A dream of digging up the past
Another very strange dream last night. This time I was back in the village I used to live in and I was wandering around seeing how everything looked. It was pretty much the same as I knew it, only some of the road was being dug up by JCB diggers. I walked past that area and made my way to my friend Ben’s house.
I haven’t seen Ben for years but I recently found him on Facebook, so I suppose that’s why I was dreaming of him. I had my old skateboard with me for some reason and I was keen to skate to Ben’s house.
When I got there, I pulled the hood on my hoodie up over my head and went to the front door. Ben answered and we chatted. I noticed that he was wearing the exact same blue hoodie as I was. Ben’s mum then appeared and said that I looked like Frank Sinatra. The whole thing was totally surreal.
Ben was all grown up, but I don’t know why I had gone to see him and not somebody else. The hoodie I was wearing was my favorite jumper for about three years. There were so many flashes to the past in this dream, but I don’t understand why they were digging up the road. Maybe that signals that nothing stays the same.
Back to the village
Last night’s main dream was in a familiar setting. I have these dreams every so often. They are set in the village I grew up in, Southwick, in the south-west of England. In this village there were all these quiet roads and cul-de-sacs where we used to play football, tennis, manhunt, and so on.
In my dream, I was with two friends – I think it was Katie and James – and we were all grown up, just walking around the village. My memories of that village and the houses are very vivid, so everything was there in great detail. It felt good to be back there, and though I don’t think any of us were speaking, each of us was reminiscing about our childhoods.
We got to one house and there was a tall figure, all grown up: It was John Ballantine, but some reason I thought his name was Burbage. I used to know another kid called John Burbage, but he was a lot younger than John Ballantine and I wasn’t really friends with him. I called his (incorrect) name: “Burbage! Burbage!” He was standing at the foot of his drive smiling. I haven’t seen him for more than ten years, so I really don’t know what he’d look like, but in my dream his hair was a lot calmer than it used to be. When I knew him, he had this kind of manic, afro-like hair; in my dream he had it cut short and looked quite respectable.
That was all I can remember about this dream. It was a happy dream, as dreams of my childhood always are, although they are always mixed with melancholy because they are of people I will likely never see again.
The Nintendo that never was
The mind can be a cruel thing. The most disappointed I have ever been after waking up from dreaming was when I was around nine-years-old. It was Easter in the real world, and in my dream my mum had arranged an Easter egg hunt, only instead of Easter eggs she had hidden a Nintendo Entertainment System and a number of NES games around mine and my brother’s bedroom. I was overjoyed at the prospect of finding a NES, and sure enough, I opened my sock drawer to be greeted by a brand new copy of Super Mario Bros. It was a fantastic moment, and one that had been a long time coming because my friend had had a Sega Mastersystem for some time already. All I had in the real world were those little LCD games that have a lifespan of around two days before children get bored.
I eventually found my NES under my bed and was ecstatic that my desires had come true. I would be the envy of my friends, and I would have a kickass games console in my own bedroom, or in the living room at least (where there was a TV). It all came crashing down as I woke up. The disappointment was immense. I had held a NES in my hands; it had been mine; but alas, it was just a dream.
A child’s own fantasies can result in the most bitter of disappointments, but this time the disappointment was created entirely by the child himself.
Old friends
Last night I dreamt that I was with my best friends from secondary school, Tom, Ed, Julian, and George. They looked exactly as they did the last time I saw them some two years ago. We were out drinking in a pub and were sat in a beer garden. I had a drink of very flat beer, but Ed had a bottle of vodka with him. He poured everyone glasses of vodka redbull, but by the time he got to me he’d run out of vodka. I was frustrated, so I threw the flat beer out of my glass and stormed off.
I walked towards a low wall and jumped over it into a typical English field. I was wearing an old hoodie that I used to wear every day. I pulled the hood up over my head because it was so cold. I decided to go to a shop. The field sloped downwards and I strolled down the hill and found a shop where I planned to buy vodka and something to eat. Outside there were nothing but green apples. I decided I would eat some of the apples and was experiencing the sensation of eating large, juicy Granny Smiths. However, the old, green door to the shop was shut. I looked in through the window and the only thing inside there was a large double bed. The best had no sheets or duvet on it, just an exposed mattress. I stared at the bed for a long time and then woke up.
Starting a new job
I haven’t added to this blog for some time. There is one dream, though, that I wanted to write about. It was set in my old primary school in the south of England. I saw a girl whom I recognised and I called out her name, “Rebecca!” Rebecca was my first real crush as a young boy, and she was my girlfriend for about two or three weeks I think.
