Re-post: The One With The Bus Full Of Matresses

There's been a lot going on at this end of things. Firstly, I won the 200m time trial at the North of England Regional Track Sprints. Which I'm pretty cheerful about. 

 

 Also, the Space thing is going well, I'm like, 58th, which means that unless something goes really wrong in the next three weeks I get to fight for a place at space camp in September. We wait and see.

 

 In other news, I'm still living with Guen and it's awesome. Living with the rabbits: Less awesome. One of them runs away from me all the time. And the other is a sneaky bugger and keeps trying to sabotage my stuff. A few days ago she dropped my phone in a pint of lychee juice. Why? Giggles. Just for the fun of it.

 

 

Ah well.

 

Anyhow, I've been dreaming a lot recently, just not writing them down. Why? Because I'm lazy. So here's an oldie

 

The One With The Bus Full Of Mattresses

Mike, Bugsy (Malone...M'Lone...M. Lone...Mudassir Lone. Why am the only person that thinks this is a good nickname?) and I had gone on holiday to eastern Europe. I think it was Romania. Possibly, somewhere more chzek. Anyway, we each had a backpack and a tent and we were just messing about really, no particular purpose or anything. It had just started gently raining while we were walking along the side of a deserted road toward some mountains. We found an old abandoned bus which people had used to discard old mattresses. It was full to the brim. Mike and Bugsy climbed in, their combined weight pushing down the top of the mattress pile so it was about 50cm lower than the ceiling of the bus. I tried to climb into this gap and join them, we could kip here tonight. Thing is, that I didn't take my pack off, and with it on my depth is more than 50cm, which meant that, try as I might, I couldn't get in. This frustrated me enough to wake me up.

Knowing that I hadn't set my alarm, I picked up my phone to have a quick look at the time and work out whether of not I should get up. It was 7:41, I had at least an hour. Time to finish this dream at least. I turned over, refolded my pillow and went back to sleep.

The guys had done good work on the bus, it had been driven to a forest clearing at the top of a huge cliff, and the mattresses had been removed during the journey. Apparently in this part of the dream my travelling companions we're being played by my brother, my father, Adil (a guy from school) and a girl (sometimes played by Jo and sometimes by someone I didn't recognise). The bus also had a driver now, and the lights worked. In fact it might have been a different bus for all I know, the windows had been repaired and it didn't smell like rust anymore. The driver was standing outside about ten metres from the bus having a cigarette and looking at the sea at the horizon over the cliff.

The light had pretty much gone and we had the internal lights on the bus going. Six of the mattresses had been retained and were laid between the chairs (see diagram) and each had been claimed by one person to sleep in.

Above - The Layout of the new bus. The letters mark where the feet of each occupant would have been. Me = Me. D = Dad. A = Adil and C = Chris. Dr = Driver and G = Girl.

Dad got up, leant his pack against one of his seat and left the bus to talk to the driver outside. The rest of us played silly buggers in our sleeping bags for a while and then settled down to tell stories before going to sleep. Adil told this one.

"In the beginning Superman could not be beaten, even by kryptonite." As soon as the narrative started up, the view changed. The viewer was watching a cartoon. In seventies style, with a low frame rate to save production time. The areas of colour were flat and block filled and the back ground was repeated when the characters moved to save effort.

The cartoon showed Superman, in rather a cool outfit (like this but without the cape: http://hallofheroes.free.fr/Images/UltimateDC/superman.jpg) and some other superheroes exploring a cave structure in a growing mass of kryptonite here on earth (Superman Returns anyone?). Where the walls are cracked the green light of kryptonite shines through, with pulsing "ray" lines like in any good seventies cartoon. Suddenly, and for no apparent reason, the cave system starts collapsing. Chunks of green rock come falling from the roof and the heroes beat a hasty retreat.

Just as they we're coming to the mouth of the cave, Wonder Woman snagged herself on a sharp rock and couldn't make it free, so Supes flew back in to save her. He managed to throw her out of the cave mouth just before it closed.

He was trapped, in the dim green darkness. He didn't know if he was ever going to see the light of day again. The glow from the kryptonite lighting his prison, flickered and went out. His heart rose into his throat and that heart began beating faster and faster.

Above ground the other four heroes surveyed the rubble, clouds of poorly animated dust settled as the dusk claimed the sunlight. Suddenly, the ground shook once again and with the scream of a trapped animal CK burst from the shattered kryptonite, straight up as if shot from a cannon. He left the shot. A couple of seconds later his body landed on the sharp green shards in front of the other heroes with a crash and he got up babbling. Eye's rolling in his head he staggered backwards trying to put as much distance between himself and the kryptonite as possible. Crying and sweating, he brushed his arms and shoulders trying to remove the thousands of fragments of green from his skin and clothing.

"Bollocks!" said Chris. The scene cut abruptly back to the campers all sitting around in their sleeping bags in a bus. "are you trying to tell us, that Superman's kryptonite thing is psychosomatic? No way!"

"No, dude, seriously, it's true!" Adil insisted.

"Really? Alright, what happened next?" Chris asked intrigued.

"So, yeah, he staggered backwards" The scene cut back to the weeping Superman. Who was ripping his outfit from his body in an attempt to rid himself of the green splinters. Paying no heed to the cliff behind him he continued going backwards, and didn't even seem to notice when he had stumbled over it and was falling towards the rapidly approaching waves.

As soon as he hit the water, the cartoon stopped and it looked much more life like. With the kryptonite washed off by the water, Clark composed himself and started to tread water. He called out to a nearby boat, which picked him up.

