Horoscope madness

My horoscope for today just popped into my inbox. This just may be the weirdest horoscope I've ever had...

"Is your wandering honey in Southern California, or are they off playing music or dancing, maybe on a journey of scientific discovery? Tonight or tomorrow could be a day to call or text them to remind them that you're there for them. It can't hurt. Meanwhile, back at the office, you can apply your hard-earned skills to really fire someone up, maybe even someone attractive. Swim into the depths with them a bit and see what happens. As Sag well knows, you can be loyal and have the fun of flirtation at the same time."

Come again? Am I really being urged to go out and get myself into an office flirtation? That's the most blatant bit of "advice" I've ever had in a horoscope. More fool me, I guess, for never having gotten around to cancelling it. Now, of course, my mind is boggling with imaginary scenarios involving falling in the big tropical pool in the Waterlily House and being rescued by the lovely Wes Shaw, or the ever patient Phil Griffiths... I'll end up with another crop of wild dreams at this rate. Good grief. Down, girl!

I don't have a honey, wandering or otherwise, so at least the first bit doesn't apply by any stretch of the imagination. Thank heavens for small mercies.

I was in the Waterlily House in my lunch break; it is looking stunning at the moment, with a marvellous display of Nymphaea species, mimosa and hibiscus everywhere, and great baskets of Aristolochias hanging from the ceiling. It would be criminal to fall in the pool at the moment. I might break a Victoria cruziana!

The odd dreams strike again...

One of my favourite books when I was a child was called “The Complete Book of Fortune". It was a huge compendium of fortune-telling methods, oracular games, popular superstitions and sayings, descriptions of amulets and their supposed powers, and so forth; all the myriad ways that we have tried to see the future, encourage good fortune and escape disaster, over the course of human history. Some of it (“Napoleon’s Book of Fate”, the Mystical Art of Phrenology and Physiognomy) is seriously daffy; on the other hand, I’ve found the chapter on how to analyse someone’s character from their handwriting very useful on occasion, and the results impressively accurate.

A whole section of the popular superstitions chapter concerns superstitions associated with weddings, including “How to divine the future with wedding cake”. When given a slice of wedding cake by the bride, you are meant to eat all bar one last crumb, wrap that crumb in soft fabric, and place it under your pillow when you go to bed that night. Then take a careful note of your dreams and interpret them in the usual way (ie with some confusion), as they will tell your fortune in love and marriage.

So of course, when I got given a slice of W’s incredibly rich wedding cake yesterday I had to save a crumb, didn’t I? I mean, come on – a dyed-in-the-wool old singleton like me - I’ve got to know my fortune in love and marriage!

Guess what - I dreamed I was having coffee with several Kew colleagues, funnily enough including Marinated Artichoke Man. Clearly my subconscious hasn’t completely got over that earlier dream yet. This was all very mundane, though; just a bunch of people chatting in one of the Kew restaurants. It was so normal and un-dreamlike I was quite surprised when I realised partway into the conversation that it was a dream.

Then the dream took me to a marvellous antiques shop specialising in Edwardian cookery equipment. I was looking round very thoroughly and taking notes, as I was preparing my Wedding List. Yes, it seems my subconscious wants to spend married life not just in the kitchen, but in a kitchen without electric mod-cons!

So there you are; a tribute to the power of suggestion. I tell myself I’m going to dream about my future in love and marriage, and I then dream about something that might actually happen in the future (=coffee in the Orangery) and then about something I might actually do if I were getting married (=buying kitchen equipment). At least Mr Marinated Artichokes featured, which is some consolation.

Subconscious mind, you’re hopeless.

Dreams odd and dreams odder

I dreamed last night that I was given a whole bunch of bicycle safety reflective dangly things. It seems too obvious, to say “This must be a dream about cycle safety…” so I guess it is about safety or caution or risk-taking in some other context. I’m still struggling to sort out what lay behind my dream on Friday night, which was a good deal weirder; it involved bondage (not of me, luckily) and marinated artichoke hearts, and someone I have never thought of in, um, that sort of context… The guy in question is a nice, courteous, friendly bloke of about my own age who is a mine of information about hothouse plants, and he’s perfectly presentable, but I’ve never looked at him going by and thought “Phwoar!”. I’m a bit baffled to have dreamed about him. Oddly enough, this morning he sent me a cheerful email with a beautiful picture of a sacred lotus attached. Spooky…

To add insult to injury (in a manner of speaking), I have been unable to shake the memory of this dream all weekend. Even during "Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg"; through six and a half glorious hours of Wagner in the sweltering gallery of the Royal Albert Hall, even as I listened in awe and delight to Bryn Terfel and Christopher Purves being utterly, utterly wonderful, there in the back of my mind was this image of the, ahem, marinated artichoke scenario.

Am I in lust with X without ever having noticing it? Can the subconscious hanker after someone without the conscious mind realising? Did my brain pick this chap to symbolise something else? If so, what? And why bondage? – bondage is pretty extreme, even the, ahem ahem hem, clearly consensual bondage in the aforementioned dream.

I don’t need to wonder about the artichokes. I love artichokes. They’re one of my very favourite foods. If I were into kinky activities involving food I’d be a lot more likely to use marinated artichokes than chocolate body paint, which is sugary disgusting stuff…

Oh, this is all too much for me. I’m going to make a nice cup of green tea and get back to the chaos that is registering Community Groups…