big cheeses – Page 2

This dream was from around 5 AM this morning.

The dream opens in a conference / sports facility which is shared by a female and a male fee-paying private schools. The schools are top end, and the facility is top notch but shared. There is both history and luxury. My team and I are clearing up after a successful course for teenagers from disturbed backgrounds. The course has gone well but our efforts to tidy are hindered by the incredible mess left by the previous users. Trays from the canteen are left partially washed, clogging up the sinks, the bins are full. Most of it is not our mess, but we need to clean it up to hand over to the next users. We struggle to get things sorted. The wife’s open heeled brown shoes have been left in different places. I get them together. It is late afternoon, and the new delegates are arriving. At last, the place is ship shaped, and Bristol fashioned.

The incoming users are a high-level international conference with many big cheeses from academia, government and business. We are just making our way to the school sleeping accommodation. Prof. T and several of his colleagues are entering the atrium as we leave. He comes over to me and congratulates me for being invited to this high-level conference. I explain to him that I have not been invited and nor am I participating. Those are not circles I walk in and I probably never will. He is surprised. I say that I have just done a course for a couple of dozen semi-delinquent teenagers. He does not get it. It does not fit his picture.

We head off to the accommodation blocks and fall tired onto the bed to sleep. It is a long drive back. During the night I need a piss. There is for us, no ensuite. I will have to use the toilet block down the corridor. I wrap a towel around my waist and go to piss in a big metal urinal.

The scene changes and I am walking around a very muddy farm. I am wearing my combats and a white sports vest. I explore the farm enjoying the mud on my bare feet and through my toes. I know that the farm is a part of the school and conference complex. It provides fresh produce. I know that the whole thing is set in New Zealand.

As I turn the corner I am met by a Kiwi farmer. He asks what I am doing. I explain that I have just done a course at the school. He says that it is a bit strange to see me walking bare foot in all the mud and that it must hurt. I say that because I partially grew up in Oz and Southern Africa that it is normal for me. He turns to a mate and says that all bloody Aussies are nuts.

The dream ends.

This dream is in two parts.

I am with prof. AR, we are setting up an event for young people, Ph.D. students and post docs. We are in a seminar room. I am going to give a presentation. I turn on my lap top and cannot find the PowerPoint document. It is on my other laptop. Prof. AR thinks she might have a copy on hers. We set up a projector and her media guy connects the lap top and the projector. It takes ages to get set up. When the file opens it is not my presentation. I gesticulate by a finger across the throat to cut. Which he does.

I turn to the audience and say, “It is clear that one needs to make sure one has the presentation. Step one.”

Everyone laughs.

I explain that because of where I find myself, I cannot detrimentally affect my career, because I no longer have one. The only way I can affect my career irrespective, is positively.

I ask them, “In this day and age, is it still ok to have ambition? Because they have their careers ahead of them, what do they need to do to push on?”

Someone in the audience says, “you can’t speak to us like that, it is old fashioned dinosaur speak.”

“Why not”, I reply “It is your future not mine?”

“It is not right; it is insensitive and wrong for our generation!”

I turn my back and simply walk out of the room without speaking. The room is silent because this is so unexpected.

The scene changes and I am at a very big academic conference. There are many big cheese scientists there. I am in the foyer looking for my book. I can’t find it. Weirdly I am due to speak at the conference dinner. I need some excerpts from my book. I can’t find it.

I go into the conference dinner it is plush and expensive.

I am sat on one of the side tables.

It is my turn to speak on ways of thinking. That thinking needs to be synthetic and joined up as opposed to divisive and separative. I walk over to top table where there is a big cheese prof. who I do not recognise.

I argue with him that black and white thinking is archaic and that there needs to be many shades of grey and nuance in the debate.

He gets agitated and combative.

I turn my back and slowly walk out of the room. You could hear a pin drop.

Dream ends,

Tag: big cheeses

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