SammyTheSnake

I'm with my parents and a smattering of other family members in Shrewsbury, visiting grandparents. We're going on a day trip in the car to Ypres. I say to Dad, isn't Ypres in Belgium of something, and he says no, it's just down the road. Who knew? Apparently it's a giant war museum these days because it was all but destroyed in the second world war.

In the way we stop at some traffic lights and Dad hops out to pee in a bush (world's smallest bladder) and the lights go through several changes but it's not our turn for a while, but when it gets to our turn I'm shooting out the window for dad to stop faffing about (by this time he's standing in the middle of the road looking at clouds or something. There are several cars behind us waiting for us to get on with it!

Eventually, we pull up at the end of an inauspicious country land onto a grassy parking area. There's a massive, grandiose but partially ruined Gothic edifice that appears to be the official entrance, it's somewhat reminiscent of the hollow shell of Coventry's old cathedral but made of a very blackened limestone.

We go inside and look at the entrance fee and rules. It's only a couple of quid, but we're only allowed to spend two hours there which we all agree is a stupid rule. We go in and are on a coach driving through abandoned houses and other buildings, most have bricked up windows presumably to preserve them. I think that the rule about only spending 2 hours here sends even sillier given the obvious size of the place.

The coach stops and we all pile out into a slightly fake looking street full of period shops with mannequins depicting typical historical activities. There's a tour guide who starts telling stories about the various buildings and other features. Somehow we've ended up with a Dutch speaking group so u don't understand much of the tour guide's stories, only catching that apparently the rule for washing was that you must use exactly 37 wipes of your flannel.

I investigate a couple of the shops, the signage is all in English and I furrow my Bros trying to decide whether that is surprising or not. One of the shops seems to be a working but historically themes gift shop with the people behind the counter in character as people of a bygone era. Another is apparently undergoing some kind of fitting out and is essentially empty but for a woman moving boxes and such around.

To one side of the street is a broad stream which on closer inspection turns out to have large alligators in it. There's a boy standing right by the edge of the water and I'm concerned that he might get attacked by an alligator. As I'm trying to decide if I should do sobering about that, I realise he's now walking along the back of one of the alligators and reaches down to rub the back of its head! The alligator seems to be happy enough with that and even rolls over for a belly rub! As I look closer, I realise that all the alligators have badly deformed snouts, most of them look like they've suffered some kind of fairly severe and partially healed crush injury. I figure with some confusion that these crocs have been selected (or maybe even deliberately inured) in order to be "safe" in this place.

Harriet is here and reaches up to hold my hand, which I accept with a smile and we walk off into a gentle waking up...

Dream 1 - Soapy Jack takes down the evil accountants.
I'm in the offices of a small accountancy firm where everything seems to be done by hand. At first I think I've got a temporary job there and just get on with the work, categorising expenses and revenue under nominal codes and all the rest of the boring crap accountants are famous for being boring for. After a while I realise there are some key gaps in my understanding that I would have known if I'd been through the basic introductory training and I rationalise this by saying I must have missed that because I'm an undercover agent!

[I think I woke up here and rejoined the dream in a later dream but I remember it as one dream.]

I'm back at the offices outside of office hours possibly to steal some secret paperwork or some other spy like activity and I realise there are several people already here and they've rumbled me. There are 4-5 of them and they all know kung fu, but so do I, so BRING IT ON! We start doing kicks and flips and blocks and the like, I realise that being outnumbered means I have to be creative, so I start throwing staplers and iPhones and anything else that might slow them down enough to make their attacks manageable, I manage a couple of knock down blows and then dive through the window, grabbing the paperwork on my way and run off into the night.

When I wake up, I'm left with the impression that for some reason my character's name is Soapy Jack. No idea what that's about...

Dream 2 - Shopping is complicated:
I'm at the checkout at Tesco with a trolley full of shopping. I start putting items on the conveyor and reach to get a "next customer please" divider, the little track they're normally on has been used for various little items that people decided they didn't want to buy after all, but there is a divider among the creme eggs and other random bits and bobs.

As the customer before me finishes up and leaves and it's my turn, I realise I left my reusable bags in my car. I ponder just using the disposable bags but my car is parked in the near side of the carpark, so I say to the chap manning the till "do you mind if I nip to my car and get my bags, I'll be literally less than two minutes" and I dash out while he blips my items.

The next thing I know, I'm pulling up in my car at home and realise I just drove home on autopilot rather than getting my bags and the checkout guy has been left waiting!

I rush back to apologise and retrieve my shopping. I get a bit distracted and pick up a couple if other things to buy. At the checkout I ask what happened to my shopping and somebody explains that they finished blipping it and put it in the trolley over by the customer service desk where I can pay for it.

This seems like a good idea and I say thank you but it turns out they want to charge me a fee for their trouble and don't want to tell me how much it is. I wake up confused!


Dream 3 - Sneaking through back gardens:
[I had made notes on this with my voice recorder but managed to l lose the recording, so this is somewhat vague and brief.]

