Happy Days

[j4]

Dragged sion_a into town to see the Beckett play only to find that it was cancelled. I suppose the 5 minutes we spent standing around outside the mostly-deserted theatre (down a back street filled with scaffolding), wondering why there weren't more signs of life, was an authentic (if brief) Beckett experience, though.

Worked at the pub on Friday night and Sunday lunch. Next week I have to do both those shifts and Saturday night, because Saturday is "Casino Nite" at the Carlton. I'm not happy about having to work all weekend but I don't really have much choice.

hoiho arrived on Sunday night; he's staying here for a few days while he looks for somewhere to live. (Okay, so he's looking for somewhere to live in Oxford, but it's still closer to Cambridge than Edinburgh.) Things aren't going terribly well between us at the moment, but there's no point in talking about that here.

* * *

I dreamed that it was Christmas and I was at home with my parents, and instead of taking our time over present-opening we'd just opened everything really quickly, and there was a huge sense of anticlimax and I couldn't work out why it didn't feel right; then I realised that this was because my sister Lorna wasn't there, because she was spending Christmas with her boyfriend. There weren't any presents there for her either. I felt disappointed, and kind of cross with her because she'd broken the tradition of all the immediate family being there at Christmas. And also slightly jealous because she had a boyfriend and (in the dream) I didn't.

In the other bit of the dream that I can remember, I was at school and we'd been asked to write five sentences in French, and I was trying to write mine in the style of sentences from a Chalet School book, but they were coming out in English, and even when I tried to translate them they still turned into English. Then I was trying to work out what my timetable was from my friend Jenny's timetable, because I'd forgotten to look it up myself. She had "Ancient Studies", French, and Maths in the afternoon; I did French as well so I wrote "French" on my timetable, but then realised that she didn't do Maths (and I did), so her Maths must be General Maths, which meant she couldn't be in the same French set as me either, so I'd got it wrong and I still didn't know what lessons I was supposed to have that afternoon. I think I woke up about then.

Don't exactly need a "dream dictionary" to work that one out. <sigh>

Comments

work out what my timetable was

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I seem to have dreams about not knowing the school timetable, and not having done homework, quite often these days; enough so that the last homework one seems to have included the observation that not doing my homework didn't seem to have got me into trouble all the previous times.

Re: work out what my timetable was

[j4.livejournal.com]

I have this kind of dream a lot -- along with being-late-for-work dreams, taking-incomprehensible-exams-for-which-I-am-unprepared dreams, and other things which seem to signify general anxiety. Not sure why my brain so often translates general anxiety into school-related anxiety for dream purposes, though...

Re: work out what my timetable was

[vyvyan.livejournal.com]

I have endless dreams about school as well. I'm always running around the place (which is a fairly faithful rendition of my senior school) looking for rooms, constantly late, unprepared, unsure of which subject I'm supposed to be taking - or sometimes sitting exams (usually Maths exams, I think) and realising I've somehow forgotten to do any work for the subject all year and will be incapable of answering the questions. I worry about this for so long that the exam ends without me even getting round to looking at the question paper. Other times, I have to get to or from school by means of cycling there (I can't ride a bike) or walking (it was 15 miles).

The ridiculous thing is that these sorts of things never caused me trouble or anxiety while I was actually at school - I was obsessively punctual, organised and well-prepared for lessons and exams. My main source of anxiety was the fact that everyone hated me and bullied me constantly - but somehow, I've never had a single dream about that.

At times, in these dreams, I become aware of the fact that I actually finished school quite a long time ago, and am almost 30, and have a PhD - and I wonder why on earth I am back at school. But you're probably right, j4, they probably are just generalised anxiety, and nothing to do with school at all.

Re: work out what my timetable was

[j4.livejournal.com]

Lessons etc. never really caused me much anxiety either -- I wasn't particularly organised, and I was often late with homework, but I don't remember being particularly bothered by it. And likewise I've never had any dreams about the things that were actually causing me anxiety at school (bullying, sexuality issues, hopeless unrequited love [see previous]).

I wonder if perhaps school-days are just a particularly anxious time, and so some kind of subconscious link is set up between 'anxiety' and 'school'. The way dreams work seems (to me) to be based on some kind of multilayered keyword/definition hash (where the key'words' can be emotions or sensations as well) which is either badly broken or so deeply subconscious and subtlely nuanced that a lot of the time the output looks like garbage.

(Waffling, sorry.)

[addedentry.livejournal.com]

There are Tube adverts for a production of Endgame, as well as a new play about Beckett and Joyce called Calico.

Since it's the West End, you'd be able to pay a vast sum to sit in an uncomfortable seat with a restricted view; which would be appropriate.

Re:

[j4.livejournal.com]

I have an enduring ambition to stage a production of Waiting for Godot in a London Underground station.

(All I really need to achieve this ambition, actually, are 4 other enthusiastic people willing to participate.)

May one inquire where His Highness spent the night?

[silicon-lotus.livejournal.com]

If you ask them nicely at LUL, they might give you Aldwich station to play in.




Lotus




"The meek shall inherit the earth... in very small plots, about six feet by three." - LL

Re: May one inquire where His Highness spent the night?

[j4.livejournal.com]

LUL?

A ditch! Where?

[silicon-lotus.livejournal.com]

London Underground Limited.

Also a very rude word in Dutch.

N

[sparrowsion]

It was actually quite cool (and not just in the freezing-your-ears-off sense) just wandering around rambling about Cambridge architecture and geography and stuff.

[silicon-lotus.livejournal.com]

I'd almost forgotten that, the pleasure of just rambling around, architecture and geography and stuff. A quick flicker of memory from a year ago: yours truly doing an unguided tour of Paris after hours. Trippy, neither of us quite awake, Odd shops and alleyways, cobbled mediaeval streets, strange churches and statues striding out of the rock.

Wonder how well it'd work in Cambridge? I mean, there's not that muted roar and horizon-to-horizon lightshow of the world's great cities at night. Mind you, my brief impression of Cambridge is that there's a lifetime's worth of weird little nooks and crannies, and a lot more to the grand architecture than you think you noticed.

Hmmmm.... Best done in summer, and in a city with all-night cafés and bars. Best not done with someone as loopy as I am (loopier is better, did well on that score in Paris) or on a cold night (failed, and badly: companion had no balls to freeze off and, being Russian, was largely impervious to cold).



Lotus

"The meek shall inherit the earth... in very small plots, about six feet by three." - LL

[j4.livejournal.com]

Indeed it was -- thank you for showing me interesting bits of Cambridge that I hadn't seen before! *hugs*