h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Wow, that drill one was really scary! All baboon-like creatures give me the creeps but a whole mountainside of them and grabbing them by their beards no less. You have a whole lot more courage than I do. Please don't send any of those dreams this way. I much prefer your driving to South America.

Hi Willem and everyone

I hope you don't mind me sharing a dream with you, it is not exciting like Willems though

I had a frightful dream the other day, I was at a festival and ended up in a huge tent where there was a boiled egg competition

There were other classes of competition, like pickled eggs, and workshops how to get the shell of eggs

I couldn't get out

(I have a strong adversion to boiled eggs)

On top of that the competition was being judged by an actor, I could see his face clearly in mind but not put a name to it when I was awake which niggled me a little, took a couple of days to place him

What an awful dream. I hope you can put the boiled-egg nightmare behind you.

Hi folks! Sorry about that egg dream Peanut! So which actor was it?

Last night - lots of dreams!

My mother won a competition. She was supposed to get a car as a prize but then they gave it to someone else!

I went on a trip to a place called Stoffberg ('dust mountain'). We were supposed to help some poor people. We went to the west ... Western Transvaal. The sun somehow went down and didn't show itself for a long while! There were beautiful rocky mountains. I tried collecting interesting plants. I found some weird Euphorbia specimens, some already uprooted by animals. Soon we could drive no further because the road got too sandy.

I dreamt I moved, I was now living in a big apartment complex. With the move I'd lost a lot of things, including my weights and exercise equipment. One of the first things I did in the new place was to see about gyms. A couple of friends and I snuck into the gym that served the complex, an absurdly 'posh' sort of place with ridiculous equipment and methods. I was just looking for some weights. There was something like robots of people sleeping and then waking up and then falling asleep again over and over ... heavens know what that was for. Sylvester Stallone was a personal trainer in this gym. Anyways I was worried about the cost ... one thing I heard was that it cost R6 000 per day ... but if you completed your workout you'd get the money back. But I also heard it cost R180 000 to R250 000 per year. Anyways we had snuck in successfully and I was trying to talk to someone about payment options. Sylvester was standing close so I kept mentioning that I only needed a squat rack and some weights, not all the other ridiculous stuff ... Sly ought to remember how as Rocky he trained with only the most rudimentary equipment so maybe he'd understand and give me a break.

So anyways the dream ended before I got a nice arrangement. But of course I'm now happily back in my real life with all the stuff I need still here in my house!

I also dreamt my father was alive again ... in the dream he had merely fallen very sick, and then recovered. But I was extremely worried about him, thinking of how I had sat by his side through such terrible times ... but he assured me that with the doctors' help he would now stay healthy for a long time still.

Okay, again a difficult night to remember. But there was a dream in which I was experiencing extreme difficulty walking ... I was trying to get back home. It felt as if I was walking in water against a very strong current. I tried leaping with each step ... each leap took a long time from start to finish as if I was leaping in low gravity ... but I still wasn't getting ahead. In the dream I wished I could ride my bicycle back ... it would be much easier. In the dream I had, as is typical in dreams like that, a very long distance to go to get back home so it was a herculean sort of struggle.

Then: I was a fluffy flying cat. Julie Andrews' voice scolded me for being naughty. She also said we (there were others with me - one a school acquaintance, also an artist) should use our best voices. I thought I was already doing that.

In the dream a friend of my father's (also a writer) had an extra kid. His real eldest son died in a parachuting accident decades ago. In the dream he had a different and even older son which I got to meet for the first time.

I am now imagining being a fluffy flying cat...well, I'm trying to...this is cool...

Also imagining being a fluffy flying cat, it is

The actor was Jeff Rawle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Rawle

Thanks for that Peanut - I've actually seen him here and there! Not dreamt of him though.

Been neglecting this ... try to get back to it.

Last night among many other dreams I dreamt about again being in university and having a tough time. In my dreams not only do I have trouble finding time to study amidst all the other dream adventures, I also have to contend with lecturers who don't show up, to the degree that there are some subjects in which nothing at all is happening (usually mathematics or physics).

So in this dream I had to 'trim back' all such pointless subjects. My aunt Lettie was there as well as her sons my cousins, for some reason. I discussed some of my decisions with them.

I kept English as a subject. There was a class in which I had to perform a bit of dialogue from Macbeth. I memorised it fairly well and then suddenly forget a bunch of it. Then I tried to look the dialogue up in my textbook ... and it was gone! It was straight-up not there; I checked the index and Macbeth wasn't in there at all. I told this to two of my fellow-students and asked them to help me find the dialogue; they found a page and gave the book to me but when I looked at it, I didn't see Macbeth. I said to them it's maybe because I am schizophrenic ... I see a different reality from what other people see. No matter how hard I looked, what the book showed *me* was different from what it showed *them*. The girl flat-out refused to believe me when I said I couldn't see the dialogue; she said such a thing was not possible.

