Tag: dreamer

Derek Jacobi – Cats – Vance – US Visitors Dream Sequence 13-08-2025

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Here is last night’s dreaming sequence of three distinct though somehow interrelated parts. Out of the blue….

The dream starts in England, in autumn, outdoors, walking along a leafy path in parkland. I am with Derek Jacobi and we are slightly ahead of a small grouping of British theatre luvvies. The wife is with the second group, with Emma Thompson. We have been wined and dined at a pub like The Spaniards in Hampstead. The conversation is flowing and everyone is excited. We are going back to someone’s mansion / house which is nearby. Jacobi and I are talking about philosophy, deity and Shakespeare a prime passionate interest of his. He is being his usual erudite and expressive self. He is asking me multiple questions about “back then”, previous lives. We pause at a clearing and sit on a stump for the others to catch up. We are being celebrated, feted even. The others catch up and Jacobi leads us off; he says that dinner is being prepared and we did not ought be late.

I awake. The shutters are partially open to let the air flow on a hot night. The window is open. Gandalf the stray cat is patrolling the window sill. She meows several times. I mentally debate whether to acknowledge her. I cough she hears and soon departs. I imagine she is seeking reassurance that I am there. I intuit that she is somehow guarding us.

Back in the dream we are downstairs in our current house. Bibi the indoors official cat is with us. In the garden we can see Gandalf. I open the large sliding “floor to ceiling” veranda style doors. Gandalf comes in greets us and Bibi. They go to sit on a large white leather sofa which is somehow against the wall by the log burner. In the garden a third black cat appears and it too enters the house, greeting us and sitting near where we are standing. A tallish woman with mousey blonde long hair comes into the garden. She is wearing an expensive trousers and blouse combo. She is slim and taller than me. She is forties of age and American sounding. With her are mice, rabbits and other small rodent like animals. They all follow her into the house, a/her menagerie. She says hello and that she is new to the area. The wife asks her name. Ivanovich or Ivaniaovich or something like that is the phonetic reply. Her first name may be Irene. Another large light brown cat with very long hair comes into the garden. The cat inspects us but does not come too close. She says that this too is her cat, his name is Vance. He is aloof and does not mix well. He thinks he is important. Vance walks around keeping his distance. He is high maintenance, she says. She winks.

The next scene is set in a very modern rental house with several levels and a designer garden. It is our temporary home; the feel is non-descript European. Staying with us are an American couple they are high functioning and high powered. The wife somehow knows the female from before. We have had a party the night before and wake up to a messy house. I am taking coffee orders. Felix {the probably dead stray cat} is asleep on the white sofa with Bibi and Gandalf. Felix meows at me and goes to the sliding glass window. He wants to go outside for a shit. I let him out. I explain to the woman that he likes to shit outdoors. I get coffees and give one to each of the couple. I go upstairs to ask the wife what she wants for breakfast. Garlic cheese on toast is the answer. I say that she can have cheese on toast with coffee and that I will bring them up to her in due course. I go back downstairs.

We look out the window and a garden robot like a mower passes by. It is expertly raking the gravel around the roses and pulling weeds. The garden is low maintenance self-clean a design of the architect who designed the dwelling. I say that this explains everything. I had wondered why the garden looks fresh each morning. The woman gestures to me to follow her outside. I do. She takes me aside out of earshot of her male partner. She says that later in the year in Colorado they are going to have a celebration and wedding. She asks me if I will speak at the wedding and perhaps officiate the service for them. I say that I would be delighted to do that and ask her what nature of service she would like. She says a non-denominational service based on beings and the universe. I say that I am sure that I can prepare the words. She says not to mention it yet to her husband to be. He is already onboard in principle and there are a few other details she wants to sort out. She shows me a picture of the Colorado mountainside venue. They have already booked a suite for the wife and I.

The dream sequence ends.

Academic Chemists – Derelict Site – Attack – Honour Dream 11-08-2025

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Here is this morning’s dream had between 5 and 7:30 AM.

The entire dream is in England and not the north or the midlands but south to that from geography and accent. There is some kind of gathering of chemistry academics in the upstairs of a large pub or hotel. There is a vague feeling of conference but it is not quite that. It is more of a social gathering with a problem solving outlook. I am there but largely unacknowledged nor welcome. There is hubbub and people drinking. A man, John, comes in who knows me and says that he has just got promoted. He is a bit younger than me. I congratulate him genuinely. I say that it  is good news for him but that my job is very definitely at risk if not already lost. He concurs. I am spare. I am not entirely sure why I am even at this gathering. I do not belong.

