May it was the sleep deprivation. Maybe it was the dregs of adrenaline running through me. Maybe it was the remnants of the theorised drug on their way out of my system. Maybe we really do problem-solve in our sleep. Whatever the cause - biochemical or otherwise - I dreamt vividly and somewhat randomly last night - this morning, rather - images unsurprisingly along the Lost and Late theme, desperately searching for Something and, for some reason, accompanied by bright blue snails with wise, sarcastic eyes who always got there before me (either that or they cheated and there were actually loads of them and they all pretty much looked the same). All up until the last quadrant, that is.
I’d started following a boisterous silver stream out of the school and into some rocky terrain. It then got seriously foresty and I was fighting my way through undergrowth and thorny bits and all sorts and come to think of it those bloody blue snails were there too - up the trunks of trees and placidly making their way along the riverbank. I really had to fight, sometimes, to stay alongside the river, coz obviously lots of things like to grow by rivers.
It was dark in a cartoony kind of way, if you know what I mean, and the sensation of fighting my way through these things was very much akin to being hit in the face and generally around the head with old clothes.
My hands, though, were taking a battering - scratched and gnarly-feeling they became, and I seemed to be either setting up a running commentary or having an argument with someone about how it was all progressing; the words were vines in my mouth, pulled through from side to side, across my tongue, and similarly through my hands, across my palms.
And then I (and the snails) was out of the woods and on what looked to be a gently sloping hillside. The silver stream ran off left; ahead of me a figure in grey sat on a rock, looking away over the landscape.
She was singing. And she turned in my general direction as I approached. It was a tune I recognised. Her voice was surprisingly pure for the warmth it radiated.
Huna blentyn, ar fy mynwes
Clud a chynes ydiw hôn.
Breichiau mam sy dy’n amdanat
Cariad mam sy dan fy mrôn...
And so it went on. It’s a beautiful tune and I knew I knew it. She finished, looking into my face.
“Oh,” I said, “I love that song! It was in...” I groped, “Royal Hunt of the Sun.”
“Empire of the Sun, yes,” she smiled. “It’s a lullaby.”
“Really? But look - I don’t understand. Why am I dreaming about a Welsh lullaby? I don’t even know what the words mean. I’m not Welsh.”
“Sorry.” She sounded diffident.
“It’s just not really a significant part of my childhood, that’s all I’m saying.”
“Who says this is about your childhood?” Her hands stayed folded in her lap and her face calm. She was wearing shades of a russet brown as well as the grey. Was that a grey cloak? I had no idea who she was supposed to be.
“I have no idea who you’re supposed to be.”
“I’m here so you can have an exchange with part of yourself that you’ve neglected.”
“This is awfully up-front for a dream, isn’t it?”
“Well, you’re eidetic - symbolism seems like a bit of a wasted effort when you remember everything anyway.”
“Except when I don’t.”
She nodded. “Except when you don’t.” She looked around. “Lovely day.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” she said, “really.”
She gestured and we looked around. My protests melted in the warmth of the sun. Bunnies gambolled. There were butterflies. Birdsong now threaded bright through the air from the somehow now-receded wood.
“Good grief,” I said, “what is this place?”
“You so rarely visit,” she said, and the sadness she felt was all for me. That little mourning only deepened the blue of the sky and intensified the birdsong. I reflected that I must be mental not to come here more often. I looked around again at the wildflowers nodding in the gentle breeze and their attendant, humming bees. The blue snails munched away, scattered like cerulean gems or bits of pottery in the grass.
“Listen,” I said, “about these snails...?”
“They brought you here, if you look at this in its most essential way.”
“But why?”
“That’s actually the least important question.”
“I...” She stood up, finally, and came closer. It probably was a cloak.
“Ssssh.” She leant forward on her toes and kissed me. “You have it all now, you just need to put it together.” She smelt like wool, wood and wildflowers. “Besides, someone’s trying to get your attention.”
I was distracted by her proximity. “What?”
She nodded over my right shoulder, smiling. “The phone?”
I turned my head over my right shoulder.
She turns over onto her right side. The phone is chirruping and shaking and flashing and saying Sal. She groans.
“Oh... bhhh...”
I fumbled for the handset.
“Ylo?” I cleared my throat.
“I knew it!” Sal’s voice was worryingly clear and horrifyingly loud.
“Whuh?”
“You’ve forgotten we were meeting today. I’ve woken you, haven’t I?”
