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More Vivid Dreaming During The COVID-19 Pandemic

I had a dream recently in which I remembered a previous dream from maybe years before, which I had completely forgotten. The previous dream was one of these very disturbing nightmares and I can only half remember it. The problem is that the feeling has spilled out into reality and it feels like I have a suppressed memory of something awful that I did as a teenager. Which I most definitely didn't. Even though I know it was just a dream it's been lingering and bugging me for weeks.
 
Don't know if this will help at all, but if you have a quiet place and time, see if you can reenter the dream, at least in feeling it, and imagine a positive ending. Keep trying that from time to time, and playing with the possibilities until something good can click into place.
 
Following my previous post t'other day, my dreams continue to be as vivid as ever, and I can now claim to have had a directly covid 19 related dream.

Away on holiday with the extended family - parents (despite having passed away last year, my father was present), brother, sis-in-law, their two kids (late teens both), myself and partner - down to the Isle of Wight. Dream focused on the journey, in all its minutae - a trip I've made many times, I'll spare you the tedium ;)

Anyway, up on setting foot on the island, my first thought is 'Well, I guess we better install the 'covid tracker app' on our phones', and then we all go into a big debate about the pro's and con's of said app.

But none of us seemed phased by the notion we where supposed to be staying at home, not travelling hundreds of miles for the fun of it!
 
Had a disturbing dream (or set of them) last night about post-pandemic life where the millennials constituted most of the population, everyone else having died, and they were in the thrall of a cult of personality around an older woman. They ended up drowning her like a witch in a ritual. She did have the buses running, though.
 
They ended up drowning her like a witch in a ritual.
Ungrateful brats!

I finally have something relevant to report: Not vivid recall of events in a dream, but vivid color. Lusciously vibrant color. Some object was a combination of sumptuous crimson, a rich complementary green, and black and white. I was in a small but upscale rural location with some shops along a lane with pedestrians only. I went into a furniture store, with antiques and "vintage" wood furniture. The space was large, but no one was wearing a mask, and people were not observing the 6 feet/2 meter distance, so I felt unsafe and very disapproving.
 
And some intense nocturnal interactions with people I haven't seen since leaving university in 1988 (miserable year) and whom I did not part company with on the best of terms. comes to something when you wake up feeling as if you've just re-experienced the whole bloody lot all over again... I'll probably ad a few more details when I've processed it, also suspect one of the other people involved may be a member of this forum and I really don't want to identify them or cause any stress to them, so it would be heavily edited. (As I say, don't have a clue as to their ID here, which is for the best)

Just commiserated with somebody else who got into Facebook Jail, or in the case of my first FB account, Facebook Death Row...

"It's annoying. I lost my first FB account completely - no opportunity to contest this or make a case or even to say "Wouldn't a temporary suspension be more appropriate?" (also learnt - if you're posting photos to FB make sure they are not your only copies. Take back-ups. Because once they kill your account everything on it is gone forever). In case you're wondering - FB used to put up a "suggested friends" features based on shared past events - in this case people who'd been to the same university as me. I'd just turned fifty; one of the "Suggested Friends" who came up was an ex-GF from university days; as well as the other old friend she'd moved onto after breaking up with me. You know how it is. I was intrigued to see her again after so long, so I messaged her to say "Look, it was all a quarter century ago. I really don't want anyone having lingering bad feelings after so long and I'm aware we didn't part as friends, and the reason for our not parting as friends was almost entirely down to me, but can we put it behind us, and be able to say "sorry" and to genuinely be able to say "hello, how are you?" and mean it?" Next thing I knew - account suspended, later terminated. No explanation given, but this was within 12 hours of making contact with X and Y and saying to both "we probably aren't going to be friends again but can we shake hands and put the past behind us?". Can't prove it, but I have a suspicion one or both invoked "harrassment" and "cyber-bullying". Well.... there was me attempting to do the thing FB was designed for, and following up on their "Suggested Friends". Also learnt that if you try to sincerely apologise for past events, the person you're apologising to is of course under no obligation to accept the apology... ah well, you live and learn. But FB could handle these thing a lot, lot, better. Wish them both well, but we're done; may they have nice lives."

lots of emotional impact and when it rises up and slaps you round the face in dreams.... not good.
 