The scene changes and I am walking with a woman roughly my age who works at the place of the gathering. She is a lynchpin for the departments there. She has grey-blonde hair. We are in South London and approaching a very rough neighbourhood. I am not sure where we are going. She says that she has a secret place, there. We come upon a boarded up set of flats that are fenced off and ready for demolition. The site access gateway if closed off with a large chipboard wooden gate together with health and safety signage about helmets and hazards. She unlocks the chain and opens the gate. I ask her if she is sure that she wants to go in. Yes.

I follow her in and we can see several blocks of low rise four storey flats. They are in a bad state of repair but not quite Gaza like. She leads me through the rubble to one building where we are joined by another woman. Together they make their way to the back of one of the ground floor flats, to the kitchen. She has set herself up a snug with teapot, table and bone-china. She boils the kettle to make tea and gets out a plate of cupcakes. She ushers me into her snug but I cannot fit fully. It is as if she and her friend have shrunk as has the flat. I can get my head into the room but nothing else.

Behind me I hear noises. I turn out of the flat and look across the rubble strewn ground between the buildings, the demolition site. I can see half a dozen young black men approaching. They are carrying weapons and acting threateningly. I can feel my wallet in my trouser pocket. They approach and I say to them that I will give them some money. I take out six £20 notes and offer these. The lead man does not want them. He says that they are going to “fuck me up”. I say that they are welcome to try.

He lunges at me and I grab his wrist in a Kotegaeshi aikido wrist lock and swirl him around. I cannot however get full control of his wrist. Others come up and start to beat my back with iron bars which I can feel through my heavy overcoat. I let him go and then shrug the attackers off. They start to give chase and I head to the chipboard gate site entrance. They are following me at pace. I am completely unconcerned because their blows cannot hurt me or injure severely. As they follow me though the gate I head onto a grass verge in front of another block of flats. There is a massive police operation going on with many police in protective vests, armed and with dogs. They see my pursuers and recognise them as people they want to arrest. Half the police break off the search and give chase to my attackers.

I go back into the derelict site and find a white tiled bathroom which is intact. In the flat above there is a large woman who is a giant. She is five times my size and wearing striped tights with massive Dr Martens boots. She is curled up under the ceiling and above my bathroom. She has platted pony tails and is wearing a denim pinafore dress with straps. She is my friend and we go way back.

I turn on the shower and note the complete surround of white tiles which bulge slightly under the weight of the giant upstairs. I take a long hot shower. I need to cleanse, to get clean.  As I finish a young man with blonde hair in white overalls appears. He is the electrician-plumber and is trying to fix the bathroom and the derelict site. I explain to him that it is near impossible because there is no room left in the gaps between ceiling and roof. I have tried but gotten nowhere. He says that he has been given the job of fixing things. I wish him luck. It will be a thankless task.

The scene changes and I am in some kind of meeting with around half a dozen male chemistry academics. They are the “generation” below me and rather full of themselves. They are talking management bullshit about targets and how they are going to fix the problem of which I am a part. Although I am there I am largely ignored. They are arrogant. I know beyond all doubt that they are heading towards a massive mistake, a fuck up. I try to warn them. They ignore me convinced that they know best. They think they have a vision and a solution. They are very badly mistaken and it will go very, very wrong.

They ask me what I have in my wallet. I take my wallet out and pull out first four and then another two £20 pound notes. That makes a total of twelve £20 notes. In the dream I know that money re-presents crystallized power or knowledge. I have in my wallet the jewels of awareness forbearance 12 and honour 20. My honour remains intact no matter what they do.

The dream ends.

The Somnambulant – Purple Wolf and Crocodiles Dream – 08-08-2025

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Here is last night’s dream. I have taken recently to using a knee pillow to ease my nocturnal back pain. It means that I do not start the day with lumbar spine pain however I am now more aware of the hip pain. I am slightly easier to get going of a morning.

The dream starts in a metropolitan area part Kurfürstendamm Berlin and part The City London. It is pan European and upmarket, upbeat, expensive. Despite being smart it has a whiff of decadence and loose sexual mores. If feels a little dated though contemporary, as if things need to change.

