Cricketing dreams... and an unusual literary theory.

Note: The following were both 'Block A' dreams: drawn straight from the depths of REM sleep. I retired at around 0400, and awoke at 0630, transcribing both dreams (or the two parts of the one dream) immediately afterwards. Once again, there may well have been a whole preceding 'unit' which I have been unable to recall... The very deepest dreams, I find, are almost impossible to remember, and operate at (and on) the unconscious. Of very great interest is the fact that the 'cricket club', just like the night club or late-night bar I described a couple of days ago, is another recurring dream image: part of the coherent, internal geography of my personal dreamscape.

I find myself in a store- a store which sells security items, I dimly recall, but which later turns out to be a synagogue. I am with a woman, a slightly mad woman, who used to date the manager. As she bitches about him, his image on the CCTV monitor pixellates, as if protecting his identity. Another woman, possibly black, is also with us; I have been pestering her for days to read The Stand. I share with my theory on why the book is so easy to visualise, a theory I had not consciously formulated in my waking life. It's all down, I tell her, to the countless millions who have imagined the characters and incidents that Stephen King writes about: the collective force of all those readers' imaginations has somehow built a mini-reality for the novel to inhabit; it's so much easier for the reader to 'slide into' the story, because the inner plane that the story exists upon has already been constructed. The reader is not obliged to construct that edifice himself.

This theory- I realise- applies to all great and time-honoured stories, and explains why classics such as Alice in Wonderland (and the Bible!) have such hypnotic force.

The black woman agrees to read it, and I promise to buy her a copy for Christmas.

Then Joanna Masters- a girl I knew from church about fifteen years ago- enters the store, dressed 'pneumatically' in a black leather dress which displays to great effect her artficially inflated bust. Her mother, who is with her, seems pleased that I notice... and makes sure that Joanna notices me noticing.

'Have you had them done?' I ask. Apparently she's now back to her natural size (or slightly bigger) following a regrettable breast reduction a few years ago.

The owner of the store, or synagogue, finally gets tired of us and politely asks us to leave. I reassure him his former partner has not divulged his identity.

*

I then find myself watching cricket in my back garden. England are playing Sri Lanka, and England are taking a bit of a pasting. I seem to be both spectator and a part of the action, though not an integral one. It starts raining but play continues.

At the end of the session, with Sri Lanka well in control, I shelter from the rain underneath a tree at the far end of the garden. Its pouring hard, the outfield is soaked, and several fielders- myself included- are covered in grass stains and mud.

As I finally make my way back into the pavilion (my parents' house), I notice that the rain has brought a large and growing number of slugs to the surface- fat slugs of various sizes and hues- one of my worst childhood fears. I want to get off the field but the rain keeps pouring down, the slugs keep multiplying in number, and now the water level is getting so high that I won't be able to reach the house without sloshing ankle-deep through a puddle of rain and slugs.

The thought evokes a gale of nauseated hilarity and terror... and I wake up.