Aim high and fall far

Not always in full detail, but usually enough to attempt some sort of assessment as to why my mind took me where it did during sleep.

If you tell people about them, there’s always an amateur analyst on hand to inform you as to what they mean, and they are usually about as accurate as the cup final penalty you took in real life, which didn’t burst the net like the one in the dream you had when you were 35. Er, five.

The narrative of those early dreams was mostly the same because you had little real-life experience to draw on as you drifted off into the land of nod next to your teddy bear. They would be sport-related, maybe involve you succeeding in achieving your ambition of becoming an astronaut, or perhaps living in the same house as Geoffrey, Bungle, Zippy and George, which seemed a whole lot more fun than the one you did inhabit (obviously, in case my mum reads this, I will make it clear that our home was just one never-ending barrel of laughs).

Your scope becomes wider; missing exams, more sports, something you’ve seen on TV, people you’ve met, being unable to run while being being chased by a monster which never catches you and, even though you head for the cliff edge, you don’t fall.

Someone informs you that “You never die in a dream”. It’s a weight off your mind until you realise it doesn’t quite mean the same as you will never die while you are dreaming.

Then, as you reach middle age, your dreams are all over the place. They mix up people, places and situations. Someone you have never met is with a friend and yourself somewhere you haven’t been. Or have you? “We’ve never been on holiday in a rocket to the moon Buzz, you must have dreamed it.”

"Did you just call me Buzz?”

Then people start telling you to reach out and aim for the sky. Achieve your dreams. Go for it. Aim big.

When you do though they warn you you could be in for a big fall, so don’t expect too much.

As the nights move on you are in for a fall when dreams turn to nightmares and you crash out of bed in a cold sweat.

I was scared of witches for years when a load of them flew in through my bedroom window demanding Polo mints when I was about four. I was convinced it happened and my mum was there, but she denied it.

The other week I was lost in Clerkenwell. As far as I know I haven’t been to Clerkenwell or have I? I Google it. Still not sure. An online dream analyst comes up with nothing, but when I put in witches it tells me “Dreams about witches are often warnings related to a feminine threat or negative aspects of yourself that still remain hidden”, and somewhat disturbingly concludes that “one of the symbols of a toxic mother appears as a witch in your dreams?”

No wonder she denied being there as Polo-gate unfolded. It wasn’t a dream after all. Only joking mum.

The other night I dreamed (nightmared?) I was dying, in a hospital bed, wearing an oxygen mask, struggling to breathe. But then I laughed in the face of the Grim Reaper as I remembered you can’t die…

I had forgotten about this brief sleep interruption until a flashback later in the day and I realised that dreams, alongside real life ambitions, change as you become older and your future smaller, until... Or is that the nightmare?