Guest Post: The One With The Sweet Mop Of A Creature

Hello folks - I'm spending too much time on the track and not enough time dreaming recently, it seems. Luckily, I have friends who do dreaming for me. Here is another Guest Dream, this time from the Nrothern Territory in Australia.

The One With The Sweet Mop Of A Creature:

Legs all a jumble, I'm galavanting through the pricked shrubs of my habitat, navigating my path to a well known water hole like some desperate koala running from a bushfire. 

Thirsty, tired and on edge...with fur - a dark muddy mass of lanky legs and nested fur. What am I? I don't know. Some sweet mop of a creature. I have no want for meat. All I can think about is sucking on some chlorophyl. Sucking? I'm not even sure what kind of masticatory apparatus I have. 

A chorus of whispering grass and cicadas is loud all around me as I move in an unsuspecting daze. Suddenly, the sky opens blue, the air loses it's whiff of any wet comfort and I see before me a siren red desert landscape with a big black tack of a velodrome left of centre. 

The rustling and buzzing stops and is replaced by the wail-like whooshing of white wheels spinning round and round the loop. I'm scared, yet curious. I see Greg atop those wheels - adorned with a pointed black helmet and Lycra from head to toe. 

He reminds me of a robotic peddling human cross drone. I can't see his face but really want to. He is oblivious to the sordid meek creature in the bushes. 

That's all I remember. 

E. 

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 The Kid In The Road...

I just had such a realistic dream that I, honestly, don't think I can remember having a more realistic one. Ever.

I was bombing back from the vet school on Storey's Way, doing as I usually do, thirty miles an hour, cursing my new tyres for being so slow, while simultaneously loving their ruggedity. Anyhow, I was down on my aero-bars, by which I mean these not these, and there suddenly appeared a small child in the middle of the road.

I swerved, slipped on the front wheel and woke up just as my right shoulder shattered against the kerb. With one hell of a jolt. So much so that I woke up my dog.