www.CharlyTaylor.com --- Charly Taylor, Mongologuista

"In a hypothetical model of a human, you would expect the brain to sleep along with the rest of the body; for it to work away all night was bizarre. Because we dream from infancy... we accept the function as axiomatic, but in fact it is against objective probability. And mechanisms which survived millions of years against logical expectation did so for only one reason that he knew: they were favoured by natural selection because they served a purpose. Non-dreamers had become extinct."

- Sebastian Faulks, 'Human Traces', Chapter IX

Dreams

2005

6-7 November 2005 School gig

I’m about to do a performance in a school, where I can’t help noticing there are lots of fit teenage girls. I go on stage with another performer (Diego?) but some rap music comes on as we are about to speak so we start to do a silly dance, at which point all the students leave the theatre as one. I go to a football dressing room and take a shirt from a peg but when I run out to play I see that my shirt is bright lime green while all the other are wearing fluorescent orange.

(This was the week I was about to debut The Guiri and, before that, Fluff Jackson… a typical theatrical anxiety dream).

10 – 11 November 120, Longsight

I’ve bought mum’s house but there are big problems with the drains. We’re watching work go on, which involves a huge magnet being lifted on the end of a crane. Janette is there and says that the magnet alone could set me back 250,000 pounds.

15 – 16 December Asturias

Some gypsies are pursuing me down a snowy hill in a sleigh. They lead me to an ambush in the form of a gypsy camp half way up the snowy mountainside

2006

1 – 2 marzo, 2006.

I’m at a party ina house made of metal. There are lots of intrigues and plots going on and I’m with Marga, who is talking to me in a very polite and civilised manner. I realise it’s not a metal house, but an aeroplane waiting to take off, but it hasn’t got any wings. This is a dream I had while I was breaking up with Marga.

9 – 10 marzo, 2006.

We are getting ready to do a Club Desastre in the Auditorio of Zaragoza. There’s a lot of tension and a lot of people waiting, but I can’t even find my way to the stage. There are some footballers from Peterborough United trying to fuck up the gig. One has gone to the mixing desk and is messing around. Everything becomes very chaotic. This is almost a nightmare.

18 – 19 septiembre (Worcester)

Zaragoza Celtic have won 1-0 away on a crap pitch with a crappy gal that bounces over their keeper’s head. Even so, Jason is pissed off for some reason in the showers. We get in the train to go home – a double-decker like in Amsterdam – and it sets off fast over some water as if it were a jet foil.

25 – 26 septiembre (First night back in Zaragoza)

I spend the dream visiting nubile women in their houses on various pretexts. I end up having ot run very fast between one and the other and end up almost flying, sort of scooting along the tarmac using my hands and wishing I had my bike.

27 – 28 septiembre

A repeat of a long film-like dream I´ve had before. I arrive at an airport in the USA with no money and no idea why I’m there. I wlak around and make friends with a grl. She invites me to her home, where her father and 2 or 3 brothers obviously hate me. I wander round some more and return to the airport to explain my situation, accompanied by 2 of the brothers who are a bit calmer with me now they know that I’m fucking off.

2 – 3 October, 2006.

I’m on a bridge watching Marina play in the water. I’m pretty frightened that she’ll drown or something but she tells me not to worry, as she’s actually standing on stilts.

(A mixture of the tragedy of the 3 Sikh boys who drowned in the Lake District and a film I saw last night on Canal + about a little girl’s bodyguard + the way Marga shouted at Marina and made her cry within 5 minutes of me seeing them both for the first time this ‘season’).

24 – 25 October (in a hotel en Almagro)

Some black guys dynamite a hole in my wall and I’m convinced they’re planning a sort of Hip Hop revolution so I go to warn some guardia civil, but they take no notice of me. Then I go to a school where I bump into Sue collecting her kid. She mentions that so and so hasn’t been to school today and I say ‘As I suspected... he’s one of those hip hop people, isn’t he? They’re planning a rebellion, I’m telling you, but no one will believe me’.

