The One Where Naz Hides In A Cupboard

... was set in a war-torn middle-eastern city. I’m not sure why. Possibly because my friend, the extreme photographer James Appleton just went to Jerusalem to take photos and get tear-gassed, possibly because him doing that brought back memories of worrying about my ex-girlfriend living in Sudan during Darfur tearing itself apart. Her reports of riding buses riddled with bullet holes, bombs in the buildings and getting repeatedly gassed still haunt me on occasion.

So, yeah...sorry...got side-tracked there. So, imagine if you will dirty, dusty, with a blazing sun and shattered concrete. Stray dogs on the streets and the scent of smoke right at the edge of detection. People trying to get on with jobs and make a living while the world eats itself around their ears.

The camera (oh yeah, this dream also heralds the return of disembodied camera style dreaming) follows a band of soldiers moving down what used to be a concrete quayside. An upturned lorry gives them partial cover and dropped containers are dry, rusted and looted. Soldier to dusty, beaten, unshaven soldier, commands and questions flow in hand signals and pointed looks like impulses up-and-down the spine of a creeping mouse. Looks made round corners are quick and darting. Move-stop-look-move the mouse moves forward.

PUNGG!

The impact of a single bullet into the corrugated steel of the container sends rust and faded yellow paint flakes everywhere and splits the mouse once more into soldiers diving for cover. More follow. The staccato report of weaponry comes softly from the other end of the street, vastly overpowered by the cacophonous noise of the hailstorm hitting the steel sheeting feet from the soldiers’ heads. Looks are exchanged. Plans are formulated. Soldiers move, silently. Shots are returned. Blood is spilt on both sides. The camera retreats up a side street away from the quay.

Here more soldiers (this time better kitted-out, better shaved, all in black) are creeping up the staircase of an office-block to which they had gained entry at ground level using excessive force. The dream doesn’t show explicitly, but the feeling is that they’ve killed the old doorman or something. The old doorman who’s worked here for forty years. And always wore an old flat cap. And had a tin lunch-box filled with an apple and a sandwich made by his old wife. And they probably killed his old three-legged dog. You understand the mood?

Cut to an office on one of the higher floors. Here the dream is from my eyes. I am a tired government worker. I say government worker, and so does the sign on my door and the sign on my desk, but let’s be honest here were utilities – We build roads, lay water pipes, make sure people don’t go hungry. The politicians and soldiers do the fighting, the country changes hands, but in the end they just change the flag on our building, maybe the colour of the sign on the door and we continue with our work. It’s been this way for decades, always fighting, always un-rest, but in a way, always us.

Naz also plays an office worker on our floor, I guess my subconscious chose him because I can see him as J. Jonah Jameson: Stressed, acerbic, bossy but gets things done. His white shirt has seen better days, the red braces and tie are a little old, but the shoes gleam impeccably. I now remember him with the burnt down nub of a cigar, but I’m not sure if he had one at the time. Possibly.

Secretaries scurry in and out with memos and telegraphs. Placed into seventies style Formica in/out-trays, they constitute a paper information flow not unlike the information flow between the soldiers on the street below. Or the ones approaching silently up the stairwell in the centre of the building. Who make their presence felt at this exact instant: Shots ring out.

Close at hand.

I go to the door in the middle of our floor’s one corridor that opens into the staircase. Looking over the railing I see flashes on the floor below and before I can pull my head back I find myself staring down into the covered eyes of a soldier in a black gas-mask.

Sprinting back into my office I close the door. Naz in busily and cleverly hiding in the only cupboard in the room. Just before he closes the door, we exchange a glance that goes something like this: I know there is no-where else to hide. I know there is not room in the cupboard for two. You have as much right to it as I do. I do not begrudge you your survival, but when you make it through this tell me as a hero in your stories...

Things go quiet. I pace silently to the door. My heart is pounding so loudly I’m honestly afraid they’ll hear it. “Nonsense, man, it’s a heart. They won’t hear it: get a grip” I tell myself.

