A girl can dream...

I had another vivid dream last night.  I can only suppose that the damp, chilly weather and general wintry darkness and dimness have some kind of stimulating effect on the bit of the brain that initiates dreaming - the hypothalamus, is it?  This one started odd (i.e. normal for a dream), turned very nasty indeed for a bit, and then, as if to compensate, went completely overboard on the happy ending. 

I was crossing Kew Bridge on my way home, and I looked down and  saw someone in a bobble hat riding my bicycle along the mud banks beside the Thames, heading in the direction of the railway bridge.  In the dreaming world, my bike normally lived on a clothes-horse in the foyer of the block of flats I live in (in the waking world it has a different home!) & I hadn't lent it to anyone.  So I ran in pursuit, down the steps onto the river bank.  But by the time I got there the tide had come in, and I found myself falling, as if sucked inexorably, into the river.

People drown in the Thames every year; it's not a good river to fall into, and I'm not a particularly strong swimmer.  Clearly my subconscious knows this.  I thrashed and yelled and struggled, and went under, and was carried away upriver, shrieking my head off each time I surfaced and holding my breath desperately each time I went underwater.  I shot the bridge and was heading out into the middle of the main channel.  It was dark and cold, and I went under again and thought "I'm going to bloody drown, what a farce". I shut my eyes and accepted it, since there wasn't anything else to do.

Suddenly a pair of very strong arms grabbed me and pulled at me; and I grabbed back and held on.  The rushing din in my ears stopped and a voice said to me "You can stop holding your breath now, you're out of the water."  So I opened my eyes and found I had been dragged from the river, and imminent death, onto the banks of Brentford Eyot, by the Crush Of The Moment.  Good man. 

Since I was soaking wet and muddy, and had swallowed a fair amount of the Thames, which I was frantically trying to spit out, I was about as unappealing as a plump middle-aged woman can be.  Nonetheless my Hero smiled at me - swoon! - and then he said "I'm Aaron, by the way."  I gobbed up some more filthy water and replied "No you're not, you're an actor, don't quote your own lines at me."  Then I woke up, with my pulse thundering, though whether from the near-drowning bit of the dream or the >swoon!< part I can't say. Either way, I couldn't get back to sleep again.

Luckily at work today I have been doing filing and data entry.  Both of which can be done when tired. 

My grandmother always insisted that bad dreams are caused by indigestion. I have no idea of this is true, but I certainly did eat too much yesterday, so maybe in this case it was.  But today was a fast day - I've been very happy so far with the five-two diet, and have just switched back on to it after the Christmas break.  So I'm typing this in the large part of my lunch hour left after eating three rice cakes and a satsuma.  Supper is due to be salad; and then I will have a peaceful evening typing up some more "Gold Hawk" (I'm partway through revising chapter three now) and get an early night.  Hopefully, one in which my dreams will not involve near-drowning.