Roprovd

I am at the house of my old primary and secondary school friend Arr Pee. In the dreamescape his family live in a huge isolated farmhouse-style home. At the time of my visit – am I nervous due to our teen falling-out? - it is the depths of winter and I keep getting recurring mental snapshots of the snow covered house, sitting cosy in the chilly landscape. Together with Arr's younger brother Gee we look at four new Christmas cushions they have bought, plump and square with a cut out of an animal in the fabric in the centre (or thereabouts) that allows you to see the fluffy internal stuffing – the cushion I am handling is of a deer or reindeer. This is quite unique and perplexing. Arr's father – again I am nervous of his opinion of me – is (to my surprise) most welcoming, inviting me out to join him/them while they walk their red setter dog. I politely decline, sensing absolutely no animosity towards me by this response-

Hyontuh

I am out walking with my older brother and my American brother-in-law. My son and my brother-in-law's sons are very much in mind – I'm conscious of their presence – if not in body. We are strolling (in Reno?) somewhere and I need to leave them to get something? -

I next find myself at the house of my old Largs Primary/Secondary school friend Enn Tee in John Street(?). The home has been extended in every direction to form a 'Community Library' with a very warm, rustic and casual coffee shop feel inside, the books tucked into timber shelves around the perimeter, the airy central space rising three storeys up to a vaulted(?) ceiling complete with roof lights. Enn sits just within the entrance and, to my surprise, is wearing a nun's habit. After some random, muddled browsing we acknowledge one another and start chatting (a little awkwardly). When she takes down her habit's hood she has short blonde wiry afro hair that is, oddly, growing over her temples. Some other old school friends – Ess? + two other males and a woman – sit chatting to our left. They are all much older but their faces are still identifiable. By contrast (and thankfully) none of them recognise me -

I am walking back to join our family party when my shoes get stuck in mud. At this point (now shoeless?) I am scared as a large alsatian dog – in a near-rerun of a frightening childhood experience – darts out some nearby bushes and leaps and bounds around me. I immediately put up my hands in surrender, hoping the owner is correct in that the dog “just wants my stick”, again a direct callback to the my younger self's incident  -

I am now explaining, with the help of a Google Maps-esque 3D map, how Enn is presently a nun and has converted her old house to create a library -

Gollft

Myself, my old secondary school friend Ay EmmCeeHaitch and my old work colleague Gee Haitch are at an old fashioned tearoom together. We're inside the entrance porch-cum-lobby, looking in at the premises through a glazed door, formed of small panels of glass supported by finished timber uprights and verticals. There's a fake clock on the wall with blue plastic hands and it's set to 3:50 (evidently when they shut) -

Ay suggests using a trick off my friend Enn Bee and asks me for a piece of paper. I hand him a post-it note (with some work related pencil sketches and notes on it). He slips this under the door and works at the lock – it is for some reason locked from the inside, the delicate key still in situ – and manages to drop the key onto the paper and successfully draw it under the gap below the door. As we gain entry Gee sets the clock to 5:50, the actual time. We immediately tell him to set it back as otherwise folk will know we've been there! I feel okay as we set about inside – we keep the lights off as it's likely every employee is at home making dinner. Ay quickly cooks up three small, plain open burgers for us. Gee is suddenly sick in a bin and Ay scolds him, clean that up and use the toilet!, making sure that we leave no trace. He also remarks that Gee ate a lot of crap food (mainly sweets) earlier -

Just then three men enter, saying that they came by earlier but we were shut. One remarks that we must have opened at 3:50(!).... The middle of the three is a (sort of) Native American with long straggly hair, sleepy eyes and sallow, horse-y features, complete with a noticeable gap between his top front teeth. The men flanking him are white, on the heavy side and smartly dressed. The man on the left has an open burger of his own, only this one is garnished (and looks very tasty). The Native American wishes to use the toilet and Gee dashes off to give it another clean (on his/their return?). I suggest that maybe chef (Ay) can rustle up some more burgers -

Niforl

Coin Collecting & Numismatic Magazine - Coin World

My old friend Aye Dubya and I seem to be competing over some ancient money and I settle for 17 (likely) Florins, comprising a 2, a 5 and a 10 coin, holding them up and inspecting them proudly. Aye seems aggrieved somehow, suspecting I now have more (in value?) than him -

Both he and his mother give pursuit, the action switching to an outdoor environment with a lawn – I have no recollection of the dreamescape's 'before'. We seem to be circling the grass and I drop my coins, packed together as they are in a small, clear, sealed plastic bag, by the upstand to the lawn. I keep hoping Aye hasn't noticed while I keep trying to dig them in with the toe of my shoe. A dog seems to be buzzing around me, threatening my clumsy plan -

