Meaningful dreams?

I have always been plagued by bad dreams, going back as far as I can remember. They mostly consist of scary things in the dark, sometimes identified and sometimes just hints of bad things and danger. Often there is blood.....sometimes it's mine but often it's unidentified.

So, I thought I might be having a major breakthrough when I had a good dream last week. It was fabulous. I was swimming in an azure sea with dolphins and seals. They were playful and I was catching a ride on the dorsal fins of the dolphins, being pulled along fast. I was laughing, warm and happy. I love the sea yet it's a long, long time since I last swam in the sea. It's just too cold here in the UK most of the time for a wimp like me. The last time I got to partake of this pleasure was in Malta about a dozen or more years ago. In this country, I swim in heated pools and to be completely frank, I've not been in a pool of any description (other than my own bath) since before I moved to Cornwall three years ago. I've even got a brand-new, unused swimming cozzie that I've had for about three or four years that I've never even christened.

So, to have such a "real" dream, not just visually but touch, taste and sounds too was a great joy. My swim with seals and dolphins felt like a real experience even though it was fake in the most absolute of senses. I experienced pleasure in a completely pure form. It was fab.

I took this dream to mean my mind is starting to come through its blackness and out into the light again. Today I have looked up the meaning of swimming in a warm and wonderful sea with seals and dolphins in my guide to dreams (yes, I AM the sort of sucker who buys such drivel) and the news all looks good - the ocean - good, especially swimming in it in good weather, a sign of enlarging my sphere of activity and or influence. Seals = prosperity and dolphins = advancement through own mental vigour.......all good so far!

Then the next day, back to strange dreams of death and destruction - this time, finding the carcasses of dead animals in the garden, just lying in the grass. A cat, a sheep, a goat, a rabbit, a rat - all dead but looking like they were just sleeping. This one is trickier because it seems it's quite unusual but carcasses are supposed to be good if they are not decayed, dead cats in dreams are good omens (so says the book, not my words), likewise sheep are generally positive.

So, now I'm not so sure - is my mind telling me that some of the things that plague me are no longer a problem for me? Is my mind telling me something I've not actually worked out? Is it all just hocus-pocus anyway and not to have anything read into?

Stephen John Alstead - the boy that never was

It was my birthday yesterday - I was 48. It's a bit of a scary thought to be honest. DM says I should think of it as having a 24 year old left half and a 24 year old right half and when you put the two together you get to 48. He's such a sweetie isn't he?

I am a woman. This is a fact of which I'm completely certain.

Anyway, my folks decided that they wanted to be with their broken daughter on her birthday, the first time they've been with me since my 40th, when I had a humdinger of a party but more of that another day. So, here they are. We went to Truro for the day on the train and had a lovely peaceful time wandering around the "fake" Gothic Cathedral there - it's fake because it's Victorian Gothic, not real Gothic. Mind you, its young age is no barrier to its beauty. It is quite deliciously lovely in a way that many churches are. It shares its age (in broad terms at least) with another of the most lovely churches I've ever seen - the Sacre Coeur in Paris, which is also a late 19th/early 20th century building. (Not a lot of people know that!)

Anyway, we got to telling DM that my "real" name is Stephen John Alstead and that I came into the world at 8.50pm several thousand miles away from home. My Mum went into labour at the tender age of 18 and my Dad rushed her to the military hospital where I was born a few hours later. As was the way in those seemingly unenlightened times, the strict military nurses sent my Dad home to await news of his first born.

When I arrived, the message was communicated to my Dad that he was the proud father of a baby boy. Since my folks had already decided on a name should they have a son, my Dad sent telegrams home to the family in England proclaiming the birth of their son, Stephen John Alstead.......me!

When my Dad got to the hospital to see his new-born son, he found my Mum in deep distress, crying her eyes out. The problem? She had to tell my Dad he'd been misinformed and had got a little girl not a little boy. Ooops. She was distraught thinking my Dad would be disappointed with his little bundle of joy. Not so, fortunately for me, he was petrified that Mum was so distressed because I was seriously ill, rather than simply with two xs instead of an x and a y.

