I don’t know what dreams are.  A quick look at Wikipedia tells us:

A dream is a succession of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that usually occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. The content and purpose of dreams are not fully understood, although they have been a topic of scientific, philosophical and religious interest throughout recorded history. Dream interpretation is the attempt at drawing meaning from dreams and searching for an underlying message. The scientific study of dreams is called oneirology.

Dreams mainly occur in the rapid-eye movement (REM) stage of sleep—when brain activity is high and resembles that of being awake. REM sleep is revealed by continuous movements of the eyes during sleep. At times, dreams may occur during other stages of sleep. However, these dreams tend to be much less vivid or memorable.  The length of a dream can vary; they may last for a few seconds, or approximately 20–30 minutes.  People are more likely to remember the dream if they are awakened during the REM phase. The average person has three to five dreams per night, and some may have up to seven;^[4] however, most dreams are immediately or quickly forgotten.  Dreams tend to last longer as the night progresses. During a full eight-hour night sleep, most dreams occur in the typical two hours of REM.

Opinions about the meaning of dreams have varied and shifted through time and culture. Many endorse the Freudian theory of dreams – that dreams reveal insight into hidden desires and emotions. Other prominent theories include those suggesting that dreams assist in memory formation, problem solving, or simply are a product of random brain activation.

Sigmund Freud, who developed the psychological discipline of psychoanalysis, wrote extensively about dream theories and their interpretations in the early 1900s.  He explained dreams as manifestations of one’s deepest desires and anxieties, often relating to repressed childhood memories or obsessions. Furthermore, he believed that virtually every dream topic, regardless of its content, represented the release of sexual tension.

I never used to remember my dreams until I started to take antidepressants a few years ago.  It’s hardly surprising that psychotropic agents will alter sleep patterns, but one thing that is apparent is that the majority of my dreams take on two forms:

• Travelling to the seaside or being at the seaside
• Toilet troubles

The seaside dreams are always from the perspective of being in a vehicle that’s travelling through countryside, over mountains, to finally reveal the see opening out ahead of me.  There then follows what seems to me a very pleasant time exploring various aspects of seaside, from the beach, to the waves and cliffs, to pleasure beaches and arcades.  Everything a person might expect from a visit to the seaside, apart from being with anybody I know… and seagull muggings.  When I was in Whitby earlier on in the year, I’d nipped in to a little fishmongers and seafood place to purchase a tub of cockles.  I stood by the promenade, looking out to the Abbey on the cliffs opposite and then, WALLOP! Something hit my left shoulder and, before I knew what had hapened, I was confronted by a victorious seagull with a mouthfull of vinegary shellfish, which it then decided it didn’t want afterall and spat out in an act of defiance.  Fucking FUMING!  If dreams were prophetic, I’d have been warned of such a possibility in at least one of my many subconscious trips to the beach. As it is, they are always relaxing, transporting my sleeping self off to places of calm and exploration.

Toilet anxiety dreams are another kettle of fish entirely, often leaving me in a cold sweat.  Similar to these are the “lift that doesn’t go where I need it to” dreams.  In both cases, I’m met with something that should perform a function, but fails, leaving me scared and frustrated.   The toilets are in public places and have no doors, they don’t work, there’s no toilet paper, they’re blocked or flooded, or there will be a single toilet in a vast, warehouse-sized bathroom, completely exposed.  The other variant is where the toilet is in a shared house and I grown up, sharing with people from my past.  The house has mutliple bathrooms, but none of the toilets work. Hideous on so many levels.

Now, some dream analysts might want to tell me that my toilet dream is all to do with wanting to take care of business, but I think I’m just scarred from the incident when we were in Italy and Mum had to take me into the woods to go for a poo because my auntie’s drain was blocked and there were gypsies there and it freaked me out. True story.  To this day I can’t pee outdoors.

