A Strange Dream

I had a dream last night that has been rattling around my head all day. When I woke, it took a few moments to gather my thoughts – to re-construct the real from the imagined.

In the dream I was visiting the house I had grown up in – the house we lived in until I was five years old. The back-story is lost on me now, but I found myself walking along a familiar road, looking for the house – only it wasn’t there.

I walked the length of the road, twice – looking for the house. I passed a friend of my parents from forty years ago – long since dead – walking with her daughters. I smiled and said hello, but they walked straight past without acknowledging me.

I passed a football ground, where an artist had constructed a wall of artwork around the pitch. At the end of the street several drunk people staggered between each other – making aggressive approaches to passers by. After a few minutes walking I reached a road junction and continued on towards an unfamiliar area of town – hopelessly lost. As cars approached I began running in the road alongside them.

It was all so clear.

When I woke up the “real” took some time to fall back into place. We had never lived on the road in the dream. There had never been a football ground. There had never been a junction, or another road.

The small bungalow I grew up in fell back into place, along with the surrounding streets and families. The friends of my parents I passed in the dream lived in a different town entirely.

One memory led to another, and another. The grown-up boy next door called Stephen that asked about our dog over the garden fence. My cousin Brian falling from the tree in the back garden. The ice-cream man parking at the end of our driveway. The lady next door paying for her car to be washed with milkshakes, while sunbathing in a paisley bikini.

I’m continually fascinated by dreams – about the world building, the fabrication, and the disassociation. In dreams I accept each new reality as it is presented without question – yet in the real world I am increasingly critical, cynical, and doubtful about that which I see, read, or hear.