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.

Cholera, guinea pigs and Mel B's big... smile

“Meep, meep!” I woke up at around 7am on Sunday morning, three hours after going to bed. A small ‘meeping’ noise was disturbing the dead of night (or rather morning) echoing throughout the bedroom I found myself lying in. A dull headache made it difficult to open my eyes. There was a small clink of metal and a shuffling from the bottom of the single bed I was lying in. Where the hell was I?
Moments later I remembered that I was in my brother-in-law’s house, his spare, loft bedroom and that that the noise was coming from the large cage at the foot of the single bed I was currently occupying. His pets were moving around.
Jillian and Colin’s two guinea pigs must have been having a morning stroll around the straw in the large cage. The noises were so small but because of the emptiness of the house around them, they echoed throughout the room. They echoed enough to awaken Ka, who was sleeping in the other bed against the other side of the room, and myself up at various points throughout our slumber.
Ka and myself hadn’t set eyes on them since we’d arrived in the evening the night before, for dinner and drinks. The two guinea pigs, (I think they’re called Mel and Kim), had been moved indoors and into the spare room, for the winter, and had not moved from the darkest depths of their wee hut inside their cage since Ka and myself had dumped our bags. Some of the rattles and clinks sounded as if Mel and Kim were working at freeing themselves from their metal cell, a theory that I knew would not go unthought in Ka's head, as she cowered under her duvet.
It may be a new year but there was no getting rid of him. There was a new addition to the McGarva household living room. As we made ourselves comfortable in the living room I spotted him smiling at us from the large armchair in the corner of the living room. He was back.
John Barrowman stared at us from the front of a large white cushion. And, sure enough, upon our first visit to the toilet, I discovered Jillian had gained a new John Barrowman 2012 calender to replace her old one which had stared at you from the wall at the side of the bathroom as you relieved yourself throughout any 2011 visits.
Jillian said the cushion was good to snuggle into at night to which I nodded politely moving him from the couch before I nearly sat on his face.
Another, much worthier and more beautiful face looked out from various portraits dotted about the room. Ka and myself are always touched at how many of Jillian and Colin’s family photoframes Lucy is featured in. She’s even got her very own portrait on a middle shelf in the bookcase, a shining silver frame with glittery stars, sparkling under the living room light.
Jillian cooked up a mighty three course meal, served with wine, of various standards (one was a bit too sweet apparently), which was followed by our semi traditional games night. Articulate, was the first. A game which is basically a verbal charades against the egg timer which involved lots of gesturing, shouting and animatedly describing various words for the other team player, in my case Colin, including 'cholera' (diarrhea!, I thought it was a bad cough?), 'hijack' (It's what happened in 'Under Siege!') and 'escape hatch' (Ka crawling around the floor opening imaginary doors).
Following this, the Xbox was switched on and 'Let's Dance' was loaded. It was the first time I'd taken part in any form of computer dancing game and it was certainly weird to see yourself dancing on screen, on stage, alongside a bunch of Fame students. Scary Spice was your host for the entirety, standing, smiling artificially at you from the tv in a tight black dress that helped make her, not insignificant, bosom look strangely 3D. After instructing you to stand in a particular spot on the living room floor, the small black box of the Xbox Connect at the foot of the telly, scanned your body and after a few moments of thinking about it, placed your full body on screen alongside the smiling, fit, and disconcertingly younger, dancers on the computer generated stage before you. As the music started you had to follow the other dancers' every dance move to earn your points, the machine scanning your every swaying, kicking, squatting, shaking, body, awarding you points for every correct move made. Needless to say, I didn't quite make the grade as Mel B strode on and gave me a good slagging, although I did manage to come second place to Jillian in the second round which both the McGarvas, Ka and Colin, were more than a little upset about upset about. If it had been slitting throats and pickpocketing in ‘Assassins Creed’ I would have been top of the table.
Following this endurance test we collapsed back on to the various chairs and enjoyed a few more drinks whilst vaguely competing against one another in a final tv and movie quiz, a game which came with rules, which, needless to say, we didn't bother following.
I rose from bed at around midday after being awoken by Ka putting her dressing gown on across the room (she's awfully noisy putting on dressing gowns, who would have thought a dressing gown could be so noisy?). I pulled some clothes on and lumbered downstairs with my shower stuff, determined to waken myself up with the power shower.
Slightly different to how I’d woken myself up the morning before with a 5k run around St. Leonards and Calderwood with Ka. We ran our usual route, in the bitter cold temperatures, breath steaming out of our mouths are we ran, leaping over frozen puddles and skidding on the black ice, hidden on dark, shining pavestones.
The shower of Sunday morning wasn’t quite as energetic or bracing, but it worked. As I showered under the watchful eyes of John Barrowman in the corner, Ka cradled a coffee on the couch, Jillian watched the mid hours of the tennis final between Djokovic and Nadal and Colin got to work in the kitchen cooking up a breakfast fit for kings. Once again we all collapsed back into the couch afterwards, and watched the remainder of the Aussie Open final before Ka and myself headed back to EK, popping by the cemetery on the way home with another bunch of roses.
As Ka tidied Lucy’s little grave and I carried out my rose trimming duties, I couldn’t help but wonder why… again.
Still it was a pleasant weekend.
A nice weekend, ruined by another Monday morning.

