To sleep perchance?

I was thinking about dreams this morning on the way to work, pondering the fact that I can't remember having dreamed for a long time. I appreciate that you often can't remember what your previous night's dreams had been about, but I actually can't remember having any at all recently.

Weird... Maybe I'm overtired, or I'm so good at working out my problems during the day that my brain doesn't need to thrash them out overnight using a tiger with Noel Edmond's face or a three eyed haddock called Raymond who can play the spoons... Pity really... It'd give me some easy bones to throw to you guys.

When I do dream, it tends to be fairly sedentary stuff, real world situations, no flying or turning into an ocelot or a trifle or what-have-you. Just me doing stuff that I would do if I had the time/money/social skills. The only major oddity I can think of is that I've never dreamed about a motorcycle, but I've had many dreams that feature me riding a motorcycle.

That's due a little explanation I suppose, I dream about the act of riding, but as far as I can remember, there's never been a bike. I sort of just float there, in the starfish position, with my hands on non-existant ape-hangers and my feet on completely ficticious forward controls. In fact, I remember having one dream where I tried to ride the (non) bike on several occasions and fell on my ass every time - It transpired that it had been stolen, but I hadn't realised - I actually went to a shop (in the dream) to buy another one, I remember wheeling it (and when I say it, I mean nothing) out of the showroom.

The only other real odd thing that happens to me, and I guess most other sentient life-forms in the Omniverse, is the prophetic or deja-vu dream. It's only snippets that I get, like I'll be dreaming about walking down the road, turning a corner and almost tripping over someone walking an amusing looking dog, and then a couple of weeks later, I'll be walking down the street, turn a corner and there's the dog, with the little wellies and a PVC sou'wester and the 'Please Gods kill me with a length of pipe' expression on its face, whilst the owner carries on about her business not realising what permanent emotional damage she's doing to the poor canine. Never had the lottery numbers though - not so far.

Now, scientists try to tell you that deja-vu is caused by impulses from the eyes being accidentally routed to the memory centres of your brain before being re-routed to the cognitive centres, so you see something, and think that you remember seing it before and then do that double-take, puzzled look, point your finger whilst thinking 'Hang on a second', thing that they do in low-rent comedies that have a laughter track and say 'You have been watching' at the end.

I don't believe that for a second, I think that during sleepy-time, your brain is occasionally hit by a stray Tachyon (a theoretical particle that travels faster than light) and the minute explosion of Cherenkov radiation that's caused by it impacting a live electron in your brain causes you to remember things that haven't happened yet.

Plausible, I think you'll agree.

I also found out recently that according to current theories, all of the people that you see in your dreams are real - I mean, not real, they're dreams obviously, if they were real, physical people and you dreamed about a crowd, then your head wouldn't be big enough to hold them all and it'd like, go POP! or something and there'd be cerebrum all up the bedroom walls when you woke up.

Actually, thinking about it, your head wouldn't be big enough to hold even one physical person would it? Especially if they were wearing a big hat. Aaaaand, you probably wouldn't wake up either. Well, you might, but you might not like celery any more, or be able to smell purple and hear tartan.

But what they actually mean by that is that you haven't made any of these people up in your imagination, you've seen them all somewhere - On the bus or in a shop, you might have pointed at them in a police lineup or said 'Sorry' to them when you bumped into them whlst filming an amusing personal injury compensation lawyer advertisement.

Your brain stores their details for future reference, or for inclusion in dreams, or if they're particularly stereotypical, for thinking about when you're telling a joke that involves a little light racism.

People often dream about people they know, sometimes in unusualy situations. Sometimes it's wish fulfilment, but sometimes you'll dream about things that would make Freud do some interprative street-dance movements in his final resting place in Golders Green (OK, so he was cremated, but you know what I mean).

For instance, a friend of mine (who reads this Blog, whilst walking her dog - which doesn't as far as I know, wear wellies and a sou'wester) once had a dream about me. I know she won't mind me sharing it with you, as she posted it to her Facebook feed herself, and she requested that I write The Further Adventures of the crew of the Edward Teach (Running to FOUR episodes!) - Which I subsequently did, because she was ill in hospital (for all of you who wondered why it was called 'Les Invalides'), so she owes me one.

I'll have to paraphrase what she wrote, as I can't find it on her timeline, but the gist of it was:

"I had a dream last night about an old friend of mine, called Dandy, some of you might know him. Anyway, I was the age I am now, and he was my Dad. I had done something wrong, I don't know what, but he took me to the park for my usual punishment.

This involved him kicking footballs at my head as hard as he could until I learned my lesson, I remember that he was a very good shot."

So, on that dreamscape I'll leave you.

Remeber, dreams aren't real, they're fantasy, you shouldn't be embarrased about them, and you certainly shouldn't make decisions based on their contents.

Till tomorrow... Sweet Dreams Children...