I asked my Aunt Lettie to help me; I asked my mom to phone the textbook's publishers to find out whether or not the dialogue was in there, and on what page it was. I wondered how the heck I was supposed to study when my mind played such tricks on me.

Yesterday I dreamt a lot, but all I can remember is a procession of weird amphinianoids! It was raining in my dream ant the frogs came out. In the dream they next formed a line and all of them marched or hopped in front of my parents' bedroom window, moving from the left to the right. On the right, where in real life there's only a projecting wall, there was a nice tall cabinet in the dream; the frogs all went into that. At first they were regular frogs; then weirdly sized, shaped, and coloured ones; next there were some salamandroids, some quite big and equally weird. But all of them marched neatly in line past the window and disappeared into the cabinet.

Meanwhile the rain was eroding my flowerbeds; the soil washed away so that a deep gully was left.

When the rain stopped I went outside, first to check the cabinet. I opened the door and was so disappointed to see there were no frogs or salamandroids in there! I thought there might be a portal ... a transporter, a teleportation device, inside by which they could all go to an amphibian-world, but I could find nothing.

I then checked my flowerbed to see if anything survived the soil getting washed away; there were a few rotten Gasteria leaves left, so I planted them back in the ground - they can reroot from pieces of leaf.

Holy sleeping dreamers, those frogs and salamandroids,my friend, can alter this reader's life forever. For the better. . Where did they go? Did you look behind the cabinet? They must have hopped back into the dreamvoid, but I do miss them already. If one could draw one's dreams .. oh wait, you can. .

I dreamt about the conversation we are having about Conservatism. Hiccup and I were on a walk and I was explaining to her how Thatcher won the elections.

I have the following dream a couple time this week.

I'm driving the car but I am nekkid and I need to get to a layby to get dressed.

I am hoping that people aren't noticing but I have to turn left at end of the of road and there in two lanes and always people queueing to go right and I'm going to have to stop to check it is safe to pull out.

I am also thinking that I might stall as clutch control is hard with bare feet and for some reason the seat is too far back and I am having to do it with pointy toes

Hi Peanut! What is a layby?

Anyways been neglecting this. Last night I can remember being back in university and as usual in my dreams having all sorts of difficulties. One of which was that an army attacked the university and started killing students and committing all sorts of atrocities. They pretty much besieged the university and I can remember trying to get away, tiger-crawling through long grass so as not to be spotted ... and it was incredibly hard work, I can remember pondering the stretch I still had to cross crawling on my belly and wondering how I would ever do it, how I would ever escape alive.

A layby is a designated place on the side of a road where you can park safely, read your map, take a break, etc or in my case get dressed!

That wasn't a nice dream you had there.

Hi again! I think we don't really have designated areas like that over here ... there are usually generally wide places alongside the road except on for instance narrow mountain passes.

Anyways ... yes, not very nice that one.

Last night I dreamt a lot. There's one specifically I can remember. We were watching a fight from a very high balcony. As in very high ... the buildings had very tall walls. As they had to, seeing as what we were watching. This was not an oridnary fight ... it was a to-the-death elephant fight.

They brought in a special (cloned?) mammoth-type primitive elephant and it was enormous, way bigger than real elephants, and it was extremely primeval looking with an enormous head, fairly short trunk, tusks in lower and upper jaws. Well they paraded this thing onto the grounds in front of the balcony where we were watching, and then from the other end came the elephants it would be fighting against ... they were two regular elephants but both still much larger than real elephants are.

So anyways then they fought, and the two 'regular' elephants beat the primitive mammoth and cut off its head (they wielded swords in their trunks) and held it up and paraded it round.

All right - I'm resurrecting this thread to report a dream romance breakthrough!

Those who've been reading will know that in my dreams I come very much closer to actually having romance than in real life. But even in my dreams it never worked out so far. But last night ...

I met a great girl and we actually hit it off and spent some wonderful time together!

The dream started in an English class ... might have been university since us students were not kids anymore.

First: we had a poem in which there was mention or roaring. So I roared ... just softly - but everyone in class was impressed. So I asked if I could roar the entire poem, all out. The lecturer said yes so I roared the poem ... except I stopped before the final stanza because there were religious references in that and I didn't want to seem disrespectful.

Anyways everyone in class was stunned and the prof said 'please don't ever do that again'.

But one girl in class was nice to me afterward, and we chatted.

I saw her in other classes/places also ... she had an idea about a mathematical conspiracy she was trying to work out (mathematically) and that she was worried about.

