Andrew and I were sitting aboard a train heading somewhere. The carriage was archaic, like we were. It had a side corridor and compartments, just the way we liked it. Andrew sat opposite me, he was wearing  black, thick rimmed, Augmented Reality glasses. He passed them over to me and told me to take a look at something on the web that he’d found funny. 

I wore the glasses and saw a kind of dull looking display of text that clouded my view of the carriage to a degree. Whatever it was, didn’t amuse me, so I handed the glasses back to Andrew. He suppressed a crackly sounding cough, I asked him if he was well and he mumbled something like “Oh, I’m at the tail end of a flu bug that Bunny gave me” 

In that moment, I got shirty with Andrew in ways that I never have before. I growled “Haven’t I told you that we cannot spend time together if you are unwell? Didn’t I tell you that a cough, cold or flu bug to you can be a debilitating illness to Tanya that can last for weeks?”  He looked somewhat affronted at my sudden change in temperament. I was in the process of explaining that I’d now have to self-isolate, when…

STASIS INTERRUPTED

Against the odds, I found myself then in Shipfield. I’m pretty sure Zak C was cooking bacon, despite being a child again. It’s unclear to be honest, but that’s what springs to mind now. I think that he was barbecuing the meat and waves of delicious odour were rolling into the air, then washing across the Shipfield pedestrianised precinct. I commented on how good it smelt, even though I would no longer eat such stuff. 

The view switched to another area in the same locale, except now I was in the kitchen of some non-existent restaurant. I’d complimented the chef on the best tasting, juiciest, tenderest roast pork I’d ever tasted. 

Chef seemed pleased at the compliment. The rest of his busy kitchen minions kept their heads down and continued with their activities. 

A sous chef brought a plate of what looked like pork belly to the head chef on a silver platter. The head chef, picked it up, looked annoyed, then angrily threw the pork down into a nearby bin. Uh-oh.

None of this mattered, the tension of the moment evaporated within an instant , because when I looked up from the discarded pork, I was in a kind of communal space that kind of superficially resembled the kitchen, full of people who’d moments earlier, resembled a chef and his crew, but now, what was it? It seemed to be a small community of people welcoming me into their way of life. We were somewhere up in the verdant hills or mountains, I’d arrived there by an old British bus from the 50’s. I had a plate with the remains of roast pork and gravy with me, some documents, records and cassettes, but not much else. I was keen to finish the food, but the other ephemera fell from the grasp of my upper arm and landed on the plate.
I became annoyed. I wanted to finish this delicious fucking food but now the records and tapes had gravy on them, when I tried to pluck them out of the food, the documents toppled into the gravy instead. 

I was trying to carry too much!

I was feeling very angry! 

GRRRRRR!

I somehow knew during all of this, that the people in this weird place had informed me that they- all of us, had a second brain; it was just below the stomach but above the bladder. I could see it in my mind’s eye, like an old medical diagram. I looked up from my plate of carnage and felt a sense of wonder. I asked “Does the second brain have thoughts like the head brain? When I have a thought, I hear my voice inside my head. Are you able to hear your voice near your stomach?” The consensus in the room was “Yes”, which excited me a great deal, oh to have thoughts in other parts of the body!
There was something cult-like about this group of people, their second brains, their fixations with roast pork, the comely girls in need of impregnation…

Suddenly wishing to shift scene, I caught the bus that had taken me up the mountain, back down the mountain. I left the various bits of ephemera behind, but now had a bunch of picture frames and old sports rackets cradled under my arms. 

I got off the bus in a sunny town beneath the mountain. It was a busy place, resembling 1940s suburbia with neat curb-side lawns, vintage cars and lots of people having an impromptu car boot sale. I spotted an empty patch of grass and dropped the crap that I’d been carrying under my arms. I was skint, but maybe I could turn this stuff into cash.
I glanced around me and was taken aback by the sudden sight of my father Mike, riding a bicycle …hang on, that wasn’t Dad, just someone who looked uncannily like him during his mid-seventies. Weird!

I then spotted someone else who looked just like dad, but this was a lookalike from dad’s fifties. REALLY WEIRD! 

Then I saw another Dad-alike, more like he was at another era. What on earth was going on?! The version of dad on the bike rode past again, there was something odd with his nose, my word! It was a proper drinkers nose, very ruddy looking, actually looking like a false nose perched on his face.
Was all of this happening because I’d invited the ghost of my dead father to visit me during the hours of sleep? 

I opened my eyes.