Here is this morning’s dream which I had difficulty naming. To note – travel tends to interrupt the dreaming, and we are not long back from Jersey. Trains re-present a socially conditioned state of awareness in that you are complied by the tracks.

The dream starts on a very long French train with a modern looking white/grey aerodynamic locomotive. The train is extensive. We are stopped in the middle of the countryside for no apparent reason. There is no station or level crossing. Just to the side of the tracks and underneath it there is a municipal child’s playground, fenced off at the edge of a camping ground. A road leads via a tunnel under the tracks which are on an embankment.

Several children are playing in the park. They are accompanied by a man wearing a Freddy Krueger style hat and striped Denis the Menace red and black jumper. He also has a white formed facial mask. The wife goes down to investigate and play with the children. The man is rude to her in French and leads the children off. I can see that he has a large, near machete style knife dangling from his belt.

The wife comes back to the train mildly upset. I say what did you expect from the look of him with that horror mask. As she does this, looking upset, I take from my pocket a white tissue in which is the point of the blade from the man’s knife. I have broken it off at a distance and it has shattered into my tissue. I have disarmed him. I throw the contents of my tissue into a rubbish bin, and it makes a metallic clatter.

We then proceed towards the baggage handling car. The train is now moving towards Caen – Ouistreham a destination which we did not book, nor do we have a need to be there. In the baggage car there is a conveyor belt, like baggage reclaim in an airport. A couple, a woman and her husband, start to talk with us in English. They are not “all there” and are making no sense. They split up and head to opposite ends of the train.

Next a being walks into the car. It is a tall female with long dark hair roughly our age dressed in a long green dress. Out of her stomach protrudes the head and shoulders of a balding middle-aged man with a partial comb over. His complexion is ruddy. She is looking one way and he the other. She starts talking to us and he gesticulates with arms that are now visible. They look conjoined and not really of this world. We look on and they exit. We can see that there is a large vintage bustle to her dress as she leaves. The wife and I turn to each other and think/know the words “freak show”.

There is now an officious woman belonging to the train company who insists that we must book through her to get the best deal. I say to her that this is exactly what we tried and have ended up being on entirely the wrong train. The next time we will book through an online broker. She is insistent that we MUST book through her. I think to myself that she has no idea and there is no way I will use her again.

The train pulls up and we exit it. Our mobile home / truck is sat at a weighbridge before boarding. A man is heading at speed with a key to try to unlock a locker behind the driver’s cab. I know that he cannot possibly unlock it but that nevertheless I must beat him to the locker because it is extraordinarily dangerous for him to even try to unlock what he does not know, to open something he does not understand. He is in very deep peril especially if he gets there before me. I hasten to the mobile home and taking a key on the end of a chain around the neck, I insert it into the lock just as the man approaches. He looks disheartened. I do not turn the key simply stand there warding off. Under no circumstance should he try.

Next, I am at a country crossroads in which there is a level crossing barrier across railway tracks. The “road” is dusty and without tarmac. Several of us are stood at the barrier. A train is being pulled by a royal blue steam locomotive it approaches and passes. It is pulling high class vintage pullman carriages with people in period costume inside. The steam train is magnificent. I did not know they had such things still. The train passes and people lift the barrier manually. We are clearly in rural India. There are people with large cattle like animals now crossing the tracks.

I pick up a stick on the end of which Dick Wittington style is a piece of cloth containing my belongings and clothes. I am bare-footed and wearing loose blue cotton trousers. My feet are tanned and accustomed to walking bare foot. I start to walk along the tracks standing on the wooden cross boards. Two young Indian men are whispering. They are going to follow me and attempt to rob me. I know this. They are conspiring. They do not know how long or how fast I can walk. I say to them, “If you want to try to rob me, please feel free to try!”

The dream ends.