Wushlyre

I am walking on a dull and damp (feeling) day, a gentle drizzle falling (in the mind). The colours are muted. A silence falls over everything as I walk over a stone railway bridge, bushes and trees on either side of the line. (It could be my childhood home of Largs, such is the feel of the place.) -

I pass a man who enters the scene from a street to my right. He has a huge dog on a lead that, as he struggles to control it, leaps and bounds, pounding at the pavement/road. I'm quite surprised, not to say scared, by how slender a command he has over it -

I turn off to the same street on the right where another man allows his dog to chew on the boot of a fellow in a high-vis vest who lies struggling in the road. I intervene and the man calls a halt to his dog. The bloke in the vest, visibly shaken, gets to his feet. The man with the dog is of British Asian descent, with an almost creamy sheen to his beautifully smooth light brown skin, close cropped hair, a long, strong chin and small, bright and knowing eyes. By contrast the man who was under attack is jet black with a goatee beard and wide, imploring eyes – I almost get the impression he is apologising, as if I should not have gotten involved -

I look back at the British Asian man, who is slyly amused, smirking at my saying I will report him to the Police. I notice he now has a huge mop of curly hair, here greying, here dark. As I bluster and bumble in the face of his disconcerting indifference – not helped by the distraction of his victim seemingly interjecting on his behalf – I spot he has a car number plate hung about his neck, the letters and numbers on display across his chest. How silly of me to not think of using this to identify him to the authorities -

Deetlo

ArchDaily | Broadcasting Architecture Worldwide

I am at (another dreamescape approximation of) my old Ferry Road flat.... only it's a sturdy angular house with Art Deco stylings set in a large overgrown plot. The windows are absolutely shot, the rubber seals are limp and hanging off and when you close them over you can shift the pane in its hinges so much so you can see outside around the edges. A (shifty) builder type reassures me he can repair all this for free (as he's doing decoration works for £500)-

The Lawrence Hall of Science – The public science center of the University of California, Berkeley.

I am trying to scoop a beetle up from the (rough, woodland) internal floor and out one of the failing windows. I see a much larger armoured beetle part buried in the soil and nudge it with my shoe to see if it is alive. It certainly is and it vibrates and shifts angrily. I beat a retreat and on my way back(?) to the house I see a tiny badger, the first I've ever seen in my life. I then see a huge shaggy golden bear standing up on its hind legs. Aware of two other (vague) predators converging on me I race away from the house, dodging between the animals and heading for a forest. I race towards a fence but doubt I can scale it. Off to my left there seems to be some sort of elevated concrete stairway (to a car park?) and I implore my old Secondary school friend Pee Dee to help me up through the yellow tubular metal railings. He does(n't) succeed and I am aware of a huge, roaring pressure on the sides of my head – his grip or the bear's?-

I am talking to a girl from my old Kelburn Primary School (Ell Ay Dee?) and it seems she and three others, including my early crush Jay Eff, all died in a hovercraft accident. We guess this means I am dead too. With nothing else for it I pair off with Jay, commencing my stilted chat up – I am now outside the scene watching the both of us – with, "it's very cold isn't it....”-

Arz

I am in an environment half way between the familiar feeling of my (bungalow loft converted, dormer window) childhood/teenage bedroom and a vast spacious NY loft apartment, large windows and cold natural light with minimal finish and furnishings. The Wu Tang Clan's RZA is there too. There are loads of stoner hangers-on lounging around, always ready to offer up a half-smoked fat blunt should I begin to object to their presence. Eventually I just snap and begin shouting my head off – this isn't cool by anyone's standards! I then drag RZA into my efforts to expose all the overloaded electrical sockets, shifting my bed and raging about the extension cables plugged into extension cables-

A man, his wife – who I definitely fancy – and her mother are paying me £50 to enter their house at 5am to wipe the condensation from the windows (even though, as I can see from outside, they are already up and awake). I have a female friend helping me, so that's a £25 split each-

Sgrall

I am with my father back in (a dreamescape approximation of) our old Largs home. We are in the garden discussing his plans to repair the dividing wall between ours and our neighbour's property. The wall as it exists looks fairly new with the exception of the middle third which, being of traditional stone, is aged and crumbling – it is also not as tall as the sections of wall to either side which, this odd interruption aside, do seem to flow height-wise as an intended whole. My father is saying how he will remove the older wall and infill that part as well as adding a metre or so in height along its entirety – as the neighbour's home is elevated it ought not to affect their vantage-

