Monday 25 November 2013

A visit to Albuquerque

Albuquerque is somewhere I have always wanted to visit. Ever since I was a teenager and I read Lois Duncan's 'The Eyes of Karen Connors', I wanted to go and see the city that she written about.

As an adult, I became facebook friends with a few people who live there. Their descriptions and pictures only increased my desire to visit. And last night I did! In a dream anyway

I flew in to visit my friends S & C, very excited to finally be in the place I had wanted to visit for so long. The weather was perfect; all blue skies and sunshine, and we decided to go out and visit the town.

Leaving the house, we walked a little way, then to my surprise, we came to a river and S said we would boat it in from there. Turned out the town was like Venice, with rivers all through it, no streets at all!. I was more than a little surprised as I had not read anything about this; nowhere in all my readings or any pictures had there been rivers or any mention that the town could only be navigated by boat.

Nonetheless, I climbed aboard a strange boat that was an odd mix of sailboat and canoe, and we set off. It was a nice journey - the river was wide and smooth, the scenery was gorgeous and I chatted away with S & C and their two kids.

After a while, we decided to go to a restaurant for some dessert. We pulled up alongside one, moored up and climbed up on to the dock. I don't remember the name of the restaurant, just that it seemed quite posh. The desserts were lined up in tubs inside a cabinet, the way icecream is at the cinema. It was very warm out and I quite fancied some icecream to cool off a little.

The desserts all looked a bit strange, kind of spongy and odd combinations of colours - there was one that looked like chocolate pudding but with ketchup - and there were no names to show what any of them were. This didn't seem to bother anyone else; they picked up a bowl, then used a huge scoop that actually looked more like the pyrex jug I use for gravy, scooped up what they wanted and went to sit down.

I am quite fussy over flavours, so I asked the girl behind the counter what each of them were. The brown spongy one was indeed chocolate pudding with ketchup. I was quite revolted over this but no-one else seemed to share this. I asked about another that looked like it might be some sort of mixed fruit, only to be told that it was [something I can't remember] with grey pheasant. Now I was really revolted.

I couldn't understand how anyone could eat such gross things, and I was reflecting with confusion that so far, Albuquerque was nothing like I had seen or read about, and wondering how that could be, when I woke up.

An interesting dream to say the least!

Saturday 9 February 2013

Runaway Bride

I dreatm that I announced to my family that I wanted to get married. The next thing I knew, it was my wedding day and I was marrying a girl named Trish that I went to primary school with. It was in a church, which I didn't like, there were 5 bridesmaids, none of whom I knew and they were wearing pink dresses, carrying little wicker baskets with pink flowers. There was a row of musicians holding trombones, which I also didn't want and to top it off, I didn't even have an engagement ring.

As soon as I noticed this, my cousin called me over to see Trish, who then gave me a rather ugly gold ring which had lost its stone. She said she would replace it soon, with a pink diamond, to which I rebelliously told her I wanted a red garnet. Then I left, saying I needed to go to the bathroom.

So there I am, in the bathroom, suddenly realising I'm wearing this poofy white dress with massive veil. I started to panic and realised that I didn't want any of this, that I should have been allowed to plan my own wedding and have the colours and dresses I wanted, not what someone else wanted. And I didn't want to marry Trish!

At that point, a bit of reality inserted itself. I knew that I hadn't wanted to get married the first time (which is true), that I should have cancelled it, even though it was the last minute (also true) and that when I had confessed this to my parents many years after the divorce, telling them that I hadn't had the guts because of all the money they had spent, they had said that wouldn't have mattered (not entirely sure if this is true, but I think it might be).

Remembering this, I decided that surely they would understand this time if I called it all of. Then I looked at my watch, saw it was 11.30 and realised I didn't have time to ring and call it off. So I decided to just make a run for it.

I was just trying to work out how I could escape without anyone seeing me, and thinking that it was very like the scene in Smokey and the Bandit when Sally Field escapes in her wedding dress, when I woke up.

Took me a minute to realise that I wasn't getting married with a bunch of pink bridesmaids, and breathed a huge sigh of relief.