This ship used to be seaworthy – now it isn’t

I am in the navy, on board a ship or even a submarie that is sinking – sinking slowly. I am by my bunk. A woman who is in charge or is a commentator comes in and tells us we need to evacuate. I take the time to put on a warm pullover because I think it may be cold in the lifeboats. I even have time to go into a drawing room and take some documents and money that I want to take with me. The woman says ‘this ship used to be seaworthy – but now it isn’t’.

Then I am with others in a wide open space in India or some exotic country and it is night. I look up at the sky and in addition to bright clear stars there are golden symbols in the sky and a golden swarm of points of light. We are stunned by their beauty.

Rhythmic Thrust at Man in the Moon

Youth from Hills Rd Sixth Form College in Cambridge and probably other places converged on music pub Man in the Moon the other night for a fest of strangely retro bands, among them Rhythmic Thrust which includes my entire personal progeny. Youth nowadays seem unprejudiced and eclectic when it comes to the music they listen to – and are seen listening to. RT has a kind of early Pink Floyd sound. rthymic1.jpg

Here’s other gigs at the Man on the Moon.

back after summer and redundancy threat

This summer actually made a difference. It came just after Middlesex University sent this letter to all its professors (See letter below). Many of us were spared summary redundancy. Yes I know its hard times in the UK public sector yet again but could there have been a marginally less alienating way of handling this? So I staggered into the summer with low morale and panic attacks (and a newly bought coffee grinder which is temporally laid off so to speak). I emerged having read Dharma Bums and Siddhartha and determined to give up work at the soonest opportunity and scale down my Cambridge terraced house for an isolated shack in Norfolk or Suffolk where I can live the life of solitude, more building projects and contemplation. The (re)discovery of [tag]Buddhism[/tag] for me came as a kind of answer to a prayer for some waft of spirituality and meaning in a degenerating life. So today I am back and what has three weeks of meditation and seeking refuge brought: my first row with a colleague in my working life. I am pleased. At last I am behaving differently.redundancy061.jpg

A series of strange occurrencies

A series of interconnected dreams: I am working in an office, showing two men something when my phone rings. Its my elderly mother and all of us can hear her trembling voice. She is saying ‘Have I heard what Captain Scarlet has been saying?’. She is worried about something but the men burst out laughing. ‘Captain Scarlet says I shouldn’t accept the parcel’. In a desperate voice she repeats ‘What is happening to me?’. I hang up.

Then I am on a train journey back to London or somewhere I live. It is a small train that snakes through a curving and hilly track. My phone rings again and it is either my mother or my dead father talking to me about her. I miss my stop, searching frantically for my rucksack with my computer in it.

I end up having to stay in a hotel, after considering joining the young people sleeping in the open. I wake up in the night and can see the reflection of a woman’s face in the air directly above me. Its rather frightening even though I am trying to think of rational explanations. I close my eyes and am awoken by a skinny woman sitting on my bed. She says ‘I am really interested in toilets but you look attractive’. She is keen to have sex with me. I get up out of bed saying ‘I think not’. I lead her to my hotel room door where there is a man dressed in a female nursing sister’s dark blue uniform. I give the woman to him. He is a psychiatric nurse and she has escaped. I wonder around the neighbourhood. It is about 5 in the morning and just getting light. I watch youg girls in corset shops practising putting corsets on shop dummies.