I am in an office contemplating whether I should accept an offer to travel solo to the moon – one sits cross-legged in a small spherical craft to make the journey (only I am unsure of my ability to fly such a machine). I am being coaxed by a Lewis Hamilton-alike who is already on the moon. Eventually, following much anxiety, I accept and (after a sudden dreamjump) am there, tucked into my little sphere all ready to go. Unfortunately, as smooth and problem free as the journey was, now that I have landed on the moon there is some fault with the sphere's mechanism that ought to provide me with food-

I am overjoyed when I realise that my friend Ayy Ess has a comic strip starting in the Daily Express newspaper, some futuristic tale about a mallet-headed individual who rides atop a flying, winged double decker bus – this is part of a feature announcing that the strip is 'coming soon'. I remark to Kay Emm that he had another strip a while ago but that it fizzled out somewhat-

Tlipt

I am at an Orb concert. It seems they have not turned up or have cancelled at the last minute. Instead we listen to the full 39:09 of their 'Blue Room' single (which admittedly makes for a satisfying enough gig)-

Afterwards and I am racing to catch a bus that will take me to a/the railway station. I just make it and am the last person on board. As I catch my breath I realise the tubular metal handhold I'm gripping just might have a tiny smear of dogsh*t on it (and so therefore might my hand). The two lads who caught the bus only moments before me take an interest and, on closer inspection, they look to have sh*t on their trousers too-

It transpires the bus is going to Beith railway station – I try to work out if that's any good a destination for me – and it arrives in good time-

Unfortunately the driver, a goofy, shuffling, grinning 'dude', has used the Satnav on his phone to take us to OLD Beith railway Station. It is an impressive, imposing Grecian-style ruin, the ancient tracks still visible amidst the great crumbling construct-

The two lads from the bus and I approach a bunch of bored teenagers, all affected attitude and Goth stylings, to ask the route to the new station – it sems the driver('s phone) has failed us and we're on our own. One girl with frizzy blonde hair is willing enough to break the solemn mould to chat while another simply sneers that the station for the “stay-at-homes” is simply over there-

The Orb - Blue Room

Wodolfwai

It seems that the musician Stuart Braithwaite has invited me to join his band Mogwai. Although the audition process (somewhat confusingly) involves wading into the water – we seem to be at some sort of coastal marina - and swimming out. I experience panic knowing I cannot touch the seabed. As we both tread water – the scene is now, oddly enough, reminiscent of the band Slint's Spiderland album cover - I am asking about what happens next. Stuart simply encourages me (between gulping for breath)-

Myself and my little brother want to go to see the film Zorro only it's half past 5 – too late! We take the car, my brother speeding as I sit, uncomfortable and worried, in an ill-fitted and decidedly shaky (and yet robustly manufactured) blue and black fabric covered baby seat. My brother pulls out of Bankhouse Avenue in Largs and on to the Irvine Road, nosing the car around a white van and trailer that is emerging from nearby John Street. At another junction he narrowly skirts around the front of a police van that is also hoping to turn-

We are walking/rushing (to the Pencil monument in Largs?) along a shore path that is elevated back and way from the sea by several metres. At a large inlet we can see an orange and black speedboat beached on the rocks (but shaking as if in open water). Dolph Lundgren and Jean Claude Van Damme, both sporting similarly orange and black swimsuits, are filming a movie. They both look old, with long, straggly hair, as I switch to the camera's POV, their lined, weary faces creased as they shout and gnash their teeth theatrically. Then, to my dismay, they spot my brother and I and start to shout and gesticulate, indignant that we are not so interested in two such "mega stars". They even, in a wide shot of this entire beach scene, fire a machine gun at us, the bullet's trajectories tracing bright streaks as they zip towards us, banging and flashing spectacularly. But we are Scottish (like Mogwai!) and we are "too metal!". Now this they understand and they leave us alone, going back to their filming-

I am now with my friend Jay Emm on the path and he finds my barking of "too metal!" really funny. He says, adopting a creaky granny's voice, "bing bong bing bong bong bong bing metal!"-

Duzzkhard

https://thedukesofhazzard.fandom.com/wiki/Boss_Hogg

I am with Boss Hogg from The Dukes of Hazzard television show. (I may be the character Bo, but I'm not sure.) I seem to be in this episode as well as watching it – a glitch of the dreamescape – and it feels like I've seen, if not dreamed, all this before. We are on the shore of a beach (Largs?) with a tarmac path to our left and the beach/shallows immediately to our right. Boss Hogg is walking on the surface of the clear, still seawater, puzzled by the unusual foam-like substance that lurks just under the surface (and which is evidently substantial enough to support his portly frame). We reach the edge of this strange underwater material – and it is at this point that I'm quite sure I've seen this episode before as I know the material is oil that has solidified and can be taken up and torn with one's bare hands... and that Boss Hogg will fall through it at some point, huffing and puffing to great comedic effect-

