BenPaddon.co.uk

This year’s NaNoWriMo starts in little under a week, and this time I’m in the right frame of mind to actually focus my energy on it. Last year I started writing a story that had been on my mind for a few years only to realise that I hadn’t properly planned it out. I had no idea where it was going and I wasn’t able to stretch it out over 50,000 words. At the time I think I was also dwelling far too much on my then-recent break-up. This time though, I’m ready for it. I’m going to do it, and what’s more I’m going to succeed.

I’ve been doing a lot of writing lately. As well as writing Jump Leads, which I absolutely love doing by the way, I’ve taken to transcribing some of my dreams into what I suppose could be called a Dream Journal. My dreams over the past year or two have been remarkably cohesive. The world my dreams take place in appears to have continuity and geography. I started drawing a map of that world last week, and this week I have begun trying to describe it in words. It’s difficult because parts of it are rather mundane - there’s a street lined with identical houses, for example, and for some reason there’s also a branch of Toys ‘R’ Us there that I have visited numerous times - but the centerpiece of that world is the beach, and the road leading to it. In some ways it reminds me of Hemsby, back in England, but it’s very different. There are a couple of restaurants near the beach, for example, and only one arcade which is closer to the beach, but once you’re on the beach itself it’s a real sight to see. It almost makes me wish I could paint it so as to share it with you. Sadly that’s not one of my talents…

I believe that writing is my true calling, and that I can make a sustainable career out of it.

Last night I had a very interesting dream. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I’m going to have to share it. I recognise that not everyone likes hearing about other people’s dreams (I personally find dreams fascinating) so if this isn’t your sort of thing, I’d recommend you spend this evening browsing Shortpacked’s archives. Here’s the first one. Enjoy!

So here we are: I’m in a waiting room with red walls. It sort-of resembles the Green Room from Friday Night with Jonathan Ross. There are other people in the room, mostly celebrities, however I don’t recognise anyone except for Levar Burton and Toni Carr, a girl who used to go to Lealands High School who made a habit of picking on me. She was with two other women who were presumably part of some part of a band.

The Green Room is actually a waiting room, as we had just been on stage as part of an auction. People had the opportunity to place bids on us, individually, for whatever reason. I remember that the customers were making payments in red LEGO blocks. Bizarre.

The dream flashes forward to later, and Levar Burton and I are cleaning junk out of an old, dirty swimming pool. There’s very little water in it, maybe an inch at the bottom, but it is, as I said, filled with junk. I mostly find things which I recognise - an Amiga CD³², some toys from my youth, my old chunky Game Boy, some videos (including “Robot“), a box of photos ranging from my youth right up to last week.

“Y’know what?” I say to Levar Burton. “I think this pile of junk symbolises my brain.”
“Really?” he says.
“Yes.”
“Well, what do I symbolise, then?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I reply. “I do like Star Trek: The Next Generation.”
“I was in Roots as well.”
“Yes, but I’ve never seen that.”
“What do you want me to do with this pink thing?”

He’s holding an old cuddly toy of mine, called Silly Billy. It’s pink and yellow, with white fluffy hair and a yellow-and-pink striped tail with a fluffy tip.  I look at it for a moment, and then…

I woke up.

I’ve had a lot of lucid dreams again lately. I know when I’m dreaming, and even more annoyingly I analyse my own dreams as I’m dreaming them. This is the first time, though, that someone from one of my dreams has asked me what they represent. Ideally, I’d prefer they told me themselves.

I’ve been trying for the past two hours to get S.T.A.L.K.E.R - Shadow of Chernobyl working adequately on my computer with very little success. I’ve now set the Graphics quality to Low and rebooted, which I really shouldn’t have to do as both the box and the game’s installer assure me that the game is well within my PC’s capabilities (the installer, so far as I can tell, refuses to install the game if you don’t meet the minimum requirements, which is a splendid feature that I’d love to see in more installers these days). Still, before I start the game up again I’m going to recount to you a dream I had last night. It is, in fact, a continuation of a rather dull dream I had a couple of nights ago - that doesn’t happen nearly often enough.

Eddie, Chaz and I worked in a big skyscraper.  The previous dream was, in fact, Eddie driving us to work in his new4×4 (which he doesn’t actually have in the Real World, but in my dreams it’s all he ever drives) and taking us up through the parking lot to park the car for work, the parking lot looking a lot like the new-ish parking construct at Disneyland, California.

So my new place of work was populated in my dream by loads of people I used to work with at NTL. Bizarrely there was absolutely no one from my team but loads of people from Riz’s team, and a couple of the old Churn team. We’re not really doing anything, either - we’re just sat around a table talking about Mortal Kombat. This is something we’re doing after our lunch break, which I went on almost immediately after I arrived at work, so our job apparently involves sitting at a table and talking about videogames. Which is nice.

The day ends, and Eddie, Chaz and I have to wait for the elevator. As we work on the top floor, it’s a long wait - someone says the elevator could take as long as an hour to get here. Fortunately there’s a brand new elevator, which brings your car up to you and then takes it down again. However it only takes the front seats (actually the entire front of the car, bizarrely). As I’m a nice chap, I tell Eddie and Chaz that they can take the lift and I’ll take the stairs.

So down the stairs I go. Down, down, down, round, round, round, passing people who used to work with me at NTL. Eventually I reach a door, which is not at the foot of the stairs, but I have a peak through and it’s an arcade. Loads of machines old and new - Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Mortal Kombat II and 4, but importantly (from the context of the dream, at least) Marvel Vs Capcom and its sequel.

As the machines are all on Free Play (which means you don’t have to pay to play them, of course) I decided to give Marvel Vs Capcom a quick go. There’s something different about the game, though - the menus and music are correct, but the characters are different. I notice the character roster has changed significantly - all of Capcom’s characters are there, but Marvel’s line-up has been stripped down to just Wolverine (my favourite character in the game, incidentally). All of the other Marvel characters have been replaced with McDonalds characters - Ronald McDonald, the Hamburglar, the Grimace, and so on. Baffled, I decide to check out Marvel Vs Capcom 2 and discover that all of the characters have been replaced with McDonalds characters, and the only character even related to either Marvel or Capcom is MegaMan.

And then it gets really weird.

Suddenly I’m wearing Colonel Sanders‘ trademark white suit and black bow tie, and I’m holding a big slab of chicken, and I’m being chased by two people in pseudo-SWAT Team uniforms. They chase me down the stairs, but I apparently outwit them by peeling the skin off of the chicken (apparently it was KFC chicken), eating it, and putting the meat in a nearby waste paper basket. I then saundered casually down the stairs and into Eddie’s car, where my clothing had changed back to it’s usual tee-shirt and jeans.

Honestly, you can’t make this stuff up. But your subconscious apparently can.