A dream

I was walking through small cobbled streets in a place that wasn't familiar though I'm now thinking it had similarities to Hradčanské Square in Prague. It was a warm, gloriously sunny day and the place must have been set on a hill because the streets were all sloping at a constant gradient, although in different directions. Glancing between buildings to my left, I spotted a massive pale-grey bull, loose and trying to wreak havoc in a street café. I was with someone I didn't know, and the bull hadn't seen us yet.

We ran over and climbed onto a sideboard that suddenly appeared as the streets shifted and morphed into a maze of winding but sharp angled hallways, the sort you might find in a large hotel.

Then I was running through corridors, alone, the sound of violence and chaos somewhere behind me. I leapt onto another work surface but this one was quite rickety so I had to hang off a wall cupboard to avoid falling.

Me and the cupboard were in what seemed to be a kitchen kind of corridor. In an adjacent passage through a doorway was F, my girlfriend from over fifteen years ago, dressed only in her nightshirt and ironing her skirt for work. She was wearing copious amounts of thick, ugly make-up. Just for a moment I had the tiniest echo of that terrifying dream feeling you get when someone is in danger, and no matter how hard you try, you can't shout to warn them. A second later it had gone as though it never existed. Although I was still listening out for the bull and hugging the wall cupboard, it seems the threat had receded leaving a peaceful silence. I looked across at F in her nightshirt, then she seemed to see me so I quickly shifted my gaze to the white emulsioned wall directly ahead as if I'd been looking at this all along. Well it's just impolite to look at someone ironing in a state of undress isn't it?

She looked across and laughed her usual cheeky and friendly little laugh. By now I was standing on a dangerously wobbly washing machine.

Just at that point, while studying the white-washed hallway, clinging to the wall cupboard and balancing precariously on the wobbly washing machine, I woke up. I haven't remembered a dream like this, nor woken up in the middle of one, for ... well it seems like years. I knew I had to write it down immediately otherwise it would disappear so I grabbed my blogging notebook (the bedside one) and began frantically scribbling, rifling through memory, coaxing out all the small details that were about to fade. There were other dream-fragments too but I couldn't stop to examine them without losing this thread. Those other fragments though, they were part of a much larger dream that had almost completely gone by the time I came back to it.

That larger dream had flashes of a much bigger hotel with a small and very crowded restaurant occupying part of the foyer and part of the street.

I was sipping a very small drink in the company of a stranger and we were looking for somewhere to sit. While the guests were comfortably sat on chairs and stools, the only thing available for me was a miniature bean bag. Unfortunately, because bean bags are quite low to the ground, my knees were poking out and it was so crowded that I had to scrunch up to avoid knocking into anyone else. Then suddenly the stranger disappeared and it was just me, the beanbag, my knees and the guests. I don't remember feeling self conscious at all, but suddenly all the guests disappeared and I was standing in a curious small cobbled and bricked alcove just off to the side, looking back on the now empty hotel entrance, and up to its balustraded balconies. The alcove appeared to hold some significance but I've no idea now, what it may have been.

Unfortunately I can't remember anything else although I'm sure this was the very tail end of a much longer dream, one which feels reminiscent of a completely different dream from several months ago that I also couldn't remember at the time and which, until now, I'd completely forgotten about. Oops, I think I got a bit lost there.

Anyhow it's later now and I'm typing this off my blog notes. Haven't got a clue what I'm rambling on about seeing as all these dream threads have completely faded from mind.

Funny things, dreams.