Here is this morning’s dream. It seems out of the blue and at odds with my current life context.

The dream opens inside a hospital. I am talking to a young woman in a white coat there. She is asking me to talk to some of the people who have been stuck in the hospital for a long time. She gathers a few of them around they are all young and white. One of them who has been in for a long time asks me which illnesses I have had. I reply saying cancer and a broken hip. Only cancer I say. I say that I was only in hospital for a few days. She says that I should talk to Em who is in the other room. She has a number tattooed inside her cheek.

I go to Em’s room and there is a very beautiful young woman with blonde hair in a bob. She is wearing a white hospital gown with sparse tiny black flecks. I ask her to show me her tattoo. She shows me the inside of her left cheek and there is indeed a number written there. We joke about how these open at the back hospital gowns make it difficult to maintain modesty. I don one and clown around for her.

The reason they tattoo numbers is because she does not have health insurance and they need to know on whom they are operating. I notice a Swiss text on her bedside table.

I ask her, “are you Swiss?”

“Yes”

“From Zürich?”

“Yes…”

There is now a tall young man with very dark hair in the room.

I explain that I used to live in Switzerland and once worked at the University of Bern. I say that I know some people who may still be at ETH.

She says that she used to live near ETH.

The young man chirps up and says that he has to show me a video.

I go with him back to his room. He is a science teacher. He picks up a tablet computer which is very fancy with dials and other lights on it. He boots it up and using the touch screen scrolls through some files. He finds a video. He turns to show me the video. It zooms in on me doing a science demonstration for children. I am wearing my blue jacket and a pink shirt. It is a part of a series on how to present.

He says I thought I knew you from somewhere. That video is from an event I attended at Zürich. I recognised you from there.

I am gobsmacked. He says that he too is a bit of an intellectual like me. I say that I don’t consider myself an intellectual anymore. He is very exuberant.

We go back to the Swiss girl’s room and he shows her the video too.

I notice that it is misty outside and say that I need to get some fresh air. There is some confusion over which slippers to put on my feet. There is a pile of them and some do not fit, others I do not like the look of. I settle for some espadrilles or kung fu slippers. 

They tell me to be careful.

Once I am outside in the mist I am in an inordinately good mood. I start to jog. Coming down the path in the opposite direction to me is a man with a white carrier bag. I feign to do a rugby tackle on him. He joins in the fun and we both beam a smile at each other.

Further down the path there are some people playing at pirates. There is a small child sized man who is wearing a white loincloth with a bandana. He is brown in colour and waving a cutlass about. He strikes me with the cutlass across the back.

It hurts but does not wound. I pick him up and he drops the cutlass.

I tell him to apologise. He refuses.

I am now holding him easily by both of his feet. I tell him that unless he apologises, I will dunk him in the pond.

He refuses. I dunk his head into the water for a few seconds. His face is now white, clean.

He says that that hurt.

Again, I ask him to apologise.

He says that he will never apologise to me, not ever.

I dip him this time bodily and he disintegrates into the water.

I reach into the water and pull out the pieces of a plastic toy bus which I assemble. There is a show cage on top of the bus. I reach down and find a plastic toy Pinocchio in two parts. I put the top half to the bottom half. I then insert Pinocchio into the cage. His nose has grown a little because of lying. I know Pinocchio and the man in the loin cloth to be one and the same. He has morphed into Pinocchio.

I close the door of the cage because that is where Pinocchio is most comfortable inside his cage.

I move on deeper into the park and I am joined by a woman with dark brownish hair. She feels familiar but we have never been introduced. Somehow, she has heard more about me than I about her. She has watched the whole Pinocchio scene.

As we progress along the path, we can see a pond across it. In it there is a small non-descript furry animal in the water. It is a bit like a sloth or lemur. The animal is wet through.

Around the animal closing in are a number of mid-size crocodiles. The woman run towards the animal to try to save it.

I shout out, “No!!!”

Nevertheless, she enters the water and picks up the animal. As she is trying to leave the pond one of the crocodiles grabs her leg and starts pulling her under.

I shout, “Oh no, not again.”

{In real life, as a child, I saw a game warden pulled under by a Nile crocodile about ten metres away from me.}

The crocodile drags her and the animal off under a piece of corrugated steel roofing in the water. The other crocodiles converge.

I find a large thick wooden pole and start to strike the crocodile who is biting her (Susan?) on the leg. I strike it several times.

I wake up with a start and was unable to re-enter this dream to find out what happened. I come downstairs put the coffee on and start typing.