Dream dream dream

I may have shared my recurring dream before. The backdrop varies but the situation is always that I need to be somewhere or do something and things are conspiring to distract me, block my way, or hinder progress.

I have almost reached the point where I can break into my own dream, without waking up, and announce to myself that I am dreaming.

It doesn't take a genius to work out that this tells me I am frustrated by the slow progress of my work.

Parish life isn't hard like log-chopping is, or tedious like a table-top manufacturing job might be, but it is all about the technique of lining things up in the same direction so the whole thing will move. It can be incredibly slow.

Today I am frustrated that something has gone wrong only I can fix and it is taking my mind off important things.

We all want the gospel to be effective but we stay where we are because we can't agree precisely how. Clinging mud; can't walk forwards.

Thank you I feel a bit better now.

More Dreams

Blessed with a lie-in until, ooh 7.20 this morning, I recalled another weird dream.

Suffice it to say it concerned being late for the Church Council meeting in my new post because it was taking me ages to get my shoes on. I didn't seem to be bothered about being late, which was strange because I get terribly bothered about being late, always.

Everyone went to the meeting in a minibus and procession of cars.

The house I was staying in included a wedding party. The bride, groom and all the guests (Leamington people I know but I'll spare their blushes) were all wearing coats and nothing else (a scene based on a TV programme I saw the other night).

Dreams

It is Sunday and a man with a baseball cap has finally come to fix the broken towing mechanism on the truck blocking the entrance to Leicester Court opposite my house. The flats themselves, now three or four blocks not one, are covered in protective tarpaulins. Further up the road Barbour-clad people are examining the apparent road-widening scheme where the houses there used to be.

Driving up the road with my wife and a singer from the church music group in the car we notice that people in the place we are passing through are now speaking in Geordie accents. One girl sounds like someone I used to know well but turning to look it is someone else I used to know only slightly. We are overjoyed at the accents though.

We stop at a health club for a swim, noting that one, seemingly disrupted by the road works, is offering free entry all day.

The one we choose has a strange pool which goes into a tunnel like under a railway arch. The water runs out as if it were a cave entrance. But no-one else is using it and turning to swim back I have to avoid lots of low-slung swings just over the water.

The other pool describes an uphill semi-circle but it is too full of people playing ball to get a good swim in. We get out the other side and find ourselves canal-side, trying to work out which of several routes through to a water-polo game is the one avoiding private property (out of which we must keep, as my old English teacher would have put it).

Following some steps down we come to a car park where I notice my car, now a red VW Polo (I used to have one of these) has the passenger door left open. Before I can accuse her of not closing it Liz notices the glove box is open and all her stuff has been nicked as well as the car radio.

'Oh no, not again,' I shout 'I really wish this was a dream.' Then I woke up. Honestly. What a relief. I usually find my confused dreams fade away into nothingness as I wake. Not today.

Analysis please.