My encounters with lifts in dreams are equally frustrating.  It’s the wrong lift to go that floor, or it doesn’t go all the way to the bottom, or you need to take this lift for that or that lift for another thing, but I never actually find the one I need and never get to where I need to because there are no stairs either and it’s all horrible and I just get into a frantic old pickle!  Freudians might tell me that going up and down in a lift represents having sex.  Not the sort of sex this girl has, I can tell you!  Everything is sex with the Freudians anyway; that lot would insist that my addiction to Italian spicy pork products is entirely sexual and nothing at all with a love of Italian spicy pork products.

Anyway, the thing about antidepressants is that they’re very good so long as you don’t forget to take them, which I had done for a number of days.  When I started to feel a bit funny yesterday, I thought I was coming down with a bug, but I think it’s just plummeting serotinin levels (and all of that running around the shared house, trying to find a toilet that works).  Of course, what you’re absolutely not supposed to do is take extra when you realise that you’ve missed out for a few days, and this is exactly what I did do last night.  And now I’m quite sleepy and I need a snooze.  I’m going to make sure I go for a wee and cover myself in sun cream before I settle down.

By “the lot”, I mean roast potatoes and sliced, stringless beans, but it’s all good.  The lamb will be infused with rosemary and garlic and my gravy is legendary, so it’s winner, winner baa lamb dinner for me tonight.

Just me tonight.

We’re currently experiencing a blip in the country’s first summer heatwave for decades (it’s only around 22ºC today) and I’m a bit fed up eating stuff with salad, so I decided to treat myself to a proper Sunday roast dinner. I prefer to cook with others in mind but there’s nobody around at the moment; my sister is on holiday and everybody else is away too.  Not that I have an enormous circle of friends, not that I like having people in my house really.  They’re ok on occasion for short bursts at a time, but I’ve grown so used to my own company that I become very impatient when the peace is disturbed by the breathing of others (little dog excepted, of course).

I’ve found myself becoming very impatient with lots of things recently, constantly grumbling at this or that, losing my temper too quickly, becoming irritated with television and radio to the point that my alone time is generally spent sitting in silence, listening to the ticking of the old Soviet clock that I acquired from eBay.  I declare that I’m fed up several times a day but I don’t know what to do about this, or whether I have the inclination to do anything at all.  There’s a danger that it will be my default state of being from now on.

Maybe that’s always been my default but I’m reverting to type because of a lack of moderating influences.  Being single has many advantages, but it’s very easy to become selfish and inconsiderate: there are no consequences to my poor behaviour and even me at my absolute best has never led to a great deal of success when it comes to holding on to a romantic relationship – complete and utter disaster in fact.  And as those relationships grow ever more distant in time and memory, all that’s left to remind me of the love that I experienced is the pain that consumed me when they ended, pain that I cling on to because I failed to cling on to them.

I’ve convinced myself that I don’t want to get involved in another relationship because I cannot bear (or is it bare?) the consequences of another heartbreak.  While this is true, to some extent at least, it’s probably fair to say that I don’t want to follow that path again because I’m actually still clinging on to that last one (not that one or that one, that one).  I reconciled that there was no going back a long time ago, but there’s no going forward either, and so here I am, slowly turning into Stig of the Dump and rapidly developing the personality of Pauline Campbell-Jones.

I do cook a lovely roast lamb dinner though.

I quite like Twitter. I quite like Facebook too.  Both social media platforms are fun to engage with.  They entertain, enrage, inform and humour me.  Unfortunately, above all else, the content tends to enrage these days.  This is particularly true of Twitter, where users get into public spats with each other.  Celebrities use their blue tick of verification to get other users permanently banned.

Avoiding those folk on the left side of politics, I am still witness to their moaning via the retweets of others.  And boy to they moan and whinge, and complain, and whinge.  I can’t understand how a political leaning can make a whole section of society so miserable, pessimistic, snobbish and downright hysterical.  The language they use is nothing short of ridiculous; using emotionally-charged vocabulary and subjective feelings over facts.

“This despicable, vindictive, uncaring Tory government is killing people with vicious benefits changes” – people on long term sickness benefits can’t just stay on them for life, they need to be assessed to check whether they can work.