So, he was introduced to his baby daughter and fell in love with her at once. So, Stephen John Alstead, the boy that never was became me..........

Seeing Jeff and Gary again....

I'm so thrilled because I'm going to see my pal Jeff again this afternoon, for the first time in three months. He doesn't know he's my pal but I regard him among my friends. (Sadly these days many of my friends are "not real" in as much as I think of them as friends but they don't have a clue who I am......I think I'm turning into a stalker.)

He's the presenter of Sky Sport's Soccer Saturday and he's fab. He's got an encyclopaedic knowledge of the glorious game, he's a "real fan", supporting I think Hartlepool rather than a glory club. He referees a bunch of pundits who are watching Premiership games and commenting on other scores, incidents and results. It's a truly wonderful show from a company who I normally consider myself reluctantly a customer of. Sky TV is expensive, very ad-laden and frankly the programming/scheduling is often so "lowest common denominator" as to be scary. I hate being a customer but they have a monopoly in this country unless you live in a city and can get cable.

Then there's the lovely Gary. Lineker of course. He'll (hopefully) be back tonight with Match of the Day. Gary is perfect. I'd marry him in a flash (of course that's a bit of a stalker thing to say too), though I doubt he'd even give me a second glance. He's also perfect in as much as he once wore the great white shirt of the Lilywhites and what I'm leading up to of course is that today we see our boys take the field for the start of the new Premiership season.

We've got Middlesborough away - a good, strong side, especially at home and we don't have a great track record there. The pundits think we'll lose. I've had my first cup of tea out of my new Spurs Mug (it proudly proclaims Spurs 5 Arsenal 1), I am wearing my Spurs shirt - these days you'd have to describe it as a vintage one - it's a Holsten one, a Spurs sweatshirt and lucky pants. I'm all set for the kick off and looking forward to reacquainting myself with the lovely Jeff and Gary. Bring it on.......COYS or Come On You Spurs to the unenlightened.

I may be an armchair supporter these days, but I have "earned my Spurs" the hard way at games week-in, week-out for donkey's years. COYS!

strange things happening

We want to know what's going on in our world.........is it coming to an end?

Why the dilemma?

Well, it's blue sky and sunshine here today, such a rare event as to be more so than finding hens teeth. It was cause for so much excitement last night that a crowd of us got together and discussed how much washing we could get dry in our single day-long window of good weather. I've done two loads and my friends Toni and Erica have also been working hard getting theirs done too. It's a miracle. It's glorious.

Mind you, I can see my herbaceous border from the house for the first time in ages (too murky and foggy for the whole of this summer) and I'm a lot less pleased to see a group of teeny-weeny baby wabbits munching their way through my plants. I've discovered that almost every man-Jack critter on the planet is trying to eat my plants at the moment - wabbits, wabbits and more wabbits, slugs, slugs and more slugs, not to mention that we humans are eagerly scooping up the tomatoes (which don't seem to be troubled by slugs), the potatoes (which DO seem to be troubled by slugs) and the peas which also manage to avoid slug damage. I've decided that over the winter I'm going to build a small pond right in the middle of my veggie patch and fill it with captured tadpoles from the pools on the moor. Although the beer traps work well in the right weather, this year they've been flooded with rainwater so often that they're virtually useless.

The other major weird event is that the house is devoid of dogs. It's very strange not to be either tripping over Rosie or having her yipping outside the back door because she's got herself shut out. They've gone off to be "done" - washed, trimmed, brushed and blow-dried......it's very strange to get them back smelling of perfume and not dog but it's a welcome diversion from the norm every now and again.

waking up with a tattoo

I'm now starting to build up my new drug for severe depression and anxiety. I reckon I've come through the worst of the withdrawal from Prozac and am now starting to get my body used to its new chemical crutch. This one is controversial - it's a derivative of one I've had before that I reacted badly to, it's patent protected so it's hellishly expensive and it's not on the formulary of my local PCT (Primary Care Trust - the local legislative body that decrees what local physicians can and cannot prescribe).