Rebecca was wearing a suit and looked very tidy, I on the other hand was wearing a pair of old jeans and a hoodie and felt a little inferior. She didn’t hear me at first, but eventually she turned round and said, “Are you Byron’s brother?” This would be a strange thing for her to say because she didn’t really know my brother. At this point I noticed she was with another man, also wearing a suit, who stood behind her watching. I assumed this man to be her boyfriend and I felt insanely jealous of him. He didn’t speak; he just watched.
I felt shabby in my old clothes. We were in a field and for some reason I did a couple of backward rolls (like kids do in gym class). Rebecca promised she’d be back in a few minutes, and then I woke up.
Rebecca is not representing herself here. When I think of Rebecca I think of desire and dreams. She is wearing a suit which may symbolize work, and as I have just started a new job this seems to fit. At the moment I feel a little inferior to my job and the other people at work. The man watching over Rebecca perhaps symbolises the reality that although I have this job, everything is not as secure as I have convinced myself. Doing a couple of backward rolls could be a way of distancing myself from reality.
Dreaming of the future with the past
I had this dream during an afternoon nap. The night before I’d had a lot of strange dreams, including one in which I was Homer Wells from The Cider House Rules. My dream this afternoon saw me back in school. I was at “university”, but the university was actually a school. It was the John of Gaunt School in the south of England, which is the secondary school that I was supposed to go to. The John of Gaunt School is a state school, but I ended up going to a private school about ten miles away. With hindsight, this was a move that I benefited from greatly (thanks, Mum) but at the time I was dead set on going to the same place all my friends were going to. When you’re eleven-years-old you don’t have much vision.
Back to the dream, and I walked into my first class to be greeted by a room completely full of students. I think everyone was around my age, but the only seat was one that faced in the opposite direction to the way the others were facing. I sat down and found myself at the same desk as David Blake, whom I went to primary school with. He was a good friend of mine when I was younger, although I haven’t seen him for a very long time.
As it transpired, David was my partner for our first project. We were filling out a form, and on that form you could write down if you would rather have a different partner. I’d left that part of my form blank, but David had written down three or four names of people he wanted to work with instead of me; I was both surprised and offended at this. I started to think of names I could write down. I looked around the classroom and thought there were far too many people there and that I was somehow better than this university. I didn’t think I’d be able to learn much so I stood up and walked over to the lecturer. I handed him my paper and said something like: “I’m walking out of your class because I’m better than this.”
I was then in the hallway and I was free. Yet another dream about school. The John of Gaunt School is a place I associate with low academic standards. As arrogant as it sounds, I think of failure when I think of that school, because if I’d gone there I think maybe my life would have turned out rather differently. That’s just my opinion. I was sitting the wrong way, so I assume that I didn’t belong there. Walking out of the class was a bold move. When I think of David Blake I’m reminded of playing football and not much else. David was a very selfish player, and he rarely passed the ball, although he was much better than almost everyone.
Putting this dream in the context of my life, at the moment I feel like I need to be somewhere I can learn more. I need to make a bold move to go somewhere new and start a new job, which I am in the process of doing. I don’t want to end up a failure and not achieve everything I can. I’ve recently quit my job and may be leaving Bangkok in the near future.
Boom! goes the Hummer
I can only really remember one significant part of this dream, but it was so vivid that I think it must hold some significance. The scene was very clear. I was in the lower car park of my secondary school, and it was exactly as it was when I was there (and not how it is now). There were lots of cars in the car park, and then I noticed my old friend Katie Ridewood (whom I went to primary school with). She was all grown up (I’ve not seen her for more than ten years) and she had a match in her hand. She took of one of the petrol caps from one of the cars, and she threatened to drop the lighted match inside. I begged her not to, and she listened to me.
I was relieved, but then the next thing I new she had lit another match and walked over to a yellow Hummer. She dropped the match in through the hole where she had removed the petrol cap and BOOM! The thing exploded. It was a massive explosion. The Hummer and Katie disappeared, and all that was left was a huge circle of thick, black power that covered everything within range. I was covered in it too, and I started to cough.
I remember there was some sort of investigation after the explosion by a group of teachers, but the rest of the dream is fairly vague. I’ve not got time to try and analyse this now, but I will at some point because this dream was quite interesting.
