Day 49

A very strange dream just now. My parents, two of my daughters, and me at a tube station, waiting. I wander off somewhere when the unexpected announcement comes that the next train will join the Jubilee Line at Bond Street. I see my daughters jumping onto the train carriages down from where I’m standing, so I jump in where I am, stick my foot out to stop the door closing, and call to my mother to bring me my bags (they turn into yellow plastic carrier bags when she brings them), and then my leather-bound journal (which is still on the ground next to my immobile father), which she duly rushes off and gets for me. I give her a quick kiss, and let go of the doors, which don’t close before some angry woman gets in and berates me for holding up the train. I tell her I’m sorry, and that I’ve not seen my parents for ages, and that I really wanted to get on the same train as my daughters. She starts crying and forgives me, then laughs at me in a posh voice when it turns out I don’t live in a huge house in Surrey. Fast forward (in the dream) to me saying bye to C & K in their London flat and apologising for not having walked through the train to sit with them after getting on. End of dream and waking.

My father has been dead for almost 30 years, and my mother for almost 10. I dream of Tube trains and their connections a lot. Not so much about my children. The interpretations of my dreams would fill a life-time of novels (read and written).

A lorry went down our usually quiet street yesterday sounding like it was full of screaming pigs. Village flashbacks. The screaming was its engine, not the load of pigs it wasn’t carrying. I don’t miss living on a main road. I don’t miss the screaming pigs. I miss the people and the possibility of a surprise visit from any of them. I miss wandering slowly round the roads and paths and bumping into people I know. I don’t miss being in the middle of nowhere and a long drive from a decent bookshop, from any bookshop. There are new possibilities here, in the city. I have always said it will take me at least a year to settle, and we’re just over nine months in.

I tied the fence to the tree twice. The first time, the twine snapped and the flower basket hinge ripped from the fence. The second time, I’d been to the local DIY shop to buy metal eyes and a strong rope. Let’s see if that holds through what the forecasters say will be chaos.

That was my yesterday. Those were my yesterdays. Now is today.

AGGIE’S ART OF HAPPINESS – CHAPTER 6