The Winged Man and a Darkness that Stretches Forever

Another vivid dream – the lack of quality sleep since Christmas seems to have increased my capacity to remember my dreams as I wake up. And for once, it’s not a football one.

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An immaculate and silent man flies through space, holding my body and another to his bosom for safety. His slick back hair has an air of Clark Kent and there is calmness all around.

We land on a desolate planet and he drops two of us to the grey, dusty ground. I look to my left to see a babbling old woman who has been my travel companion for hundreds of years since we left Earth. But neither of us have ever spoken, not to each other or to our guardian. He just keeps his eyes ahead, always striving forward through the stars to a final destination maybe he doesn’t even know.

Off he flies again, I have a slight panic as maybe this time he won’t come back to pick us up. We’re left in the middle of an everlasting desert. Solid grey below and to the horizon and above a pitch black sky with no stars to be seen. The exosphere is stark and looks like the perfect glass casing of a snow globe, protecting us from the black void of nothingness beyond it.

The woman beside me looks lost and she is digging into the earth with her bare hands, picking up the grey sand and nibbling on it, she has a wild and ragged appearance and her eyes tell me she’s no longer in control. The old her has long gone.

Silence turns into a slight hum that continues to get louder and louder alongside the beating drum of me heart through my ear canal and I feel like my head might pop. Suddenly, in the distant sky comes a flash and I assume it is him, returning to collect us. It is not.

A meteor in the sky picks up speed and becomes bigger and bigger, the wind picks up around us and a grey sandstorm begins at knee level. The woman starts to babble and panic, burying her head in the freshly dug ground. The meteor hits the line on the horizon – followed by a blinding white light and complete silence.

A Buzzing sound

 

Buzzing

 

 

Buzzing

I awake to see the line on the horizon is now shifting in size and appears to be approaching us quite quickly. A tidal wave miles high – this is how it all ends, hundreds of years after my birth, in a galaxy far, far away. I sit down and look at a pocket mirror I’ve kept as a memento from the last planet we landed on. My face is weathered, skin dry as parchment and lacking any colour, harsh lines fill my forehead. My hair is thin and wispy. I look my hundreds of years in age.

A mile away or so.

This is it. I panic like never before as I think of everyone I’ve ever known. Everyone I’ve loved and hated and everyone they have loved and hated are now long gone into dust. Everything means nothing but the littlest things mean everything. This is where I will stand and draw my last breath.

A loud bang as the sound barrier is broken and in a flash we are picked up and dragged off into the night sky, above the waves and over the vast sea which is now covering the entire planet.

For the first time I notice his wings, the silent man who has never uttered a single word is suddenly our angel.

Except now I realise I must continue to live. Could that be worse than dying?

Into the Family Home of a Man with a Bite

Before he went and bit an Italian on the field during the World Cup I had a dream about Luis Suarez. He has since left our shores for a crack at the big time.

Here’s what I remember:

My phone pings – (Luis Suarez has accepted your invitation for an interview – proceed to his mountain home).

His mountain home was in Cwmbran, overlooking the new town he had recently bought with his bonus from last season. I was chauffeur driven up by my dad in a limo which was bullet proof, but only down the left hand side. We have been told to worry about snipers on the mountain. Suarez, as I’m sure you’re all aware, doesn’t trust the British press, and even though I love him he doesn’t know that and the team of Uruguayan snipers are hidden away and ready to pounce at any moment. I’m a little scared.

We arrive and he is very charming and funny. He takes me through his living room to the kitchen where his wife and children are sat happily around the large dining table. He offers me a drink of mate, which makes me feel very welcome, and I play some lego with his children. We make a recreation of Anfield in just 5 minutes and it looks better than the real thing. On the television in the kitchen Jan Molby is talking to Jim White about that goal against Utd in the 80s that was lost for years as it was during a broadcast strike.

Attention back to Suarez and I ask for the WC. He points me upstairs and asks me to use the en-suite in the master bedroom. I climb the stairs and it strikes me how calm and natural the day has felt so far. Even though I’ve not got much material yet he’ll be really relaxed when we do get down to talking on the record. The bedroom opens out onto a balcony at the back of the property. The curtains rustle and the wind picks up through the room. It’s weird that the doors are wide open. A click goes off in my mind. My life flicks to black.

A Vivid Picture of a Past and Future Embrace

I’ve had a few dreams over the years that have felt as real as life – waking up still going through the emotions (and motions) of the dream. Once, I woke up in physical pain, clutching my stomach from the two dogs attacking me and clawing my guts out in my dream. And then there are the countless times where I’ve gone for a sleep walk and half woken up muttering something or other and trying to get out of the building.

Last night I was on a packed train heading to nowhere. Football fans of all colours were everywhere, there was little space to breath and the edges of my periphery blurred into a swirl of nothingness. It was hot, I was tired and could see no end in sight.

And then there was Pete – right in the centre of the carriage – someone to focus on and calm down. He smiled at me and motioned to come towards him. I managed to squeeze my way through the crowd, keeping my eyes on him to make sure I made it ok.