I cannot remember all we did but we had fun and the culmination was the most romantic thing I've ever done with a girl in a dream ... we played a 'real life action board game' together. Like Monopoly but actually fun and the 'squares' were large and on the ground and we walked/jumped from square to square for real. Anyways this was a long game so we spend a lot of time together.

After all this we knew each other so well and yet I was not quite sure about her name. I cannot remember it correctly even now ... well in the dream I asked her, what her name was/how it was pronounced. I think the closest I can come to the way it is spelled is Hlatke. (It is perfectly pronounceable to a South African but I think most Brits or Americans will have trouble.)

Unfortunately the dream ended around there. But anyways this is the best time I've ever had with a dream girl. I do hope I see her again.

Real life ... sigh. What gets me is how my dream woman friends are actually willing to give me a chance, willing to spend time with me and accept me for what I am.

Well I did have some other dreams last night as well.

There was one of an artist who made dinosaur/prehistoric animal sculptures. I was at a sports field or something where these were arrayed in a grid pattern. But then there was one much larger than the others - it was a huge gorilla head, I figured it must have been a lifesize sculpture of King Kong's head. The artist might have been based on Waterhouse Hawkins. There was something about a fundamentalist religious preacher mixed in him as well.

There was something about my garden ... there were plants growing in the compost heap, probably from cuttings and snippings we had throwhn there that kept growing. My father was in the dream as well. And there was something about an art book but I can't remember anything else.

Dream romance! That's great, Willem! How amazing!

I've never had a dream romance. Not in a sleep dream. I've had daydream romances, plenty of them. mmmm. Censored! haha. Not really.

Hello Cactuscafé! Glad you find my dream romance interesting. I'll try and have more of them!

Last night's dreams were interesting. One I can remember involved me studying English again. And this time I actually studied so I thought I had a good chance come exam time.

But in the dream our lecturer decided to get creative. We got five separate exam papers on five separate segments/aspects of the course, and I found myself out of my depth ... I immediately realized I had forgotten some stuff about Greek and Roman goddesses, Hera/Juno among others.

But the lecturer had supreme confidence in me. She came to me and demonstrated something incredible. She drew a picture in ink - with incredible speed. I felt so envious about this person, someone who was not a professional artist, being able to draw so rapidly. And it was beautiful too, art-nouveau-ish sort of. Anyways she drew this picture - she did it to demonstrate to other people how clever *I* was, apparently believing this was how I would be answering the questions. You wouldn't be surprised to learn that in my dreams my exams - no matter what the subject - often involve me drawing or painting incredibly detailed pictures, and that while under a severe time constraint. But anyways this time it was my lecturer who drew the picture. Then when it was finished, she 'stirred' it as one would stir coffee ... as if the picture was drawn on the surface of the coffee - and it vanished, she stirred until it was all homogenous. But then she said that there was now the trick that I knew about - she tapped the picture (now as if it really was in a coffee cup) with a spoon and suddenly out of the stirred-up mess a new message suddenly organized itself! The message was something like her being a superhero. So anyways - that was how I was supposed to answer the exam questions. Piece of cake, right?

The night before last:

I again dreamt I was at university. I was studying ... for some reason parked in my car at night. There was not enough light. A security guard came by ... I don't know what he had to do with anything but I decided to leave my car and go study in my hostel room. In and around the hostel there was a ridiculously long line of students queuing - I don't know what for. A friend sat on a bench and there was an open space beside him and he said I could sit there but I said no thanks. I went to my room - I still had a lot of work to get through and I think there was only a couple of hours before the test and I had to do some weight training too!

Then I went back in time. It was the late eighties. I saw an old friend I hadn't seen in decades. I could still remember what happened so I wanted to tell all my friends that Apartheid would end and what things would happen in 'the future' but I thought no-one would believe me.

Then there was a dream of another friend who was going on holiday to South America for 2 weeks. He was somehow sad, he was afraid about being away from his parents for so long. I wanted to tell him what it feels like when your parents have recently died. But there was another friend who had been an orphan from when he was very small so for him it was even worse.

Last night: can't remember much. A friend from Canada came for a visit. We would train together, he's also into weight training. But he was disgusted by my house when he saw I stored a ladder in the bathroom (something I don't do in real life). He said that was just unacceptable. Anyways we trained outside ... there was a huge grassy lawn like a sports field with equipment set up. I did some squats but the bar was ridiculously bendy, as if made of rubber, and the weights whipped up and down so that it was a very useless sort of movement.

Wow, what vivid dreams. I can't remember mine lately. This morning, I know I was in some vivid dream, but unfortunately, I woke up suddenly with a bad charleyhorse and had to jump up and walk around to get rid of it. End of dream.