Frankly, the controversy isn't really that helpful to someone with depression - all I care about is getting better and I'm not sure if I care what I rely on to get me there any more. This is especially true as my natural patience span is short and this has been going on too long. So, if it works and my body doesn't object, I'm all for it.

Surprisingly I don't seem to have had the severe reaction that I had to this drug's (off-patent) older brother, although I fully expected to - perhaps there is a good medical reason for this - I dunno.

Anyway, while my doctors bicker among themselves, I'm just going to quietly go on trying to get better. Other "interested parties" also seem to be bickering and unwilling to accept life as it seems to be at the moment but I've resolved to not let them grind me down any more - there has been two months of "wobbling weather" in my world because of it and I need to put it in a box and forget it.

One of the weird things about these drugs is the morning hangover that feels like the result of a way-too-large quantity of the red stuff. I get sick and headachey EVERY day and I deeply resent it because I'm almost completely tee-total these days, only supping a glass of my favourite tipple once every couple of weeks on average over the last seven or eight months. It's just not fair. All of the pain and none of the pleasures of the dark green bottle........

So, in my fake hung-over state this morning I dragged myself into the bathroom and while going about my ablutions, I noticed something bright and colourful about my person. Oh no, I've forgotten I've been out, drunk a couple of bottles of wine and then found myself getting a tattoo. You know, that old cliche, reported in many an amusing tale over the years (I can think of the episode of Auf Wiedersein Pet, where Kevin Whately ended up with one that had the name of a woman who was NOT his faithful wife back home and the Dave Gorman driving licence to name but two).

I am adorned with bright pink.......OK, OK so it's not a tattoo really - I'm not sure I could ever go that far, especially as I'm completely certain that not a single drop of the red stuff passed my lips last night now I'm down from the initial panic.

Somehow, in my infinite wisdom and my clearly limited memory, I'd painted my toenails bright pink, a state in which they've not been seen for more than two years now, although I once would not have considered myself dressed without brightly-coloured toes. Somehow, the little pearl of wisdom of Gwynneth Lewis, the author of Sunbathing in the rain seems to have permeated my psyche. I can't remember the exact words but it was something like "dress above how you feel" - I've not quite managed to drag myself out from trackie bottoms and holey sweatshirts, but I've at least made sure that if the rain ever stops and I ever get to put on my Birkenstocks again, I'll at least have "over-dressed" toes!!!

Weather warnings

My psychologist has given me a tool to help with my depression. She's asked me to stop describing my mood in the first person "I am sad/I am having a wobble etc" and to start to think of my emotions and mood as part of an ever changing landscape a bit like a weather map. So, "I am sad" becomes "sadness is happening". Strangely or otherwise, I find this quite useful so here goes:

The Emotions Office has issued the following warnings:

Expect a complex weather pattern over the next few days, with many emotional fronts rushing across the landscape. Expect sadness, anxiety, lost-ness(!), worry and gloom. This weather system will whip across your world for the next few days until the middle of next week, when we're expecting the pace of change to slow and a return to brighter emotional weather.

Who knows why but my recovery has hit a bump. The drugs that were helping with my improvement have stopped providing the relief I need. This is probably due to severe "bad things happening" on the work front but nonetheless, my doctors have said that a change of medication is needed.

The trouble is, this requires weaning off the Prozac to go onto something else. As I come off the Prozac, my anxieties and fear rise to the surface again and panic has set in once again.

I write this by way of an explanation because I may not write anything more for a few days - quite apart from the depression symptoms, the nausea and headaches associated with coming off the Prozac are making me feel decidedly grotty.

DM has been asked (by me) to "pull me along" for the next few days so last night he prodded me off the sofa and out into the fresh air. I was grateful and pleased to see my trees. My fight goes on....think of me as having found a ledge on the cliff where I'm shielded from the weather for the most part but with a north wind blowing, the rain is hitting me again. The wind will change direction and my shelter will return.

