dreams, doctor?

I’m walking west across a peat bog in Scotland. Like all peat bogs, the water-saturated ground gives just a little beneath your feet. It’s like walking on a natural sponge made up of living material. Where the earth is most saturated it seems almost black in colour. Where it is drier there is the characteristic reddy-dark brown of peat. Short, hard grass and heather lie across the surface like a blanket of bristles or maybe like the stubble on the chin of Desperate Dan.

Then I find myself in a manicured public garden not unlike Hyde Park in Sydney. The whole area is elevated above the surrounding streets. I’m about five metres above the surrounding roads as I head north. At the edge of the park all the exits (bar one) are sealed with chicken wire. I can see the other side of the road, which looks like a Georgian Terrace in Edinburgh’s New Town.

To my left, beyond more chicken wire fencing, a ramp crosses the road. A woman with crutches and calipers is walking up the ramp slowly. She turns to look at me and smiling in friendly way she says, I hope you make it too. I follow the one open route, which leads me down a dozen or so steps, along an underpass then up many more steps that lead me into a room that might once have been Martin’s lounge room with a bay window recess in his enormous flat in Grosvenor Place, Edinburgh. Now, this room looks like the insane gift shop at the museum of Scottish tackiness. There’s tartan everywhere; tartan goods of every conceivable type – scarves, gloves, Tam O’Shanters (of course), fridge magnets, highland cattle, cute little sheep, toffee, fudge, God knows what. The way out is up an impossibly steep staircase with a dark, dark wooden handrail. Someone says, I hope you can make it.

Next I find myself in the street. For some reason I think I’m in Liverpool (England). I enter an old Victorian era department store. Once inside there are lots of individual shop fronts. They are warmly lit, inviting places. None of them seem to have doors. I can see happy customers and friendly shop assistants reflected in wall mirrors mounted in the window displays but I can’t see the people themselves and I can’t enter any of the shops.