“They’re killing the NHS by underfunding it so they can sell it off to their rich mates” – not happening, won’t happen; the NHS is over-subscribed, not underfunded.  There are too many people in this country and a lot of them make unreasonable demands on the NHS.

“Our kids’ futures are literally being stolen because they won’t offer free university tuition and they’re ripping us out of our beloved European Union” – more kids than ever from poorer and working class backgrounds are going into higher education; if they’re dropping out, it says more about the courses they’re doing than anything else. Countries of the Eurozone have over 50% youth unemployment, how’s that for a stolen future?

“They’re only interested in offering tax breaks to their rich mates and not about the majority of us” – the tax gap in the UK is the lowest in the world; this means that we retrieve most of what we’re owed, also the top 1% pays a hell of a lot of the tax take, in addition, nobody pays tax on the first £11,500 of their earnings (up from £4,300 in 2010).

“Tory Austerity is crippling public services” – we’re still overspending by £50bn per year, that’s not austerity.  And while public services can afford to police twitter, change the livery of police cars to virtue signal, and employ £60,000 per year diversity coordinators, then there are still efficiencies to be made.

But, whinge, whinge, fucking whinge.

Those on the left offer a pretence of caring for others… so long as the others they pretend to care for can be forced to succumb to the groupthink of the liberal bubble.  They herd people into groups so that they can treat each one as special victims: women; gays; muslims; ethnic minorities (but never Jews, heaven forbid, the Jews!); trans people.

I honestly don’t know how they reconcile their fight for gender equality and gay rights with their pandering to muslims.  Quite clearly they don’t, as mass child rape by gangs of muslim men across the country were covered-up by Labour councils and police forces under their instruction.  We don’t tackle the issue of islamist terrorism, we’re expected just hold hands, lay flowers, sing don’t look back in anger, post a hashtag then accept metal barriers to prevent truck attacks.  Every time there is a terrorist attack perpetrated by somebody whose mind has been warped by their interpretation of Islam, our civic leaders’ first response is always, without fail “we must protect our muslim communities and any reprisals will be dealt with with the full force of the law.  We will be monitoring social media for any comments that might be deemed threatening or hateful”.

The left hates freedom of speech, it hates diversity of thought, it hates having to deal with facts and arguments because it’s so much easier to feel like you’ve won an argument by shutting down your opponent with screaming and crying.  In their oh-so clever and funny way, with a “that’s shown them” smirk to the others in their twitter bubble, they quote the tweets of those they disagree with using the following:

• “Posted without comment” – as if to say to their comrades “Ha, I don’t need to offer an interpretation or narrative because this person is an idiot and so there”.
• “The state of this” – oh look, somebody who I’m never going to meet from a demographic I’ll never interact with doing something that’s harmless that they find fun.  But they’re clearly thick and they don’t vote the way I do, so I hate them.
• “Delete your account” – I don’t agree with you.  You should delete your account before I complain to Twitter and they do it for you.
• “Imagine my shock” – actually, this is one of my favourites and I’m guilty of using using it, so slap me.
• #metoo – this wound me up so much recently.  Women from privileged backgrounds dredging up clumsy encounters with men from years ago.  Grow a fucking pair, girls, if somebody comes on to you and it’s not welcomed, tell them.  If they carry on, punch the fuckers or break their fingers.  Don’t dwell on an awkward wink or an attempted kiss for years so you can jump on a bandwagon of victimhood when there are real people out there who are victims of real, horrible sexual violence and repression, but you’re too fucking scared to say or do anything about them because, you know “cultural differences” and you don’t want to seem racist.  Idiots.

To look at Twitter, the news websites and political commentary from across the spectrum, you’d think the world was going insane.  There is definitely an effort to shut down conservative voices on social media by suspension of accounts on Twitter and demonetisation of Youtube channels.  Luckily, the vast majority of people use social media to interact with their friends and post funny videos.  These are the people who go about their daily business, work the best for their families, pay their taxes, contribute to society.  They don’t give a crap about what Owen fucking Jones is pissing his pants about. Or that there’s a hashtag to complain about an awkward fumble at a Christmas party in 1995.  And thank goodness for that.

