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

I can remember two dreams from last night. In the one a bunch of folks and I were flying kites. They were very light and the strings we flew them on were able to stretch to almost any length, becoming thinner and thinner but never breaking. Also the further we got our kites away from us the faster we could move them. Imagine whirling an object at the end of a rope many miles long! The kites eventually were moving at an incredible speed.

The other dream was me and my mother visiting a game reserve. There was an old school teacher of mine teaching a class in some buildings on the reserve's grounds. I can't remember more.

dreams Willem. I wish mine were as interesting.

This thread is on my list of favourite s of all time

Hi Elektra and Peanut! I just wish I could remember more details and describe them better. There's actually certainly a lot more going on when I'm unconscious for several hours. I really hope I get better at remembering ... I don't like the idea of losing all those weird ideas my mind comes up with to make its down-time interesting. I'm reporting even the boring dreams though, for the sake of getting practice and getting my mind used to it.

Last night:
I was sort of in a city, perhaps because I was studying there. I was trying to get food. I got a place, a fast food shop, I looked over the menu and ordered something and pre-paid. Then I waited ... and waited ... and waited. Other people were served but not me. I got worried about my money.

Next dream I was having trouble with my computer browsing the internet. The 'back' button on the screen didn't work. A friend told me he'd fix it. I had to remember where I bought my computer, though ... it was at a mall close to the university. The dream ended before it could get fixed.

The majority of my dreams are quite dull, same can't be said for yours though!

Over the last couple of weeks I have noticed my dreams have started to pep up a bit, they are quite detailed and I have been retaining that. Last night we went on a road trip in our campervan, how everyone fitted in I do not know!

We weren't very good at driving it, whoever was steering had to have a partner to do the gear levers, we had a number of mishaps, although that is understating it, nearly took out a whole village going downhill on narrow winding roads fast because the brakes were rubbish.

Then we went over a jetty in a port, had to swim for it and get the van out the sea. Then we ended in mud, deep mud and were rescueing each other before putting straps under the van and hauling it out. Then the kids got bored and jumped out at a set of traffic lights in protest and we had to take them to a water park.

We survived all these things, although the van had a couple of dings and we had some good times on this road trip and seemed to enjoy the adventure of our mishaps even if they were a little hairy at the time

I remember having conversations with people, and working out sleeping arrangements, and picnics, and smoking rules sometimes it was a bit, well, Cheech and Chong...

Peanut - don't be taking the garden gnomes pot now. Not good.

Well I'm happy your dreams are pepping up Peanut! And the one you describe doesn't sound dull at all!

Last night was action-packed. There was a dream of disembodied hands. They had somehow been created by the magic of genetic engineering. These hands did all sorts of mischief all on their own! I saw them on a poster (I made that note but have no idea what they did on the poster!) Then I realised that it was impossible: even if a pair of hands could survive without a body, there was no way they could actually *do* anything! The muscles that move the hands and fingers are in the forearms.

The next dream was of my hunting prowess. I caught three rabbits using only my hands. The first was a red rock rabbit (a kind we get here, they're very fluffy and cute), the next I can't remember but then there was one that looks like the Himalayan domestic breed. Anyways I was trying to impress a girl saying that we would not go hungry in the wilderness because I can so easily outrun and catch rabbits. But then she said, we have technology! (IRL I am a vegan so would never eat a bunny!)

There was a dream where we were driving around. At every curve of the road there was a tree with a bird's nest in it.

I had a dream in which I found a classic heavy-metal album ... it was a group with all-female vocals ... the sort of thing that was very rare back then.

I dreamt about my ant and termite problem. There was a huge cave under the house. My old gardener Albert made a huge paintbrush from the bits and pieces of worn-out brooms, and painted the whole cavern with red paint (which might have been poisonous as well) to drive them of.

I can remember very little of last night's dreams ... but they were epic! The one dream was taking place over immense spans of time ... hundreds, thousands or maybe even millions of years ... if not actually continuing till the end of the Universe. But all I can remember from this dream is a garden. There was something like a baobab tree, an adenia, and a dioscorea or elephan'ts foot, all growing in a clump, and by the end of the dream they were quite large but so much time had gone by that actually they must have been growing very slowly.

if Dr Who ever gets to the end of universe I shall feel so cheated if there isn't a baobab tree there

and I think you get a ride in the tardis, only fair

I think I have to paint it ... the garden at the end of time.

Last night I dreamt of missing my father; then I was teaching poor children again. Let me elaborate ... this is such a major theme in my dreams that it is actually one of my dream careers. Every now and again I'll be back at that place and busy with that work. The dream school is in a very rural region ... a long journey from my dream home town, so there's always some travel involved. It's a dry and mountainous region and the houses are poor and the yards dusty. There's a dilapidated school there with some makeshift classrooms. I teach the kids there, general subjects, can't remember any specifics. It's a harrowing job and I don't think there's any question of money. But in the dreams I actually like doing it.

Then there was a deam about books about evolution and extinct creatures. Certainly there were wonderful illustrations but I can't remember them.