I am with two others of my kind. We go into a night club past bouncers with a red rope barrier. We are among many entering the night club even though it is still light. People are leaving their jackets at the coat check. The clients age ~20-40 and are of mixed sex and nationality. They are somehow a part of the “in” crowd. This place is difficult to get into and has an air of privilege. I know that some are “content” creators.

We wander through the many levels of the night club, which is big, vast even. We see people dressed expensively made up with false eyelashes, there is evidence of tattoos and cosmetic surgery. All the punters have dilated pupils consistent with hallucinogen use. The look to be awake because of the pupils. But in fact they are more like walking dead, sleepwalkers, somnambulant. They are all there because it is the “it” place to be. There are floor after floor of them. There is however no music, no sound, no talking. They are zombified. The look animated but are not. The lack of music in the nightclub is very eerie and joyless as are the clientele. This is modern life. We are very surprised.

Now in a dark basement of the club. I am told that I have met the velvet, the purple wolf and that this is the mood. There is anger. I do not see him yet the feeling intensely subjective is strong. Purple is not a good colour. I know that in part this refers to Théun and that he is a bringer and symbol of all that refuses to change, stuck hard and fast in the old ways. There is a lush insistence on indulgence characteristic of the outgoing sixth ray which presents a major barrier to evolution. People are stuck in their ways and vehemently adamant that they are right, they will growl, fight and try to destroy any agent for change. There is a longing for times gone by which no longer are. I have met the purple wolf and that is an emblem of all that refuses to change. It shows that clinging on to old ways and out-of-date cultures, preserving, is not moving forward. There is more meaning to this meeting which will become apparent over time and indeed layers are coming as I type.

The night club has now changed into an underground theme park water ride. People are in “hollowed out logs” which are like little boats and are being driven around the “amusement” park by the flowing water. There are simulacrum rapids and now people are vocalising, shrieking. In some of the logs are people I know from the past in London.  I am on the side by a sluice in which is an adolescent hippopotamus. It is trying to get out into the wider theme park and succeeds. The hippopotamus is friendly towards me. I know that it wants to turn over the log-boats for fun. At the side of the water course there is a pool which is filled with mid length crocodiles, not full Nile size but a couple of metres long, lithe active and hungry. They are the crocodiles belonging to the people in the log-boats. I know that these crocodiles are the dreaming symbols for cumulative shortcomings of the people in the boats. There are many of them. One of the crocodiles is exiting the pond and starting to make to attack me. It is snapping at me. I pick up a slightly smaller crocodile and place it horizontally into the opening mouth of the attack crocodile. I know in the dream that the attack by the crocodiles of the people in the club / log boats will be ongoing and unlikely to stop anytime soon.

The dream ends.

Fate or Self-Determination?

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Many imagine that they have partial control over their lives, their circumstances and the trajectory of those lives. I have used the plural lives here which might be a moot choice for those who do not believe in reincarnation. Already people might want to debate singular or plural. Their own minds may not be certain, “do I cark it and that is it, or am I reborn?” This is quite fundamental in terms of outlook. They don’t imagine that the entire trajectory of life can pivot on a few tiny things.

If those marking my undergraduate exams in 1985 had given me one more mark and Sue one less. We would have tied for the last remaining SERC Ph.D. quota studentship. The organic section already had a lot of applicants, the inorganic chemistry section less. The decision would have been to grant the supervisor of my third year research project the studentship and I would have done a Ph.D. in the synthesis of Pt and Pd mixed valence compounds with X-ray, FTIR and Raman. I would have become an inorganic chemist of sorts at UCL and not gone to the Royal Institution nor helped moved the group to Imperial College. At some stage down the line the UCL trajectory could have led me to doing coherent Raman spectroscopy of GaAs growth at UMIST. Here the two possible trajectories could have remerged. This could have led me to the Interdisciplinary Centre for Electronic Materials and to Imperial.

But my life would have been markedly different in the meantime. I would not have formed the same “relationships”.

When Sue transferred to UCL part through her degree I helped her catch up on the course. In effect sealing my own fate by an act of kindness. Without my intervention I would have “beaten” her. Of course I could also have smoked fewer spliffs and not gotten so pissed on a regular basis too.

