I've been toying with expanding this blog beyond gaming for a while, but I wasn't sure what to do in that vein. I still don't know what I'll do as a rule, but I had such a peculiar dream, which I wrote immediately on waking, that I do have something non-gaming based to show. Enjoy.
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I woke up and it was half past nine, with warm sunlight filling the room. I was shocked! How could I have slept so long? Then I woke up and it was half past one in the morning, pitch black. I heard a noise outside, and went to my window. I looked down into the yard and there was an alligator eating the food we'd left out for the badger. I moved back cautiously, not wanting to disturb him, and hurried to Mum and Dad's room, where I hissed the news at them. I then went to tell Niall. Everyone crowded into my room to see. I made some wry observation about them getting into the house, and lo! There was a baby one sat on the landing outside my bedroom. I picked him up by the tail to avoid bites. I took him into my room and asked the family for somewhere to put him. He was about two foot long and quite chunky, so I didn't think we had a good place to keep him. We ended up dropping him into an old fish tank. Unfortunately, I held his tail too long, and the last few inches came off just as I was putting him in the box. Then I left the room to observe the alligators from the kitchen window. But as I passed the downstairs toilet I descried the door open in the gloom. I'd just the whole family in the TVs room! I pressed myself against the wall as a green laser swung about on the wall opposite the toilet door. A figure all in black came out of the toilet, seemingly holding a gun. I leapt for him, bashing him into a door, and crunching him down on the stairs.
It turned out to be a friend, and I'd forgotten that I had agreed that he and his girlfriend could use the house as a meeting place for some Guides they were taking on a trip. That sorted out, I went to the kitchen window and saw carsful of people pulling up, getting out in fancy dress - Great Auks, various other improbable animals, they walked unharmed past the alligators (a second had arrived) and a large buzzard or bustard, which were eating the badgers' food, still. I went to let them in, and got confused because there were several glasses of orange juice on the cupboard by the front door. I picked some up and went through to the Dining Room, where I tried to give them to the Guides - although they seemed young enough to be Rainbows. I needed more orange juice, so I went to get some from the larder. This had moved about eight feet and altered its configuration, so I ended up stuck in there with an exhausted and pretty Guide Leader's tricep pressed into my face as more people pushed in.
Then the scene shifted and we were in Liverpool. My two friends and I were going into a dismal building, evocative of Soviet Russia. We had to go up three flights of stairs to get to my mother's mother's house so we could pack away her things. We gathered some things, went down, came back up, went down with more, and by now the bottom of the building was a railway station. The lady at the kiosk asked us when and where we were going, and enthused about the superior quality of
that service on
this day as opposed to any other. So the bus driver (of this station which became a train and then a bus) asked me to go upstairs to talk to the passengers up there. I climbed the three flights again, and the rowdy passengers up there were irritated that he hadn't done something they'd asked.
Then I was in a Victorian-esque street, wrapped in fallen snow, where an angry industrialist was ranting to his secretary that "I used to run this town!" and complaining about the mayor, who then walked into view. The two exchanged angry greetings, then the mayor said to his staff "This never would have happened in the old days! I used to be in charge here!" I then realised that I had somehow got very far from home, and night suddenly fell. I hailed an open-topped horse-drawn carriage to take me home. I soon realised this wasn't actually a Victorian place as a modern motorcycle zoomed past us. My carriage then drove into a pub which stood in our way. The carriage slipped out of existence, and I continued floating on my own through a door into the back of the pub. This rear area was a strip club, and a number of women lounged about in various states of undress. The bouncer would only let me leave through the back window if I let him write something in red marker on my shaved head, so I hovered in the air, admiring the women, and joking with him, as he stood on a stool to write, that "You'd better not just put tits on there!" He grinned, and soon finished, opening a half-window, half corrugated-aluminium construction on the back wall. I floated out, and remembering I was nineteen miles from home, decided I had better hurry.
I jumped to a tall red-brick wall on the left of the street, running along it, then leaping off to land on the next wall. A man, his wife and two small boys were hurrying across the street in front of me, and I think one of the little boys wanted to catch me, because I was flying. I stopped on a part of the wall which was damaged at the top, and I found a rough paper document proclaiming itself to be someone's (I forget whose) passport. It was only the outer sheath, the inner documents were gone. The man, who was Peter Serafinowicz with a moustache, was comforting with his wife one of their children because the other had disappeared. I leapt off the wall, and into a large square. I saw that the buildings were too high for me to leap over, so I went to the far right corner to see if I could get through. Instead oriental female martial artists flung throwing stars at me in silence, and I had to jerk myself out of the way and retire. An important British government official (I just knew he was) in a suit, bowler, with umbrella and briefcase (come to think of it, he resembled George Darling in the film
Mary Poppins) told me that it was imperative that I go through the building, as these people were a terrible threat (to national security?)
So I went into the ground floor of a building. It was a shop with an open lay-out, rather like a mobile-'phone or gadget shop. I tried to get to the far end, but the lights went out, and the shop dummies, which were made of a shiny dark grey clay, came to life and tried to attack me. I kicked one over and he smashed. Then the lights came on just as one was about to attack me. He was frozen in place, and after an agony of conscience I knocked him down with a large plate made of the same material as he was. Both smashed on the floor. I flew back into the square where I saw a round swimming pool filled with happy people. I think about this point I briefly became Bart Simpson. I recognised some foe on a walkway high above the pool, and flew up to engage him. After a brief struggle on the walkway, I knocked him off, and he landed beside the pool, his limbs tangled round his corpse. His three friends were remarkably phlegmatic about this, being only a bit surly when I decided to take over their gang. I was no longer Bart Simpson. I prodded the leader, a tall, muscled fella with dark hair, in his chest, and my sidekick (where'd he come from?) backed me up.
Then over to my right I could see what I recognised as the bridge over the Mersey, and I flew toward it, knowing I could follow that route home. it looked nothing like the real bridge, and it didn't even cross a river. There were just acres of futuristic cityscape beneath me. But I knew I'd get home this way. Then I really woke up and it was 5:59. I sat down almost at once to write.
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The spirits had done their work all in one night! It's Christmas Day, Mr Scrooge! I don't think I've remembered that much of a dream ever before.