Cracking the door, I stare out onto the silent and deserted corridor. Suddenly, there’s a single gunshot and blood hits the beige (like, 1978 beige, not 2002 beige) carpet tiles. Once again I catch the eyes of the mad in the gas-mask. I throw myself backward into the room and lock the door. I’ve got seconds. I know that. Myriad solutions flash through my mind in a second: I look at the window. I could jump? I might even live, but I’d be on the street with broken legs – a sitting duck. I consider hanging outside the window, but I can see the sadistic delight he’d get from finding me there. Maybe, one of his colleagues on the floor below would shoot me in the gut while I was hanging there. I could hide under the desk? I could sit at my desk like I wasn’t afraid, accept the inevitable?

In the end, I’ve not made up my mind as the glass in the door is smashed in and the man in black is shooting a handgun into my office. I dive behind my filing cabinet (grey-green for those that were wondering) and hear six shots miss me by inches. He lets himself into the room and I launch myself at him like an animal, dodging and diving with enough vigour to impress Patches O’Houlihan. More bullets smash bourbon glasses and the framed pictures on the walls.

But a middle-aged office worker in a shirt and tie is no match for a strong, young soldier. After a second or two of grappling, he throws me back against the heavy wooden desk. I’ve always liked this desk, thought I. My hands stretched instinctively behind me to stop my fall and I felt my heavy, cut-glass ashtray. An angular, seventies monstrosity. A relic. I grip firmly with my hands to steady myself and look down the barrel of a black and menacing hand-gun.

Click.

(If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say that six + two doesn’t equal a full clip, but A, this is a dream and B, maybe he shot the old doorman’s dog a few time for luck?)

Without a second’s hesitation, I swung the firmly-gripped ashtray into the man’s skull. He went straight down and I went down after him. I knelt over him and time and time again I struck him on his shaved scalp. Long after he was knocked unconscious I continued to strike him. There was blood on my hands and arms and I could feel fragments of his smashed skull moving under the lacerated skin.

I could see Naz watching me through the door gap of his hiding place. Maybe he wouldn’t tell me as a hero after all.

The One Where Lewis Nearly Crashes A Bus...

I wished they'd hurry up.

Lewis, Martin, I and the rest of the coach full of people were in a hurry to get to something (cycling-related, probably, given the company) and this *joker* of a driver was taking his sweet time during the driver change-over.

 As a bit of a laugh the outgoing coach driver (Who looked in ALL ways like a coach driver, that is to say that he was bald, portly, wearing a huge white shirt and dark pressed trousers and probably about 50.) had left the steering locked all the way to the right and first gear engaged. As the behemoth engine ticked over, the coach was slowly rumbling 'round so that, if the new driver hurried, he'd get to us just as we completed a 180 and were pointed the right way to leave the rest-stop and get back on the motorway.

We were now on a third rotation. The back wheels had hardly moved and neither had our new driver, who, apart from having slightly more hair, could have been a clone of the old one. Realising that stopping the coach with it pointing outward might make a bit of a statement to the jolly, jabbering, drivers. I plonked myself down in the driver's seat, surveilled the myriad pedals on stalks (like tractor pedals, see below), picked one, turned to Lewis and said "Clutch?"

"Probably" - Replied he and I depressed it just as we hit 180 degrees. The engine pitch changed and the wheels stopped crawling over the tarmac.

The drivers looked up from their brews which, somehow, they'd used their northern powers to magic out of nothing. And then looked back down and continued talking.

"Right" - Says I. And threw the coach back into first, spun the wheel back to central and started to crawl away to the slip-road, hoping this would outrage the new driver into some sort of action. I was, of course, bluffing. And that git of a driver called it. He looked over, waved his arm in a way that clearly said: "Go on, then. I dare you.". I knocked it back into neutral and put on the handbrake, dejected.