Seemingly innocuous happenstance can nudge life trajectory more than you imagine. Is it down to fate or is it down to the integral over all the decisions we make? I prefer the notion that fate has a considerable hand. Others do not like the idea that some external force has influence and control of their lives.

BUT.

If you choose your incarnation then you have in a way self-determined your fate by the choice of vehicle into which you incarnate. There may be a fate but it was caused by your choice.

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At the moment the residual fate in this life looks pretty simple. No big deal, no big external dramas and marginal significance to the world at large. I am very unlikely to have much ongoing wider significance. If it is fated there is no intervention required of me. If it is fated otherwise something might happened outside the compound to change things. I don’t have to be in any way proactive in this respect. If it is fated, it will happen.

Tomorrow, I have a urology appointment to follow up on my elevated prostate specific antigen (PSA) test. I don’t have cancer yet according to the guidelines of how these things are assessed. But the way the PSA numbers are going it will not be long before I fall into the right numerical regime to mean that I have cancer or at least warrant another hour long session in the high resolution MRI machine or an invasive biopsy. I may get a prostate exam. The trajectory of our lives might take another turn, if it is so fated.

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There are many who really don’t like this notion of relying on fate. It is core belief and orientation for me. My dreams help me evolve my fate in accordance with what I, the indwelling dreamer, planned at birth. I have made huge life changing decisions based on dream interpretation. Some of which were very hard with difficult consequences. I was fated to dream and fated to use those dreams to guide this life.

Of course I may seem like a complete nut-job to some. But if so, it was always fated thus.

I am open to the fact that there is not much left fated for me to do in this life. Why would one not accept one’s fate? Even were my life entirely governed by self-determination there is precious little that I can do to alter life circumstance as it stands. It looks like fate has me “cornered” so to speak…

Shit happens… you may as well relax into it…take a deep breath… this will only take a few seconds…

Novel Conductors – Counts of Penthièvre – Tapestry Dream – 03-08-2025

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Here is /are this morning’s dream(s). Had between 5 and 7:20 AM. The juxtaposition is notable.

The dream starts in abstract space. I am viewing a three dimensional crystal lattice, a molecular / atomic model with atoms as small, coloured spheres and “bonds” as lines. The model is not space filling. I can see a cage structure made out of group 1 metal ions which extends in a quasi-one dimensional linear fashion. Inside the cage are molecular halogens chlorine, bromine and specifically iodine. There are / can be different variations of group  1 and halogen. The halogens carry a negative electronic molecular charge and are in an extended multiple electron delocalisation brought about by the confinement caused by the ionic cage. There are Cooper pairs. Outside the cage are several strands of the charged delocalised halogen thread. Outside of this are more metal ion cages with halogen conducting cores. The whole is entwined like threads in a heavy duty wire with the halogen “fibres” providing electrical neutrality for the positive metal ionic cages. I know that the material is a very good conductor in one dimension as a wire. This is a new and revolutionary type of material yet to be made.

The scene changes and I am in the kitchen of a tall thin building. It has an “Amsterdam” or Dutch feel. The kitchen is on the ground or basement level. I am looking out the back window onto a small, enclosed garden / courtyard. The kitchen sink is in front of the window. The wife comes in dressed in the light green yukata. I ask her what she has been doing. She has opened the door to the “secret” room on the top floor of the house. It is the fourth floor at the very top of the stairs. I say that I didn’t know there was a room / floor. She say that yes there is, it is a bit messy and I should go to look for myself.

Wearing a white waxed paper disposable overall and with safety specs and small respirator, I go into the room at the top of the stairs. It opens up into a couple of rooms painted white with an open door into the second room. I run my hand along a small white painted beam which forms the strut for the roof. Some paint flakes off. There are some wardrobes in the far room otherwise the floor is empty.

I go down stairs and just as I near the front door an old style bell on a pulley door bell rings. I open the door and it is Elizabeth Hurley. I invite her in and usher her to the kitchen. It seems that we know each other from before. We go into the kitchen and the wife greets Elizabeth. They sit next to each other at the kitchen table, sink side. I ask the wife if there are any clean towels. Yes, in the bathroom. I go up to the bathroom and take the overall off wrapping a light blue towel around my waist with a white t-shirt on the top.

I go back into the kitchen and Elizabeth and the wife are wrapped up in luxurious rich fabric tapestry. One side is vibrantly embroidered and the other is of a very rich creamy-white velvet like support. The tapestry is several metres long and they are having a cwtch together like long lost sisters under the tapestry as if to keep warm on a winter’s night.

