Delusional Dreams

Delusional Dreams ©

By Michael Casey

Are dreams delusional or just an illusion or maybe a form of prayer or something to protect us through the Dark Nights of The Soul? Now if you have just done PPE at Cambridge  you may have had that question on one exam paper, and are you half thinking that I was the horrid examiner who set that question. 

Then we’d both be delusional, the very thought of me being a Cambridge Don, more like Don Camillo than Cambridge Don, though the question I would throw at you would be Why Oxford? And I’d ask for 15,000 words in answer to the question Why Oxford? If I were an Oxford Don I may ask you Why are Cambridge Students such drunks? For that I’d ask 30,000 words as there’s such a plethora of evidence to prove the case only 30,000 words would do it justice.

I hope the cat has been thrown amongst all the pigeons, though when me and Mary Beard were down the Trader in Old Forge and Singing Anvil she did let slip a few home truths, give her 2 pints of Irish Lemonade, the red one and a packet of cheese and onion crisps and her tongue is so loose. Though only folks with a degree in Latin can understand a word she says, the red lemonade makes her such a gossip, and there’s no stopping her.

She can give you 150,000 words on Why Oxford, though this scruffy guy with blonde hair did earhole us as we drank our drinks, I had my usual Stella Artois of course.  Somebody said the spy was Norris or whatever his name was, he was drinking shandy should I say no more. In the end he bought some pork scratchings for his pet Fox and was away, but he did stop to speak to Mary Beard, whatever he said made her blush and dance around the bar just like Joyce Grenfell in the original Saint Trinians film.

Now have we got to the point of today’s story? Maybe it’s just a dream, me aspiring to have clever friends, though my brothers did go to Oxford and Cambridge. My own seat of learning was Spring Hill Library and Hudson’s book store New Street Birmingham, as well as 20 years of BBC Radio 4, which is PSB if you are American. Though isn’t PSB something else in Russia, sorry FSB, I only bring it into the conversation because today my readership has extended into Russia, as well as China, and Saudi Arabia.

I don’t think Putin reads my stuff on my websites, though it could help with his English, perhaps he’s dreaming of retirement, Trump could have offered him a job as a pro player at his golf courses. It could be Putin’s dream being a golf pro. I played golf on holiday in Abergele Wales as a child, who knows one day me and Putin could play golf on one of Trump’s courses.

Dreams don’t have to be logical, they are hopes, they are not reality. A dream can be a target too, like dreaming of someday making money from your writing, while you shake the pram and make notes on the table of a café. It worked for Mrs Harry Potter didn’t it.