SITTING AND WAITING

I'll have to get out more. Up-Helly-A' and the coincidental Burns Night passed by last Tuesday without any participation by me whatsoever, although the Tait Gallery is now on the collecting sheet for the former. My sister Angela, who is normally resident at Bethesda, North Wales, informs me that the 25th January is also the date of Diwrnod Santes Dwynwen, a kind of Valentine's day for the Welsh. Whatever the occasion, I can't be bothered to attend it nowadays. Sad, isn't it?

Sitting has always been one of my favourite pastimes. I just park myself, preferably near a window with a view, and switch off, allowing myself to be transported to wherever my flights of fancy might take me. And there I remain until the unwelcome intrusion of a phone call, a knock at the door or a work deadline encroaches upon my reverie. To tell the truth, terra firma is not such a fearful place for me as it used to be (would that it was the same for everyone). A year into my self-employment, around the end of 2005, I reckon I was over £10,000 in debt, and with no real idea how I was going to get this paid off. Now I've managed to work myself clear of three-quarters of that sum, and I hope to be rid of it completely by the close of 2011.

During the 1990s and into the "noughties", a recurring nightmare used to invade my hours of slumber. It varied as to its "geographical" location, but the theme was always the same. I was always among a crowd of people, I was always trying to accomplish some task or other, and I was always failing miserably. Frequently the location was a grotesquely enlarged version of the Vadill Compounds during the construction phase of the Sullom Voe Terminal, among the mud, sheds, workshops and portakabin offices of this period and area. It was dark, and I was trying to find someone, which I never did, of course. Sometimes it was a flat, which may have started as a similar one to that in which I now type these lines, but in my dream it took on much larger proportions, with loads of interconnecting rooms. I was the official tenant, I was trying to rid myself of the crowds of people who seemed to have taken up residence in it, and no-one was taking a blind bit of notice of me! Walking up B Avenue, again at the oil terminal, towards the flares, with crowds of people walking down, was another theme. I think I was looking for a lift somewhere (it made sense in the dream!). Those and many others were disturbing, and they made little sense to me at the time. I was always glad when blessed consciousness returned, and, grim though reality may have been, it was not as bad as the dream from which I had just awoken.

Something has changed - I haven't had these dreams for years now. The strange scenes which now play themselves out in my unconscious hours and mind, while equally grotesque, are not at all unpleasant. Have sweet dreams this week!