But, as I walked back to my seat, defeated and annoyed, I was lurched suddenly off my feet. Silently, Lewis had dropped into the cavernous drivers seat and we had all taken off down the slip road like a rocket. 1st, 3rd, 5th - He wasn't hanging about.

The Rumbling V12 (14? 16? Don't know, just going by sound and size of vehicle) engine sounded like a Volvo Penta being attacked by a monster made of treacle and blew black smoke like a dragon.

 Indicating, according to dream-Lewis (possibly real-Lewis as well, I'll ask him) is something that should be done when one is NOT driving a MASSIVE Green double decker coach. We joined the highway and cars moved out of our way. Rolling from lane to lane we destroyed the miles between the rest-stop and our turn off.

When the time came, Lewis left it as late as he could, before swerving violently to the left and flicking the wheel to the right. With all four wheels (probably, I wasn't counting) screaming, the bus drifted sideways towards the end of the turn-off and the beginning of the metal barrier. Lewis had a calculating look in his eyes and, after grinding the bus along the metal barrier like a skate-board on a rail, he gunned the monstrous engine once more and we took off up the exit slip.

But this bus-driving-wünderkind wasn't done yet. Using the incline of the exit slip to aid him, he shifted down into fourth (possibly third, I wasn't watching, but the noise changed a lot) and pushed his foot to the floor, launching the gargantuan vehicle into a wheelie, which he sustained until stopped by the lights at the top of the long exit slip road, when gravity took back over and the front wheels slammed back down.

At which point I had a short bit of a dream about being aboard a Klingon bird-of-prey, but I'm not sure it was connected, and if it was, I have no idea how.

The One With With The Odd Stereotypes

Walking home. Nothing exciting. Just starting to get dark. There's a march happening in the city centre. Students or something, campaigning for or against something, very worthwhile, I'm sure.

One thing I am paying attention to is Guen's dress. It's black with tiny blue flowers on it. Very floaty, but fitted at the waist. Perfect for a warm summer evening.

Dribs and drabs of post-march...er...marchers, wonder past us carrying rolled-up banners under their arms, plus or minus face paint.

One particularly vocal lady with close-cropped blonde hair, in scruffy cargo/jean things with a dark grey t-shirt filled with with rather too much belly and showing the faded black and white logo of some chick-rock band or other, is attempting to stir the dissent of her two marching sisters who were regarding her with more and more embarrassment as the trio walk past us.

I don't remember the exact wording other than "Worthless Scum", but the sentiments stuck with me, in her mind not only were men the root of all evil, but their monuments should be torn down, pictures of them torn up and all women who had ever loved or lusted after one exiled from society. Her marching sisters were less than convinced and moved like people torn between supporting their friend and distancing themselves from a noisy lunatic. The trio disappear from view.

Lovely.

Arm in arm, Guen and I turn a corner to walk through the double-doored "airlock" into the shopping centre which constituted part of the walk home. It was a pair of doors that worked as a valve, only opening inwards so as to control the flow of people in the centre. Trying to make the airlock look less sterile the mall had put a couple of large pot palms in the ocrners and painted a deep dark red onto the walls. One of which currently prevented the backward escape of the two moderates, being verbally pinned up againste it and yelled at by their portly, blond-cropped comrade.

She wasn't happy. Her chubby cheeks blotched red with fury. She was livid that ladies weren't siding with her. I *can't* imagine why, thought I to myself as I strode ahead of Guen to open the door at the far end for her. As I hefted the door open I turned to look back and my blood ran cold.

The blonde mentalist had a pair of kitchen scissors open and was pressing one blade to her friend's throat while swinging another blade around in a dangerously confined space. Guen was trapped between the closed "In-Only" outside door and a knife wielding lunatic. Knowing I couldn't reach her or reason with the lunatic, I leaned past the inner door and shouted for help.

