Dreaming

I notice that I'm still having persistent recurring dreams about being at school.

This is kind of strange - clearly the highly symbolic and Freudian act of shredding my old school books (inexplicably hoarded for 19 years) has had no effect. So why do these dreams recur?

There's usually some variation in the circumstances surrounding it, but the basic dream generally involves me not being at school. Somehow I'm late, or don't want to go, or haven't been for a while. Either way, I'm absent in a way that I probably shouldn't be.

The other night's dream revolved around these usual themes, although I recall that this time I was about a week away from leaving school for good - but nonetheless I didn't really feel like going. Seeking to back up my decision, I thought about which subjects would be on the timetable if I were to attend today - and of course I couldn't remember what lessons were at what times, or even which room they are in. Which is not surprising, because I left school nearly twenty years ago. Even so, the awkward feeling of not remembering the timetable is also a recurring element of the school-based dreams, even in the ones where I'm actually at school and not bunking off.

I wonder why these themes haunt me. I have similar recurring dreams about trains. Now maybe this makes a bit more sense because on the rare occasion that I do happen to leave the house, I usually travel around by train. Of course, in the dreams, I'm usually at Waterloo, waiting for a train which doesn't seem to turn up, or is on a platform I can't find, or which doesn't actually move, or something like that. If I do manage to board a train that starts moving, it's usually going to the wrong place. Or I'm just not quite sure where it is.

Hmm. There's a common theme here... Not being where I should be, either because of circumstances or my own lax attitude to regular attendance.

Wait, there's a third recurring dream - walking around trying to find a toilet. Outdoors, indoors, up and down stairs and through doors.. lots of doors. And lifts too. Plus, irony of ironies, when I find a convenient convenience, there is usually something wrong with it. The door doesn't have a lock on it. There are other people watching. All things which conspire to preventing the happy pee time which I seek. Of course that's probably a good thing, because when I wake up, I really really want to go actually and for real. That must be why I can't actually go in the dream, because if I ever did find that perfect secluded locked toilet, I'd be wetting the bed, which at the age of 35 is generally considered impolite at best.

I bet other people don't write things like this in their blogs. I wonder if I've got any more pictures of kittens anywhere.