"A Quarter of Nodes Please"

I visited a dimly remembered sweet shop that existed in Burghmuir Road in the fifties. It was at the furthest point of my safety zone. The shelves were full of sweet jars and tins of biscuits. Quantities were ladled into paper bags at your request.
I stood wondering what choice to make.
This choice would effect the direction of my life for years to come, which probably meant forever.
With pardonable hesitation I pointed at a jar.
The choice has been made. .

Hailstorm Cafe

Went to a cafe for a meal with another man. I was jealous that he had a new spoon and mine was an old spoon that had probably been used by thousands of other diners. We went outside to sit, him up a hill under a tall tree and me a few hundred yards away under another tall tree. A hailstorm then broke out. Isolated from each other we consumed our meals, me with an old spoon and him with a new spoon.
So, this is what it's like to eat out with another man?
Don't think I am homophobic, but, I mean . .

The Revolving Field

Walking alongside a ploughed field. Felt wonderful just to be alive. I was paying careful attention to the side of the field, watching stones, earth, plants as they passed me by. A round sphere of grass approached jumping around. Thought a rat must be inside but no, it was a kitten. Then I realised that I was standing still and the ploughed field was slowly revolving past me, like a carousel, a massive power being involved.
I then acknowledged that I knew nothing of how the world worked.
Even awake I still wonder . .

Scary Dream

Walking through my house last night, aware of being followed. Turned round to face whoever it was, slowly reversing. Remembered never to walk backwards in a haunted house, as something horrid is always behind you. Watching scary movies has paid off. Turned round and started to run, aware that the house is full of unseen people, watching. Not many places to run to in the house without ending in a cul de sac. Must make more doors.
Who am I kidding, find difficulty in changing the loo roll.
Why is real daylight so reassuring and ghosts reside only in the sleeping mind. Or do they?

The Auction

Running down a steep, grassy hill with my girlfriend. We were heading towards a car auction half way down the hill. It was a white Saab of around 1970 vintage. The car belonged to my aunt Alice, who died around 25 years ago. She was present and was also the auctioneer. Other relatives were all around. My girlfriend overshot the auction and stopped downhill, and slowly returned. The others asked who she was and I said her name was Alice. The auctioneer and my girlfriend seemed then to be the one person. The bidding was to start at £500. The car was worth several times this as it was in 'as new' condition. I thought I would put in the starting bid, which I did. I then realised that it was a fix, as they intended to give me the car for the £500, a real bargain.

Tea Break.

Sitting at the side of two small pools of water. I was a soldier with my rifle and about 5 of us were having a cup of Earl Grey. Heard a helicopter approach, a twin rotor affair. Landed alongside us and pilot jumped out and warned us about the old woman at the other side of the road.
She has cropped up before.
Thought about shooting her.
Perhaps not yet.

Heavy Rain Forecast

Not sure why I chose this picture today (my birthday). Perhaps its because its the last one from the archives. Painted it after my Dad died. He was always fond of steam engines.

Anyway, raining heavily this morning. Hope it clears up before the bbq on Saturday.

Life goes on until it doesn't.

The Journey

Decided to go out a ride on my bicycle. First I had to push the bicycle up a very steep, icy, snow covered hill. I met two other cyclists on their way up the hill. They warned me not to speak to the old woman at the top. She had a lot of legal, emotional and physical power. I wondered what they were talking about. Then I saw her, an old woman shuffling towards me. I recognised her, a woman from Dundee. I hoped she would pass, but no, she spotted me and called me across. She started to explain why everyone feared her. But she was merely the Gate Keeper, the Edge Figure guarding the boundary of another world.
Could I negotiate passed her to the Other Side?

Two visitors only

Myself and a friend were visiting a patient in the local hospital. I noticed The Editor and Isabelle had also entered and made their way to the far end of the ward. They were giving each patient a sweet and a kiss on the forehead. I thought, "So this is what they do to redress the balance." I said to my friend that she would get a chance to meet them both. I then lay with my head on the bed to receive the two proferred gifts. However I was rumbled before that memorable event occurred and I successfully woke myself up.