Hearing the shouts, three heroic girls came running. All tall, athletic and courageous they pushed past me. One wasted no time subduing the assailant, her dark skin, obvious musculature and rampant black hair a stark contrast to the the pale-skinned corpulence topped with a yellow buzz-cut. The other two went to help the two other marchers, while I went to retrieve Guenevere, who'd tried to hide behind a 5ft palm.

Huge, brown, worried eyes peered at me as I uncovered her face from behind a protective mop of hair.

A stark image to wake up with... 
     

The One With The Dream...

...was a bit of an Inception style thing.

There's no-one recognisable in this one, so I'll keep it brief, it's a bit dull.

The One With The Dream

So, I was in class. For some reason all of the other students were toddlers. And the Teacher was crying, he seemed really upset.Obviously, after class I followed him from the room to check he was OK, only to find that the door he'd just left through led to a dead end room with three HUGE server towers in it. I wondered why a school with less than 1,000 students needed that much server power. Possibly they were doing some hosing on the side, who knows.

Anyhow, the next day I went to his office to offer an emotional support I could. He invited me in, offered me coffee and we sat on a fawn-coloured set of arm chairs, facing one another. I stated my concerns and he smiled, thanked me for my concern, told me that not only was he not depressed, but he'd not had a class with me yesterday. Then he sat and looked at me as if he was waiting for me to realise something...

...Which slowly, slowly I did. The rest of the class being toddlers? The dead end vanishing trick with the HUGE servers. Absurd! It had been a bloody dream realised I and said as much.

The teacher agreed with me and nodded and I went to get up let him have the rest of his afternoon to himself, but he stopped me with a motion of the hand. I sat back down. I smirked with his own inner-joke and continued looking at me, as if waiting for the penny to drop.

So I thought.

And I thought.

Wait a second...What the hell am I doing in School, didn't I graduate university two years ago? And how did I get in this office, I was in a room with huge servers! I sighed at my own stupidity and saw the twinkly-eyed teacher look at me with amusement as the world dissolved around him...
 

The One With The Pearlised Urchins...

Right, once again, quick as I can. This time I have to go get on my bike for a couple of hours, but I have time enough to write this out, I think. I'll lop off the beginning, which is pretty unintelligible and I think may be leftover chaos from an earlier dream.

The One With The Pearlised Urchins

The internal conflict was raging, but I didn't say anything. Not that it mattered, Guen had seen my expression and "suggested" we head back home, quietly guiding me away before I either punched the guy or jumped in the boat to capsize it or bought his entire stock. Neither of us were sure which I would have done.

The guy, a tanned boat-dweller with tattered trousers held up with string, had a small wooden boat and an obvious skill for free-diving. The evidence was a collection of 8-10 GLORIOUS marine gastropods from the reef. Vast and baroque Queen conchs, spiny spider shells and massive tritons amongst others more incredible than I could name. Just one of them was worth hours spent studying it.

They were alive, constantly trying to haul themselves upright and off the boat and the adjacent dock. But every time they a grip the boat-man would jab them with a blade to make them retract their foot and their movements were getting slower and weaker as they ran out of oxygen.

You can see why Guen hauled me away.

We wondered back to the house that the family was renting. A light coloured American style beach-house with three storeys and a porch large enough for 10 to dine around a long table. I sat on a white-cotton-covered double in the front-most top-floor room, feeling a mixture of guilt that I hadn't acted and guilt that I'd felt it was my right to dictate how this man made his living. Guen, probably to distract me, pointed out a number of interesting bikinis wondering by on the beach below and we sat enjoying the warm breeze blowing through the open, circular windows and admiring the beach population's many ways of filling swimwear.

Guen's distraction tactics have never failed and we returned downstairs to find that the younger members of the present family, that being Chris and Lucy, Lauren, Flo and Ben had gone down the beach a little to swim where the shingle turned to sand. After aiding my father and grandfather with some quick repairs to the VW Camper that my grandparents had arrived in, Guen and I set off in pursuit.