I'm at the bottom of a largeish suburban garden, sneaking through, I climb over fences and through bushes and brambles. After going through half a dozen gardens, I start to climb a flagpole or mobile phone mast or something. At the top I perch on a spar that sticks out the side and watch some kids playing in the garden below. There's some conversation with the kids but I can't recall any of it...

NLD:
I'm outside a building I don't actually turn around to see but appears to be a train station. I have my bike with me and I'm planning to cycle home, but feel like I should show my train pass before I go anyway. I hang around in a fenced of area just over the road where a bus is due to arrive to replace a missing train, muttering under my breath about how poorly arranged this train station appears to be (I do this in real life, too!)

When the bus appears, I have to squeeze past to get to the door to show my ticket (thinking back, the location if the door means this bus was left hand drive) The conductor chap is puzzled by my explanation of why I'm showing him my ticket, and I feel like a chump for waiting around when it seems I needn't have bothered.

I go back across the road to get on my bike, noticing that it's just starting to get a bit dark, just enough that I'd rather have my lights on to avoid SMIDSY.

I reach over to get my helmet (hanging on the fence) and when I turn back my bike has been replaced by a large silver car (a Mondeo, I think) This doesn't phase me at all. (I have a memory of going to buy the car but I think this is a retrospective justification or an insert from a different dream) I get into the left hand side of the car and have to reach quite far forward to pull the door shut.

I think I ought to drive super gently because this is a new car and because I don't want to give Emma any excuse to criticise my driving. I briefly think that I should put my bike lights on, but remember that my bike is a car now and has headlights!

I head off on a dirt track, because it's too tight to turn around and take the obvious route home. I try to work out how to get from the dirt track to the main road and see several other cars on a parallel track looking like they know the way but I can't get to their track. I decide that I can just keep going on this track and that eventually it will turn into a residential area and beyond that will be a main road. I have to dodge a couple of mutters coming the other way at high speed. Just as the track gains tarmac, I catch up with a couple of other cars, who then look like they're turning off to the left into a race track. I can't resist joining them out of curiosity. I think this might be a prefect chance to satisfy my need for speed in a low risk environment.

Coming up the drive I have some difficulty with the gears, accidentally ending up in third at very low speed, then struggling with clutch control, feeling like a early as I hold up the car behind, given that I'm trying to drive impeccably.

I get to the track and park my car as out of the way as possible so I can find somebody in charge and find out what the costs are etc. They'd a sign up saying entrance is free, so I have a look over the fence to see what's going on. There are people racing around on skateboards, so I won't be able to drive today and I turn around to leave.

My car seems to have taken on board my desire to park out of the way and had shrunk down and transformed into a motorbike helmet. I briefly pounder the dream physics of getting into the car on is reduced form and turning around when the full sized firm would be overlapping with the building I parked next to. I turn the helmet sound and move it away from the building so that there won't be a conflict when it returns to full size.

I drive off on a tarmac road, following a series of junctions while trying to get a grip on this new car. There are a variety of controls around the steering wheel, one of which spears to be some kind of military device, but I can't work out what. There's a key for it in the driver's door pocket, and even the key has a little lock on it. I have no idea where the key for the key lock is. Also in the door pocket are some audio tapes, the car soars to have a take player, how quaint.

After following the road around a bit, I pull into a supermarket carpark over a huge speed bump. The car skids a coupe of times barely missing boards and other cars. I manage to react to the skids and avoid crashing, but only just. I think how it would be a good idea to find a nice open part of the carpark to practice, but it's a very small carpark. I head out passing an employee of the supermarket on the way out.

I wrestle with the gears again, the clutch send to be reluctant to grip at low speed and I think about what people will think about me buying a car without checking such basics. The dashboard of the car has lots of gizmos, glowing lights that react to my driving, a fuel consumption disk that shows me when in using too much, a radio that appears to be from my old Mondeo and is still tuned into my choice of station.

Fragment:
Discussing the former dream with my dad, then waking up to find I'm running late because I turned my alarm off instead of snoozing!

SammyTheSnake

I'm in a car park, or possibly at the side of a road with cars parked alongside. I remember that I was going to turn cars over as a demonstration of superhuman strength. MrPriority is with me and it becomes a competition to see who can do the most impressive car flip. I start with a smallish car and turn it onto its side fairly easily. I move on to a larger car, perhaps a Mondeo. I hope to turn it right over. It nearly tips onto its roof but I lose momentum and it trays on its side like the first.

I move on again to an estate car, picking it over a couple of others as they're parked in and there's nowhere to flip them over into. As I'm turning it over I notice there's a man in the driver's seat and I hesitate a little bit but I know this competition takes that into account, so I carry on. The car ends up testing against a bus and there are several family members in the car. A small child has fallen out of the car and is such between the car and the bus, so I help to retrieve it unharmed.

An additional fragment: I remember there being a salamander. No idea what the rest of the dream was, just the salamander...