Elizabeth says that she has been investigating her forefathers some of whom were biologically related to the Counts of Penthièvre. I say that when we first moved here to Britanny, I looked into Breton history going back to the founding Welsh saints and St Illtud in particular. I say that the history of the Counts of Penthièvre is tied closely to that of Eleanor of Aquitaine. The times relate to my priest – crusader life in some way. We have been to Fontevraud Abbey where she, Eleanor, is said to be buried.

The scene changes and I am being ushered into the drawing room of a very plush mansion like house.  Very Brideshead. I am meeting a tall quintessentially English man. {Imagine Charles Dance as a movie villain.} The man is expensively dressed and is standing by a fireplace which is black metal enamelled and shut. There is an ornate flower pot with dried flowers and potpourri. There is also and old fashioned radio with a wooden outer cover and extendable aerial. The man welcomes me in and we are talking about funding some research into the Counts of Penthièvre. He is concerned that I am a gold-digger and in some way after his estate. I reassure him that I have no biological connection to his family. As we are talking a programme comes on the radio which is talking about the Counts of Penthièvre and Breton history. He sees this as a good sign and is well disposed to funding.

The scene changes and I am on the driver’s seat of an open horse and cart with a dark haired Greek man. It is sunny and cobbled. He has the reigns and the whip. We are going to meet some of his family down at the port. He reminds me to be Greek because that will help with my inquiries. I playfully gesticulate and grimace. He smiles and says that already I am perhaps a bit too Greek. We are like bothers who have known each other long. My antics make us both laugh.

The dream(s) end.

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From Wikipedia

In the 11th and 12th centuries the Countship of Penthièvre (Breton: Penteur) in Brittany (now in the department of Côtes-d’Armor) belonged to a branch of the sovereign House of Brittany. It initially belonged to the House of Rennes. Alan III, Duke of Brittany, gave it to his brother Eudes in 1035, and his descendants formed a cadet branch of the ducal house.

The geographical region of Brittany that constituted the holdings of Penthièvre correlate closely with the territories that constituted the early Breton kingdom of Domnonée.

The history of the title Count of Penthièvre included frequent dispossessions and restorations. Henri d’Avaugour, heir of this family, was dispossessed of the countship in 1235. The Duke of Brittany, Pierre Mauclerc, founder of the Breton House of Dreux, gave it as dowry to his daughter, Yolande, on her marriage in 1238 to Hugh XI of Lusignan, Count of La Marche. John I, Duke of Brittany, Yolande’s brother, seized the countship on her death in 1272. After the Breton War of Succession the title was dispossessed twice by the reigning Dukes of Brittany, once by John V and another time by Francis II.

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Eleanor of Aquitaine (French: Aliénor d’Aquitaine or Éléonore d’Aquitaine; Occitan: Alienòr d’Aquitània ; Latin: Helienordis, Alienorde or Alianor; c. 1124 – 1 April 1204) was Duchess of Aquitaine from 1137 to 1204, Queen of France from 1137 to 1152 as the wife of King Louis VII, and Queen of England from 1154 to 1189 as the wife of King Henry II. As the reigning duchess of Aquitaine, she ruled jointly with her husbands and two of her sons, the English kings Richard I and John. As the heiress of the House of Poitiers, which controlled much of southwestern France, she was one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in Western Europe during the High Middle Ages.

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Ildut (forme bretonne courante) ou plus correctement Iltud (d’après la forme galloise), ou Iltut ou encore Elchut (voire Ideuc), est le nom du moine breton (soit insulaire, soit armoricain) Illdut de Llantwit, devenu saint.

Considéré comme le père fondateur du christianisme celtique, saint Ildut est fêté le 6 novembre.

Origine du nom

Le nom breton Ildut se retrouve dans le nom de lieu Lanildut, et le nom de l’Aber-Ildut, tous deux situés sur la côte nord du Léon.

Le nom gallois Illtud, parfois transcrit en anglais Illtyd ou Eltut, est associé au monastère de Llanilltud Fawr, au pays de Galles, lieu anglicisé sous la forme Llantwit Major qui est le nom de la ville qui s’est développée autour.

La forme latinisée du nom est Hildutus de Iltutus qui évoque qu’après la baptême l’enfant est ainsi appelé car protégé, en sureté, mis à l’abri (cf. tutus).