(Art by the talented: Declan O'Doherty at http://declanod.wordpress.com/)

While walking along I saw a dog playing with a whelk, the size of a shoe. It was old and dead and beaten by the waves. I re-considered the man in the boat. All of the shells were going to die anyway. They were all huge adults that had done their breeding. Why not die and leave a beautiful shell for study and admiration instead of dying to leave a knackered-out piece of CACO3 for the dogs to run after? But I just couldn't agree with him.

Just as we reached the shingle/sand transition I noticed tiny shining coins on the floor. Bending down for a closer look, they were circular fragments of urchin shell, but shining with the opalescent hue of mother-of-pearl nacre. Incredible! No urchin in the world makes mother-of-pearl! What on earth was going on?

Just then, I looked up, I'd heard Chris call my voice from the middle of a water fight between him and Ben, while Lauren, Flo and Lucy looked on in that faux-unimpressed way that women can get during a water-fight. The fight ended and Chris waded over while Guen and I dropped our clothing by theirs.

When he got to me, he handed me something. A tiny piece of urchin shell about the size of a postage stamp.   -  "I found this and thought you might find it interesting" He said. "I didn't know urchins made pearl..."

And there, right there in my hand, was the answer to my quandary: The shells in the boat belonged to their wearers and we had no right to them. But also, we had no need of them. A tiny broken fragment could hold scientific curiosity, artistic wonder and emotional resonance, all in a tiny package that would be missed by no-one.

The One With Javier Bardem

I'll keep this brief, because I'm just back from training and I have to get in the shower before I congeal:

The One With Javier Bardem

We scampered through the corridors like rats in a maze. The whitewashed Moroccan walls reflected the blazing sun in so the dust we scuffed up hung in the air and sparkled. On the other side of the compound (Monastery? Old hotel? Ancient palace? Not sure) we could hear doors being kicked open and boots pounding the packed earth floors.  Maybe thirty officers by the amount of noise they were making. Against two men and four women, we were running for our lives.

Finally barrelling into one room without an external door, the girls darted over to check the windows and saw only a four storey drop to the azure waters and the red rocks below. The chase had gone on long enough, we formed up to take a stand and heard the thin wooden door being tested from the other side.

(Like this. Only no Dash. And no lycra. And in a whitewashed room)

We held our communal breath.

But the door didn't splinter and fly open. Instead the air started to crackle and the walls bulged. With the dull rumble of heavy stone the outer two walls and ceiling of the corner room exploded outward revealing two helicopters. One of which held the now crumbling remains of the walls and the other one of which fired two bolus/lasso type affairs at my father and I. The helicopter sped away and the coils of slack line were rapidly removed.

In a well-rehearsed instant we linked arms and shins with Anne-Marie, Hannah, Chels and Emily, before the line went taut and the interlocked ball of us was yanked out of the room and hung from a helicopter speeding away over the Mediterranean. We held fast for a couple of minutes before the aircraft pulled up suddenly and cut the line, launching us in a parabolic ark toward a gaping hole in the roof of a huge warehouse on the docks of the mainland.

From blazing sun into darkened warehouse takes your eyes by surprise, but it didn't matter: We were falling and completely unable to do anything about our landing point even if we could have seen it. As it happened, the landing point was a steep, padded slope and we tumbled, painfully but without injury, to a concrete floor.

Immediately reforming into a fighting unit, backs to backs in a defensive circle, we lashed out at the crowd of thirty or so fighting men advancing on us. Diving from assailant to assailant, barely touching the floor in between, we held our ground. Elbows connected effectively with jaws, knees with abdomens and groins. If you could spring off a chest and connect with another man's throat you did so.

But we all noticed at the same time. Applause. One slow, approving clap. A man in a light brown suit, seated on a cheap folding chair. We looked around, none of the family were down. The assailants had been holding back. This Javier Bardem Bond Villain Person had obviously set them the task of testing us, before he had his part to play. We'd never been in danger for our lives.

Until now...