Back at UEA Norwich - again - last night talking to a former friend who is now a tenured university professor in the USA (so I hear in real life; this came into the dream). Felt a sense of depression and inferiority hearing what others have done with their lives since; wondered what I could legitimately claim for myself and put into the conversation. The person involved, who I did not part with on good terms, was at least friendly and encouraging, with no signs of condescension or sarcasm. At least, I didn't detect any. All I could think of as a life time achievement was having mastered Microsoft Word, knowing what font to use, what font size to use, and how to typeset a document - for some reason Times New Roman was specifically mentioned! Lovely, I can sell my strengths so well, can't I.

Interesting thing this morning. Discovered an ex GF from many years ago has now legally changed her name to something non-gender specific and has adopted the Mx salutation. I wondered for a moment if this was a direct result of having known me, then thought "Yeah, right. over two decades ago with no contact since, and the gender-identity changes away from female because she's still traumatised about men from having been with you. Get over yourself. It's not about you. Nothing to do with you, in fact." Again, I wish he(r) well in what (s)he does and chooses.
 
Interesting thing this morning. Discovered an ex GF from many years ago has now legally changed her name to something non-gender specific and has adopted the Mx salutation. I wondered for a moment if this was a direct result of having known me, then thought "Yeah, right. over two decades ago with no contact since, and the gender-identity changes away from female because she's still traumatised about men from having been with you. Get over yourself. It's not about you. Nothing to do with you, in fact." Again, I wish he(r) well in what (s)he does and chooses.

Don't kid yourself - it's all your fault.
 
Having dismissed the idea as evidence of my having a monstrous ego - "I made such an impact on the girl that twenty-odd years on, she doesn't want to be female any more,that's down to me, that is! One up for me!" - you have to add a caveat.... you never know if you were a part of that, unlikely though it seems. I've just not been privy to the workings of {her} mind for over two decades. Incidentally, what the Hell are the right pronouns and salutations to use in these circumstances? There must be some sort of clunking contrived American English PC thing to use where the old-fashioned "he/she", "his/her" doesn't cut it any more.
 
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Last night I had my first lucid dream in a while. Bear with me because I'm hoping someone here will know what it meant...

I've recently moved house, about 100 yards down the road. My old house has been sold for renovation, is empty and stripped bare inside.

So last night I dreamed I'd lost my big ginger cat. I was worried he'd gone back to his old home, so I walked up to the old house (letting my dog run loose ahead of me, which I wondered about as I did it, she's a reactive terrier and HAS to be on the lead). When I got to the house, the big wooden gates had gone and been replaced by metal ones and I could see lights on inside. I thought someone must have come to do some work on the place. A man approached me, I was just about to apologise to him and explain I was looking for my cat, when my old terrier appeared from inside the house. She's been gone for nearly two years now, so when I saw her, I knew I was dreaming.

At this point I started to look around me. The man standing in front of me was wearing a Rack sweatshirt (it's a local firm) but I didn't recognise him. I told him I was dreaming and he did a kind of 'oh yeah?' nod, not very interested. So I asked him to say something to me that I would remember when I woke up... he was a bit reluctant - he clearly thought I was mad. In the end he said two words. The first was 'aircraft', the second was 'scootage'. Then he told me they were from his time in the army...

I woke up after noting that the roofline to the house had changed, and the location now seemed to be a cul de sac in a suburb (it's really in a very small rural village).

Anyone know what 'scootage' might be? Or if it relates to aircraft? I've no idea why my dreaming mind should throw these words up at me...

But it was nice to see my old terrier again. She looked fit and well, although eventually morphed into looking more like a German Shepherd puppy than her real self.

Scutage maybe?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scutage
 
The only dream I remember from last night is about seeing someone about to throw away a big sheet of thin see-through plastic stuff which I asked for to make face shields with. This was my conscience telling me to get cracking with my sewing!
 
Mrs Mouldy and I have radically downsized and given the kids have got their own gaffs we've moved into a nice little flat. Been there since the 20th of March.

A couple of nights ago I had a strange, lucid but non scary dream. I dreamed I woke up and there was an old lady standing in the corner of our bedroom, "can I help you?" I asked feeling totally unafraid

"Oh will you?" she asked "I'm trying to find my husband, he went into the darkness and I know he's waiting for me, but I'm scared to go on my own"

"It's ok" I replied "I'll sit here and if you don't make it you can come back and we'll talk until you're ready to try again"

"You're a lovely man she said" and I remember thinking "oh if only you knew"

And she replies,"I do know, that was a long time ago, it's left no scars on your soul"

the next thing is the alarm ringing and another day at work.
 