Another day at the office.

Coming home to 'Police Line, Do Not Cross' tape around an empty space where my house used to be. My wife however was still around to tell me that I would still have to keep on working to make up for the shortfall of having no house. I turned the car around and headed for London, saying that I would be back in around 4 hours, idly wondering where my house had gone.
Then I realised that I had no idea how far London was, had no wife, had no work in London to go to or even in what direction to head for London.
However I drove on hoping that things would be made clearer as the day progressed.
No change there then.

Quarry women

A visit to a disused marble quarry on a remote island at sunset. Heard a trundling noise and then saw an old unmanned tractor pulling a string of small stone filled trailers.

Two blonde women were sitting on the last trailer, laughing and legs dangling. They were incredibly beautiful but super scary in a Hammer House of Horror sort of way. I was sweating in case they caught my eye, but they passed on without incident.

Mmm, Doughnut House

I had just finished building myself a circular house in the shape of a half doughnut or perhaps torus is the right word. It was made of turf and glass and looked great. However I needed to roll the circular piece of ground flat in the centre so I decided to take the roller up the sides and over the roof. However I reasoned that the roller would fall through and wished I had built the house around the roller. How would I then retrieve the roller?
Trying to work out this small conundrum I awoke.

Red Dye

Walking through a dark garden, a dream path through sleep. At the end of the path lay morning, glowing dimly. Off the path were dark tunnels surrounded by foliage and rocks, entrances into dreams. These joined up to the main path later in the night. A red glow was visible on the ground ahead. I side stepped this and headed towards morning.
A midnight walk last night enabled me to stand in some red dye and see Jupiter, Venus and a brilliant satellite passing overhead.

A birthday wave

A friend came to my house to give me two birthday presents. The first was a breaking ocean wave around 3 m high, made of crystal clear water, which was continuously moving in the same place.

The second present was an old picture which was completely black, as was the frame. The picture was for telling the future, the idea being that by staring at it images appeared. I looked at it and immediately recognised it as something I had painted myself a long long time ago. I asked my friend to look on the back of the picture and sure enough there was my signature.

Excellent presents both.

The Stripper

I walked into my house where a plasterer was at work. He asked who had done the previous wall repairs, since the walls had many layers of plaster, paint and wall paper on them. He told me that to achieve a good finish I would have to completely scrape the walls clear of all this stuff.
Have no idea how this corresponds to my current process.....

The Hole

In this dream I was walking along a terrace between two steeply inclined ploughed fields. I came to a bench that had four friends sitting on it. Above them was a huge mound of new earth. I looked beyond that and saw that an enormous hole or tunnel had opened up in the earth. All of the earth had come out but stopped short of my friends on the bench. The hole had an extremely strange and frightening atmosphere, reminiscent of Carsaig, Isle of Mull.
This entry made at one of the numerous internet cafes on Isle of Iona.

Affair of the Heart

Not quite a dream but a glimpse out of the jaws of death. It was the occasion of my cardiac arrest brought on by another relationship crisis, poor diet and other not quite random factors.

The day started with more than my usual amount of lethargy, pins and needles and an unwillingness to face that all was not well. Persuaded by son to phone the doctor who declined to attend but sent an ambulance instead. A wired up wait in a hospital bed with doctor and male nurse staring at me expectantly. With good reason it turned out as I suddenly felt dreadful, tried to get out of bed and fell onto the floor.

Dead for over two minutes before revival, a modest amount compared to those in 'Flatliners'.

Non survivable if outside the Cardiac Care Unit I was later informed.