The long thin, motorised canoe turned out to be full of Chinese shark-fishermen on their way back to Beijing with two or three live sharks thrashing around near their legs. In return for being rescued, Superman showed the fishermen the most efficient way to kill a thresher shark and a blue shark (which are the two species they had in the boat (what? I know my sharks)), but also told them why it was a bad idea to fish for sharks in this area, due to the fragile ecology and gave them other hunting grounds.

Before arriving in Beijing they had learned how to tie various knots, how to efficiently skin and/or fillet a shark so that they didn't have to just use the fins any more and how to keep their little outboard engine running properly. Then knowing it was about time for me to wake up, I opened my eyes and looked at my phone again, it was 8:58. Perfect.

The One With Polarised Lighting

Ugh, I had a pretty rough patch emotionally recently. Lots of self doubt and worry about the future. As is its custom during times of high stress, my subconscious has been trying to pick me up by screening a new and exciting film of its own creation each and *every* night.

As to whether this one cheered me up? Not hugely. But it was interesting none the less...

The One With The Polarised Lightning

The lectures had abated for a lunch and the poster session wasn't starting until 14:30. Chris and I took the opportunity to slip out of the beach-side hotel and conference centre to wander on the sand and skim stones in the surf.

Walking through the coarse grey sand, Chris and I expressed the exact same opinion at the exact same time: We sighed. To be alone, without the 5-10 students and professionals asking questions everywhere we stood was bliss. Without being asked to pose for photos or shake the hand of the 10-year old winner of such-an-such a science prize. Just...alone with our thoughts. Not a word was said.

Chris and I had given the last one of three keynote lectures at the symposium. Scientists from all over the world were in attendance and listened enraptured as Sir David Attenborough outlined an ambitious conservation plan that relied on emerging power and energy technologies and was so crazy it just might work. After this, my brother and I took Stage One. Between us we detailed a renewable energy system that used polarised lightning to power the cities and countries of the future. The watching audience had erupted into applause and questions and at 14:30, our posters would further explain the mechanics of the system. Until then though, our time was our own.  

(The conference centre looked a lot like the Apple Campus, but it overlooked the sea)

Five hundred metres or so down the beach there was a small café. We reached it and met our mother and grandmother for lunch. They'd not wanted to come up to the hotel. We ate and as we were all about to start the short walk back to the conference centre. I spotted a very interesting beetle (yeah, that bit is a LOT like real life). It was the shape of a soldier beetle, black and yellow striped like a Colorado potato beetle and had a bright purple head, making it one of the most striking insects I'd ever seen.

I walked closer to see it, but was distracted by finding Sir David sitting cross-legged in the sand, holding a fistful of grains and letting it flow slowly out as if from an hourglass. He looked up for a second, his worn face crossed with the lines of a long and illustrious life, and said "I am old. What good is life without productivity?", before letting the last of the sand run out of his fist and closing his eyes. 

I knelt down to talk to him, to tell him that every person in that hall had thought him productive, that his life was *so* full of meaning to so many, but I stopped. Partly because I couldn't think of the words. And partly because I'd just put my hand on a thistle and biting my tongue to prevent my crying out also prevented me from saying anything.

I stood back up, picking long, brittle thorns from my palm and strode after the three members of my family. I looked at my mum and thought that she would love life even if she were a disembodied brain and a jar with a single eyeball. Her phrase is where there's life, there's hope. And I was sure she'd say so if I asked her. I saw her catch Chris' attention and point offshore. And then I turned to look. And my heart raced.

About two kilometres offshore was a towering storm-cloud. The winds ahead of it were whipping up ocean froth and the waves were increasing in size. Neither of these thought meant much too me though. I knew that Chris had set our machine running before we gave our presentation. Without any lightning it had been a very dry demonstration, but if this storm became electric then, if our calculations had been correct, we would see something new.

At once the sky was split with lightning. Chris whooped and yelled. He had his polarised sunglasses on and screamed for me to put mine on as well. I did so just as the sky was lit again. The lighting was a myriad of colours. Some parts blue, some green, some crimson red and purple. I fell to my knees with relief and joy. It worked!

Exultant with joy, Chris ran into the surf still in his smart trousers, shirt and tie. I did the same. We splashed and shouted and grinned like idiots. Nothing could bring us down now.

Until I saw granny, our frail octogenarian granny, enter the water at the same time I felt the character of the surf change. The first of the big swells ahead of the thunderstorm were reaching the beach and they carried a lot more power than she could stand against. The sky had darkened under such heavy cloud, but in a flash of lightning I saw her swept out. By the next flash she had sunk. I swam to the spot and dived, but was unable to reach her. I could barely make anything out in the gloom, but her pale skin and white hair helped me to see her. Every time I tried to swim down, the air trapped in my shirt would buoy me up. I knew she was gone.

And as I surfaced and gasped for breath, salt water turned to cotton and I stared at a blank canvas of plaster by my bed. I whispered to the darkness (very quietly for fear of alerting waiting grues to my presence) "No." And closed my eyes again.

The same first swell came again. The same unstable second preceded my grandmother's disappearance to sea. This time I swam harder, faster. This time I didn't have to dive twice. I knew the spot, and I knew how fast she was sinking. This time there was no shirt.

With Granny back on the beach, shaken and bedraggled, but alive, I considered the dream. It was falling apart now, I was mostly aware of cotton sheets and the fact I'd had most of the duvet stolen, but I could still see the multicoloured lightning and feel the pride in a machine well built. One thought stayed with me: A life without productivity is no life at all. So why had I fought so hard to save it?

 

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.