Just who is Rosie?

She's known variously as Rosie, the Roguester, Rogus Pogus....sometimes with a Poo on the end, you mad bitch, my petal, sweetie, oooowwwwww Rosie and a whole host of lesser names that come to the fore in moments of madness, delight or irritation.

It's her birthday tomorrow. She's going to be nine years old, which, given that she's a Border Collie, makes her a middle aged woman. If you believe the seven dog years for every one human year then she's a pensioner at 63!

Rosie is black, well at least to most people she's as black as the night. Her fur is so black it's almost blue if you know what I mean. She's only got the tiniest "shepherd's lantern" (the white tip of her tail). Her snout is greying and a friend once described her as looking as though she's just tip-toed through a puddle of milk. That's because she's got a pair of cute front legs that look splashed with milk and her back legs, although resolutely black, have the tiniest little blobs of milk on her toes. The roof of her mouth is also black - apparently this is a Border Collie breed standard - if their mouth doesn't have a black roof then the dog's not a "proper" Border Collie.

Her entire life is devoted to me. She would happily be joined at the hip with me but if I'm not showing any sign of receptiveness to her charms, then she'll certainly take her comfort elsewhere and is something of a tart, flinging herself at anyone who'll show an interest in her. At this moment, she's tucked up in a ball on the floor of my office by my feet. If I display any sign whatsoever of moving away from my desk, she'll leap to her feet and anticipate some thrilling trip down to the kitchen or better still, into the garden. Rosie doesn't mind where, as long as we're on the move and she's with me.

When I get up in the night to go to the bathroom, Rosie greets me outside the bedroom door, where she's managed to get herself from wherever she's been sleeping to "full parade" in the space of the few moments that it takes me to throw back the duvet, climb out of bed and negotiate the complete darkness to get around the bed and out of the door. Our pitch-dark environment means you can't see her, but you can feel her breath on your legs as you pass her by. I ALWAYS bend down and give her head a scratch on the way past. Some nights, she'll follow me into the bathroom and then stare at me with a quizzical look on her face while I do what I need to do.

In the morning, she eagerly awaits the moment when she can come into the bedroom, circumnavigate the bed, leap onto me and spend a few minutes trying to insert her tongue into one or both of my nostrils. That's when she gets called the less-flattering things in the list at the top of this posting! Then we play "the biting game" and I see a side of Rosie that very few other people see - her white side. You see, when she's upside-down she looks completely white, despite my earlier assertions that she's almost entirely black. She rolls onto her back, then tries to put my hand where she wants her fuss by taking it in her teeth and putting it onto her body where she wants to be tickled. She knows what she wants alright.

Her "best ever" game is "tennis ball" - she'd rather have a manky, chewed, soft tennis ball than any posh dog toy. You know she's managed to root one out when you hear THUD, thud, thud, thud. This is the sound of the ball being tossed towards your feet - the first insistant thud then the lesser thuds as the ball loses its initial momentum. I have NEVER known Rosie to be tired of the tennis ball game before her opponant.

She's my "Battersea Babe", coming into my open arms as a ten-week-old puppy, already having had the sad lot of being taken away from her Mum too early and being rejected by another family. I have loved her ever since the moment I whispered "Rosie" over her head as she sat on my knee in the waiting room to see the Battersea Dogs Home vet before we went home. She turned her head and looked at me and my heart was lost forever.

Although we don't celebrate Rosie's birthday - how can you celebrate the birthday of one baby when you have another who you not only don't know his birthdate, you don't even know his age? I expect we'll probably still spend a few moments thanking the day when I walked through the doors of Battersea and walked out again with her under my arm.

So, I salute Ali Taylor (the collie specialist at Battersea) and all of the rest of the team there for their wonderful gift to me. OK - I may have paid a small sum of money to take her away but nonetheless I still regard her as a gift. She may be 63 in dog years but she'll be my baby girl forever. Battersea Dogs Home gave me the gift of a little critter who loves me more than anything else on the planet - how can you EVER top that?

Cute huh?