SammyTheSnake

I'm in my childhood home and I'm late leaving to get to college. I briefly converse with my sister about it then rush to get ready.

I faff about with my bike for a bit checking I've got air in my tyres and have my lights in place etc. I start cycling and it's really hard work, in pushing really hard on the pedals and barely moving, it feels like my legs are really tied and still asleep. I look down at the gears and hear levers and try to work out what hear I'm in and how to change to a lower gear, which I eventually manage after getting thoroughly confused.

Once I'm under way I realise I've probably missed the train I was going to catch and decide that just cycling the whole way is probably my best bet. I start to get a little uncertain of the route (I've not done it in about 18 years!) The weather is glum and gets wetter, I'm getting soggy and muddy and when I get to a village on the way I decide to pull over and find somewhere to get a bit cleaned up and regroup.

I pull into what turns out to be a cycling shop and I fell a little sheepish that I was just going to use the loo to wag the mud off and I'm in somebody's shop. I have a quick wash and return to my bike. My rucksack is a bit off balance on the rack so I decide to repack it and start turning out items into the shop floor. I try shoving various items into pockets and sections, take out and refold no less than three jumpers, a blanket and two woolly hats, rearrange a small camping stove, and a bunch of other stuff I can't remember, and three raw eggs.

At this last item evinces a quizzical grunt from the shop keeper and I explain that they're a gif snack when camping and that it you pack then wrapped in your clothes or blankets or whatever, it's not difficult to keep then safe. I note that of course you have to remember they're there when you get your jumper out of your bag or you'll to them onto the floor. As I'm explaining this I'm trying to zip up my overstuffed bag and manage to pop two of the eggs like zits, looking like a fool

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...

Dream 1 - Losing the baby at the Colliers' mansion --
I'm at a friends house, it's a huge almost stately home sized building, but the part I'm in seems like a fairly conventional house, though still on a large scale. I'm in the kitchen and there are lots of family photos on a sideboard.

The family has a new recent addition, a tiny baby, and I'm given the baby for a cuddle while people are bustling around preparing for some kind of event (a dinner party or something)

The baby is tiny with as much head as the rest of the body put together. I hug the baby and smile at it and such for a while as I mooch through the house, ending up in a living room, with people still busily going about their business. At some point I realise I no longer have the baby and start panicking because I was left looking after the baby and now I appear to have mislaid it!

I back-trace my steps trying to work out where I might have left the baby. Nobody else seems all that concerned about the missing baby and to begin with I'm glad that I get some time to try to find it without everyone panicking and telling me off for losing it.

I spend quite a lot of time looking in increasingly unlikely places (behind the pictures in the kitchen, in boxes of toys, in the pockets of coats hanging in the hallway etc.) I retrace my steps between the living room where I realised I'd lost the baby and the kitchen where I was given it. Each time I retrace the route it gets more confusing as extra rooms and corridors are added. Eventually I manage to remember that I came into the living room with the baby so it must be in that room somewhere. As I'm taking this through with one of the less busy people, I spot the baby wedged in a little gap under a door. At first I don't connect being able to see the baby with having found what was lost (dream logic!) and I spend a moment baby talking with the baby about how it has its daddy's mouth before realising the story has reached a happy ending and I wake up relieved!


Dream 2 - Playing bass and making up a new tune:
I'm on the stage at some kind of village hall type building, there are a couple of the classic folding tables that every village hall has, apparently I'm going to be playing bass in a band but I'm the first to arrive apart from KM who isn't in the band but is involved in organising the event somehow. I ask if I'm supposed to be setting up in front of or behind the tables and she starts talking about how her kids want the bass amp to be right next to them. I'm not convinced that's a good idea because they're quite small kids and the amp will be pretty loud close up (in reality, one of her kids is still a bump, but on the dream she had a boy - I must tell her!)

Some other band members and others attached to the event are milling around and discussing songs that we might sing and organising logistics. I notice that somebody has put their guitar on the stage and I pick it up to have a little play. I start plating around with some chords and come up with a new harmonisation for a song the others were discussing (I can remember the chords, but not what the song was!) The others start singing the song but to the original tune and I can't keep my concentration so I put the guitar back on its stand.

We faff about with table cloths for a bit and start eating lunch on the tables, while I mutter about getting crumbs in the equipment

Dream one: Supermarket catacombs
Somebody is ill in a large traditional church building.
I call an ambulance, the person in the other end of the phone appears to be almost expecting the call and even knows the persons address, but I explain that the person is not at home but at the church. I go and try to spot the ambulance in case they don't know where to stop and see a variety of shops built into the edge of the church building, like a shopping arcade. I investigate behind the shops and find a large underground storage facility full of what looks like supermarket stock on dusty shelves with some yellow jacketed men shuffling around with clipboards and fork lift trucks. I snoop about a bit before realising I probably ought not to be here and heading back upstairs by means of a rickety old open lift somewhat reminiscent of warehouses in 101 films.

Dream two: Naughty motorbiking
I'm on a dirt bike flying through streets and tunnels doing wheelies through large puddles and trying to skim over deeper water.
I get to the end of a tunnel and it opens out into a covered space on the bank of a river, it looks like this area is perhaps tidal or otherwise occasionally flooded with banks of sandy silt and puddles it feels a bit like the space under a pier or a large concrete pontoon. I carry on toward the bank of the river planning to use a RIB as a ramp to get over the river. At this point I think through the manoeuvre several times with variations as my dreaming mind is interrupted by the first flakes is lucidity. This repetition as my subconscious tries to decide how realistic the scenario needs to be to pass muster is a classic dreamsign and the lucidity grows until I opt to land in the middle of the river and sink down, enjoying the impossibility of breathing and riding a motorbike underwater. Unfortunately the darkness and minimal lucidity mean I lose the dream and wake up.

I reenter the dream but non lucidly (boo!) I'm back on the motorbike coming up to a backstreet industrial area with a variety of garage sized units each occupied by separate concerns, mostly #full of boxes, some appear to be running repair shops of various kinds.

I pull into one unit that apparently is where the bike belongs, but I get an uneasy feeling that these guys are up to nefarious activities and decide to go back out again. I see two motorbikes this time and realise a friend is with me and we head off to play in the streets and puddles again.

Dream three: Lots of sex
That's about it really, an awkward succession of stilted and vague sexual encounters in which neither party was all that interested and both seemed to be putting up with it for the benefit of the other. Eventually we stop because it's getting a bit sore. Heaven knows what Freud would make of that dream...

Dream four: Tree in a car
Leaving a large modern church building en masse to go and have lunch together. This is not the same church as in the earlier dream. I decide to take a chair with me for stone train, it's exactly like one of my table chairs. I head directly through the nearest door rather than negotiate several internal doorways, explaining the logic to Andrew on the way past. I ponder how in going to get the chair on my bike as I've left my car behind today. I overhear Maddie taking to somebody about how he wouldn't let a tree grow in his car and I investigate the subject of the conversation, pulling a small tree out of the suspension of some numpty's car. Freud would probably claim the tree was sine kind of sexual symbolism in this dream, too, I expect...