More than you needed to know

Canal Dream

I was walking home from Haymarket up the hill towards my flat. Ellen was with me, but she was riding a bike, so she kept cycling off ahead or taking detours up side streets and around nearby blocks.

I was on my own when I reached the canal and saw that the bridge had been taken away. Another one, further down the canal, had been removed as well, but the old stone bridge off to the right was still there. Evidently, Ellen's detour had taken her across it because she was now on the other side of the canal, cycling towards me. I realised that she couldn't see that the bridge had gone and shouted to her to stop. She couldn't hear me -- or ignored me -- and cycled straight into the canal. As always seems to be the case when some low-level slapstick occurs in my dreams, I stood by, laughing helplessly.

I woke Ellen up by laughing in my sleep. She woke me up to find out what was so funny but seemed somehow unimpressed when I told her...

Notes for Freudian Analysis

We were visiting Ellen's sister in Oxford at the weekend. Yesterday afternoon, I was talking to her about how my plan to use Ellen's bike to cycle to work when the Parliament moves to Holyrood seemed like a good idea until I thought of the all-uphill journey home every night.

Later that night, walking home, Ellen and I stopped to look at the canal, which has just been refilled with water following some nearby construction work.

Freud would no doubt note that the bike appears to be connected in my mind to my future at work and find it significant that, in my dream, it is Ellen who has control of this symbol of career advancement while I merely trudge slowly up a hill that leads back to my house. Thus, Freud might suggest, I acknowledge my lack of ambition in my place of work relative to Ellen's in hers.

If that interpretation is correct, Ellen's tumble into the canal would fit with Freud's understanding of dreams as being the place where we are able to express emotions and thoughts that we will not allow ourselves to recognise consciously. Could it be that my id finds comfort in the idea of Ellen failing in her course of action? Do I, at some level, think that that would justify my lack of any course of action whatsoever?

Freud is a genius, so he's probably right, but if so, I must be an absolute louse!

Bob Dylan

Last night, I dreamed that I was in the Barrowlands, in Glasgow, watching Bob Dylan and his band play some of the most incredible rock and roll I had ever heard. It was completely great.

Notes for Freudian Analysis

Dr Freud is not required, as this dream was clearly caused by the fact that, last night, I was in the Barrowlands, in Glasgow, watching Bob Dylan and his band play some of the most incredible rock and roll I have ever heard. And it was completely great.

I should note that, just after I bought the ticket earlier this month, I dreamed that Bob Dylan was presenting the BBC's Children in Need show. He just sat behind a desk, wearing a cowboy hat and looking uncomfortable.

Reefer Madness

Jim, a colleague of mine, was incredibly depressed and contemplating suicide. Over a quiet pint in a pub, I tried to talk him out of it, becoming quite enthusiastic on the subject of how full of wonderful things life is and, when that didn't seem to be convincing enough, explaining in detail the unpleasant, messy and painful aspects of the various ways of killing yourself.

I presume that I got through to him, one way or another, because, when everyone in the pub started dancing, Jim got up to dance, too. He was quite close to three guys who were smoking joints, one of whom said to another one, "You're so high you could fly like a bird." At that, the one who hadn't spoken threw himself out of the window and, rather than flying, fell to his death several storeys below.

The police arrived and arrested everyone for taking drugs. Subsequently, we were all released apart from Jim. He came to work the next morning protesting his innocence. How come he was the one who was going to have to go to jail when it was the other guys who'd had the drugs? Everything was so unfair.

Notes for Freudian Analysis

Although we get on quite well, I don't often speak to Jim at work and I don't think I've talked to him in a pub more than once in the past couple of years. Oddly, many years before coming to the Parliament, he was my friend Ford's English teacher.

I recently responded to a gloomy and pessimistic e-mail that Ford had sent with what I intended to be a ridiculously chirpy summary of the many great things in the world that make life worth while.

The other day, I passed someone on the street who appeared to be openly smoking a joint. Closer investigation revealed it to be only a herbal cigarette, though.

Japanese dream

A young Japanese couple were driving around a small Thai town, lost. Evidently, I was having one of my film dreams again. Driving through the backstreets, they turned into an old garage by mistake. When they tried to reverse out, they found their way blocked by some menacing men. Then, a tall Japanese man came out of the boarded-up office. At the sight of him, the couple were terrified. Clearly, they were in big trouble.

The scene shifted to Marchmont. I was walking to work past a paint-mixing shop that had been set up to allow young offenders a chance to learn a trade while doing their community service. I was just thinking what a great idea this was when a cardboard dart, soaked in red and blue paint, sailed toward me from the doorway of the shop, landing on my lapel. As the social worker who was in charge of the shop tried to explain how to get the paint out, a voice-over started talking about the lives of the Japanese couple and the dream cut to a montage of scenes from their early lives.

The voice-over explained that they had known each other since they were kids and had been part of a team of skateboarders who had all sorts of Manga-style adventures. When they were older, the boy had written a film script based on their lives but the film company that bought it gave it to someone else to direct. I recognised that director as the man who had stepped out of the office in the first scene and the dream jumped back to the present.

The terrifying director crossed over to the car and made the couple get out. The boy was very scared.

Later that day, the girl was waiting in a room for the boy to come back from wherever he'd gone with the terrifying director. When he arrived, he was dressed as a geisha, but his make-up was terribly smeared. Walking very awkwardly and slowly, he said, "It hurt quite badly."

Notes for Freudian Analysis

With the exception of the Marchmont episode, this dream had a very unpleasant feel and was not at all enjoyable.

I wrote to Colin Burns, who is in Tokyo, yesterday. He'd told me that he had been bathing naked with elderly Japanese men in a bath house. I suppose that that might have some relevance to the off-stage incident at the end of the dream, but I don't think so.