25 – 26 October (Almagro)

I’m listening to football on the radio with Frank and he tells me Liverpool are beating Chelsea 4-3. There are some mnutes left and I say ‘I still think we’ll win’ and in the end we beat Liverpool 9-5 (very credible).

15 – 16 November (first day of illness)

John and Janette entrust me with keys to a house to look after. As I’m going to open it up ( a suburban semi in England) a proto-hoodie horrible little fat devil child follows me. I don’t want him to know anything about the house and the keys so I try to shake him off by pretending to make phone calls from a telephone booth, but he just keeps hanging around outsied,

16 – 17 November (second day of illness)

I’m playing 11 a side football and make a superb pass to some French guy who seems to think I’m the dog´s bollocks. I wake up almost sad thinking that I used to be quite good and never will be that fast again.

17 – 18 November (third day of illness)

I go for a bike ride, ditch the bike and start to climb a hill (like last Sunday the other side of Farlete) but it gets too dangerous so I come down and decide to go home. John and Janette join me here and we follow a track which takes us to a viaduct, under which we find a systme of ramps and passages. John decides to knock on an old wooden door that’s fallen off its hinges and an old tramp comes out. He’s good-mannered and we all sit down at a table in the rubble wth him while he regales us with tales of his war experiences in the Pacific and Burma.

(John had a dream about me that night – me and him and Bryan in a cheap hotel in Russia wth an enormous Russian woman that wants to shag all of us).

2007

3 – 4 March, 2007

I'm asked to leave a library because I have dirty and bitten fingernails. I do so.

2008

22 - 23 April, 2008

I'm at home in the house I grew up in (No 120) and want to store some screens (the black biombos from the Club Desastre) in our house's external coal cellar. My mum says I'm not allowed to but I sneak out of the back door to put them there anyway. I open the door to the coal hole and there's my mum inside wagging her finger in an 'I already said 'no'' sort of way.

The next day I dreamed about the old house again. This time I was in the back garden looking for somewhere to have a piss where no-one in our house or any of the neighbours' houses would see me. This is also a period of John dreaming about me (stealing his too-small suit and then sleeping in it and rumpling it up, to his annoyance)

11 – 12 th May, 2008

Me and Katy are collecting money on the door of the Cerbuna Monologue competition but the passage is very wide and thousands of people are just brushing their way past without paying. Then I'm told I have to get on stage so I go running to a door at the head of a few steps (entrance to the Cerbuna?) where I'm waiting to be let in. Someone tells me it's in another building so, already late, I set off running there in a panic.

And that's where I woke up.

17 th – 18 th October 2008

I'm walking (almost running) up a wooded hill (the road to Castejón de Valdejasa) and showing someone the way with great enthusiasm. The track takes me a little bit off course but this doesn't daunt me and I'm having a great time struggling up the mountain.

(I think this dream is about the Club Desastre). I woke up at 10 a .m. to go and play with Zaragoza Celtic and had a rather good game in a 0-0 draw – my first time in the new pitch at Villanueva-

19 th – 20 th October

I'm waiting to play for Z Celtic, but it's an 11 a side game on a tarmac school playground. The other team kick off and the ball goes to Jason in goal (!) who palms it out to Dai who then puts through his own goal. After that, it's total chaos. I'm waiting to get on and realise I'm in my normal shoes. The game sort of disintegrates into 2 games spread over 2 pitches. A total mess.

3 – 4 Nov

I'm in the back seat of a car cuddled up with Marina and asking her if she remembers when we went to see The Incredibles at the cinema. She can't at first, but gradually remembers bits of the day. As always, when I dream of Marina , I'm so pleased to see her in my dream and so sad when I wake up knowing she's not there.

10 – 11 Nov

I'm outside Marina 's old school, with people milling around, Marina and Marga among them. I go up to Marina to give her something; a box, which could be a violin case, but is too square. Then I want to put her on my bicycle seat and wheel her along like I used to but Marga won't let me.