He reached for me as I struggled past the last sweaty, lager breathed lout, brushing aside the damp scarf briefly stuck to my face. It was the big bear hug of an embrace that brought it all back – oh and his big blue eyes – you could get lost in those eyes as anyone who knew Big Pete would tell you. I looked up at him – he seemed even bigger than I remember, as if I was his kid brother – and told him I missed him. Pete looked down, gave me a peck on the cheek and told me everything would be ok. I smiled and rested my head in his chest and felt safe for the first time on that train.

A smile and some tears arrived on my face at the same time.

Some dreams are a lot more vivid than others. And last night I woke up almost in tears.

RIP Big Pete – glad you’re still around somewhere nearly a year on.

”I either need to sleep or be sectioned”

My dreams have been infected by stranger beings over the last month, since I started watching Twin Peaks. Sometimes my every day life feels a bit like one of these strange dreams and yet again it is public transport that provides me with the opportunity to witness these characters from a safe distance. It is almost like it provides you with not only affordable and regular travel options, but also a gateway to another, dreamlike world where anything is possible. Sometimes it’s just full of wankers, who are also interesting to watch but from a distance.

As I take the train less and have started using the bus much more, I was under the impression that my travel related tales had vanished for ever. How wrong I was. Since the turn of the year I’ve seen two bus drivers verbally attacked, a Chinese woman scream continuously for the 10 minutes I was on the bus and numerous ‘little people’ and giant fatties.

The first bus driver saw himself as a hero, stopping the bus after a young thug had thrown his ticket at the driver whilst getting off. We jolted to a halt, the doors were reopened and the bus driver threatened the lad that if he ever tried to get on his bus again he’d be sorry and as he never forgets a face, to not even try it! For the rest of the journey you could sense the pride this man was feeling and the adulation he craved from the rest of the passengers. As each got off they thanked him for standing up to the yobbish youth culture of today, a man standing to fight a losing battle, alone, like the British hero we have lost from yesteryear. I gave him a look as if I was about to thank him, then decided against it, as I didn’t appreciate his own threatening nature, in front of a child near the front of the bus. What a wanker with next to no professionalism!

The second driver couldn’t speak fluent English as far as I was aware, or maybe he just couldn’t understand scouse. An inebriated man stumbled past without paying, can of special brew in one hand, a pizza box in the other. When called back, he fumbled in his pocket and showed what looked like a betting slip, when the driver shook his head the drunk stomped his feet like a child and slammed a pound down whilst shouting ”Fuckin’ ell, is that enough for you! treat yourself for fuck sake and let me eat my pizza!” Again the driver shook his head. The drunk fumbled around some more and this time pulled out a fiver and told the driver to just keep it. Once the bus resumed it’s journey the drunk walked up to the back of the bus, stopping at every second person and repeating what had just happened, as loudly as possible and ending each time with ”Some people just need to chill out and get a life don’t they? Could you get more of a twat than HIM?!” He’d forgotten his pizza and it was left at the front for the fattest woman I have ever seen, outside of TV shows, to drool over, and no doubt sneakily take with her when she got off the bus.

The screaming Chinese woman came on a packed bus at rush hour. She had let her little boy run on to the bus ahead of her and her other child (in pram) and had got herself stuck in the queue. As it looked more and more likely that she wouldn’t get on the bus at all, she started screaming at her boy, I presume to get back to the front of the bus, although of course I can’t be sure. She did manage to get on, just about, but her son stayed at the very back of the bus, himself screaming his head off, crying. He was without a seat and wasn’t holding on as the bus moved off and I’m surprised he didn’t fall over and injure himself. His mother continued to scream in a high pitched tone at the very front of the bus and pushed the pram into a man stood in front of her until he moved. This continued and more people had suffered a pram to the leg, until I got off the bus in Kensington and I imagine she went on, as her son was still at the back of the bus crying his eyes out.

The last interesting bus journey I took involved an old woman who sat on her own at the back of the bus, knitting away as if she was in her living room. The bumps of the road didn’t seem to hinder her and I’m sure the cardigan was completely finished by the time she got off. Speaking as a person who feels a little ill on a bus and struggles to read anything whilst moving and sometimes string together coherent sentences, i just don’t understand how she stayed so calm whilst knitting. Just in front of her sat a midget. He was so small that when he pulled a book out of his bag it was almost the size of his body, and he must have been suffering under the weight of it. I hope it was a good read. Also on the bus that night I could hear a young man telling a friend about his exploits in Korea the year before. He was meeting up with Korean friends the next day but hoped that they would speak English with him as he just couldn’t be bothered with the hassle. He wanted his friend to understand that it was easy to learn Korean, he had just lost the will after 6 months over there and had come back without learning anymore than was necessary to just get by. You could however learn to read Korean in 1 day if you so wished, it is that easy a language to learn!

That last journey sure did feel like a dream and the whole while I had the theme tune to Twin Peaks whirring through my mind and thoughts of Agent Cooper were never far away, he would be able to decipher this message from another world surely??