Nearly the Big Sleep

I know these are the most dreaded words in the English language, with the possible exception of 'I'm not racist, but…' (which I heard yesterday), but here goes…

I had an odd dream last night. The fire alarm sounded, and after a while I dragged myself out of bed, in my old family home. I then went into another room, where a completely deaf friend slept (a guy I haven't spoken to since 1993, and who never visited my house) and got him out of bed. I then woke up and realised that an alarm was going off in real life, where I live now. I didn't panic, or evacuate the building. Instead, I wearily put earplugs in and went back to sleep.

It didn't occur to me, in my befuddled state, that my building could have been on fire. My subconscious assured me that it must be next door, it must be a false alarm, that I'd be fine. I needed the sleep, after all. Only this morning did my stupidity hit home… I could have lost all my lovely books!

People are weird

I went back to the pool today, for the first time in a week and a half - the carcass was complaining and I was a full two minutes slower than usual. There was a certain pleasure in being the first person to disturb the limpid waters, though my habitual impersonation of a drowning rhinoceros was perhaps not the most elegant of entries.

I had quite a strange experience afterwards though. Here's an image you'll find difficult to shift. While I was hosing myself down, a guy I vaguely know from the university stopped to tell me he'd dreamed about me last night. This is the second time a relative stranger has said this to me recently. He did make it clear that my nakedness wasn't part of his dream, which consisted of seeing me crash my skateboard outside Wolverhampton's central library. I've never been on a skateboard, don't frequent that particular institution, and certainly don't feature in this guy's life enough to impinge on his subconscious!

I'm largely uninterested in dreams - random fragments of the subconscious. I only ever dream about being shouted at, during times of stress like the marking period. What's your interpretation of this one though?