Hope dream

Ellen and I were attending a family gathering in a country house -- that's to say, it was a gathering of somebody's family; I don't think we knew many of the people there. Perhaps because of that, we'd elected to look after people's kids while the grown-ups went off for a walk or hung out elsewhere in the grounds.

I noticed that one of the kids we were looking after was Hope, the newish baby of my friends, Alan and Jane. The other thing I noticed was that, somehow, she was sitting on a grassy embankment that sloped up from the top of a nearby wall. How on earth had she managed that when she's only a matter of months old?

I went over to the wall and asked her how she got up there. She explained that she'd flown up there, and could fly down again, too, but only if I closed my eyes. That was important, because she's only able to fly when no one can see her.

It seemed fair enough, so I closed my eyes until she told me to open them again, whereupon I saw that she was down on the ground beside me.

Pretty smart kid.

Notes for Freudian Interpretation

The day I had this dream, I'd seen this picture of me and Hope on Alan's Flickr site. In it, I'd twisted my hair into a peculiar quiff in mocking imitation of the remarkable spike of hair that Hope was sporting that day. What kind of feeble individual mocks a six-month-old baby girl? She doesn't look too impressed with me, that's for sure.

The other element, about looking after people's kids at a family gathering, is no doubt inspired by the rather kid-heavy time I had when we went down to Canterbury for Ellen's brother's 50th birthday event the other week. Somehow or other (probably because I don't like to say no to children, or even know how, really) I ended up talking pretty much constantly about fairies to a couple of Ellen's nieces, who believed me to be the world's greatest authority on the subject, with my expertise being matched only by their enthusiasm.

The unseen-flying business, I can't explain. Not a bad idea, though.