2 x 2 = 4

Last night's was a twist on the standard anxiety dream thing, I think.

I was back at school, writing out times tables. All of them. But on the board, rather than pieces of paper. People were watching, but with curiosity, rather than disgust or disinterest.

Sci Fi?

I clear the woods and enter the village. It's a really odd place, this. It looks like a Star Wars setting. Everyone here is called Terry, and we're constantly being attacked by robots, who are all called Anne.

Close Encounters

I keep dreaming I'm on an expedition with the British Antarctic Survey and every time I wake I have the overwhelming urge to paint what I've seen. Kind of like a freezing cold Close Encounters.

Flying High

I was the test pilot for a revolutionary new plane. Magic.

Tower dreams

I'd climbed some steps and into a doorway at the base of a concrete needle. No, not concrete, stone. I started to climb the stairs of this tower. Up and up and up, I climbed the dark steps until, not at the top, probably no more than half way I felt an enormous sense of wellbeing. I felt that the whole country was mine, the language, the land, and that it would be there and mine forever. Not the country I was in, but a homeland. I belonged, and it was wonderful. I was there.

Uuhh

Very strange this one. Slightly out of focus, grainy and occasionally dropping in and out. I was uh, well, umm, and then a huge raven swooped down and snatched the baby away. So I, uh, ah, UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali. Oh, ah, something mumble something hollowed out volcano. And she said, um, well, ah. That's when the chandelier exploded.

I was very,very drunk at the time.

A Video

An anonymous contributor offers us this re-enactment of his recurring nightmare:

Quality Control

I became aware that I was in some old fashioned, wood panelled Victorian court room. I was sat in the spectators' gallery, at the front, with my hands resting gently on the brass rail. Looking down into the well of the court, I was able to make some sense of what was going on. There were bewigged lawyers, an elderly judge, and in the witness box, and the dock, a series of dwarves. Your actual, Disney dwarves.

The trial, or so it seemed, was a sort of testing process for some of their mining tools. It wasn't clear which, but there were no shovels or lanterns being examined. Doc had just started weighing something when the whole scene faded away...

Random Images

Some images our readers have reported seeing in dreams.

Another

Last night's weird dream:

I was a maths teacher, I think, and married to my old boss's wife because he'd died. That was odd in itself. I had this old computer, this Acorn Archimedes that went everywhere with me. I didn't carry it around, but it just appeared wherever I was. It was always there.

I know that I was writing some book about maths, but my awake brain doesn't understand what about. Then my wife changed, and the house looked nicer because my father in law was a furniture maker. 

But the recurring bit, the bizarre bit, was that I was rally anal, really really OCD about eating. Every day we ate at exactly six minutes past five. Every day. And every day we ate what both my wives called a Greek pie, which apparently was at my insistence. But the pie wasn't the usual pastry topped thing. It was a cylinder of pastry with the filling running through it a stick of rock. But not just blobbed in the middle, the filling was shaped like a little picture of a table. We had a slice each and seemed to enjoy it. Imagine the calories in that. 

Mysterious Gentleman

I keep bumping into this man who says his name is Richard Peterson and used to work in East London.

Irish minds

I dreamt I was in Dublin. On O'Connell Street. I crossed the Liffey and wandered into a shop. They took my money, but the change they gave me wasn't money. It was pieces of plastic. Small pieces of broken old printer. One bore the scratched out name Canon. They were coin sized, and had monetary values marked on them. I saw one man pay with a camera lens. Most peculiar.

Strange Cheese

I had the weirdest dream last night. I was at some grand awards ceremony, all black tie and international respectability. Then they give a short speech in several languages, and call my name and announce that I'm being celebrated for having invented the equals sign.

So I go up and get given this little trophy that looks a lot like a coin. Then John Humphrys appears, interviews me and then ushers me out through the curtain at the back of the stage.

Stepping down, I realize that I'm outside the headmaster's office in my old school. The school is deserted, so I have a stroll trying to get out, until I reach the science block. As my old form tutor was a physics teacher, I decide to go in and look at the old classroom. I go through, past the lecture theatre and enter the door, but the classroom appears to have been half-converted into a lavatory. A gents' lavatory, to be precise, as the old wooden benches are mostly still there, but there's one big trough running around the walls. 

Which is when I woke up.

What It's All About

I've been having some very odd dreams lately.

I intend preserving some for history, and possibly as a record of my own descent into madness.