Day 67 – Saturday 30th May 2020

“You gotta have a dream. If you don’t have a dream, how you gonna make a dream come true?”

Oscar Hammerstein II

Is it just me or are other people having more memorably vivid dreams since the onset of lock down? Actually, I know its not just me as speaking to others they have said the same. Last night was a case in point: my dreams including something about me being in a meeting with the Orange Cockwomble, aka The President of the United States of America * with him forcing me to share his bowl of marshmallows against my will. I woke up for a pee, went back to bed and this time dreamt something about a death fight with a cat I caught scratching my paint work and then Michael Caine attacking me on Twitter for cruelty to cats. I mean, you couldn’t make it up – except somewhere deep in my subconscious I did, though obviously not a lot of people know that. During this whole crisis I have learnt to trust the advice of scientists and experts more and more when seeking guidance so I thought I would turn to them to help me understand this phenomena. Good Housekeeping magazine was particularly helpful in this regard and pointed me to The Resident Sleep Expert at tailored online sleep improvement programme, Sleep Station.  ** He said, “Stress and anxiety put the brain into a heightened state of alertness.” I found that helpful as I was worried I had just been eating too much of my home made medical marijuana infused chocolate.

However, I needed to explore deeper into what do these extra deep dreams really mean. Why did I fight a pussy to death in my dreams? Again, I turned to my personal SAGE advisers at Cosmopolitan who told me that the death of a pet in a lock-down dream “……. is linked to our waking knowledge that many people are actually going to die. It is not a prediction that your loved ones are going to die. The virus is simply making us all contemplate our mortality. If you have lost a loved one your dreaming mind may also be pulling you back to that pain, but if you have not suffered a bereavement death dreams wake you up to the fact that none of us lives forever. Dream deaths suggest endings, but with every ending there is a new beginning so this dream could also indicate the death of our old way of life because we all sense that our pre-virus and post virus life is going to be very different.” ***  Got that? Anyway, what the fuck has Michael Caine got to do with it? Seriously though, some of this advice was really helpful. For example, it is apparantly not uncommon for men of my age to still be wetting the bed, who would have thought it? Though, the advice did say “You are letting yourself be submerged by fear or anxiety about the virus when there are ways to keep your head above water” so some blokes obviously have it really bad. I wonder how they explain that to the cleaner?

If you doubt the source of my advice then go and ask Dominic Cummings because he is obviously turning to Cosmopolitan for lock down guidance. “Remember, although you have no control over the lockdown you do have control over how you choose to react to it. It’s time for you to get in the driver’s seat of your life – or if you are the driver and not a passenger in your dream car – to drive more skilfully and take charge of your thoughts, feelings and reaction to the lockdown.” Though, to be fair to him, he probably doesn’t suffer from bed wetting if he can drive for four hours without stopping for a piss.

Being serious for a minute *** having the right scientists and experts at hand can reduce the stress of lockdown so when I needed advice appropriate to my age I turned to the accumulated wisdom of Silver Magazine “For The Fifty Plus and Fabulous” who explained my dreams as thus “Being forced to stay at home throws our minds back to our remote ancestors, who lived in caves for safety from predators and protection against a hostile natural environment. Hunting and foraging for food and water were the main reasons for venturing out. Being in lockdown subconsciously activates these ancient instincts, making shopping for essentials and getting exercise potentially very stressful.”  This might also clarify that inexplicable urge to scratch stickmen and animal drawings on the dining room wall. So, anyway if you were wondering about these dreams you have been having, you can rest assured from the leading experts that “our dreams are a way of limbering up our survival instincts, and important for our ability to survive.” Although this assuages my fears to some extent, it does not quite explain why the Tangerine Wankmaggot was so intent on feeding me marshmallows.

Moving on I was trying to decide which of my neighbour Shea’s Mum’s Vinyl collection should I talk about today. And then it dawned on me – my dream had nothing to do with being cruel to cats. My somnambulistic visions had nothing to do with my ancestors living in a cave. It was a message from God, using Michael Caine as his messenger, to feature the Squeeze song ‘Cool for Cats’ in today’s blog.

Squeeze were one of the bands that emerged in South East London about the time I moved to New cross in 1978. The others were Dire Straits and The Fabulous Poodles. I never saw Squeeze or Dire Straits but I did see The Fabulous Poodles and their violinist, Bobby Valentino, used to play in one of my local pubs. I must find out if any of them lived in a cave and ate marshmallows with the Tiny-Fingered, Cheeto-Faced, Ferret-Wearing Shitgibbon.

is ‘Cool for Cats’ real or was it just a dream ? …………..https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJ2cEc_TCH

*Has there ever been a time when we have so many derogatory names for, so called, world leaders? I usually make my own up but Orange Cockwomble is just a favourite. There are whole websites dedicated to this subject, just Google it.  All today’s epithets are favourites from the interweb.  Comedian Stewart Lee makes a whole art form of it, adding an extra word to the long- form moniker every time he writes about Prime Minister Johnson (Ed. hahahah that’s very funny, no, that’s not the joke name, that’s his real one – the joke name is here ……… “Boris Piccaninny Watermelon Letterbox Cake Bumboys Vampires Haircut Wall-Spaffer Spunk-Burster Fuck-Business Fuck-the-Families Get-Off-My-Fucking-Laptop Girly-Swot Big-Girl’s-Blouse Chicken-frit Hulk-Smash Noseringed-Crusties Death-Humbug Technology-Lessons Surrender-Bullshit French-Turds Dog-Whistle Get-Stuffed FactcheckUK@CCHQ 88%-lies Get-Brexit-Done Bung-a-Bob-for-Big-Ben’s-Bongs Cocaine-Event Spiritual-Worth Three-Men-and-a-Dog Whatever-It-Takes I-Shook-Hands-With-Everyone Herd-Immunity I-Want-to-Thank-Po-Ling Squash-the-Sombrero Johnson.”

**   and *** see its true, I don’t just make this shit up.   https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/uk/lifestyle/a32080368/vivid-dreams-during-lockdown/

and https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/body/a32153598/dreams-meaning-lockdown-coronavirus/

****(I thought you were Ed.)  https://silvermagazine.co.uk/having-crazy-dreams-during-lockdown-this-is-what-it-means

*****  Ed. Now you’re really taking the piss. You didn’t really have that dream. You made it up. Me. No, honestly, I swear, I really, really did.

Funnily enough, the featured picture is from my favourite cartoon: Gilbert Shelton’s, “Fat Feddy’s Cat”. I didn’t put it there so it must just be a dream.