Anyway, no tunnel of light, angelic choir or fiery pit. Non existence instead, impossible to describe but only known about as I climbed out of it into the above picture. Like I had never existed. Then a sudden rush of awareness like a gale entering the back of my head with all my memories and programming, a total re boot. Born again into the world which was spinning around with fragments of doctors, nurses and shiny equipment. They slowly came together and a female voice said "He's back!"

If I felt ill before, I now felt ten times worse, with a two hour adventure into extreme pain coming up as they tried to insert a pacing wire down my neck into my heart.

I slowly felt really grateful to the hospital staff, the NHS and a host of machinery.

I had been given another chance.

However my relationship woes were not yet over, but that's another story. . .

But I have cut down on the lard sandwiches.

All I have to do now is make the most of being alive, jings.

Connections.

An unusual dream this one. It was about how everything and everybody is interconnected. Not sure if I managed to get it across. I dreamt that I was holding my heart as I was sitting in a wheelchair. Probably about me having responsibility for my health and any outcome. At the same time I was aware of my Dad in our old house with Max the dog. I had been looking after my Dad, who had dementia. He had been looking after Max and at the same time my three children were having to be looked after by me, themselves and K. (with different degrees of success). All this in a background of floods of interconnected emotion within the house and the neverending patterns in the sky, which gave some constancy. Orion was the pattern in the dream, with a close up of the Nebula.

The Orion routes on Ben Nevis are an example of how individual rock/ice climbs are all connected to an overall pattern, and is probably why it crept into the dream. These routes were an unfullfilled ambition of mine.

Always good to leave something for another day.

Class of 40+

I was back at school, late and unsure where my class was this period. Not unusual. I rushed into the classroom and sat near the back. Looked around, not the usual faces, in fact they were hostile to a man. In fact, they were all men around 40yrs old, I was in the wrong class, enemy held territory. I looked for the teacher for support, none visible. The men looked round and stared with hostility. What to do, panic? Hold on, I looked down at myself and saw I was their age as well, (even older!). Also I was not without some muscle of my own. I stood up with a new found confidence and walked out.
Phew!

The Casualty

This was a dream about being in hospital with serious injuries to my face and armpits. Nurses came with a blanket to cover me up. But, as I was already covered in blood, they used a blanket that had been pre stained, as it were, by another patient. This procedure was watched with approval by a team of 5 doctors/administrators, their only involvement.

In actual fact the NHS have been very good to me in the main, apart from a couple of early traumas, in which my only thoughts are (almost) that the staff involved have moved on in one way or another. I still enter the hospital with a certain trepidation, in addition to any life threatening injuries/illnesses I may currently possess.

I want to go home.

I was walking home (again!) and saw this incredibly complex car accident involving around 7 vehicles. Not wanting to get involved I ran off the other way and come across another scene of carnage involving around 3 vehicles. I hid behind an embankment and wondered what other direction I could take to get home. Then it occurred to me that if I went the final third way some other unfortunates would have to crash. Unsure of this theory but not wanting to test it, I retraced my steps.
May be connected to seeing a weird car accident in a supermarket car park the other day which required all three emergency services to tidy it up for other shoppers.

Safeways to Morrisons.

The final painting in the 'arid land' trilogy. I emerged from the Land Of Death into Safeways with my fellow travellers. Of course, this would now be Morrisons, such is progress into the Future.

The keen eyed will of course recognise the cliffs of Ben Nevis as being the last bastion of the Land of Death. Too true probably.

So, according to my dream world I am now back in the land of the living and commerce. Hooray.

All I have to do now is Live. Should be easy enough you would think. Here goes.

Land of the Dead and The Tunnel

To follow the story of my dream of my house in a strange arid land, the next episode was about climbing up a steep slope which had numerous water obstacles at an unnatural angle. I was aware I was on a land of the dead. Others were around me, like fellow travellers. I think we were looking for 'a way out.' Perhaps this is where I went when I was dead for two minutes following my heart attack.

