Okay, here we go. I was at work again, and lunchtime was approaching. I thought I'd go to town for mine and escape the oppressive atmosphere of the care home. But first I needed to go to the toilet. For convenience I went into what I thought was an empty service user flat opposite the office and peed in the kitchen sink. I was just finishing and putting my cock away when a service user and two carers, both Asian, came out of his bedroom. They didn't comment on where I'd peed, but I felt I should be friendly with them just in case I had made the wrong impression. We got talking. All the while I was thinking what a nice room the service user had. The only drawback was that the ceiling was as high as a warehouse roof. I imagined lying in bed staring up at that ceiling in the dark. It would scare the crap out of me.
I agreed to show the carers the way to whatever place they wanted to take the service user, despite the fact that it would cut in on my lunch hour, and we set off out of the building. It was snowing. We went down a couple of half-familiar roads and then suddenly, perhaps disoriented by the snow, we were in the country: long, bare, bleak, white country. And I needed to have some lunch and get back within the hour!
We saw a hill. A big, steep hill with nothing visible over the top of it except the grey snowclouds. "Maybe there's something over there," one of the carers said. I scrambled to the top of it, my feet slipping in the snow, to have a look. Nothing. Just countless miles of fields rolling back to the horizon; not even any trees. And snow piled thick on the ground, and still falling.
When I slid back down the hill and told them the bad news the mood in the group became hopeless. But I was determined to find a way so that I could squeeze in some lunch and make the afternoon shift at work. "We'll try that path," I said, indicating a lane to our left that seemed to disappear into the same nothingness that was everywhere else around us. But since the group was in the profoundly liberated position of having nothing to lose, they followed me; and soon we came upon a house, and then a row of houses. It looked like the beginnings of a village, but once we were in the village we'd soon find the town.
The only way to enter the village proper was to go down into a courtyard that belonged to the first house and sneak through the building unnoticed. (The house was empty, it seemed.) One of the carers tried this before me and pulled it off without incident. Then it was my turn. I slipped as I descended the steps into the courtyard, knocking something over and making a tremendous noise. A dog started barking. It was one of those small, yippy dogs, but in the silence it was making enough of a racket to give us away. I entered the house and got through it to the village anyway. I presume the people in my travelling party did too on whatever plane of reality their story continued, but at this point I stopped being aware of them.
I arrived back at work late. Very late. The manager, Alan Hackworth, had gone home. As the skies darkened and the snow storm thickened outside, I tried to text him to apologise for my lateness. I thought I would tell I'd been mugged on my lunchbreak. It was a good story. He might ask me for the crime number the police would have given me, but he probably wouldn't ask; and if he did, I'd say I'd been at the hospital for a long time and I couldn't remember it. Maybe my head was all blurry with painkillers. I tried to write a message out for him, but I couldn't do it. My thumb didn't work properly; and even when it did work, the wrong symbol appeared on the screen of my mobile. Becoming frustrated, feeling I only had a certain amount of time to get the message to Alan for it to retain its credibility, I tried the phone of another member of staff who'd just come into the office. But I couldn't send a text on their phone either.
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In another dream I was riding in a car with Bob Dylan and he was being pursued by someone he owed money. There was a high speed car chase. "What have you got me into?" I yelled at Bob as we raced through the traffic, with his apparently murderous creditor behind us. Bob tried a clever car manoeuvre. It failed and the creditor slammed into him. I jumped out of the car and ran away, scared shitless of the fight that was to come.
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