Lawplle

I am sitting at a circular restaurant table with (ex-Stone Rose) guitarist John Squire and two others. I am next to John but also, thanks to a fuzziness of the dreamescape, sitting opposite him/myself. This being opposite is ill-defined but I feel it is (a sort of out of my grasp version of) me. Ess EmmCeeKay, a girl from my primary school years, joins our (already overcrowded) table and sits down, forcing me to budge up to my left and thus squeeze up right next to John. She asks me, 'have you ever dealt with Ingles, Dingles and Cowpit?' - I take this to be the name of some architectural firm-

'Made of Stone' by The Stone Roses begins playing over the restaurant's PA system and I push my pasta in tomato sauce about in acute embarrassment, playing with my food listlessly as I'm aware of John bristling and seething as the staff slowly turn the volume of the song up and up-

Julamm

I am in some sort of Forbidden Planet-esque store(room, all black, angular metal shelving stretching from floor to ceiling. There is some deal whereby, after much investigation on my part, it seems you can get a giant plastic (Original Star Wars trilogy) Stormtrooper for £1.00 on top of a purchase (the comic 2000AD?) of £1.75. The Stormtrooper is a kit of sorts, comprised of somewhat abstract components – parts of the limbs and torso are open/hollow and the helmet has oversized, almost 'googly' round eyes-

I an then out and about somewhere, a pub/bar I suppose, and see my old school friends Gee Pee and Ess Bee sitting together at a round table with two young women. After much swithering I go over to Gee – his older brother Arr, with whom I used to be very good friends until our mid-teens, passed away a few years ago – approaching him with much trepidation. Gee, a "cheeky-faced wee boy" as my mother would say, has grown into a darkly handsome man with deep and slightly menacing eyes, just a hint of inner threat. Thankfully he's pleased to see me and hold no apparent grudge over his brother and I falling out. He thanks me for my wee Facebook tribute to Arr and he and I hang around, going back to his house later-

His home is a lovely and spacious, immaculately furnished and kept ground floor tenement-esque flat. The front door opens into a vast living room. I still feel slightly on edge and surreptitiously peek at the many picture frames dotted about the place, trying to see a picture of his parents and/or Arr. Do I leave my wallet out (steal it?), Gee finding it, remarking on the rolled up wads of cash jammed in it – "It's a night out after all", he remarks. Is it not his house after all, but some place with an unpronounceable triple-barrelled name that Gee has booked, indeed he had to book it with no option otherwise, for the night?-

Luttintie

Myself and an old primary school (female) acquaintance Jay Eff at my brother, Dee Emm's? She and I are out together but I am adamant that Kay Emm knows this, and that nothing happened – purely innocent-

The dreamescape becomes a cross-section through an organic, conger eel-esque underground train. The train is populated by a changing roster of freakish, skeletal occupants who sit and stare, piercing bright white eyes glowing from in under their dark, unsettling sockets. This section moves as I see three times-

I break the cold tap in the bathroom. It is almost like a bottle screwcap and water is spraying everywhere. I need my big brother to fix it – there's a bit of sprung wire inside I'm sure – and he uses some white, not metal(?), and drops it at one point before warning me to let it cool in his attempt to repair-

Nondons

A sad (childhood friend) Arr Dee is lying under an L-shaped table made of dark timber. I seem to be wiping and wiping the surface (with milk?) to clean it-

He says, "Time slips by so fast..."

"I know!", I reply, "The first Indiana Jones film since 1984 tomorrow... I know it'll be rubbish but I'll still go and see it." (Arr too, but at home?)

"Does your brother like chesty girls?"

"He married a doctor so maybe he likes chesty coughs!"

Onkai

I am going out to meet my friend Vee Dee and several others for something to eat. The streets I am walking down are very reminiscent of my childhood hometown of Largs, that sort of leafy, seaside suburban feel. I meet Cee Cee, a former associate, and I am instantly annoyed and on the defensive. Rather than simply telling him to "piss off!" (as I dearly want to but am too (im)polite to) I am deliberately rude and evasive. At one point I consider telling him to ask Dee(?) why I don't like him – that's put her in the sh*t. He innocently tags along just as I expected him to. I behave more and more rudely towards him, giving him terse and blunt answers to his tedious and relentless questions-