I can only remember three dreams and only very sketchily. There was one about a video game. PThere was one about an old school friend. And there was one where I released some kind of animal from a cage in which it was quarantined ... probably causing a lot of trouble, which I didn't mean to.

I dreamt of sniffer dogs last night

the garden at the end of time, I keep thinking about that and wishing I had an imagination to do it justice

Sniffer dogs? What did you dream about them?

I am definitely going to try the dream garden picture sometime.

Last night I went dream mountain climbing! This happens a lot and this time was again in a place I'd been dreaming about a lot. These are very rocky mountains and in this particular dream one had to drive to the Orange Free State town of Clocolan and beyond and the massive mountains would soon be visible. This time there were some of the 'Voortrekkers' (an organisation almost like the Boy Scouts but for boys and girls) that were going to climb the mountains, but they started before I got there. I tried to follow but the route I was trying was much too steep. I remember sliding back down the rocky slope. I then tried taking a different route, and wanted to look for interesting plants growing between the rocks, but I didn't find any good ones... or the dream ended before I could.

Dream geometry is a strange thing with me ... there are identifiable regions in my dreams that roughly map to certain real-world places but they are very different. These mountains that are in the dream version of the Free State are unlike any real-world mountains to be found there. The 'real' region is highveld, a high and fairly flat plateau. There are small hills dotted here and there, and towards the Natal and Lesotho borders there are higher mountains, but they are sandstone and not like these piles-of-rocks that feature in my dreams. Other anomalous dream-geometry features are forests in a mountain range to the southeast, and a place that roughly corresponds to the real-world Soutpansberg mountains but in my dreams are in combination with the island of Madagascar. I am thinking of making a map of my dreamworld and pointing out consistent features that differ greatly from the real world.

I know what I am going to dream about tonight...

...aardvarks...

That would be one amazing map!

I used to like doing that when I was younger, not well good like in good drawing but drawing maps with landscapes and features and that

sometimes they would have a description with big pointy arrows on them to say what the features were but most often some very small neat writing and also a well thought out key and symbols just so could tell, what they were, yes, well

the sniffer dogs, honestly I don't know what they sniffing. The dog handler said they wouldn't tell, the dog had different signals for different things and was giving me a very stern look and emptying out my shoulder bag and asking me to empty my pockets

I was wondering if was smelling the Cheech and Chong experiences in teh campervan or the fertiliser I had brought from B+Q

either way I was worried that I had niether things on me and what going to happen next given that I couldn't empty anything even vaguely suspect out of my pockets, eek,

also was taking the fact that the was sittig down next to me wagging it tail rather than ripping my arm off as a good sign, sort of...

the wasn't giving me a stern look, the dog handler was

the dog was looking very cute, big eyes, wagging its tail looking like it wanted a stroke or a share of my tea, or time to go for a walk, go on you know want to, how can you resist my cuteness type of look

And .. dream geometry! ....

Amazing.

Just to say I'm still reading, Willem. In fact, I just realised something ...

Hi folks! Keep dreaming! I really will see if I can make some time for dream maps. I've drawn lots of weird maps ... I'm going to have to draw some maps for my stories also.

Last night: An old school friend and I got together. We drove to a church service and attended. But the preacher preached a lot of nonsense so we stayed after the service and told him he didn't measure up and we wouldn't be coming again. Then we were at a wedding. There was lots of food but very little vegetables and they were watery so in the dream I decided to have some meat. (Dream meat at least don't involve killing animals but I still feel guilty in the dream!) But we couldn't get to our tables ... there was a traffic block up ahead caused by the bride and groom! So we waited... some of us were very comfortable, there was a guy on a bed right next to me and while I waited there his boyfriend came and they made out on the bed while waiting in line. Later we somehow had made it through the entire wedding party and had to drive back. It was getting dark, so I couldn't read during the trip back as I had on my way there. So I said that my friend and I should talk to each other. We talked and I asked him about his religious views. He said first of all what was important was ethics, next was 'blood', by which he meant passion, lust for life, caring and appreciation, that sort of thing.

Last night:my father and I were in a park or garden, sightseeing. There was a building associated with this garden but I can't remember what we did in there. Anyways, for some reason my father was not comfortable. He was sitting next to me on some sort of step ladder or wooden platform, the wood of which was hard and rough so he then tried sitting on one of my legs but no matter what he did he couldn't get comfortable and I was worried that he might be sick. I tried to cheer him up by telling him about a plant, an Adenia cladosepala, a vine related to passion flowers, with big round leaves. I wanted to show him the plant growing in the garden but by then it was getting late and the light was fading.

There was a dream in which I made a joke, claiming that penguins were the national birds of Canada. The dream people (Canadians?) didn't appreciate it.

Then there was a dream in which I had R150, then spent 70 rands on something, and then got hungry and went to a fancy restaurant and had only R80 to spend on a meal! I had to really inspect the menu closely to get the best deal for my money. The dream cut out before I actually had the meal.

Did you wake up hungry?