Reminding me of home
A short dream this time, and another one shrouded in darkness. I dreamt that I was in the kitchen of the house I lived in as a child. The room was very small, and I was holding some sort of sleepover with my friends, although nobody was asleep. There were a few people in the room, just sitting around on sofas and the floor, and all the lights were turned off. People were passing around a remote control for a television set, but no matter how much I wanted it, the remote never came to me. I was annoyed by this.
The next thing I remember from the dream is that everyone was asleep, and I noticed that one of the people sitting on a sofa was Tom Bronwrigg, a guy I went to secondary school with. He wasn’t a close friend, just someone I knew really. Some sort of ball, like a balloon, floated down to him and landed on his head, and he hit it up in the air to someone else in a kind of game.
The kitchen makes me think of happy times as a child. The remote control reminds me of British television, which I miss dearly and don’t get to see much of in Bangkok. The fact that I couldn’t get the remote may symbolise that I miss home and feel that home is somehow out of my reach. England does feel very distant, and I would love to go back there to see the place again, but not to stay. I don’t know what I associate with Tom Bronwrigg.
I’d say that there are things about home that I miss, but that I don’t really think I can get back. The times we had sleepovers are some of my fondest memories, but they are not times that could be recreated. Do I miss being a child? I’d certainly relate the game of keeping a ball in the air to something children do.
A dream about proving myself
In one of last night’s dreams I was playing football in a field with a group of people. It was a typical English field, but not one that I remember ever going to. The day was fairly overcast, and I couldn’t really see whom I was playing with. At one point I noticed that a guy called Ed Holden was in my dream. I went to secondary school with Ed. He was picking on in the dream me and being quite mean, and in the end, four of us who had been playing football started playing field hockey, while the others around us carried on with their game.
Ed was taunting me and I began feeling like I had something to prove. I kept missing the ball, but pretended like I was only practicing, as you do in golf. I got so pissed off with Ed that I launched the hockey ball so high into the sky that it went over the roof of a house. I watched as it bounced twice on the roof, and then came down the front of the house landing on the windshield of a car, again bouncing twice (four bounces in all). A great fear rose up inside me and the dream started to darken, both in the literal and figural sense.
I became aware that the house belonged to James Veale, who was my best friend in primary school. I was supposed to be staying over at his house, and now I was worried about what his dad would say about me cracking his car’s windshield (the car was red). Nobody had seen the crack at this point except me, and I thought maybe nobody would notice.
James’ Dad then opened the front door of his house and screamed: “It’s not just dirty! It’s CRACKED!” The fear I felt then was very real, and I did the only thing I could think to do, which was to fly away somewhere I could not be found. I hid somewhere dark, although I’m not sure where I was exactly.
This dream raised a number of issues. It was another dream with people in it whom I have not seen for many years. Ed Holden was someone I’d always liked, but I wasn’t particularly good friends with him. As we approached the end of school I thought he’d become a little bit arrogant, but he was a good guy. The one thing I still associate with Ed is a comment he said to me once about a girlfriend who had cheated on me. His comment was rather offensive, even though it was off the cuff. Having recently broken up with my girlfriend (who didn’t cheat on me), this could explain Ed’s presence.
Playing hockey was something I always enjoyed and was good at, but as I got older I began to feel more intimidated by other players, and my game slipped completely between year 11 and year 12. I was afraid to really play (especially with new people whom I was unfamiliar with) for fear of being made to look bad. My life at the moment is riddled with fear of failure in a world much bigger than myself. I usually put this fear to the back of my mind.
Attempting to prove myself to Ed in my dream may be me trying to prove myself to the girl who is most on my mind at the moment, as well as trying to show the world something about my abilities. Breaking the windshield and the subsequent fear could be linked to the fear I feel at the moment as I prepare to leave my job and maybe leave the country in which I live. I’m afraid to fail, and flying away was my way of hiding from the realities of life, which I have been doing somewhat by pretending that everything will be fine, when deep down I know there are many things that are rather uncertain right now. The dream was rather gloomy, so I’d say it represents something about my apprehensions about the future and about wanting to achieve, but being afraid to put myself into unfamiliar places for fear of failure or not being accepted. I think I also fear rejection by my ex-girlfriend, with whom I still speak every day.
I’m unsure why the car was red, or why the number ‘four’ made an appearance. Money, work, life, girls: those are four things I said were prominently on my mind just a few weeks ago. When I think of a red car, I think of something that stands out, particularly in Thailand where most cars tend to be dark in colour. Could the car be a part of me, wanting to stand out in an otherwise graying world?