It was my birthday last week.  I was in Wales on holiday with my family at the time and my sister confessed to having forgotten the upcoming anniversary on my arrival at the holiday cottage a couple of days before the event itself.  Anyhoo, on the morning of my birthday, I was pleasantly surprised to be presented with a gift bag from her.  It contained a cards from my sister and my niece, a candy skull air freshener for my car and a small hard-backed book entitled “The Little Book of Hygge: the Danish way to live well”.  My eyes rolled audibly: here she goes again, trying to make me eat vegetables and lose weight.

She’s never happy with me, that one: “You’ve got to stop smoking”; “you dirnk too much, cut down”; “you eat rubbish”; “you need to eat a breakfast”.  Even when do all those things, there’s always something else.  “Why have you put so much weight on?”  Probably because I stopped smoking and she makes me eat a breakfast.  My diet is actually OK if you reduce the fat, salt and sugar, and introduce more vegetables while halving the portion sizes.  There’s also the tablets that I take for depression that can cause weight gain.  Plus the fact that I’m a lazy, greedy, fat slob.  But despite my continuously expanding form, the little book she bought me for my birthday shows me that I am pretty much there when it comes to hygge (pronounced something like hue-gah).  I am living the thygge life, astwer.

Hygge is hard to define, but if you think of cooking a meal with two or three friends, and you’re all wearing Sarah Lund jumpers and the best woollen socks ever and you’re drinking mulled wine in a log cabin with a roaring fire and lots of candles while lolling around on sheepskins or wrapped in blankets and playing board games, that kind of sums it up.  It’s that feeling you get when it’s a bit miserable outside so you close the blinds, turn on some dimmed lights (or light a load of candles), settle into your favourite armchair alongside the snoring dog with a lovely cup of sweet, strong coffee (maybe with a splash of whisky) and immerse yourself in your favourite book or film while the aromas of the casserole that’s cooking in the oven gradually emerge from the kitchen and evolve. Being with your favourite people and sharing simple experiences with them, laughing until you cry.  That moment when the sunshine changes from winter cold to spring warmth, that’s hygge.

It’s kind of the Zen of your experiences and environment.  Or it might not be, what do I know?

From reading Meik Wiking’s book, it seems that having access to resources like a Copenhagen apartment and a cabin in the woods, or being able to sail, go canoeing along rivers and ski in the Alps, these things are all VERY hygge.

What strikes me about hygge is that we all have it, irrespective of where we grew up or live, it’s just that certain cultures and language have managed to come up with words for it.  Others may not have words for hygge, but it’s so nice to stop and recognise it by being more in tune with ourselves, our environment and our relationships.

I painted a picture while I was on my holibobs, totes hygge.

There comes a time in your life when you take a step back, have a look at it and, if you’re me, sigh and decide not to bother engaging in that exercise again because it’s just too distressing.  True to form though, as a person with too much time on their hands, I find myselt sitting back, having a look at my life and taking stock of the good things about it as well as those areas that require improvement.  I tend to ignore the “Requires Improvement” area altogether these days, even though I know I shouldn’t.

The following areas  listed under “Satisfactory”:

• Accommodation
• Friends
• Family
• Dog (although he could quite easily come under “requires improvement”)

Requires Improvement:

• FinancesI’m very good at knowing how much money I haven’t got.  It’s always a bit of a struggle, and past periods of profligacy haven’t helped my cause, but I keep my head above water and the wolf from the door.  It’s just disappointing that I’m never in the position to save money.

• CareerGiven my natural brilliance, sparkling personality, intelligence and many other attributes that I’m too modest to mention, I should really have a career and I don’t. I have a job that’s ok that I generally enjoy, but I can see me being stuck there until I retire because, although  I know I’m capabale of much more, I don’t want the hassle of job applications and interviews and the rest of it.

