Dream 313

'Public Transport & Pizzas'

I was at my nan's house, sitting on the sofa next to my cousin, HM, She was holding a book which I had when I was a child - it was a Garden Gang book by Jayne Fisher - Penelope Strawberry, about a vain, narcissistic strawberry. I was trying to wrestle the book from HM, but she was pleading with me, saying she only wanted to read the cover. I thought that 'Penelope' was the perfect name for a female strawberry and this thought was very clear in my mind.

I was then in a supermarket, very briefly. The supermarket was dark and I could not see what was on the shelves clearly. I bought a quail for £5. I took it back to a house where I was with my mum, standing at a counter. I ate the quail and found it delicious, however it was pale (raw-looking). In real life I have never eaten quail before. I told my mum that I thought it was delicious, and she agreed, but said that quails were too expensive to eat often. She gave me a smallish box, which she said came inside the quail. I opened it and inside were slices of dark meat (looking like beef), something called 'corned quail' (which was the quail version of corned beef) and some other quail-based meat products. My mum told me that these were the internal organs of the quail and said we should eat them, because they were the best bit. We started to eat them, and they were also delicious. My dog, Kelli (now dead) came into the room and I started playing with her. She looked as I remember her (large German Shepherd), but her hair was longer and fluffier. My mum gave her some chocolate. I knew chocolate wasn't good for dogs, and also had a knowledge that Kelli would die when she reached the age of 13 years. This made me sad. I ran out into a lush, green garden. where my stepdad was doing some gardening, and told him that he should stop my mum giving the dog chocolate for a treat and we might be able to prolong her life beyond 13 years. I had some kind of dispute with my mum over what looked like mashed swede or some kind of pureed orange vegetable which was smeared on a plate. I think my mum was saying that it was not fit to eat and I was trying to convince her that it would taste nice.

I was then in some kind of seaside town, where there was a London Underground Station, positioned next to a bus stop. I was waiting to catch the tube, but first wanted to go into a shop and buy a snack. I was aware that I was taking ages in the shop, not able to make my mind up. It was just a small shop/cafe, like those you find in a train station, just selling coffees and basic snacks. There was a middle-aged woman there, with a young, slightly obese daughter, who  was named 'Boo Boo' (a little bit like 'Honey Boo Boo'), except she was British and much quieter. I held Boo Boo's hand and sat down with her and her mother, who I instantly befriended, although this was the first time I had ever met them. We had some conversation in this cafe and I found them to be very nice people. Suddenly, Boo Boo's mother announced that the tube (which was late) had arrived and it was time for us to board. I thought I would sit with them for the lengthy journey to our (unknown) shared destination. Boo Boo was telling me to hurry, and we all ran outside into the daylight to board the tube. However, there was a bus which was parked in front of the doors to the tube, so we had to squeeze past these to get into the carriage. Boo Boo and her mother boarded the tube, but I was a fraction of a second too late, and the door shut, nearly on my hand. The tube train started to move away slowly. The train conductor/guard (a young black man wearing a deep red uniform) noticed me and said: 'I could have let you get on if you'd have asked!' but I just said: 'I didn't see you to ask'. I felt annoyed as now I had lost my friends and had to wait for another tube. I noticed that in my hand I had a clear, transparent bag. Inside were sweets, drugs and small plastic toys. I realised this belonged to Boo Boo and I felt sad because I had no way of returning it to her. I wondered if I should take the drugs, but decided not to, because they might be dangerous, or they might be medication which she needed. I decided to try and find a way of getting the bag back to her.

I then went on a walk to kill time before the next tube, which I saw on a sign was scheduled to be late. The front of the station looked quite a lot like Stratford Station in London (where there are buses at the front of the station forecourt). I walked around to the side, and found that it was a dusty, desolate waste ground area. There was a bench positioned next to an old lock-up/warehouse area, and I took a seat. I was joined by a man - middle-aged and brown-skinned with black hair. He was dressed in a pale yellow T-shirt (which matched the colour of the dust on the ground), grey baggy tracksuit bottoms and black work boots. He took a seat opposite me. He seemed to be friendly and I felt safe. The man asked me where I was from. He said: 'You have a 'Shirazzy look' about you'. Shiraz is an city/area in the Fars Province in South-West Iran and apparently, this is where my Persian family name originates from. I said to him: 'How did you know?' and he just smiled at me and said he 'could tell. I asked: 'What about you, where are you from?' aware that he had a foreign accent. I noticed that there were some people wandering around nearby and some of them had reacted negatively to me asking  where this man was from, but I ignored them, as this was a private conversation. The man told me that he was 'Iranian' and I said: 'It's weird how Iranians can always recognise that I have Iranian blood, but non-Iranians think I'm from Spain' (which is an actual real-life experience that I have noticed). The man just smiled at me and he had a charming smile with very white teeth. He reached under the table and pulled out an old coffee machine, then preceded to tell me about a trick he and his workmates had played on a colleague - apparently, the coffee machine would only spit out stones and pebbles instead of coffee. The man opened the padlock to the lock up next to us, and put the coffee machine in there, before re-locking it. He asked me to come walk with him, and he put his arm around me, but it felt more fatherly than romantic or sexual. I knew he did not feel that way about me, because there was at least a 20 year age gap between us and he was polite and caring.

It turned out that he walked me to his brother's house, which looked like a traditional family home, with beige and cream furnishings, and a kitchen which looked like the mirror image of my own kitchen in Norwich (my neighbours have a kitchen which is on the opposite side of the lounge, but identical to my own, so I have actually seen the 'mirror image' of my kitchen in real life). It turned out that the man's brother was not Iranian, but he was the father of Boo Boo, so I was pleased that I could return her bag of sweets, drugs and toys. I was sat at the kitchen counter. I was joined by my cousin, HM, who said that Boo Boo and her mother were not yet home, but the father was making us some pizza while we waited. HM and I went into the lounge, and found that the oven was where an electric fire, or heater, would usually be found - underneath the TV, in front of the sofa. The father put some items in the oven, then said he had to go out, so we should help ourselves when the food was ready. He left with two other men, with whom we had made no conversation. Since I had found myself in the house, the Iranian man had disappeared. I looked into the oven. The father had already cut the pizza into slices and placed them on top of each other and in a very disorganised way on the oven shelves, draping them over some red items of food, which I knew was food for Boo Boo. The pizza looked cooked, so I reached in to get two slices out for HM and I. The slices were not equally sized and the piece that I got for myself had no cheese on it, only tomato sauce, so I asked HM to give me some of the cheese from her pizza, as she had plenty to spare. She gave me some of her excess cheese with no argument.

I was then walking down Cromer Road in Sheringham with my mum and some other 'parents' of people I was supposedly at school with. It was night. I felt like an adult, but I was actually in the penultimate year (Year 10) of high school. My mum and the other parents had just been told that our high school was closing down and the only option for us to complete our secondary education was to enrol at a local private school, paying very expensive tuition fees. My mum was saying that she could not afford the private school tuition fees and I was worried, as I needed to sit my exams in order to continue into higher/further education. My mum and the other parents were putting together a mental list of all the parents/children in a similar situation - unable to pay the private school fees. They were listing names and saying things like: 'ZT's mum won't be able to pay, she's unemployed', 'NN's parents can't afford it'. I advised my mum to register me at the private school and once I was a student there, we would explain that we couldn't pay, and if the school tried to remove me or not let me attend classes, then we would complain to the government, and point out that every child is entitled - and legally required - to receive an education. My mum was considering this idea. We reached a small, square building in which a local meeting was being held to discuss the problem of the school closing down.