Coming Home to Roost Dream and Preparation 02-08-2025

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Last night in the twilight between sleep and wakefulness, in the cusp between here and yet to come, I had yet another coming home to roost “slide show”. In that, things come home to roost for some people whom I once had acquaintance of. I take no joy or glee from these happenstances, these scenarios, rather a tinge of sadness at folly and adamant folly to boot. For example if you falsify any official document there is a chance down the line that it could come back to bite you on the arse like a rabid chihuahua. If you succumb to temptation and allow the tendrils of evil to find purchase, they rarely let go and your relationship becomes symbiotic. Without knowing it you supply the food. Short of a full blown exorcism it is game over in terms of liberation for this lifetime. Nobody involved in such a symbiosis will ever believe or accept such a statement.

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Everything seems normal to them. Their playbook seems to work and they have success in the world and among peers. They can handle whatever mini-crises are sent to them. Or so they think.

The thing about karma is that it can be subtle. People who believe they are thoroughly entitled do not imagine that it exists. When something happens that is “bad luck” , “unfair” and not an effect which they have had a hand in causing. One day, perhaps in a lifetime to come, people get to have the penny drop whilst incarnated and they see with irrevocable clarity the outcomes and consequences of their actions, their emotionally charged bile and punitive vengeful thoughts. Theory has it there is a review at the time of death too. I witnessed bedside my father struggling with his. It was not pretty.

I have started mentally preparing for my operation and other commitments later in the year. It has become reasonably obvious in the twilight that I need to return to the A-U-M meditations and revisit Phowa practice just in case. I probably need to start doing more stretching exercises and work at building back some muscle in my legs and hips. At the end of the month I start a new birth-year, leading me further into my final pinnacle. Who knows what is in store aside from some hippie action in the operating block.

My understanding is that when people incarnate, they choose all the circumstances of their birth to enable them to learn from a “lesson plan” that might help them best evolve and work at karma. They made this plan themselves. For example I was born into a family in which the education mantra was strong. I was sent to boarding school in another country, education was more important than any close familial relationship. I subsequently ended up working  in “education” for a couple of decades. I planned this before birth.

In the birth lesson plan trajectories of whom you are “meant” to meet are bullet pointed. The possibilities exist. These individuals have the wherewithal through which you might learn. Human choice must be allowed. Thus it is possible to completely screw up the lesson plan which you yourself wrote. Literally miss the boat by miles. You can fuck up a life and badly so, through your own arrogance. The moot point is were you always destined to fuck up or did you simply act that way out of bloody-mindedness? Did you cut off your nose to spite your face or had you zero choice in the matter? In the grand scheme of things learning will inevitably ensue. But it may be many lifetimes later that such a great learning opportunity re-presents. People learn painfully yet effectively through loss.

It is the karma of snakes and ladders.

The thing about dreaming is that timing is never atomic-clock accurate. But when the dreams increase in frequency it does mean that the event is getting nearer in time, it will happen sooner. It also means that the likelihood or probability is increasing.

Dreaming by its very nature cannot be an exact science….

“Job” Interview  – IP – Patents Dream 30-07-2025

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Here is this morning’s dream had between 5 and 7 AM. I did not think I would go back to sleep but had this from which I awoke exhausted and grilled.

The dream starts in South West London, with a feel of Richmond Wimbledon etc.. I am with a younger man, mid-late thirties. He has bright blonde hair and is tall and slim. He is immaculately dressed in an English suit, overcoat and with expensive English shoes. He is smooth and accustomed to handling people. He is privately school educated and has a crisp posh accent. He has not seen much sun and is a pale indoors person from a high social class family, hence a part of the firm. He is skilled in meet and greet {think main character Pine in The Night Manager only better}. We are in his shared house and getting ready to go into town. There are two other men and one Serbian or Bosnian woman who live there. The hallway to the house has very small black and white tiles and the door is of a large ornate stained glass kind. The implication is that they all work together. They are all high functioning.

