Foreign 4: Strength to Dream

For the past 2 months of so, I've had this recurring dream - it's not a nightmare, but it doesn't invoke warm, fuzzy feelings of content. It always takes place in my old house; the loft of which was converted into my bedroom in 1996. Everytime, my room is exactly as it was before we moved-out - the two beds, the Velux windows, my old Aptiva in the corner.

However, my room has been left like that for 6 years in the dream. Large spiders had a habit of appearing on the far wall in reality (although, not as frequent as I suggest), in the dream there are cobwebs over everything and small insects scattered about the floor. The key moment in the dreams is always when I near the hi-fi and a large rainforest-esque centipede or likewise insect crawls out from underneath the table when I approach.

I still have the old Aptiva (unused now, although I plan to setup a home server on it), but in the dream there are now two of it - which presents a cheap way of getting another computer. I'm always running out of time when I boot it up and check the drive. Everytime, a bewildering interface prevents me from finding out what's on the drive, and from gaining a freebee computer.

A strange new variation appeared last night. The room was still cobwebbed, but I wasn't interested in the computer and there were no insects. Instead, I was sitting on the floor talking to Zoë Ball (who was accompanied by a toddler, infered to be her son). What Zoë Ball represents in the dream was immediately indentifiable. A few weeks before I was reading through the wiki entry on Live & Kicking (the classic Forbes/Peters and Ball/Theakston years - ie. the days when childrens TV was decent, like when I were a lad) and a fantsite explained Zoë's popularity because (words to the effect of) girls could talk to her like a big sister and guys could fancy her and/or talk to her like a friend-who-is-a-girl (a mild ladette).

Anyway, last night we went to the restaurant Zeppo's close to the beach (which you can't go on after 7PM because of the big turtles, and all the lights within 200m must be out by 11PM). Just before we left, a family (French, from what I could tell) who were personal friends of the owner, arrived and sat nearby. The daughter must have been about 16 or so; she was dressed in this beatiful simple dress with long brunette hair - stunningly continental.

[444]