Dreams

Granny is a heavy dreamer. Something she only minds when she's sleeping badly and for a good part of the night catnaps rather than sleeps. Each segment of that restless dozing contains a dose of disturbing story that leaves her edgy and upset for the first part of the day. (Beloved is sceptical about this. 'If you're dreaming you must be asleep. How can that be disturbing? The dreams aren't real.' Oh but they are - both disturbing and, at the time, all too real; believe her.)

In general though, Granny likes this other world she enters as much if not more than she ever did; her vivid night life seems to extend her day life, even while, in real time, it shortens day by day, has her thinking to herself as she climbs into bed each night: 'another day older' - if not 'deeper in debt' (a freelance, most of her life, Granny has always avoided debt; to her relief now seeing what is happening to everybody else.) Her dreams undisturbed by such problems she enjoys her sleeping life a lot. At times it seems a good deal livelier than her waking one.

She enjoys it too for this reason: she is not old in her dreams - and nor on the whole is anyone else - neither the recognisable members of her friends and family, nor the total strangers she encounters and whose faces she can recall vividly for a while on waking. Last night for the first time she met and hugged her grandfather - an event unlikely in real life as he would have been ninety odd when she was born and had already been dead three years. And even he looked young - dark-haired, tall (in real life he was red-headed and fairly short) much younger than Beloved looks, for instance. The only person with gray hair was a woman she'd been working with cleaning public lavatories - really -Granny takes on some unlikely activities - for her - while sleeping - who suddenly decided to accept the marriage offers showered on her by her French boyfriend, called for some reason Thierry, and who appeared a little later in the dream still gray-haired but with bright red lipstick and some very sexy patterned green leggings. Explain all that someone.

Almost all Granny's dreams are narrative and all are in colour: she can hear, she can smell - she can even taste. One dream a while back provided her with the best coffee she has ever drunk. You can see why she likes dreaming.

Day life is indeed a little blanker at the moment. Yesterday she made a delicious rabbit stew - but that was yesterday; today she will make cauliflower cheese, reminded by Hugh Fernley Whittingstall that it can be delicious. (Beloved who claims cauliflower makes him fart is not so sure; we'll see. There's plenty of wind outside again for sure - cold wind this - though better is forecast.) Over the weekend everyone was out pruning vines: the smoke from the fires made for the clippings dispersed widely in the wind and the vines themselves are all dead gray stumps for the moment: with all the other greens in the flower-covered landscape that's no loss just now. Carnival is due next week and the shops are full of Harry Potter outfits, wizards, devils, supermen, etc etc. Though Granny likes the definite shape of the years here, turning on religious festivals mostly, she wishes they didn't come round quite so relentlessly: hardly is one over when it's back again. Sitting at her desk in the kitchen - warmer than in her workroom- she thinks she should be writing, but disheartened by rejections doesn't quite know what or if she dares, let alone where to start. Even though she knows she'd feel less blank if she did. Writers need to write you know, no matter what. It's what they do. But still, but still. Where next?

Let the dreams come. Maybe, one day, she'll dream a saleable story. That will be the day. The only problem is that stories that seem promising when asleep turn out not to be when you wake up. Pretty much like dreams in real life too - most of them. Shame really.