• HouseworkThis is something that I avoid until I absolutely have to do it, which is wrong, I know.  The thing is, I love having a tidy, dust-free house, but the housework always starts with the vacuum and the vacuum always initiates a fight with the dog and I don’t think he can afford to lose yet another tooth from biting the GTech.  I’m making excuses when I have no justification for not doing my housework other than the fact I can’t be fucking arsed.

• RelationshipsDon’t, just don’t. It’s not going to happen. I am not, ever, going to get involved in another relationship for as long as I live.  My poor old heart is still torn from what happened six years ago and I can’t even think about putting myself through that again.  The thing with women is that all the nice ones are straight and the gay ones are a strange variety of mental illness in human form.  So no, I shall be avoiding all that nonsense at all costs.

• HealthSomething very strange happened to me in the new year: I got poorly over Christmas with a terrible virus that gave me the most horrendous cough and rendered me unable to breathe.  Try as I might, I couldn’t smoke, so I just stopped.  I also hardly drink booze these days other than at weekends when I see how many drinks I can have before falling asleep or developing a migraine.  Despite my straight edge lifestyle, my health never seems to improve; it’s just a downwards spiral of fatigue and pain.  My right hip keeps me awake at night while a seering pain runs through my left hip whenever I stand from my office chair at work.  I’m in agony with my ankle when I walk and I have a grumbling ovary that leave me feeling like I’m being constantly poked.  If anybody is a limping lesson in looking after yourself in youth, it’s me.

My shortcomings have made me come to the conclusion that I need a carer.  I’d never heard of such a thing until morbidly obese people who are too stupid or lazy to work started going on TV and shouting at politicians, claiming that their benefits had been cut and they no longer had a carer to cook for them or to get them dressed.  Another word for carer is “partner” and people who have partners are generally not the sorts of people who go on telly to shout at politicians about having their benefits cut because they’re not fat, lazy slobs and they manage to get off their arses and go to work while still having time to have a bath, wash their hair, eat a balanced diet and get some exercise.  While being a fat, lazy slob, I do go to work, have a daily appointment with my shower and my diet is very well balanced between stuff that’s really good for me and absolute shit.  I don’t have a partner or a carer, but I don’t think I want to go on the telly to shout at politicians about this because, quite frankly, it’s a ridiculous thing for anybody to do.

I don’t want a partner or a carer though, the former because my fragile emotional state simply can’t handle it and the latter because I can’t stand the idea of somebody not loading the dishwasher correctly (this applies to the former too).

In the absence of a partner or a carer, most of my “Requires Improvements” could be brought up to a more optimum state by me having more money.  So essentially, having the income of a partner without having to have that romantic involvement and all the constant suspicions that they’re cheating on me because that’s what they always do.  Having more money will allow me to get a housekeeper, a personal trainer and a hip replacement. To facilitate this, I’m going to set up a GoFundMe page where people can donate to a wonderful cause: me.  Because I’m worth it.

I started a new car insurance policy with a different provider at the beginning of the month.  It was all nice and straightforward: go online; find quote; add extras; pay; cancel other policy, etc, etc.  Anyhow, I got this e-mail on the 7th of Feb:

So, this was a bit of a pain – I’d never been asked to provide any such information when starting a new insurance policy before – but I’d get round to when I wasn’t at work and I had a bit more time.

But today, I got an e-mail from the insurers telling me my policy had been cancelled and I’d been refunded my fee (minus the £45 cancellation fee).  Hang on a minute!  What?  How about giving us some bloody notice?  So, I phoned them up:

Assistant one

“Oh yes, it’s been cancelled.  Not to worry, we can just get you a new quote and get you a new policy to start straight away”

Assistant two

“Ok, we’ll just transfer all the details of your policy over to the new quote… that’s £453 but we’ll refund your cancellation fee.”

“But that’s £100 more than before.”

“Yes, you went through Money Supermarket before, we can’t offer that discount”

“So I have to go and get another quote and a new policy elsewhere and I’ll still have to pay the cancellation fee for a policy that you cancelled without any warning?”

