Friday 3 July 2009

Recurring Nightmares

I recall as a very young child having a recurring nightmare in which Jesus would sail down out of the sky in a strange sort of boat which I now recognise was similar to a punt (Jesus even wielded the punt pole himself, although it is probably easier to punt when the boat is flying). Jesus held out his arm and implored me to join him in the boat so he could sail me back to heaven. I would of course refuse, however appealling he made heaven sound, as even then I understood that what Jesus was proposing was my death (the similarity to Charon's role in ferrying souls across the Acheron to Hades was lost on me, however).

I remember on one occasion I dreamt I was playing with friends at my godmother's house on The Whartons, and suddenly the skies darkened and my friends disappeared and Jesus came sailing out of the sky to collect me, the bottom of his boat nudging lightly agains the tops of the trees. I didn't want to go, but his minions were sent after me. Caught in their grasps, I was only able to resist capture by forcing myself to wake up.

I slept in my parents' bed for the rest of the night.

Another recurring nightmare was plane crashes. There was an airport on the other side of the valley from my house, and our house was under a regular flight path. Frolicking in the garden during my childhood, our play was often punctuated by the roar of a jumbo jet flying above or - in later years - the gasping sound of adults spitting out their drinks in surprise as concorde flew over.

Ironically, plane crashes were not actually unusual in Otley either. I remember hearing of one that smashed right into the Chevin (the rocky ridge that formed the other side of the valley wall), while another came down in a farmer's field and made the national papers. In my dreams, though, things were much more extreme. I recall one dream where I had to duck down while walking to school as a huge plane soared overhead and ploughed into Sheila Polhammer's house; while another time I was playing golf with Tim Brabham and a plane simply dropped out of the sky onto the green. The sheer force and heat of the explosion was astonishing in both cases. A third time, I dreamt I'd seen a plane hit the Chevin with a gentle 'poof', and none of the adults I told would believe me.

Another common dream was being crushed under a tonne of bricks. In one extreme example, I was sitting at the dining table at home and was suddenly and inexplicably crushed under the solid weight of a tonne of bricks. I woke up in shock, caught my breath, and was then again crushed under a tonne of bricks. Waking up again, it was breakfast time and I went downstairs to dinner and - yes! - was crushed under a tonne of bricks.

Waking up for real that day, it was with cautious optimism that I ate my breakfast.