Last night's dream was about following a familiar woman along a railway track through a tunnel, hoping no trains were due. The woman was in front as we approached the tunnel exit. A huge roar and a train approached towards us at high speed. Familiar woman leapt with unexpected vigour out of the tunnel and down to the right. I followed almost as fast and we landed in a heap. The train roared by on another track altogether. All that effort for nothing, or perhaps not. An obvious sexual theme but more to it I'm sure.

A well oiled Sunday.

I went to church last night, The Gate, in Dundee to be exact.
I was given the job of taking the collection with some sort of machine. First of all I took a tour round the congregation to plot a route and take a rough audit of numbers. Several people asked me to sit beside them, popular guy.
I went out to the door again and sprayed the collection machinery with WD 40 to ease its operation. This mild act of preparation caused the entire contraption to fly apart. Shouts of "Be quiet!" came to me as the Minister entered to begin the service. I was surrounded by springs, cogs and a rolling tin of lubricant.
No longer popular I had to confess to all that I had brought the Church to ruin, no more money could be collected.
The shame of it.

Porridge Forever

Last night I was sent to prison in a male urinal with around 10 other men. It was about the size of my kitchen and all done from floor to ceiling (both included) in white tiles. No windows. It felt and smelled horrid. Where could I lie down? Claustrophobia. I wanted out before the first two minutes were served. "Forgotten something outside," I said. No excuses. Here I was to stay.

Someplace, that will be actually happening.

Life on Mars

This was a dream about my real house in a strange arid land, but surrounded by familiar hills.

It seemed to be in the same place where I was at any time, only not normally visible.

Two of my children were present and running around.

I had an ongoing life, much the same as this one.

This was going on all concurrently with my life at the moment.

What's it all about?

Parrot Talk

I was walking towards my house when a parrot with a replacement steel leg landed on my shoulder. It started to speak to me and give me relationship advice. I realised that it had a good handle on that sort of thing and so I started to frame a question in my mind. Then I realised that speaking to a one legged parrot about relationships was probably pretty insane.
I woke up, but thinking, what if I had asked . . . . ?

Boy Racer

Not such a nice dream. I was driving my red Honda around a long wide left hand bend, with a high grassy bank on the same side. Lot of traffic in a long queue. A boy racer in another red Honda suddenly overtook myself and some other cars on the inside. He swerved off the road and up the grassy bank at high speed. Then he drove across a half mile of grass and cutting the corner launched himself off the bank back onto the road, ending up in front of the queue of cars. Or not quite, because the car somersaulted as it hit the road and ended on its flattened roof on the other side of the road. We all stopped to help. Some guys pulled out the driver who had both arms ripped off in the accident. "It hurts," was all he said. He was around 20 and all his life in front of him, now without arms.
Its hard getting past that age group when you are trying to proove yourself and find your way in the world, totally unscathed.

The Bus Driver

Last night I was driving a double decker bus for a living, £7 an hour, excellent terms and conditions.
I was unsure of my first route and so merely followed the bus stops, thought I couldn't go wrong. I cruised into a docks area, with my infallible plan.
The harbour developed into a pier.
Alas, what I thought was another bus stop was the mast of a schooner alongside the harbour wall.
By this time I was commited to driving along the pier, reversing had not been covered in the training, perhaps I was off that day.
The end of the pier duly arrived, I checked over my shoulder and noted that I had a full compliment of passengers.
So, a three point turn it had to be, perhaps more, as the pier was much the same width as the bus.
Luckily for all fare paying passengers I woke up at that point.

Coloured Feelings

Another from the archives. When I sleep really deeply, perhaps accessing another part of the dreaming man, I often experience a different sort of awareness.

The dream that prompted the painting was when all the emotions and feelings that I was having, or capable of having, were visible as swirling colours deep within my psyche. These were continually moving slowly around but when one was felt its colour deepened and moved around a lot more. It was hard to label them all but I think the usual associations were present, and I seem to have a fair bit of reddish colours showing that I am a very **** guy.