I had a Brexit dream...!

I went to bed Friday evening, post-Brexit, feeling deflated, as if I’d lost part of myself somewhere in that divisive referendum.  It was a hot night and as I tossed and turned trying to cede to sleep and failing dismally the same thoughts of doom and gloom kept going round and round in my head, riding a carousel of disaster called the Sinking British Ship, and with each tired revolution my eyes ached more and my heart sank lower.  “The young, the young! What about the young?” was the mournful cry lurching out of the sweaty darkness in a voice that grew weaker with every cry, as if the wailing vocal chords were being sliced through one at a time until they could be heard no more.

Three o’clock, then four, and still my heart sank until I felt the breeze on my face cooling me down.  I was moving, not fast at first, but it was me that was moving through the air I realised, not the air moving over me.  Perhaps I was on my bike.  It seemed plausible.  The rush of air over my face now was strong enough that I couldn’t hear anything else but the roar of wind resistance as I moved through the air at gathering speed.  I reached up and felt for my helmet but it wasn’t there!  Just to be sure I looked down at my feet expecting to see my cycling cleats locked into my machine but instead I saw nothing.

My feet were there; my legs too, as was the constant deafening rush of air filling my ears.  I was moving but I wasn’t on my bike.  I was flying and my feet were brushing clouds of nothingness as I looked around to see where I was to try and gain some perspective.  I seemed to be flying through sheer force of will.  I wanted to, so I was.  If I wanted more speed I just thought it and there it was; a sort of cerebraccelerator.  I wasn’t sure where I was but there was no sense of fear or panic.  There were trees below me now and rolling landscape over which I soared with no effort at all.

I became aware that I was asleep, finally lost in my dreams, the overbearing tiredness of earlier and the feelings of despair were no more; they had been blown away.  I had outstripped them through sheer speed.  I was flying, not like Superman by using my strength against the irresistible force of gravity, but by simply knowing that I could.  I was dreaming and I knew it and anything was possible.

I banked slightly to the right and as I slowed down I could discern what appeared to be towers with a shimmering globe rising above swirling mists.  Enjoying the free-flowing control my subconscious had given me over my movements I decided to investigate and as I came closer the mists lifted and flying buttresses abutting an imposing edifice reared up.  This was a place I knew by sight though I had never visited it in my waking hours.  

The Hagia Sofia is magnificent.  I had pawed over images of it a thousand times and knew it’s shape and contours well; now it seemed I was to know how it felt to stand under the great dome.  There was the glittering Bosphorus and to my left lay the Sea of Marmara, while directly below me sat Acropolis point, the very tip of the Golden Horn, and I spied the impressive barricade of the Theodosian wall lining the Horn like a huge, heavy necklace.  A gap in the wall indicated the Eugenius gate from where the Byzantines had strung the great chain intended to keep out the ships of the marauding Ottomans of Mehmet’s army during the great siege.  Now I knew not only where I was, but also when.  Straining my eyes I looked now to my right for the ends of Europe and the Genoese enclave of Galata but it seemed even my subconscious had limits and it was nowhere to be seen.

The Hagia Sofia, Istanbul

Without thinking about it I knew it was 1453, the year the crumbling Byzantine empire was put to the sword though as I fluttered down, flying just above the florid rooftops of indiscernible houses, I could see no signs of violence.  The sound of a muezzin calling the faithful to prayer hung in the air like a mystical magnet pulling me down to earth.

I landed softly unaware whether I was invisible or just another man among the many.  I was somehow beneath the great dome now, the huge, graceful columns and porticoed galleries soared above me, giant discs of azur blue wrought with gold calligraphy detailing Koranic verses hung conspicuously from the first gallery like incongruous badges on a Janissary’s chest.  All around me men in traditional Arab garb were talking in small groups in guttural tones that were incoherent to me.  I remember wondering at the time if they were truly speaking Arabic or just some hotch-potch of my imagination.

I walked around, apparently unnoticed, peering into the dark corners of my subconscious, as if I were testing the depths of my fantasy.  I wasn’t sure what, or who I was looking for, but I looked nonetheless and then sitting cross-legged in a dank recess sat a young man whose eye caught mine.  His face was partially hidden beneath a cowl and it was dark but there remained something familiar, yet oddly distant in his look.  I think I did a double take, aware for the first time that someone was looking back at me and as our eyes met again his features suddenly became clear.  I smiled.  I think I’d been looking for Mehmet, but maybe I had no clear image in my head of what he may look like, so instead I found Percy Jackson!

He gave me a conspiratorial grin then from beneath his cloak he pulled out a magic wand and holding it aloft he began chanting what I presumed to be a spell of some sort!

Percy Jackson! How did he get in my head?

But hang on a minute!  Even in my dream state I knew something wasn’t right.  Harry Potter has a wand, not Percy Jackson, but try as I might I couldn’t remember what he had in it’s stead.  Then a bolt of light shot from the wand and I followed it up high above my head.  The domes and porticos had disappeared; so it seemed had the Hagia Sofia, because the beam of light was swallowed up by a woody canopy of giant trees that threw great fingers of timber across a night sky hundreds of feet above my head.

I looked about me wondering where all the Turks had gone and how I had missed sundown.  Percy stood up and as he did men in black uniforms flew down out of the darkness on magic carpets, bren guns slung over their shoulders.  I was having a great time and I think I began to laugh just as Percy bundled me over and the metallic ricochet of bullets sprayed all around me.  Percy raised his wand again and another bolt of light shot out as one of the men on carpets vapourised, his machine gun falling at my feet.

I picked it up fully aware that I’d never held a gun of any description before, but it all seemed quite natural and far from being scared I think I was exhilarated.  I fired, standing shoulder to shoulder with Percy Jackson as the black uniformed men, who I had assumed by now were bent with an evil intent, dropped like flies all about us.  

All of a sudden I was aloft again, but this time riding high on some sort of flying banana boat.  Percy was sitting in front of me, looking back over his shoulder and beaming like a Cheshire cat.  I wanted to ask who those men were but before I had a chance he told me, “Right wingers!” he said, “Bloody Nazi’s!”

“Shit!” I said. “And who’s that?” I asked as I pointed to some more flighty figures zooming out of the sunlight above us.  It was apparently daytime again and my dream was moving apace.  

“I’m not sure!” said Percy, “Perhaps they’re Eurosceptics?”

“Brexiteers?” I asked.

“Think so!  Have they got weapons?”

“No, no!  I think they’re waving ballot papers!”

“Shit!  I’m out!”  And with that he faded away into the backwaters of my mind, leaving me alone on my flying sausage wondering where the hell I was headed.  Paper planes made out of referendum ballot papers whizzed past my ears and around my head, sucking me down into a vortex of despair as I fell from the skies in a tempest of ‘remain’ votes that no longer flew.

Sunny boy!

A gentle humming awoke me!  My face was wet and my chest heavy.  Sunny, my lovely pusscat was sitting across my neck, a living, breathing stole, and he was purring, hungry and licking my face!

“Sunny!  You want brekky boy?”  

He purred his agreement.  I got up, yawning, still tired and knowing full well I hardly slept.  The sun was just coming up, poking its’ orange brow above the horizon and as I set the kettle to boil I pondered the meaning or significance of my dream as Sunny gulped his fishy breakfast greedily at my feet.