The woman is in the kitchen and opens the door out. Bibi our adopted stray cat runs out into the garden. We need to get the cat in because they are all returning to work. In the garden there is a golf style sand bunker. Bibi is in it and wants to play. I go over and sweep her up onto my shoulder as is customary and bring her back into the kitchen. The house is period with original features. It has an Aga over which is a wooden slats clothes dryer, raised by a pulley and cord. The kitchen is massive and decked out for cooking and entertaining. I let Bibi off my shoulder onto the kitchen table and say that I will be back later to drive her home. The woman speaks with an accent to the cat. She is also tall and lithe, gymnastic even. To an extent they are all humouring me as they have been told to do.

I go outside with the young man through a tiled entrance area from what once was the scullery up to street level. I comment that it is nice that all the original enamelled tiles remain. We are running a little behind schedule and we make our way to the ticket office of the over ground railway. The man in the ticket office hands me a small bundle of documents hand sized ~4 by 6 inches. In this is a cardboard “wallet” of yellowed colour and age. In it are old photos of the male side of my family some of whom are in their military uniform. He has gotten them out of records and I must give them to the blond man. The documents contain old out of circulation Sterling banknotes. I hand them to my “guide”.

He takes them and gets two old school train tickets for us. The man form the ticket office says that the next train is at 4:30.  We look at the clock it is nearly an hour to wait. He says that “they” are waiting for us upstairs.

We go up into a busy bar come waiting area. It is lively, there is a hubbub and people are drinking. At one end of the room there is a long rectangular table around which are sat a number of people, less than ten. They are all male ranging in age from mid-thirties to my age. Most of them are wearing suits. They are going to interview me for a “job”. The notion it is for a glass company like Pilkington. The whole things seems weird to me because I have made no job application. They are sort of “head hunting”. The “guide” ushers me to the head of the table and sits me down. The man in charge at the other end of the table welcomes me and says that they are going to ask me a few questions. There is a lot of interplay between panel members. I have a knowing that at least two people on the panel are from the security services, they are British. There is a possible third who says nothing but who had a distinctly American air. He is the only black person on the panel amidst the nondescript white men. He is focussed and attentive.

The chair asks me about patents. I say that I have three granted patents, two on Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV). He asks me how these were filed. I say that when were knocking the ideas of a company about I started the ball rolling by going to Kilburn and Strode to draw up the first patent application. I look to one of the men to my left. The penny drops I have met him before very briefly at Kilburn and Strode. He is a government patent attorney. I claim him and he says that yes, he was there, I too looked vaguely familiar. They want to know who I worked with at Kilburn and Strode. I can’t remember the name except that it was Welsh sounding and that he has gone on to be a senior partner. I suggest that they look him up on the internet. They take over the entertainment screen in the bar and give me some new fangled clicker to run the search. I do not know how to use it. This bemuses them. I say that I have never seen a device like this before. They are disappointed in me. The chair says why would I have used one of these things before.

One of the junior members of the panel asks me about my exam results. Somehow, he has a file about me open on his desk. It has my photo and multiple sheets of paper therein; it is about half a centimetre thick. He has withdrawn the file from records for this purpose. I say that I got four “A”s and four “B”s at “O” level and BCC at “A” level. He tuts unimpressed. I explain to him that this was before rampant grade inflation. He inquires what about the recent “E” grade. I say that I have no idea what he is talking about. I joke that it was my self-taught grade for computer science. One of the panel gestures for him to desist. He backs off.

One of the security people wants again to know whom I worked with at Kilburn & Strode. The name still escapes me. For some reason it is very important for the security guy. I say to him that I have a relatively recent patent grant for a patent entitled “Electric Field Induced Spontaneous Parametric Down Conversion” * . He really wants to know who I worked with all those years ago.

At the far end of the table there is a discussion, which I am not privy to, going on. It is very animated. I remain pretty unsure as to why I am there and what they could possibly want from me. I am incongruous in their company and the plush opulent bar like setting. I can feel that somehow it is important to them but I have no notion of why. It is tiring all that stress.

As I come to, I remember that it was Gwilym Roberts, all those years ago.

The dream ends

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* The full patent title is “Increasing the probability of generating entangled photon pairs using Electric Field Induced Spontaneous Parametric Down Conversion”.

From The Kilburn an Strode Web Site

Arguably the highest profile patent attorney in Europe, Gwilym Roberts advises clients on all aspects of the patent process including IP audit and capture, IP filing strategies and patent portfolio management techniques. He acts for a range of clients including individuals, SMEs, Universities, and spin outs through to multi-nationals and handles a broad and diverse range of cases before the UK Patent Office, EPO and WIPO.