Sky-Diving With No Pants!

I love dreaming. As a rule, my dreams are mostly happy or just downright weird! I think I have only awoken in a cold sweat just once in my life, and that was many years ago!

As a child, I once watched a film called 'Jason and the Argonauts'. As in all good Greek myths, the people tasked with the journey encountered lots of trials and monsters. One of these was a group of skeletons that rose out of the ground to fight the sailors. Any man of a certain age knows of this film and of this moment. To watch it now is quite embarrassing, because the special effects look so feeble, but at the time they were cutting-edge.

That night, with the thought of this epic battle still fresh in my young fertile mind,I fell asleep, only to find myself walking through a graveyard looking for my parents. Without warning, a skeletal hand shot from the ground and proceeded to drag me into the grave. I tried everything to release the grip of this bony clutch, but to no avail, as I slowly sank deeper and deeper into the dank, dark earth! I had never encountered fear as terrifying as I did during that dream ever in my life, and have never encountered a fear so deep and emotional ever since. Needless to say, I awoke from the dream covered in sweat and in a deeply disturbed state. I dared not fall asleep for weeks after in case I were to relive the dream, I never did.

If you have read any of my previous blogs, you will be aware that I'm one of life's cynics. I do like proof. So I'm more than a little wary of people who claim to be able to read your dreams. I think dreams are things you have encountered/thought of during the day, all just getting the rapid eye movement make over. These 'dream whisperers' or whatever they are called say that there's a reason why we have certain dreams. If you dream of flying, some dream whisperers claim its a sign that you may feel insecure. I don't believe that for a moment! I have always, ever since I was young, wanted to fly. The thought of just running and jumping into the air and taking off to pastures new is for me a wonderful dream. I often think about how it must feel to be able to fly, I'm not really the insecure type.

A friend of mine claimed that he once dreamed that he was being followed around by a twelve foot high chicken. No matter how he tried to get rid of it, nothing would deter it from following him. The huge bird didn't menace him, attack him or even look at him, it just followed him. He decided in his dream that the best way to get rid of it was to ignore it, but it wouldn't go away. I know that this is open to lots of interpretations, but my friend claims that the best interpretation is that he was being followed by a twelve foot high chicken!

The reason that I'm telling you this is because the other evening, I dreamed that I jumped out of an aeroplane from a ridiculously high height. While plummeting towards the earth at breakneck speed, I could feel that I was unusually cold around my nether regions. On looking down I realised that for some reason I wasn't wearing anything on my bottom half. I really had gone 'Commando'. Now I know that this should be a source of shame or anxiety, but it was quite the opposite. As I hurtled through the air with my little man-servant bobbing in the wind, I couldn't help but laugh. The most shocking thing was just how real the feeling of flying through the air felt. I could feel the cold and found it hard to breathe as the air rushed up my nose. I could feel the weightlessness as I spun as I fell. I felt exhilarated and laughed uncontrollably as the Earth loomed ever closer. I didn't land on the ground, but found myself landing in a blue crystal-clear sea. 

Lots of other people landed around me, but they immediately released their parachutes on landing. I knew I had to keep my parachute on and swim to land, the thought being that we would all need food later, and my parachute would act as a giant trawler net to catch us all a fish supper. As you can imagine, I struggled to swim ashore, dragging the huge parachute behind me. I'm sure that I would have made it had I not received an elbow to my nose. This was no dream, little Harleigh was sleeping at our house and was in our bed. She doesn't move slowly or stealthy while sleeping - like all three year olds, she has the reflexes of a leopard. She had spun round in bed and hit me square on the nose!

So, I don't know how the dream ended. Unlike my 'Jason and the Argonauts' dream, I have been trying to fall asleep to relive my trouserless sky dive. I want to know how it ended! If I made everyone a fish supper, and just who 'everyone' was?

As for all you 'dream whisperers' out there, I tell a story on my school visits to secondary schools about window cleaners catching me by surprise when I was just getting out of the bath. I had been talking to my son on the phone about sky diving, and had watched a program about trawlermen, So make of this story what you will. I just want to know how I can get back into it!