Bikes, Trains and Aeroplanes
Today’s dream involved some peculiarities relating to travel. For some reason, I had to travel somewhere and the dream’s focal point was the journey between leaving home and the start of the plane journey. I can only remember that I left with my girlfriend and then she had to go back to the apartment to pick up something. Only it’s not really our apartment but looked like one of those wrecked city apartments straight out from post-alien invasion Cloverfield which is unsurprising because I went to bed after just having watched the DVD. She told me to go on ahead and she would meet me at the airport. I think this, along with the rush when you need to catch a flight, gave the dream its strange undertones of urgency.
Next I found myself shifted to London.
There was an impression of a certainty that I had actually started the traditional route I use to go the airport from Finchley to Heathrow and that I had embarked in a car. In spite of this and the need for haste, I ended up at the entrance to Finchley Road underground station. Walking down Finchley Road towards Swiss Cottage, I found myself wondering why I needed to walk it when I had arrived at the start of this segment of the journey on a perfectly good motorbike. I think the ludicrousness topped out when I ended up at the destination I was trying to reach to but, on account of not having parked my bike properly, back-tracked up the length of Finchley Road.
For some reason, I had actually ended up back to where my dream thought I needed to be. (There was some crazy computer game type of riding simulation in the dream but it remains vague as to how this fit into everything else). The only thing about the destination where I was at (a mixture of a train station like Waterloo and a crappy airport terminal like Gatwick), was that it was in-town and nowhere near where I wanted to be. My growing frustration was not helped by me running around trying to figure out how, in the space of a really short space of time, I would catch my flight.
I had met someone I knew and asked them for help. Yet they hadn’t offered any help whatsoever to my predicament. When we were 10 minutes out from the deadline (yes, it felt like a deadline), they came back to me and did have a solution – their much touted direct train ride to from that place and the airport (you guessed it – it takes just 10 minutes). I think the person was giving me a object lesson in being late and even the new train service could help you.
The dream cut to me being inside the aircraft. Oddly enough, it was a transit flight so some people were already on-board. There was an announcement for First Class travelers although I saw it as strange since my girlfriend and I were on the foremost seats possible and they were business. My seat was a mess and it looked like no-one had actually cleaned it for the next stage of the aircraft’s journey. My dissatisfaction was increased when some jokey had taken my girlfriend’s seat and refused to move for the take-off. I was about to offer my own seat to her and show the guy the emergency exit face first when I did manage to wake-up.
The dream’s aftertaste was reminiscing about Maida Vale in the UK and how my parents and I almost got an apartment there. It wasn’t big enough so ended up not being where did eventually end up in Finchley. I think part of the reason was that it afforded my father a more convenient location for the airport. This morning has been a sunny one and a nice breeze is coming through my girlfriends’ large windows. The wind, the lighting and the relaxed nature of the morning since the dream evokes reminders of Maida Vale’s compact gardens and green boulevards.
