I don’t often remember my dreams but when I do, I’m always struck by how odd they are.  Sometimes too vivid, too real to be dreamlike, my waking state takes time to adjust to how life really is.  Sometimes, they’re just so ridiculous that my brain immediately dismisses what the neural sprites had been up to while my conscious had been at rest.  Of course, rest for me means seven to eight hours of sleep that’s frequently broken by pain from my ankle injury and/or a full bladder that I don’t seem to be able to siphon off sufficiently before sleepytime.

Anyway, last night, Mum was there.  She was upset because I think she knew she was dead and we had to take her to her funeral to say goodbye.  And then I put my coat somewhere but couldn’t find it when it was time to leave, so I spent an age looking for it instead of going to the funeral and by the time I got there, they’d started and finished without me.  The bloody cheek; I had a moving eulogy to deliver and everything!

So after that, and quite logically, I was driving along through an agricultural area at night time and I was picking off massive heads of garlic and courgettes and things as I drove through the fields back to my student digs, which weren’t anywhere I’d actually ever lived and there were no housemates.  But then it was my flat in Sheffield, only it wasn’t.

I had such a banging headache when I woke.  And a full bladder, despite getting up three times in the night to go to the loo.

Mum.  I miss her terribly.  We all do, especially Dad. Her ashes have been dispersed into the seas and I’d like to think that, had she known our plans and actions for that final committal, she’d have approved.  The family went together to Porth Dinllaen on the North Wales coast.  We’d spent many happy holidays in that location when us kids were young and it was one of Mum’s favourite places.  Walking together through the clifftop golf course, our descent to the beach near the Ty Coch and holiday cottages, to the shore where the waves of the high tide gently lapped the sand.  I wandered off a little, contemplating the scene, reminiscing on happier occasions as the late morning sun warmed my face.  It was time.

I turned to find Dad had already emptied most of the contents of the urn into the water. For fuck’s sake!  I’d driven him all the way there and he couldn’t wait for a bloody minute while I gathered my thoughts and took in the moment.  But it was serene, those few minutes, as the grainy remnants of Mum’s body were picked up by the sea and carried off on an eternal journey around the world’s oceans.

As we turned away and made our way to the pub for a shandy, I had time for one final thought: I bet no fucker does this for me.