My dream life seems to be growing ever more vivid and I awoke this morning remember yet another persecution dream. In it, I was me but reality was all skewed and places and people were all mixed up, as dreams usually are. This turned out to be a recurring dream, or at least a continuation of a dream I had started in January. In it, an old man had been murdered. He was the husband of a fictitious neighbour and the murder had been some kind of mistake, a practical joke gone wrong. I was with the other two guys who had been respsonsible for his death and I was given the job of disposing of the body. And so I had dragged the corpse to some open ground, set it alight and buried the remains. I had done a good job of hiding the body and I had thought it was the perfect crime.
But that was in January, in my dream at least, or maybe I had dreamt that last night or dreamt some kind of flashback? I don’t know for sure. But the dream re-started with a knock on the door and a policeman entering the house, which was similar but different to my grandparent’s home. They were still alive and I was there with them. The policemen spoke about the disappearance of the man and then left.
I broke down and confessed to my grandparents as to what I had done and my level of involvement in the disappearance of the man. They looked on at me disapprovingly and said that they were digusted with me and that I was a disgrace. There was only one thing I could, they said, and that was to confess, to come clean to the cops. I spent the rest of the dream avoiding the interest of the police and then a letters came through the letterbox, a number of different letters, all with a different letter printed on them that spelt the word “CONFESS”. A free newspaper punctated the flood of envelopes and on the front page was an interview with the wife of the man who said how much she had missed him.
Then I realised what I needed to do. I picked up the phone and called the police. I said I would be there within the hour. I walked to the police station and sobbed all the way there, crying for the fact that I would lose my home, my wife and my liberty. Despite this sadness, I knew what I was doing was the right thing.
Then I woke up…and for the first time ever in the history of my dreaming I said quite loudly: “Thank god, it was just a dream” and I laughed. I spoke so loud that it woke the Missus and then I spent the next fifteen minutes describing the dream to her.
Today, at just after 2pm, I spoke to my sister on the phone. Her contact made me feel very special. She is a clever, sensitive and witty young lady. I like her a lot already. She is super-cool! My only regret was that we couldn’t talk longer. We only had 30 minutes, but that was enough for now, I guess. I don’t want to rush things although my heart says “Come on, stop beating around the bush, you big sissy!”. Sister, if you are reading this, you are great.
Category: Diary
Tomorrow is the 25th anniversary of the Personal Computer or “PC”. Indeed, it was IBM that introduced the concept of the personal computer at the cheapest versions then would set you back $1,565, which is probably about the same amount of money it cost to send the first Space Shuttle into orbit. Of course, I jest. I remember my first experience of a PC. It was 1981 and I was at school. The class fell silent as the computer was wheeled into the room and, in pairs, we were allowed some private time with the new machine. The screen was green on black and the type a bit difficult to read. We played some kind of maths game with robots, it was pretty basic.
But I was hooked and a couple of years later, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum was launched in this country. OK – it wasn’t a personal computer as we know it, but it created a lot of computer geeks. I loved my ZX Spectrum and spent numerous hours typing computer games into the computer using the impossible rubber keyboard – I think this is what helped me develop my 60-words a minute typing speed. My touch typing has always been a skill of mine, but then I did have an electronic typewriter as a birthday present once. Typing out computer games from magazines, which always ended up as either being crap or didn’t work, seems incredible now. I can’t imagine the youth of today having the patience or intelligence to do it, but we did in those days because none of my peers had the disposable income to buy new games every week. Ooooh, the good old days, I am indeed becoming misty-eyed. My early teenage years was filled with computer games such as JetPac, Jet Set Willy and Sabre Wulf.
I used my Spectrum for everything and even wrote one of my first novels on it. I had a little Brother 9-pin printer that I’d use to print out my text and I even used it to create the centre spread of the College magazine using a primitive DTP application. That was the first co-production between myself and The Missus all those years ago. Cripes, I feel really old now.
Fast forward a couple of years and The Missus managed to convince her folks to give her the cash for our first proper PC to celebrate her 21st birthday. We trekked down to Morgan Computers off Tottenham Court Road and secured one of the job lot Wang computers they were flogging. Wang (don’t laugh at the back) had gone into liquidation and so their stock was being flogged at discount prices. I think it cost a few notes under £500, which was an impossible amount of money for us. We got an expensive cab home with all these large boxes and I spent hours setting the thing up.
In those days, PCs weren’t as much fun or useable as they are now. There were no CD-ROMs or DVDs or CD writers or fancy video card or even sound cards. You effectively had an expensive, silent computer and if you wanted it to do anything clever, you had to add bits on like accessories. So over time, I bought a sound card and upgraded bits of it and often spent hours when the Operating System went down. Windows 3.1 was useable to a level, but if memory serves correctly, if something went wrong you very often had to reiinstall the whole operating system from scratch. Oh what fun.
Over the years, the Wang got superseded and bits were salvaged to go on to create my subsequent machines. I’ve built my own PCs ever since because it is always been cheaper to upgrade. I’ve bought the odd cheap base unit, but often ripped out the guts and bastardised the thing to create my own model.