Having dismissed the idea as evidence of my having a monstrous ego - "I made such an impact on the girl that twenty-odd years on, she doesn't want to be female any more,that's down to me, that is, one up for me!" - you have to add a caveat.... you never know, unlikely though it seems. I've just not been priviy to the workings of {her} mind for over two decades. Incidentally, what the Hell are the right pronouns and salutations to use in these circumstances? There must be some sort of clunking contrived American English PC thing to use where the old-fashioned "he/she", "his/her" doesn't cut it any more.
Isn't it they/them?
 
Mrs Mouldy and I have radically downsized and given the kids have got their own gaffs we've moved into a nice little flat. Been there since the 20th of March.

A couple of nights ago I had a strange, lucid but non scary dream. I dreamed I woke up and there was an old lady standing in the corner of our bedroom, "can I help you?" I asked feeling totally unafraid

"Oh will you?" she asked "I'm trying to find my husband, he went into the darkness and I know he's waiting for me, but I'm scared to go on my own"

"It's ok" I replied "I'll sit here and if you don't make it you can come back and we'll talk until you're ready to try again"

"You're a lovely man she said" and I remember thinking "oh if only you knew"

And she replies,"I do know, that was a long time ago, it's left no scars on your soul"

the next thing is the alarm ringing and another day at work.

Reminds me of an Inside No.9 plot!
 
A couple of nights ago I had a strange, lucid but non scary dream. I dreamed I woke up and there was an old lady standing in the corner of our bedroom, "can I help you?" I asked feeling totally unafraid

"Oh will you?" she asked "I'm trying to find my husband, he went into the darkness and I know he's waiting for me, but I'm scared to go on my own"

"It's ok" I replied "I'll sit here and if you don't make it you can come back and we'll talk until you're ready to try again"
I'm glad you didn't say, "oh don't be scared, I'll go with you."
 
There must be some sort of clunking contrived American English PC thing to use where the old-fashioned "he/she", "his/her" doesn't cut it any more.
Have you noticed how these characters get the rest of us actually worrying about how to address them? Being totally non PC myself I would continue to address them as I knew them.
 
After a troubled night - woke up around 02:00 feeling like I had swallowed something that was choking me. Took me a while to get over that and finally fell asleep again a couple of hours later. Had an obviously Coronavirus-inspired vivid dream/nightmare. Was in the street and saw long queues of people. A disembodied voice told me "They've all got Coronavirus. Don't go to hospital or your chances of getting out are poor."
I then found myself in a sort of basement with people showing various stages of illness. At least one was obviously dead and looked like something from The Walking Dead. A voice then announced "come on - it's upstairs!"
So we all dutifully trooped up a sort of zig-zag ramp leading upwards. Our exodus from the basement included the dead person who, disconcertingly, kept glancing around at me. On reaching the upstairs room, we found it was unoccupied and looked a bit like the office where I worked until a couple of months ago. On passing a desk, a telephone rang - it was an old, pale yellow traditional phone with a curly lead. I answered it and the voice said "I know what it is..." followed by a word that sounded like "spevel" or "sparvel".
I woke at this point, with that strange final word, which meant nothing to me, stuck in my head. Feeling that it may have some significance, I got my iPad and Googled variations on the word I had heard. Well "SPEVAL" is an acronym used at NASA for "spacecraft evaluation" and seemed to have no bearing on my dream. I then found that "Sparval" is a trade name used in some countries for the drug Sparfloxicin. I had never heard of this before and did some reading. It's apparently a controversial (due to side-effects) antibiotic used to treat infections of the respiratory system along with other things. Seems a bizarre coincidence that my dream conjured forth a name linked to problems with breathing. I could not find any evidence that Sparfloxicin is being assessed for Coronavirus. If it does turn out to be a miracle cure though, remember you heard it here first!
 
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it gets worse... in last night's dream, people from primary school who I have not seen or even thought of in a long time. Walking with a girl from my class who even at the (mutual) age of ten or eleven I thought was gorgeously pretty. But the little voice in my head of my adult self, saying "She's still eleven. YOU, on the other hand, are way over fifty. Going for a walk with her like this, just the two of us, could look bad! Even if you did go to primary school together, it looks bad... " In-dream paranoia about that!

