dream diary

MindlessMunkey is known to be a rather slothful creature. This past week or so though, after being ill, I have been even sleepier than usual. Last night when I got home from work I was quite exhausted, so I went for a late-afternoon nap. I woke up at 5.30am. That means I passed out for about 12 hours. My subconscious took advantage of this unusually lengthy sleep to have some quite bizarre adventures...

~~~~~~~

I have travelled to Perth, with the intention of marrying a 15-year-old girl. I think I met her on the internet. Clearly this is not a love-match. I can't remember the exact reason why it's essential we get married. When we meet, I am disappointed by her immaturity, and wonder whether this can work, even as a marriage of convenience. I am having trouble with a map. I have a huge map, the size of a double-bed, and but her house seems to be just outside its borders.

~~~~~~~

With Snaz, Canoe and Shorty, I am staying in a large and beautiful hotel/mansion. There are a myriad different classy bars and cafés set up in different rooms of the building, and there are people everywhere. I receive a text from Mr Ryan. He wants to meet for a drink and talk. I avoid him. My friends and I are in a particularly crowded and lavish art-deco bar, when Mr Ryan comes in. He has long, oily hair (a la Dylan on Neighbours). It is gross and I laugh. I know immediately that Ryan is going to fall in love with Shorty and get his heart broken.

There is some kind of school-formal/prom type event happening this evening, in the garden of the hotel. I have to go and change into my suit. The changing area is big and crowded. Each person is allocated a "changeroom" which is literally the size of a large school-locker. There is no way I can get changed in there. So I just start getting changed in the corridor.

~~~~~~~

In an Alice-In-Wonderland-esque sudden change of surroundings, I am now getting changed in my old bedroom at patermunkey's house. I am putting on a costume for some kind of show or play. The costume has two layers: underneath is a shiny black tux with a red tie, and a retro lurid green and blue suit is over the top. The outer layer is designed to be pulled off suddenly for a showy on-stage costume change. I go out into the loungeroom and demonstrate the trick to matermunkey and Grandmas Ashton & Miller who are sitting there. They are impressed.

Now, suddenly, we are getting ready for Grandma Miller's funeral. My parents are having a huge fight. My mother screams that she doesn't give a shit about any of us, and never wants to see us again. She leaves. Patermunkey and I are in shock, but we have to get ready for the funeral. We are late. We desperately hurry to get ElectroBoy and Ms Cait into suitable funeral clothes. It seems to take forever - and we are growing later and later for the funeral - before we finally have the two kids dressed in cobbled-together formal attire.

Uncle P is driving us to the funeral. He drives very fast, because we are so late. We pull into a parking complex and Uncle P pays the man in the booth. After paying though, he doesn't park the car. He pushes a button on the dashboard and we all hurry out as the car shrinks like a deflating rubber boat. Soon it is the size of a Matchbox car, and Uncle P slips it into his breast-pocket. I wonder why he paid for parking.

The funeral seems to be held in the Food Court of a large shopping centre. My family are all sitting around chatting, including Grandma Miller - a little odd considering it's meant to be her funeral. Matermunkey is socialising with her side of the family, and does not even acknowledge her husband or kids when we arrive.

~~~~~~~

I am in a classroom, about to sit an exam for which I am fiendishly unprepared. It is a text-study exam on the latest Harry Potter book, which I haven't even read. The teacher hands around the exam-sheets for reading time. I read the exam several times and I don't understand anything - it is like a different language. Something about truth serum and Dumbledor and Voldemort's curse. There doesn't even seem to be a question. I look up and realise that I am not doing an exam about Harry Potter's world, I am doing an exam in Harry Potter's world. The teacher is Ms McGonagall (played by Maggie Smith) and the kids (including Mr Byron, who is at the desk next to me) are all in Hogwarts uniforms. I'm not 100% sure, but I think I may actually be Mr Potter himself.

But I am still none the wiser on how to complete this exam, as Maggie signals that reading time is finished and it's time to begin. With that sick hopeless feeling in my belly, I surreptitiously watch what the other kids are doing. They each have a small glass goblet of stuff that looks a bit like thick smooth peanut butter, and a smaller glass dish of a sticky liquid resembling dark caramel or golden syrup. Using two little wooden utensils, they are carefully adding tiny amounts of the syrup to the thicker stuff in the goblet, and swriling it through in what seem to be very specific patterns. Byron in paritcular seems to know exactly what he's doing.

So I copy. I play with the syruppy stuff and the peanut-buttery stuff and mix them together and make pretty patterns in my goblet, having no idea why or what it means, let alone how it relates to the life-threatening issues of Good and Evil as described on the exam-sheet. Finally the test is finished. McGonagall now, with a clever twinkle in her eye, announces that because what we have just performed is some kind of Truth spell (which somehow relates to the whole Voldemort issue), we can in fact mark ourselves honestly. We all cover our concoction-filled glass goblets, and she goes round the room asking each of us how we went in the exam. The other kids are compelled by their own magic to answer truthfully. Most did okay, Byron did very well. When it's my turn, I realise that because I have completely failed to create any magic, I can still lie. "I could have done a bit better if I'd studied more, but I did okay." She believes me, and moves on to the next kid. But wait - maybe that is the truth. Maybe I fluked it, and I did magic myself into telling the truth - maybe I did do okay. I am confused. Music plays and credits roll.

~~~~~~~

Byron and I have just watched the latest Harry Potter movie, and he asks me what I think. "It was interesting, but seems a bit odd," I admit. "There's supposed to be this whole battle between Good and Evil going on, but the whole movie was just that one scene, in real time, about an exam in a classroom."

"But all that stuff in the classroom was about the battle between Good and Evil," he says. He is obviously disappointed that I failed to appreciate the movie. "Don't you get it?!"

I don't get it, and I feel bad.