It’s funny how PCs would be integral to home life. When I was a kid I always knew that computers would be in every home, but I didn’t expect the Internet to be the catalyst to draw them in. Again, I was kind of there at the beginning when the Internet started to gain popularity in the UK in the mid-90s and I started using the net from about 1996 – so I have been online for a decade, cripes! I’ve been there and done it all. In the early days it was like the Wild West and the trick really was to avoid all the child and animal porn. Yes, one wrong click on the newsgroups and you’d find yourself looking at an image that would disturb your entire day. Thankfully, that’s all gone now.
I remember learning HTML from a big book, so that I could program my first own webpage. That’s what it was like – you had to buy books to learn how to use it. It was very difficult to find stuff on the net and Google was years away. Altavista was the search engine of choice and Mosaic was the browser. I remember being amazed by the early MSN webchat pages and made some online pals, but when I got my first stalker I have never really let myself get involved with out online entities.
The Internet is a scary place populated by weirdos like me – be warned! 😉
I love rude words. I think part of it goes back to those schooldays where you used to use the dictionary to see how many obscene definitions you can find. My favourite swear has to be cunt. Now I know a lot of people get really upset by that word, but it has old-Englishe roots and is even mentioned in Chaucer. In the Miller’s tale, there’s a line where the randy young cuckold “privily he caught her by the quaint”, which means crotch area. So the word quaint evolved into cunt. Clever, eh? Anyway, it is my favourite swear and I think the world is full of cunts and people (especially ladies) should embrace it. It’s one of those words that just trips off the tongue, as it were (nudge, nudge – wink, wink).
Anyway, that long meandering preamble was just a piss-poor attempt at bringing your attention to the new Jarvis Cocker single. I have been a big fan of his (and Pulp) since the early 1990s, just before His ‘n’ Hers was released and it was great to see he has a new single out, albeit in digital format. It’s called “Running the World” and is a great summation of the current state of our country and people in general. He is a great observer and pop-philosopher. The chorus is the sweet “Cunts are still running the world” and is a sentiment I totally agree with. Now I ask you to head over to iTunes and buy this little ditty for 79p. If enough of us join the bandwagon we might just get Jarv to the top of the charts. It would have been nice to see him sing the song on Top of the Pops, but they axed it. Like he said, cunts are still running the world. Go on, have a listen…
Click here for Jarvis saying a naughty word.
I had a bit of a disturbed sleep as Alex the Wonderdog decided he would go on full alert mode and would bark at every noise eminating from our leafy Avenue. With every thunderous bark, I believed my heart was going to stop as I was dragged abruptly from sleep. The upshot of this was that I was able to remember a dream.
The dream started off quite normal. Myself and The Missus were househunting and surveying a four-storey townhouse type dwelling. The place was OK-ish and needed some work. Out in the garden, I was greatly impressed with the large pond and Koi carp. The garden was split on two levels and as you rose up, you could see over the back wall to the sea and a beach behind.
Then all of a sudden things got weird as dreams usually do. There was an audible crack and I feel something change. I was no longer me. I felt smaller and younger. The Missus was replaced by a Chinese girl. It quickly came back to me that this was my girlfriend and we’d not been together that long. Suddenly, there was the sound of car doors slamming and raised voices. The girl quickly told me to go inside and so we retreated away from the voices. Inside, she explained that these were the friends she had told me about previously (????). They weren’t particuarly nice people and they were a gang of somesorts and were coming to take over the house. I was confused about the situation, as you would be.
And so the gang arrived. They were non-descript white youths, a mix of male and female. Modern. Good hairstyles, if you know what I mean. These people herded us upstairs and proceeded to yell a lot about betrayal to my chinese girlfriend and how she had let the team down, while gesturing to me. I guess I was the source of the trouble. So we were held prisoner locked in the attic. Time passed and we talked and other stuff happened which I can’t possibly divulge on this family-orientated blog and we hatched a plan to escape.
It seems that she was very athletic and could climb through the small window, flip herself through a lower window and come back to open the door from the outside. This she promptly did and we were free. We were going to head downstairs and escape via the blue sports car on the drive. As we descended, I could hear noises and the gang appeared to be practising gymnastics on one of the floors. It was very strange. They were even dressed in blue leotard-type uniforms.
We snuck past them, but someone must have spotted us as I heard the shout go up and we made a run for it. We made it into the car, but we weren’t quick enough to pull away and the gang surrounded us. The chinese girl was dragged screaming away, back into the house and I was pulled out and given a good kicking by the largest male of the group. He whispered in my ear that if I was ever to return he would kill us both. He pulled out a large knife and brandished it at me. He then stood me up and kicked me away from the car, telling me to go. It was fifteen miles to the nearest train station, he told me.