“Shit! Shit, Sal, shit, what, what time is it?” I peered frantically at the screen. My heart thumped sickeningly and I felt momentarily divorced from my body as I morphed from panic to incredulity. I jammed the phone back to my ear.
“About 11 o’clock.”
“Then why, bastard, you...?”
“Because it always takes you two hours to get from asleep to meeting, so I thought I’d make sure I don’t...”
“Have I mentioned how sorry I was about that time?” Pause. “Clearly not enough. I’ll, er, get up then.”
“And eat breakfast!”
“Yes, mam. See ya later.”
“Bye.”
Fuck.
Okay. Clean bowl, milk, sniff, meh, hunt down cereal, sigh, hunt down more cereal, slump, combine remnants of both cereals in a bowl and leave a note for Mel.
I’d have made her toast, but Sunday means sleeping in until 2pm, possibly more today, considering I got her up and all. I doubled-back and added a smiley to the note.
Because that makes all the difference, right?
All-in-all, I wasn’t feeling awesome about myself while I brushed my teeth. My karmic balance was possibly the lowest it had been in about seven years, and I didn’t seem to be able to stir my rancid self to pull it up. It also occurred to me - on the subject of virtue - that I had no idea whether to count today as a rest day as - apart from yesterday - I’d no idea what my exercise had been like for the last few days. Mind you, whatever I’d had in mind, today was going to be an exercise rest day. Although I had this sneaking suspicion that there was going to be plenty of aerobic activity. Hopefully no punches to be thrown. Or bricks. I checked the time, sighed and resigned myself to a quick flannel job and back to my bedroom for body-spray and fresh clothes. Except the jacket. I added my bag to my shoulder. I had a feeling it would come in handy, even if just for carrying a bottle of water.
I looked around the room and felt a slight groan escape. Pootle was humming to himself as I hadn’t had the cerebral wherewithal to switch him off before I crashed out. Knowing the horrific price of just unplugging him, I gently joggled his mouse and began the arduous task of shutting down the many research-themed windows that were open. Little hope, now, of continuing my research into myself before I had to do anything about it.
(Yeah, I know - sometimes, for such a clever bastard, I can be really thick...)
Then I was swearing all over again as the thought of last night’s PC-related self-research and the image of walking downstairs into the sunlight of what felt like my last hours as a free woman combined to remind me of a promise made. I grimaced and pulled up Recent Documents again, switching on the printer with my other hand.
Five minutes later I was walking downstairs with a couple of pieces of paper in my hand, all ready to knock on my landlady’s door. P occasionally likes to ask: “How’s Boris?” still riffing on the gag that Doris is a talented cross-dresser and not-so-talented Russian spy who had been abandoned after Glasnost but is still faithfully reporting to Moscow.
This is not the kind of thing I should have in mind when about to speak (quite slowly and clearly) to my landlady. I knocked hard, wincing slightly and resisting the image of pounding the wood with the toe of my boot. For a start, I was wearing my Converse, not my Docs, and I’d come of worse...
Doris shuffled to the door and swung it open, fighting the pile as I fought the usual urge to help by pushing it for her.
“Hi Doris!” I smiled weakly at her and she responded with her somewhat haphazard dental accessories. For some reason best known to her (or maybe not), she’d only stumped up for dentures in the top half, and the stumps of the lower jaw were left to their own devices. It made Mel twitch every time she saw it and I’d learned not to mention it. “I’ve got that letter you wanted me to write for you!”
I handed over the first piece of paper. Doris peered at it and made approving noises, but one of these times I swear I’m going to write “I’m the King of the Banana People” thirty times and see if she makes the same noises and faces. But probably not, though. She seemed pleased enough, as ever, displaying her gaps at me: “It got all I say, yeah, girl?”
“Yes, Doris, and look - here’s another copy so you can keep track.”
“Ineht,” she said approvingly. I started to head towards the front door.
A thought struck me and I turned back. What the hell? “Just out of interest, Doris - I’ve never thought to ask, and I hope you don’t mind...”
“What is, luff?”
“Where are you from - you know, originally?”
“The axen?”
“The accent.”
“We come over from Czechoslovakia when it wor Tiger Bay - us and our parents and the little dog didn make it but you carn av everythin. You know Tiger Bay? Like the film. That coulda bin me dad in tha, only he never killed no-one.”
“Oh. Ok. Thanks.”
“Inneh,” she said, nodding genially. I left, walking dazed into the hazy sunlight.
One of these days I’ll meet someone bloody normal and have a perfectly normal bloody relationship with them for years, I muttered to myself as I made the right turn towards town.