Then to first college in North Wales (1980 - flunked grades for university. Desperate to get away from home. Took first place I could. Didn't quite work). Was watching people playing various sports. There was a hugely, hugely, obese man acting as a human goal in a game of football.... he was sat on the ground and his body mass occupied the same area as a goal... looking up and seeing the college taught circus skills - two attractive girls in shorts climbing up to a highwire about thirty feet up - appreciating their skills and confidence and noting there was no safety net. (Waking me - well, you ended up at a clown college, what can you expect...)

Then in a pub over drinks having an epiphany - looking through the window to familar-looking distant hills and realising it was all so simple. Start a travel agency. But one that's tailored to providing sports fans with accomodation and hotel rooms and so forth in the city where their desired sporting event is happening. I need to ask that guy in Flint whose family run a travel agents for their advice... the couple I was having the drink with were interested, but the woman kept breaking off and talking into her mobile phone (this was apparently in North Wales sometime around 1979 - 80, but she had a 2020 mobile phone...)
 
Wait, what?


Ah. go here for the definition of "clown college". You have to scroll down a very informative page.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/BritishUnis

some background: in 1980, the very last ebbs of the Baby Boomers, born in 1961-62, were coming of age and among other things seeking university places. Their parents had lived in a time of relative prosperity and as people will do in times of prosperity, they started families. So there was a big surge in births in the very early 1960's - a baby bulge. Scroll forward 18 years to when the baby bulge ran into Margaret Thatcher, economic recession and massive cuts in university funding. something had to give, and for me my grades were lousy. Too many eighteen year olds, a lot less opportunities - double whammy. I couldn't get a uni or even a poly place, but I was still desperate to get away from home.

Enter the North East Wales Institute of Higher Education (NEWI) based on split campuses in Wrexham and at Connah's Quay, on the Flintshire coast. I got onto a lesser HND course. so-so. Heart wasn't really in it - I just wanted to get away from home like most of my mates from school had. Don't underestimate how big a draw that is at eighteen.

And scroll forward a lot further when polytechnics were allowed to rebrand as universities and - incredibly - some tech colleges were allowed to make the leap to university status all in one go. Including NEWI Wrexham. (see tvtropes article...) Leading to...

Clown Colleges

Saying you went to one of these is just embarrassing, since they are near the bottom of the league tables. You might get a pass if you come from a background from which you would hardly expect to go to university at all (e.g. you come from a long line of career petty criminals and you're the first of your family to attend), but even then, it's still not anything to be proud of.

Terry Pratchett makes a lot of this pun, as you'd expect... the Guild of Fools on the Discworld is literally a clown college. Maybe that was on my mind in the dream last night!
 
Ah. go here for the definition of "clown college". You have to scroll down a very informative page.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/BritishUnis

some background: in 1980, the very last ebbs of the Baby Boomers, born in 1961-62, were coming of age and among other things seeking university places. Their parents had lived in a time of relative prosperity and as people will do in times of prosperity, they started families. So there was a big surge in births in the very early 1960's - a baby bulge. Scroll forward 18 years to when the baby bulge ran into Margaret Thatcher, economic recession and massive cuts in university funding. something had to give, and for me my grades were lousy. Too many eighteen year olds, a lot less opportunities - double whammy. I couldn't get a uni or even a poly place, but I was still desperate to get away from home.

Enter the North East Wales Institute of Higher Education (NEWI) based on split campuses in Wrexham and at Connah's Quay, on the Flintshire coast. I got onto a lesser HND course. so-so. Heart wasn't really in it - I just wanted to get away from home like most of my mates from school had. Don't underestimate how big a draw that is at eighteen.

And scroll forward a lot further when polytechnics were allowed to rebrand as universities and - incredibly - some tech colleges were allowed to make the leap to university status all in one go. Including NEWI Wrexham. (see tvtropes article...) Leading to...

Clown Colleges

Saying you went to one of these is just embarrassing, since they are near the bottom of the league tables. You might get a pass if you come from a background from which you would hardly expect to go to university at all (e.g. you come from a long line of career petty criminals and you're the first of your family to attend), but even then, it's still not anything to be proud of.


Terry Pratchett makes a lot of this pun, as you'd expect... the Guild of Fools on the Discworld is literally a clown college. Maybe that was on my mind in the dream last night!

I know all that. Thought you meant an actual educational institute of circus skills.
 
