Dream 363

'Bullying Mickey with Damien Hirst'

I was in an unfamiliar seaside town with the artist Damien Hirst. We were standing on a pavement which had a 4 foot ledge with a concrete bin on it and then another ledge, about 3 - 4 feet higher. We struggled to climb up to the first ledge with the bin, and then got on top of the bin to climb up to the second ledge. This was quite difficult, given the height. It was daytime, but the sky was grey and overcast. We walked through the town until we got to the sea, where there was a wide concrete jetty. Some other people were on the jetty, standing beside a large easel. Damien instructed us to chop up some pictures to make a triptych. The pictures were some architectural plans, a drawing of a cathedral and a landscape. The cathedral was in the centre, and the blueprint and landscape were to fit either side of it, but everything looked wonky and I could not place them straight, as Damien wanted them to be. He said we should just give up.

There was another male with us, an unfamiliar dream character called 'Mickey' who had learning difficulties. Mickey was in his mid-20s with a round face, pale skin and shortish, black fluffy hair. He was wearing jeans and a white top. I cannot remember him saying anything through this dream. Damien and I were laughing about the fact we had stolen Mickey's brother's painting. It was an old-fashioned painting of a priest in red robes. We had (previously, not experienced in the dream) mounted the painting on the outside of a tall building, near the sea. We were looking up at the painting. The town looked a little bit like Cromer in North Norfolk, and the tall building with the priest painting was where the arcades are usually located. 

Mickey had a clarinet which he could not play. I took the clarinet from him and tried to play it myself, while Damien, Mickey and I walked through the high street. I could not play the clarinet. I said to Damien 'I have never been able to play anything instrument except the bass guitar' (I cannot actually play the bass guitar and was never able to learn to read music or play any of the instruments I tried to learn at school). Damien suggested we also steal the clarinet from Mickey and destroy it, so we did. We smashed it up. Mickey was very upset. Damien and I then tried to get down the two ledges we had previously climbed up. Damien got down both successfully. I got down from the first one onto the concrete bin, which was quite stable and secure. However, the jump down from the bin was too high for me to manage. I called out to Damien to help me down, and he said: 'Yes, darling' and started to walk round to the front of the ledge to catch me when I jumped. However, he was taking his time and the bin began to tilt forwards. I fell in a panic, but before I hit the ground below, the dream scene changed.

I had a litter of  6 puppies which were white. They were sucking my fingers. The puppies were a cross between Staffordshire Bull Terriers (my favourite breed) and Pugs. I was pleased to be able to keep them all.

I was then peeling layers off my left thumb nail. Each time I peeled a new layer of nail off, I felt a bit better. Finally, I got to the final layer of nail and realised that if I removed this, I would have no nail left (I bite my nails in real life and do not fear removing a nail, as I have done this before after one became infected from my fake nails - it grew back in a better condition than it previously had been - in less than a week!) I decided to remove the final layer of the thumb nail. It left a huge hollow hole in my thumb, which was bigger than the area originally covered by the nail. Inside was a long sharp shard of amber, which I picked out. There was a lot of dirt and rubbish in the thumb hole, and I emptied it into an ashtray, feeling good about it, and 'cleaner'. 

The dream scene changed again, and DL and I were approaching the front of my house in Norwich. EB was coming round the corner, approaching my front door. He was holding a pizza box. DL and I decided to avoid him, and ran away. We were running up some concrete, curving stairs which were inside a building. At the top of the stairs, we could see a balcony and bright sun. This looked like the staircases in Norfolk/Suffolk Terrace - student halls of residence at my university. EB was following behind us. He called out to me: 'Will you buy me a new phone?' and I said: 'No! I haven't got enough money to buy you a phone!'

I was then in a classroom. TG, my cleaner was the teacher. The class was filled with other students, who I think were people from my former high school. The room had lots of desks and wwas well-lit - looking like a typical classroom. TG gave us all a sheet of yellow paper on which were two exam questions - one about Holt, a picturesque Georgian town in North Norfolk, and one about my work (many years ago) with Sheringham Skateboard Project (a Prince's Trust and council funded project to build a local skate park). I was writing about Holt in my answer, referring to the fact that Camilla Parker Bowles (the Duchess of Cornwall) is a regular visitor and does her Christmas shopping there (according to my nan). Suddenly, there was a commotion. A young male dream character called 'Lawrence', who had olive skin and shoulder-length black hair, ran out of the class screaming. TG and I followed. with me several steps behind. TG was closer to Lawrence, who had gone up some steps onto a concrete walkway (the classroom we had been in was on ground level). I stood by some double glass doors, overlooking a quadrant, above which the walkway was. TG went up to the walkway level to talk to Lawrence. I shouted to TG: 'He does this all the time and will threaten that his stepdad is going to jump off a bridge!' I thought it was all a fuss about nothing. I returned to the class and sat with my classmates again, this time at a different desk. I went back to my exam questions. TG brought Lawrence back into the class. Lawrence sat on the floor, leaning against the wall, crying and still screaming. His face was red. TG gripped the back of an empty chair and said in frustration: 'You're going to get agonies!' He then went over to Lawrence, put his arms around him and tried to calm him down.