So I remember walking in the darkness and miles seem to skip past as I was at the station in no time. There was a sharp incline leading up to the entrance and once inside I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of people. Being a smaller person in this dream life, the crowds were a lot taller and more intimidating. I wandered around trying to figure out exactly where I was and how I could get home. I spent ages in the bustling station exploring. There were many restaurants, even a casino, and it seemed to have its own thriving communitiy. Every so often, a whistle would sound and the doors would open allowing freshly alighted commuters to rush through the scene.
I asked where if there was a cab office and the man gave me directions. I followed them litigiously, only to find myself back where I started. I explored some more and thought a lot about my life with the mystery chinese girl. Was this really my life? I could feel elements of Darren seeping back into my character and I urgently wanted to get home to Loughton. I managed to find a quiet ticket area – all the others had been bustling with people – and I attempted to buy a ticket. But I had no idea from where I was travelling. I asked another man who kindly showed me a mechanical machine on the wall for plotting the route home. But as no-one was telling me what station this was, I couldn’t enter a starting point. How can you head from home if you don’t know where you are? And so I talked to a station assistant who gave me a map and I told him where I wanted to go. He replied, “That’s going to cost you £140 from here”. Of course, he was clever not to reveal where “here” was. I didn’t have that kind of money.
In the end, I was overcome by the place and needed to escape, so I back-tracked the entrance and headed away from the station.On the way down the hill, I found myself walking with another man and I asked him if there was a cab office in the town. He said yes and said he’d direct me to it. When we got to this cab office, there was some kind of misunderstanding and they thought I wanted to apply for a job as a cab driver – which is impossible because I don’t drive. I tried to make it clear what I wanted but I got the feeling I wasn’t being heard.
Then came a voice in the distance and I turned around and saw the large fellow who had given me a pummelling. But before I could find out what happened, Alex the Wonderdog barked loudly again and brought me out of the dream.
What a weird one, eh?
(Again, this dream was written down for my own pleasure and for future reference)
Here’s a gentle ambient piano piece I viddied last night. It’s a live recording of me noodling around on the Boss RC-50 – I basically fed my Triton LE keyboard into it and created three separate loops, one of which is played backwards. This is how the “Mist Suite” was recorded.
Still been feeling a little miserable. The mild depression has only just begun to lift and my day has been lived under the cloud. I thought it would pass quickly as these things usually do, but it was only until later in the day and some vigorous vacuuming that things didn’t seem that bleak.
Managed to record three noodly pieces for my ambient CD. There are called Mist on Stone, Mist on Water and Mist on Mist. They are three piano looped pieces using the RC-50 and are very calming. I have edited them together to create an elongated “Mist Suite”. How fricking pretentious. But when I listened to the reverbed piano, the only image I saw was shapes coming through the mist. So the name stayed. I like them a lot but I am sure others will find them deathly dull. Tough titty.
Yesterday, we spent lunchtime at the pub, but I wasn’t in the right frame of mind. Events of the past week have been weighing on me and I was a bit snappy. I vented. I vented and I vented. Luckily, The Missus has seen this impotent rage before and so just lets me clear my pipes before letting me apologise for my stupid outbursts. I’ve been fairly up recently, so yesterday can be classed as a bit of a downer. Thankfully the booze and the venting helped me feel a bit better – even though it was completely pointless.
After listening to the tracklisting of the vocal songs I have recorded so far, I have decided to stop the CD at 44 minutes. It’s a nice size and doesn’t outlive its welcome and there are six songs from the past and six songs from the present. This gave the CD a name: SIx of One, Half a Dozen of the Other. I like the symmetry.
So now I have three of the four CDs complete and mastered. The fourth CD is about half done with 30+ minutes of ambient noodlings in the can. The fourth CD is my usual “experimental” fare and I hope that each CD gives the listener a different aspect of my musicality. The boxset title has also changed now. It was going to be called “You Are Allowed to Enjoy This”, but that has been dropped for an old expression that my late grandmother used to say: “God Pays Debts Without Money”. It seemed kind of apt with the way life goes.
Now I’ve just got to do some more noodling – hopefully aided and abetted by the new RC-50 and get the artwork together. I nixed any idea of getting this done properly because the costings are beyond me. This is a great shame, but The Missus said that CD packaging is going to be a thing of the past and that everything is being delivered digitally anyway and that I was just being too fussy. She is right, of course. And so, I am going back to the old 4-DVD cases I used before because they give me the maximum space to fit in all the details. No booklet either, but that doesn’t matter because I’ll set up a webpage where the listener can come and read all the details and lyrics.
The funny thing is that I keep listening to CDs one and two and I am really enjoying them. I hate to have any pride in my work (because pride always comes before a fall) but the work and effort in these discs really shows and I feel that I have made more progress that I could ever have imagined. Yes, I honour my mistakes and leave them in for “freshness” and so that I get a sonic smack when I play these songs back. I just hope that I get some good feedback on this stuff. I don’t want money – I just want the odd person to say: “Hey – I really like this, Darren.” That’s not much to ask, is it?
Meanwhile at Chez Lock, I opened the curtains to be greeted by this sight…
Don’t worry, this giant spider was captured by yours truly and released back into the wild.