be a narrow ginnel) and turn back after a short while, hearing footsteps behind me. But I'm not afraid as I see the silhouette of a policeman and policewoman walking across the entrance of the street. I walk back home past a pillar box (which says something) and a garage where another policewoman is talking to a suspect.

26-27.9.82
1) West Ham
I'm going to see Chelsea. Someone (Pete's mate) suggests we go to get West Ham tickets. We do so, forgetting that I have a Chelsea shirt on. Someone shouts out "Afternoon, gents" and this signals the start of a running-the-gauntlet type escape down the street.
2) The Igloo
I go to meet a friend who lives in a two-storey igloo. He goes out but his neighbour comes in and asks to buy some acid. I know my friend has some (and the guy upstairs) but nothing else about it. "Still, it's gratifying to think that even out here in the igloos everyone's into acid" He agrees and rolls a joint.
(This dream must be due to Andy's plans to move to the Shetlands)

2-3.10.82
The Shetland Synthesiser
I visit Mark (Ellis) who is living in one corner of a large room in a house. He has developed a new synthesiser which he calls 'The Shetland'

5-6.10.82
Seduction
I am visiting a girl (Claire?) She suggests we go to the pub with the people next door, three girls and a bloke, as it turns out. One of the girls obviously fancies me and spends the rest of the dream seducing me as we walk back down the road to someone's house for coffee.

19-20.10.82
Driving
I borrow Pete (Greet)'s van for an evening though I can't drive. I bring it back and park it in Radstock Road though I later decide to move it into Manchester Road where I park it very badly. I have a lot of dope in the van. A police van pulls me over but thankfully it goes awaywithout them questioning me. I go into No. 46 leaving dope and stuff in the van and come bck out to find the police there again. I admit I haven't got a license and say I was jsut moving it down the road for a friend. 29-30.10.82 Three Girls
A long complicated dream with a farcical sort of plot about which I can only remember this much: there are two hosues, adjoined. I am in a room in one of them with other people who keep moving about from one house to the next. There are three girls among these people all of whom want to sleep with me. A sort of game develops. Though they all appear to be uninterested and continue getting up and walking out from time to time, we all realise that only one can sleep with me and only when the other two are not present. No sex occurs before I wake up, unfortunately.
This dream may seem to me more confusing than it really is.

23-24.11.82
Munich
I am about to set off for Munich with Pete Greet and Sam. I am asked to take a bag of dope and a small packet of diamonds with me, but I am extremely apprehensive about this. Also, there is nowhere for me to leave my bike (we're cycling the first part of the way, apparently). All sorts of confusion as I try to think what to tkae with me.

28-29.11.82
Sleeping Bags
I leave a house in which an orgy is going on on a motorbike on a sunny afternoon. I go to a farm and talk in Somerset vernacular to a farmer, asking him the way to Longsight. On my way through the old barn I stumble across piles of spleeping bags being sorted out. Brown are 4cc and blue are 2cc (whatever that means). I am talked into buying one and I leave with it, returning to the orgy (or perhaps going to a different one).