Last night I dreamt that I was watching a fellow tutor, John, in a cine film. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt and had Shawshank redemption glasses on and the tenor of the scene suggests it was the sixties. He was sitting in a bullet shaped sidecar with three babies and a terrier. The babies were playing pat-a-cake with the terrier as she stood on her hind legs and two dead babies were kept in coffins under them.
Hanif Kureishi describes women who read cookery books in bed as ardour dampening. Talking about dreams is also meant to be a very efficient way of ruining a relationship boring your partner: they will be thinking about how much they are going to bid for their moleskin plus fours on EBay while you are describing the finer aspects of the colour of the hummingbirds that landed in the river Orwell last night.
I have a friend who finds anything maritime so dull he can’t think about getting an erection.
Each person’s list will be different In The Singing detective Peter Marlowe tries to stop himself from getting and erection as the nurse wipes unguent on his body by thinking of: The Blue Peter dog, Women’s Hour, Tax returns, George Formby.
I worry that anyone I love will be bored by the constant mention of my father and the dreams that are more real than my daytime feelings
Conscious fears:
Is my boat sinking?
I should lose some weight
Will I end up childless?
I would be a dreadful mother
I don’t want to be homeless
I would like to live somewhere different
Is my cat depressed?
I will never find someone I can marry
Unconscious:
Is my father living in the room where the landlord keeps his furniture?
I am frightened of the old school I live in. Sleeping here on my own. I am writing this at 2 am. The high windows that I know are outside my room. The new glass replacing the old that was shattered in the war.
I have just run through the black studio needing a wee into the headmaster’s office that is now my loo and home to my zebra finches.
I give the finches old nests and they take them apart and make theirs much better. First they started off with a flimsy cotton wool and parcel-stuffing nest that had huge holes. Then they assimilate a greenfinches nest along with its fag ends and thread. Now they are on a blackbirds nest-which is lined with mud and harder to dissemble.
(Dream) I am making a film of the old school I live in and the ghosts of the children I wanted to film were demanding some kind of equity rights.
Waking logical explanations:
There is a strike at work tomorrow
My boyfriend was teaching film yesterday
I am scared of ghosts
I have just heard of another ex pupil who has died this week