Dream: 23/12/06

It's very hard to capture that bizarre, real-but-not-real quality of dreams, so I thought it might be worth recording some of my actual dreams as a sort of reference. Here's the first I've written down:

I was involved in some sort of experiment, which was being run by a teacher apparently as something to do with school. (But not my school.) We were trying to discover the source of a ghost or supernatural emanation of some kind: a man in a blindfold.

We all had to gather in a sort of school hall or village hall, in a large circle of chairs. I knew some of the people there but not others.

I had a breakthrough: I found some old black-and-white film footage taken in WWII. It showed some grubby, urchin-like boys in the rubble of a bombed city, all gathered around a man in the centre of the frame. he may have been injured: he was wearing a bandage around his eyes like a blindfold. There was a rough star shape drawn (carved?) on his forehead – or it might even have been a flaw in the lens. As we were watching, the film closed in on this star, which suddenly burst with light, sending beams of bright light out from each of its 'arms'.

A homeless man arrived in the hall one night. He had nowhere to go. I was in a room off the main hall, which was visible through some windows. I said he could sit down in one of the chairs in the circle. I asked if he wanted something to eat.

'No thanks,' he said, 'We've got some sponge.' And I saw through the glass that his friend was already sitting in the circle, cutting up a sponge cake. He lifted it and grinned...

This is a good example of the way dreams can move between the almost mystical strangeness or frightening imagery into something like farce. It's a quality Alec and I have discussed for the book. You just have to be careful not to descend into complete whimsy, I think.