Dead squirrel bodies

After a fantastic weekend of blistering heat the sun is holding out over Scotland. Last years summer lasted the whole of two weeks at the most. Could this be our short summer? Fast and fleeting like the life of the little squirrel I passed over on my way to work today. Slightly adjusting the path of the car, making sure either of it's tyres did not disturb the small furry motionless body I wondered where the squirrel had been heading at his time of death. Yes, I know, I should have stopped and tried to somehow move the body to the pavement or at least the side of the road but like so many others that had presumably done so before me, I drove on. I had more important things to do, like get to work on time.
Some of these animals have a death wish anyway. We were heading home in a taxi at the weekend after a BBQ in Chapelton, speeding along, when all of a sudden the driver swerved us into the middle of the road. As the approaching headlights lit up our faces through the windscreen and our lives flashed before our eyes the driver muttered something about narrowly avoiding a passing hedgehog.
Foxes are experts are getting run over too, especially on the expressway. Most of them ending up as flattened piles of mush on the tarmac. Dogs are different though. You run over a dog and they're more than likely to get up and dart away, perhaps with half a leg missing. Not unlike Bullet from 'The Scheme'.
I had been in quite a good mood last night until Ka and myself sat and watched this horrendous programme. A documentary series following a small number of families in a Kilmarnock housing scheme. Possibly the worst advert for life in Scotland ever. Hopefully it was not being transmitted outside Scotland as anyone watching it with little knowledge of our beloved country, it's districts and its people would most probably be horrified in a way that Rab C. Nesbitt could have only hinted at. Zombie like girls hooking each other in the street, stoned, indecipherable young guys slobbering their thoughts in between getting their neighbours daughters pregnant, police visits, court visits, families going on holiday and leaving children to fend for themselves, couples knocking each other about and pet dogs (the aforementioned Bullet) getting run over and left to suffer in the streets (gawd, that squirrel is going to haunt me now!). For the past week now, since the first episode of the series went out I've been listening to folk in the work laughing about it, and the people it follows, so I started watching it under the impression I would get some sort of laugh out of it. Unfortunately I was utterly depressed by the end of it and felt like immediately emigrating. No wonder so many Scots end up leaving. To get away from the people arguing around blind relatives smashing bottles over each others heads? As the credits rolled on this programme a BBC voiceover informed us that future episodes of the series had now been cancelled due to ongoing police investigations... In other words they've all been arrested.
Saying that, my Dad calls our area a 'scheme'. He might be right. There's a neighbour who sings Take That over and over upstairs on drunken nights in with mates, a neighbour living downstairs who likes to walk around the street naked, a bunch of wheelie bin thieves who burn the plastic for the fumes, a couple of six year olds who constantly cycle up and down our lawn while their Mum sits and drinks wine at her front door, a woman who parks her car by hitting it off others and a recently discovered transvestite living further down the street. There's also a bloke who noses at all of this and drives by dead squirrel bodies. Maybe I should put a call in to BBC Scotland?

Safaris and Stevie Wonder

Over a week since my last post! Good grief - what's happening to me?! I have been off work for a week and enjoying myself in posh hotels, trips to safari parks, eating out in the town, relaxing in the sauna and jacuzzi, spending Wedding gift vouchers and visiting graves. Well, I wouldn't class the latter in the 'enjoying myself' category but it is one of these things that you always mean to do and never get round to doing. I've carried out a few of those 'meant to do' jobs and trips having the whole week off and to myself and it has been great.
Ka and myself stayed in Malmaison last weekend for a five year anniversary treat - and also because we had a voucher given as a Wedding gift by a parent in Ka's nursery. You know your in a posh place when the bathroom sink is on a table and the toilet comes out of the wall and not the floor. A floating toilet seat - amazing. I did manage to pull myself away from the posh toilet seat to go down to Humming Bird on Bath street after our splendid two course meal in the Malmaison restaurant. Another trendy overcrowded bar with a mix of music, cocktails and clientele.
Blair Drummond Safari Park was surprisingly impressive too. We arrived at five to ten on Monday morning with Morgan, the neice, singing in the back seat, eating cheese sandwiches. Blair Drummond proved to be a great day out with talks, shows and enclosures for elephants, lions, tigers, giraffes, chimpanzees, meerkats, penguins, guinea pigs and a dead bear. Morgan informed us the bear was now in heaven. Watching the sea lions wave and jump was quite fun, though a little disappointing if you happen to have already been to any Deep Sea World abroad, the Sea Lions best skill being their rather accurate impression of Stevie Wonder as they stood swaying on their plinths.
The Birds of Prey talk was far more entertaining as a giant eagle of some description done it's best to take our heads off. Morgan seemed unfazed by it all, apparently the overfriendly lamas were far more frightening. Driving through the lion enclosure was surprisingly intimidating too especially when one of the lions jumped up and broke into a run, heading straight for us. I nearly chocked on my chocolate button but fortunately refrained for jumping on the accelerator as the lion in question then decided to slow and settle down at the foot of a tree in the shade.
Tonight Ka and myself are off to another ELU fund raiser involving the old wooden horses on strings ordeal. You never know I may even win some money out of it... certainly more than a visit to the Shawfield Stadium anyway.