Dreams

Once, when I was little, my mum was watching me sleep. While she watched, I sat bolt upright in bed, eyes closed, clearly still in the grip of slumber and announced “hooray! But I wanted the toffee one!”

Then I put my head back down and continued my snooze.

I’d love to know what I was dreaming about that night. Sometimes I worry it was a nightmare; that I’d been playing Revels Roulette and my next turn would land me in a coffee flavoured hell.

I obviously didn’t get the toffee one, but was still pretty excited, so what would have happened if I HAD got the toffee one? I used to sleep in a cabin bed, six feet off a floor covered in hard plastic action figures. Getting the toffee one could have left me writhing on the floor, impaled on Lion-o’s Sword of Omens. Doesn’t bear thinking about.

My dad has a recurring dream, where he revisits a childhood accident. He fell down a flight of stairs. He was fine, but it obviously left an impression on him. Fifty years on, when he has the dream about it, you can see the jolt go through his body as he hits each step in the dream.

I love the feeling of waking from a bizarre dream and trying to piece it back together: why did my brain think I’d like to be at a party with Boris Johnson and the Dingle family from Emmerdale? Why was everyone telling me we were in Rio de Janeiro when the venue was clearly a dingy rock club in Cardiff? Most importantly, why was I not me, but Hulk Hogan, in full WWF attire?

The nightly brain defrag is a magical, mystical thing for me.

I saw a thing on Twitter the other day, it was one of those accounts which spews out facts to its followers and is presumably run by someone who just loves flicking to random pages in encyclopaedias. It said: “babies dream even before they are born”.

WHAT?

What do they dream of? Dark? Muffled voices?

It may be true, but I just don’t get it.

A baby has no experiences to draw on for dreams, no visual experience more exciting than a bit of light, no concept of what will happen once they’re born. Their brain has nothing to sort through and file away at the end of each day. They haven’t watched Homes Under the Hammer or Neighbours, so where are they getting their material?

So, I’ve concluded, baby dreams must be really boring. Until they get out of the womb. Imagine that! Going from the barest of sensory input for months on end, to a sudden EXPLOSION of stuff, attacking you from every angle.

Sights. Sounds. Smells. Tastes. Textures.

All day every day. No wonder they cry a lot, daytime TV is shit.

I spend quite a bit of time watching The Creature when he’s asleep (I feel I should savour it) and I’ve noticed something. He hasn’t sat up and proclaimed his excitement at not getting something he wanted yet, but I can quite often tell what he’s dreaming about.

Boobs.

Typical man.

Tell me your funny dream stories and I PROMISE I won’t recount them to all my friends. Go on…