“I’m afraid so.  You can make a complaint if you like.”

“Well, it looks like I’ll have to and I don’t want to take any more of your time because you’ve done all you can to help.”

Assistant three (who’ll go far as a GP’s receptionist one day)

“The policy clearly states there’s a £45 cancellation fee.”

“I’m not referring to that, I’m asking where in the e-mail I was sent on the 7th does it explicitly state that my policy will be cancelled if I don’t provide the required information by the 14th, and why wasn’t I given any notice?  I’ll read it out to you:

What happens next?

Once we have this information, we’ll check it against your policy and contact you if we need anything else. If the details don’t match the ones you gave us when you took out your policy, we may have to change or cancel your cover. This is because, under the Consumer Insurance Act 2012, it’s your duty to answer relevant questions about your circumstances correctly, and provide evidence when needed.

We appreciate your time with this matter and look forward to hearing from you by 14^th February 2017

“That wording does not give you grounds to cancel my policy.”

“The policy states that there’s a fee for cancellation.”

This went on for about 20 minutes until I did that thing, yes, I asked to speak to a manager.

“They’ll only tell you what I’ve been saying but I’ll try to find somebody.”

Pause…

“Hello, I’m back, they’re all going off into a meeting so none can come to the phone, but we’ve had a chat and agreed that all we can do is waive the cancellation fee.”

“Thanks, err, but that’s what I was asking you to do.”

Anyway, with that done, and my £45 refunded, I had to go off and get my car insured with none other than Hastings.  They’d be advised to have somebody review the documentation they send out to people.  Can you imagine if they’re dealing with a claim against another party?

“Our client claims that your client may have hit their vehicle, causing damage that we’d appreciate you pay for.”

Lordy!

A few weeks ago, I stood outside the building where I work. I watched as the leaves that had fallen from the trees were tossed around, whipped up in a frenzied dance, thrown back to the floor only to be picked up again in twisted musty whirlpools.  Other leaves clung to branches, offering the last vestiges of resistance against the forces ripping at their stems; the unseen puppeteer that choreographed the dance of their brethren.

It was just the wind of course.  The narrowed currents of air that had travelled from the east, bringing the chill and the dance of the leaves.

Days later, the ground staff were out there with leaf blowers.  They were the puppeteers this time. It was they who used mechanical devices to imitate the unseen hands and strings and chase the fallen leaves into piles against their will.

Many things we encounter, with the exception of women, can be explained through what we have learned through science and reason.  Before humans developed such knowledge, they were left in wonder of phenomena, without the skills to interrogate the world around them.

And so, man created god – a construct borne out of ignorance, kept alive by ignorance and the need for men to control each other.

The fact that religions with adherents in their billions persist to this day makes me despair.  Fairytales are fine for children, but I don’t understand how adults believe they, their world and the universe is controlled by an unseen puppeteer. And for them to pass on their beliefs to susceptible children is tantamount to child abuse.  It negates their responsibility to nurture inquisitive minds and instead of tackling difficult moral dilemmas with intelligence, the answer is “because God said so”.  Rather than dealing with situations like death sensitively and sensibly, those followers of religions make up the promise of an afterlife… but so long as you’re good, or you’ll burn in hell for all eternity. Even if they’re not good, they won’t burn in hell so long as they accept a saviour and seek forgiveness.

The thing that I would ask people of faith is this: if a person hadn’t told you about God, would you have thought up the idea for yourself?  In the same way as nobody would make up the tooth fairy or Father Christmas, the notion of a god wouldn’t just pop into somebody’s head unless they were suffering from some sort of psychosis.  For those who are overcome with the light of Jesus when revved up by a pastor, does the same ever happen while they’re doing their shopping at Asda?

Maybe I’m wrong.  Perhaps my thoughts against an omnipotent being are ill-judged.  I’ve come over ever so warm since starting this post.  Oh, I forgot, my dad was here earlier and the heating is still cranked up to 23C.