Dream On

          The week hasn’t been overly eventful – for me, at least – though I am quite pleased with my latest purchase, a pair of woollen socks. I got them at the nearby military surplus store, Bogey Knights, suppliers of military miscellany and outfitters to discerning but brand-averse, gents. The socks are no-nonsense NATO spec “extreme cold weather” (undyed). Weapons-grade footwear but destined, in this instance, to be worn for lounging around the flat on winter evenings. Well, NATO apparently has no use for them.

          So little has happened, in fact, that I can honestly say there has been more action in my dreams. Sometime during Tuesday night’s slumber, for instance, I got a call from a famous rock band wanting a drummer for their upcoming USA tour and convinced them, with the briefest of drumrolls, that I was the man for the job. Unfortunately, I woke up before the fame and adulation. Or would that be fortunately, before they discovered my lack of ability? Whatever, it’s inconvenient to wake in the middle of the night, especially part-way through a story. I think there must be some in-built brain function that puts a premature end to dreams, since few, if any, ever come to a satisfactory conclusion. This can be quite frustrating if, say, you are about to make a life-changing discovery, be introduced to one of your heroes or fulfil some long-desired erotic fantasy. However, on the flip side, the mechanism works well in the case of nightmares, reassuring you that they are illusory and that your real life is not like that – mostly. And, lately, I have been pleased and relieved to have woken up part-way through dreams that are not nasty or disagreeable but simply boring. After what seems like hours of being subjected to a witless plotline, lifeless characters and dull dialogue, I long to change the channel but can’t find the remote. It’s a relief to wake and breathe an actual sigh of relief, before turning over to try a new story.

          When not asleep, I have been active only vicariously. For example, I left it to others to demonstrate on Dartmoor against the courts’ decision to end the right of hikers to wild-camp at will. (From now on, permits must be obtained from ‘landowners’ who receive public subsidies to maintain those of ‘their’ acres that sit within the designated National Park.) It’s not that I don’t feel strongly about the issue, it’s more that I wouldn’t have started from the assumption of land as private property. I will never forgive the Normans who, when they appropriated England, divided it up amongst themselves and, to a large extent, still have it. Their descendants adhere to the principle that ownership is nine tenths of the law and, while selling or renting small parcels of land to us plebs, continue to believe the rest is theirs. Protesting against the law that forbids wild camping is a mere pinprick in the flanks of the Establishment. The issue is bigger and wider. And there is an element of pique in my not joining the thousands protesting on Dartmoor. Where were they last summer when far fewer people, marching as Extinction Rebellion (Southwest), were on the streets highlighting the overarching matter of the destruction of the planet? Will they mass again to address the fundamental issues of the erosion of civil liberties, electoral suppression and cultural erosion that our present government is so keen to implement by means both of legislation and appointment of its cronies as heads of public realm institutions?

          It would be nice to have the occasional triumphal dream that ended with the masses rising up to dispatch autocratic rulers, or to force landowners to give us back our land so that nature and all its species may be restored. Last night, however, the Russians won the war because NATO ran out of socks.