I try try to send a text (on my archaic Nokia phone handset) but Cee Cee simply uses his own crappy silver Nokia handset to phone me, thereby disrupting my texting. This gets me really annoyed (though in a way I am impressed by his inventiveness). I swipe his phone from his hands and (fake) throw it away, quickly hiding it about my person. We square up as if to fight. This moment is interrupted as suddenly Cee has to take care of several tall metal window shutters, about a foot wide each and 6 feet or so tall. They are up off the ground and the last one has partially come off its hinges. I seem to make peace with him as I help him out, clambering up the side of the building and putting the shutter back on its (horizontal?) hinges with skill-

Uxwallot

In a town street (Largs?). I am passing a simple house garden on my right – a neat square lawn sticks in my mind – and I see (who I think I recognise as) Jay Eff's mother. She is slightly ill-defined and I struggle to make her out, her face/head a blur, reduced to a sweep of wiry blonde (to the point of being white) hair. I am sure it cannot be Mrs Eff as I recall hearing that she had passed away-

I walk on past the gable end of a(nother) house and look over to my right. It has a straightforward window-front door-window elevation to the street, finished in a porridge-grey render. Beyond this the garden continues and I see, from the back, a young woman walking away from me, heading from the house to the shed/garage. She has her blonde hair tied back and I am certain this is Jay Eff herself (a girl from my schooldays) although I never see her face-

I walk on past this scene and turn up a narrow lane, hedged in on both sides. Part of me is worried that this in fact the private access to a neighbouring house but it seems to lead to a small network of allotment-style enclosures. I am standing in the enclosure that belongs to Jay Eff – I am sure of that, spying her father? - and there is some large engine-esque machinery there, thundering away. There are odd, thick stripes of blue paint appearing too-

Twudikk

Intuition tells me I am at my old childhood home, although much of the environment is altered. I am inspecting the floor by the fire, looking at it in great detail. The fire is an old fashioned electric effort with moulded, coloured logs and mounted in a plain rectangular timber frame. The tiling to the front of the fire unit is lumpen and misshapen as if forced up and displaced from below. This seems to worsen as I look at it, the subfloor now seemingly stretched and exposed, the tiles further buckled and broken. The damage is not limited to the tiling and I notice, to my absolute dismay, that one of our front windows is cracked in by the frame. My mother and I, both deeply upset, hug each other, lamenting the costs of this unforeseen damage- 

I deduce that this ongoing damage has been caused by something acting from the outside of the house. My two brothers and I go out into the (dark) street to investigate. To our left, a few houses down from us, a 'gas' van is parked, visible in the orange glow of the streetlights. The van's back door (to access the trade materials) is sitting open. A heavy-ish guy in his mid-50s – he has tousled hair and sports thick NHS-style glasses and wears sturdy, reflective clothing – wanders over to it and my brothers and I take turns to remonstrate with him. It transpires he has been doing some “essential” gas supply upgrade in the area, drilling and adding extra pipework, and we are outraged that he is doing so without (at least) notifying the homeowners. I call the guy “a f**king moron!” to his face – of course, I instantly regret it, knowing that by insulting him I have weakened our case against him. He just takes of his glasses and smirks. This attittude of quiet amusement further fires the flames of my wrath and I bristle with intense frustration-

Ukkint

Irvine Road, Largs. Junction where it meets the Main Street. At/in the old (vacant?) Rowe Sports shop. It is housed in a modern-ish, but somewhat imposing/brutal, brown brick building. The shop front is low and set back from the (narrow) pavement edge with about a metre's overhang above. It seems that here my brother's wife, Jay Gee, is displaying her metal animal sculptures, all of which are freestanding with the exception of two. One of this pair is of a wallaby – I say this, but in my mind it looks like a hare caught at a gallop – and, I think, I'm not supposed to ask, or am I?, why it is the only(?) piece lying down. Is it something (sensitive) to do with a hospital operation?-

Yapple

In the back garden of my childhood/teenage home in Largs. I am with several other people who I can sense but not identify (due to the stress of the situation). There is a white space rocket idling over the garden. It has 4 teardrop like marks on the front towards a point, a long fuselage that culminates in its 4 engines or boosters. There's a solid band around this part too. The rocket consistently hovers then crashes in the garden. The crashes are violent and very close to us. It seems to make a recovery then just as suddenly crash again, sending us dashing for cover. Eventually it lies wrecked on the garden chuckies. I take it upon myself – I am scared and frustrated – to (somehow) grab the nose of the rocket and smash it off the kitchen outside wall. There's a feeling I will smash it down to its component parts and then give the pilot a lecture on his lack of skills. In this process the nose seems to shrink and change material – at first it resembles fibreglass but eventually, as I repeatedly batter it off the wall, it is more and more like a stiff sackcloth of triangular material. I continue to flap hopelessly at this until it dawns on me that there is no pilot at all-