Weird dreams and freaky flamingoes

A few nights ago I woke up in the middle of the night and moved to shuffle my pillow around. This, in turn, woke Ka up and she moved round to adjust her position in the bed. Upon turning round and seeing me, her eyes burst open and she let out a loud scream, which punched through the quietness of the night like a verbal explosion. Ka then turned around again, mumbling and whimpering under her breath and went off to sleep again as if nothing had happened.
Had she forgotten she shared a bed with someone? Was it a scream of shock? Had the shock of reality disturbed her dream of being married to Brad Pitt or Damon from Vampire Diaries?
I know the sight of me half asleep can’t always be a good thing but I didn’t think it was reason enough to scream quite so loudly.
I’d be surprised if she hadn’t woke up the singing postman upstairs with that scream.
Anyway, Ka was soon snoring once again, oblivious to what had just happened and once again needed reminding the next morning.
It reminds me of how I used to sleep walk as a kid. I used to wake up on the living room couch, sitting watching tv, late at night with my Mum and Dad. Apparently I used to just get up a few hours after having gone to bed and amble through to the living room, plonk myself down on the couch and sit there until I came to.
Ka doesn’t generally sleepwalk, though she does occasionally talk in her sleep. She even replies sometimes if I ask her what she’s talking about.
One night she awoke just as I was switching off the light and started talking. Once her mumbles finished I asked her what she meant.
“She doesn’t know how to push the cat”, she grumbled back with eyes still shut under a frown of annoyance.
I have to admit, it may not have been that line exactly, it was difficult to make out exactly what she said but it was something along those lines. I’ve no idea what cat who didn’t know how to push, but most dreams rarely make sense anyway.
My most recent dream that I can remember involved me accompanying Lynsey Ann, my sister, to church on the first anniversary of her Wedding. She wore her Wedding dress to commemorate the anniversary. The interior of the church was enormous and we sat at the side of it’s interior before the massive altar, or at least I did, where there was a cassette player. On this cassette player, a double deck, I kept pressing play, listening to the music, letting it echo throughout the church, disturbing the hymn singing and the voice of the priest, and intermittently flicking it off with the stop button. The priest on the altar, Father Pat, kept getting annoyed with me for disturbing his mass with the loud music clips and I think he asked me to leave on more than one occasion, a request I denied, rebelliously pressing down on the play and stop buttons, whilst he spoke to his congregation.
Can anyone guess what that is all about?
Apparently you can have up to 7 dreams a night. I used to be great at remembering dreams and actually wrote down what I dreamt from time to time, a vague effort at a dream diary (Yep, in those days I had more time on my hands). I would sometimes have dreams that lasted for up to a week, my sleep continuing on with a dream where I had left off the previous night like an ongoing, surreal, drama serial. When I was young I remember actually looking forward to going to bed to see what happened next after the cliffhanger ending from the previous night or morning awakening.
Then there were the nightmares.
I used to have a recurring nightmare when I was small, set in our first house, Vancouver Drive.
It was dark. The curtains were all shut, but some moonlight could still be seen shining through the fabric of the curtain. Mum and Dad had locked the doors and windows and the five of us sat in the dark living room, cowering from what was outside. I remember peeking through the gap between the two curtains covering the living room’s rear window to look out into the small, dark back garden, the old rusty second hand see saw at it’s centre, partly hidden by the old stone hut that came with those houses. I would freeze in terror at the sight of the things outside, all standing, or pacing around, moving around the house, threatening just by their presence. They were large birds with tiny, beady eyes and giant beaks, standing as tall as a man, on long feather less legs. Things that can only be described as large dark, horrific versions of flamingos.
I remember, as I looked out, looking over the gathering block in the pale moonlight, the head of one of the creatures suddenly appearing directly before my nose, on the opposite side of the glass, straight up at the window. It’s small black eyes glaring at me over its large beak.
In one particularly frightening version of the dream I remember having a little later, the giant birds actually somehow got into the house via the back door and spent the majority of the dream ascending the hall staircase. Obviously I was in my bed for the entirety of the dream but could somehow see what was going on. Some of the creatures made their way up the hall’s stairs (Vancouver Drive’s stairs featured in quite a few of my nightmares when I was wee) and after the familiar creaking on the landing directly outside my, and my brother Kenny’s, bedroom the noises stopped. I watched my closed bedroom door, pressed up against the wall behind me, eyes wide with fear. On the other side of the door, a clawed hand reached up and turned my bedroom door handle. Just as the door swung open to reveal the creature beyond, I awoke.
Thinking back that was probably the last time I seen those scary black flamingos in a dream.
In work we quite often have Radio 2 on in the background and occasionally folk come on the Steve Wright afternoon show claiming to understand dreams and know what your subconscious mind is telling or instructing you. Personally I’m inclined to believe it’s a lot of subconscious babble, your brain conjuring up stories whilst you sleep, using elements from all over your life, including family, friends, experiences, locations. In your mind, whilst you sleep, what starts out as a simple thought develops, grow, mutates and expands like a patchy watercolour with too much water soaking through the paper making the colours spread and merge.
Say that, I have had a few, weird, eerily accurate moments involving dreams.
I did have one, very different experience recently. One that came back to me in a horrific flash, like a very bad sense of déjà vu.
I dreamt that I was sitting in Angela’s, Ka’s sister’s, living room, surrounded by the McGarva family members and, what was stranger, my Mum, Dad, brother and sister, who, in real life, had never seen or been in Angela and Steven’s house. Together we watched as young Joshua played in the centre of the living room, dressed in a strange uniform with a big red object on wheels upon which he could ride. Throughout the dream Joshua played with this red object and the relatives talked but I just couldn’t escape the feeling that something horrendous had happened. A terrible aching pain echoed throughout my head which I couldn’t pinpoint in the dream. Even though I recalled the dream the next day the dream faded over time as they all do.
Around six months later, Lucy passed away on Hogmanay and Angela invited us all round for dinner on the New Years Day in an effort to help us through the remainder of the ‘festivities’. The McGarvas, and the Reids. Sure enough, following dinner, we were all sitting in Angela’s living room talking, when Joshua sauntered in to the living room pushing the new fire engine he had received from Santa for his Christmas. Previously, before Lucy had arrived on the 29th and departed the day or so later, we had enjoyed our Christmas Day with Joshua who had been playing with the new truck dressed in his Santa outfit.
It was all probably just strange coincidence but it did make me think, not for the first time, that maybe there’s more to dreams than just mere mental rambling.
I’ve still never encountered a flamingo though.