Nightmare on Queens Road

Dreams # 4 and 5: Peter Pan and Napoleon walk into a bar... I mean, my brain...

While abroad I had a few very strange dreams. The two that stick out in my mind both involve water, to a certain extent, the ocean to be more specific. It may have been due to the inordinate number of sea gulls that keep the city of Bristol in perpetual shade. It's the only place I've ever seen nocturnal sea gulls. I'm sure their 4 a.m. screech fests must have made it into my dreams at some point.

The first of these two dreams involves me, as Wendy Darling, trapped on the Jolly Roger with my kid sister, in the middle of a hurricane. Captain James Hook and his vile crew were about to slice us open, navel to nose, when suddenly a distance ticking was heard. Immediately the captain freezes up. Surfacing the water was a massive crocodile, as long and wide as the ship itself. Unable to reach Hook or his crew, it summoned more of it's crocodile friends, who proceeded to pile on top of each other to reach the deck of the ship. They made a tower, ten crocodiles high. Just as the top one was about to stumble onto the ship I shouted to the wind, “Peter Pan, where the hell are you?!” Can you believe the fool hadn't rescued us yet? He didn't even leave us any fairy dust to fly away. The nerve!

The second dream that comes to mind is one in which I was enlisted in Napoleon Bonaparte's navy. Never mind that Napoleon never had a navy, (in fact that may have been one of the reasons he lost), I was in it. Not to mention, my crew mates and I were all staying in Versailles. Never mind that there's no water near Versailles, that's where we were staying. We were having a grand old time, having balls, eating lolly pops and candy canes. Then, suddenly, it all stopped and all new recruits were forced to take a math exam. Everyone else seemed to know except for me; they all had calculators and pencils and rulers. All I had was my candy cane. I wrote my name on the paper and began to read the questions. The first one was a proof and that literally set me to tears. I woke up from that quite depressed. In fact, I might even call that a nightmare.