my dream last night

I dreamt I was talking to Sophie Cunningham about how I and the two other former members ofWham! were going to re-record 'Wham! Rap' to publicise National Depression Week. Instead of the 'D.H.S.S.' bit, we were going to sing 'D.E.P.P.R.E.S.S.I.O.N'. The joke about misspelling 'depression' was either a joke about how stupid Wham! were, how stupid their fans were, or how stupid people with depression are, but in the dream it was just left hanging as something sophisticated and subtle. Sorry.

9/11-style Judy dream

A dream involving double-decker buses, a deceased dog, conflagration enacted by terrorists and my friend Greg Wadley: I was on a bus going to work (only work was at the University of Sydney, which is actually where I did my undergraduate degree). I was there with Greg and Judy, the notoriously ill-tempered and unmanageable silky terrier. We were accidentally going the wrong way - away from the University - but did not care about this, particularly when we saw, on the horizon, it erupt into a ball of flame, the result of a terrorist attack. However, in the confusion and furore the busdriver was required to drive in a random pattern through streets which were extremely crowded - with both cars and pedestrians - and which looked more like central London than anything else. One of Greg's kids (actually, neither of his kids, as this child was aged somewhere between Ellen and Tom, probably 12 or 13) got off the bus and said to me 'see ya Nicko' and I turned to Greg and said, 'so do they call you Wad-o?' to which the whole bus erupted in mirth (I guess people get a bit hysterical during terrorist attacks). The bus was going so slowly that I decided I would get off and walk Judy alongside it, leaving all my stuff (which included at least one important thing - a stool with a cloth cover on which I had written some notes on in pencil). We walked for a while and then of course lost the bus in the traffic, an inevitability which did not greatly concern me. We went past a small retail outlet - a stationer's or something - and the proprietor called out, 'Judy can you work a half-day for me on Wednesday?' and Judy indicated she would be happy to mind the shop for that period. I had not realised that Judy led this kind of life - a little like Sooty, I imagined, though with less mayhem.

stupid dream # 68498590060

I dreamt I was by timetabling error put in charge of 3 kindergarten classes at once, and was persuaded to go and see a film instead. I thought this would cause problems with the powers that be in the short term, but in the long term it would blow over.

the african man's oeuvre

I dreamt that I spied some 1960s African novels that I had left in the rain, and I went into a schtick about 'you know how you've always got a pile of African novels you leave out in the rain somewhere...?' these were detective novels by a writer whose first name was Malcolm, they were a uniform series with colour covers that simulated, to my mind, stained glass. I started to read one, having noticed them consciously for the first time, and they became my new favourite thing.

mate you couldn't make this stuff up

I dreamt Millie was walking funny and I said to Mia, 'why is that?' and then I had a flashback to when Millie was training to be a missionary in Laos and she fell out of a ten-story (victorian, brick) building into a tree at a bad angle. As she was young, she thought this was how you got down from high places so she then leapt into another, lower tree and this clearly caused some damage to her legs or hips.


I apologised to Millie for all this anthropomorphication and she sat down as if to say, 'no worries'.

dream

The year after high school finished for me, 1982, one of my friends Scott Verity died of a heroin overdose. I was not much in contact with him by this time, and I didn't hear about his death until after the funeral. And in fact I know very little about his death at all; perhaps it wasn't heroin though it was described that way to me at the time and also suggested it was the first time he'd tried it. This was about 25 years ago, and he would have been 18 or so.

Most of my dreams I can trace back to some casual remark someone made or something I read. But in this case I have absolutely no idea at all - perhaps it'll come back to me - why I should dream that I was asked to attend a memorial service for Scott, in a special room at an airport, at which forty or fifty others attended, some of whom were vaguely familiar (one introduced himself to me as Ralph and said he now worked in the NSW Department of... but was cut off), and most who weren't. There was no-one in charge of the event, and no agitation for leadership. One of the people there wondered why it was being held at an airport (don't know what city it was) and was told that it was a place where many people could come together conveniently from various parts of the country.

Actually I have wondered whether this dream was in some way connected to this brilliant apology to the Stolen Generations which is taking place today. I can't quite see how except a lot of people are going to Canberra today to participate in a ritual commemorating a past tragedy. How Scott Verity fits in I cannot imagine however.

(Later: Now looking at the dream thing from earlier this morning I am worried it seems a bit glib, smug or glub. Not meant to be - it was very early - I was really thinking about the strangeness of the dream, and as I wrote it occurred to me a similarity with something auspicious that was happening later in the day. I was certainly not suggesting that anything in my experience or poor Scott Verity's was similar to that of the Stolen Generations'. By the way it was an incredible moment, I saw it live, in a lecture theatre of those similarly affected I think. Lovely.)

mia's dream

A few days ago - I think when she was finishing her magnum opus or maybe the 'making of' film (I'm not joking), Mia went to bed at the time I was getting up, like 6am-ish. About an hour later I was going to work so I came in to say goodbye, and this transpired:

M: It's all flat and rocky.
D (more and more like an old man who wants to describe everything around him so people know he's sentient): I think you must be dreaming.
M: No, it's happening now.
D: Do you mind if I blog that?
M: [mumbles]

Later on she agreed she didn't mind.