Ah. go here for the definition of "clown college". You have to scroll down a very informative page.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/BritishUnis

some background: in 1980, the very last ebbs of the Baby Boomers, born in 1961-62, were coming of age and among other things seeking university places. Their parents had lived in a time of relative prosperity and as people will do in times of prosperity, they started families. So there was a big surge in births in the very early 1960's - a baby bulge. Scroll forward 18 years to when the baby bulge ran into Margaret Thatcher, economic recession and massive cuts in university funding. something had to give, and for me my grades were lousy. Too many eighteen year olds, a lot less opportunities - double whammy. I couldn't get a uni or even a poly place, but I was still desperate to get away from home.

Enter the North East Wales Institute of Higher Education (NEWI) based on split campuses in Wrexham and at Connah's Quay, on the Flintshire coast. I got onto a lesser HND course. so-so. Heart wasn't really in it - I just wanted to get away from home like most of my mates from school had. Don't underestimate how big a draw that is at eighteen.

And scroll forward a lot further when polytechnics were allowed to rebrand as universities and - incredibly - some tech colleges were allowed to make the leap to university status all in one go. Including NEWI Wrexham. (see tvtropes article...) Leading to...

Clown Colleges

Saying you went to one of these is just embarrassing, since they are near the bottom of the league tables. You might get a pass if you come from a background from which you would hardly expect to go to university at all (e.g. you come from a long line of career petty criminals and you're the first of your family to attend), but even then, it's still not anything to be proud of.


Terry Pratchett makes a lot of this pun, as you'd expect... the Guild of Fools on the Discworld is literally a clown college. Maybe that was on my mind in the dream last night!
Ah yes the 1980's. I've always thought that the UK economy never really fundamentally recovered and learned from that decade, the fragile UK situation being superficially bolstered. Recently very cheap money and the expansion of competition in every market especially the service and financial industry has caused a false sense of security, exposed dramatically by recent events.
 
I know all that. Thought you meant an actual educational institute of circus skills.
It would have been interesting, though... "HND in business skills, clownface slap and tightrope walking"
 
Ah yes the 1980's. I've always thought that the UK economy never really fundamentally recovered and learned from that decade, the fragile UK situation being superficially bolstered. Recently very cheap money and the expansion of competition in every market especially the service and financial industry has caused a false sense of security, exposed dramatically by recent events.
This is something that can annoy me when people from a different generation accuse me of being one of the Boomers who selfishly collared all the good stuff and got rich at their expense - you hear that a lot. Who, me? Came of age in 1980 to Thatcher's Recession, neither of my parents owned their house or had investments worth a damn, therefore inherited nothing, by dint of hard work I'm possibly in the same socioeconomic band I was born into... so being a boomer has really set me up well...
 
Last night I dreamed I had given birth to a baby girl, whilst still being married to my ex husband. It seemed to have happened very suddenly, and I got very bound up in dealing with the practicalities of having given birth whilst not having any of the essentials to hand. It had all taken place in a flat that used to be owned by my aunt and uncle - so it was a bit like being sent back into the past. I am well beyond child bearing age and my youngest child (who is a daughter) is nearly 24. Her birthday is looming, so I'm wondering if my brain just took 'birth day' literally and decided to relive some of the less pleasant parts of that.

It was horribly vivid though. I can still visualise that little body that I'd put, for some reason, into a bouncy chair, despite her being a total newborn...
 
There was a girl - oh my goodness she was attractive - in the same room as me, all alive and everything. I tried to act nonchalant but was probably just staring at her. She came over and said something reassuring and gave me a kiss on the neck. At that moment, there was a small blue flash and I glanced out of the window to see a London Routemaster had ploughed into traffic. I had the presence of mind to say that this would be a 'car-wreck relationship'. Can still picture her.
Why am I telling anyone this ?
 
Couple nights ago I had this ace dream where I went on the run with Sandor Clegane from Game of Thrones. Can't remember anything I did but I know it was fun.

ETA: Read that back and realise he's one of the least "fun" fictional characters ever written but, I dunno, I found him entertaining.
 
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Had a disturbing dream (or set of them) last night about post-pandemic life where the millennials constituted most of the population, everyone else having died, and they were in the thrall of a cult of personality around an older woman. They ended up drowning her like a witch in a ritual. She did have the buses running, though.
Novel. Right there.
 
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