2009

6 – 7 March 2009

I'm in the house where I grew up, with some other people including a Polish brother and sister, my mum, my auntie Irene and one or two others. We are all sitting around a table . It seems I'm supposed to be giving an English class. I show them a picture of some people in a room, similarly arranged to us. I try to ‘elicit' the response form the Polish girl that some of the people in the picture are together and others are separated. She doesn't understand and flounces out of the room in a huff. Her brother follows her and I'm about to when auntie Irene tells me not to follow her as she has ‘women's problems', so I go to look out of the back window instead. All the garden is flooded up to the terrace and almost up to the back window.

9-10 marzo

I'm trying to start the Club Desastre but Kati isn't on the door and hundreds of people come in without paying. We have to open the whole bar and it's chaos. The spotlight doesn't work (it's a miserable thing, like the one in the Beer Brothers), Diego feels ill and has to go off stage, Felipe doesn't arrive, the audience are all teenage louts who shout things, I'm running around like an idiot and after the show the boss (like that c*nt from the Prior) complains about all the pipas (sunflower seeds) on the floor but then insists on buying a ticket (!?).

To sum up: a horrible nightmare.

I'm shopping in Marple, near Stockport , and I see Hannah in one of the shops so wait for her to come out and I say hello. She says hi, I ask her out for a drink and she prevaricates. I say – some other time, and go back to my friends' house. There they tell me she works nearby and soon after I see her on the street again. I ask if she wants to come to the pub and she hums and hahs but finally says yes. After a drink or two I take hold of her hand, and she seems O.K. with this. Unfortunately at this point I woke up.

(This was after my first long ride of the season – 132 km – and I slept for 9 hours).

I'm visiting Viki's house (the barmaid from the Morrissey) with another bloke and there seems to be some rivalry between us. Viki is wearing a long blue floral summery dress. Her family is present in some other part of the house.

I'm trying to do my record cycle ride of 200 + km and going well, so I decide to stop off for a drink (I appear to be back in Zaragoza ). In the bar, by chance, I find Diego and Mariano doing a gig (with a guitar). They've ust finished the first half and are sitting at a table with 2 English girls who don't speak Spanish so I go and sit down with them and have a chat. Then I go outside confident I can knock off the last 70km but I find that my bicycle, which I left tied to a lamp-post, has been completely trashed. Obviously, I'm in a bad mood, but also notice from the fading daylight that I never would have been able to do the remaining distance in time.

(The night the clocks went forward and the day after scoring my first goal in 7-a-side football for about 5 years).

I'm due to start teaching at a school (it's a school with lots of beautiful old mansion-like buildings) but I'm on the last minute and don't know where to go, so I'm running around trying to find the classroom and eventually get in just in time. Then I find I have no notes and have to improvise a class on Etymology. The students pay me precious little attention and I end up just about muddling through, thinking all the while ‘I'm not going to let it bother me'

(Today I learned I had a teaching job in Oxford this summer – I think this news got mixed up with memories of the gig I did in the 20th Century bar, which I wasn't very happy with - also, this was another of my 9-hour sleeping sessions, this time with no obvious reason).

I arrive in Barcelona in a taxi and have to go to the airport/bus station/ a bookshop. I find myself running around frantically and finally follow some people through some security doors in a shopping centre. I find myself being asked to officiate a wedding. I oblige, but make a mistake and am about to marry a father to his daughter before my mistake is pointed out.

Another deeeeeep sleep after a tough bike ride, and obviously already worried about how I can get a ticket for the Barca v Chelsea semi-final.

Awful anxiety dream (again!) – I'm in St Jo's (though it looks more like Canon Slade) trying to give a class to some rowdy Eastern Europeans and Asians who take no notice. Half way through they all go out, saying they've changed classroom and I don't know where they've gone or what I'm supposed to do so I go to see Sarah B so she can instruct me, but she spends all the time chatting to me about other stuff while I'm wondering what havoc my students will be wreaking in the school or its grounds.

I'm visiting friends in Ireland and I'm with them in a bedroom. They go downstairs but I remain. They then inform me I shouldn't make any noise as there are some disreputable people outside waiting in a car. I toy with the idea of hiding under the bed but then they say the coast is clear and we can set off on a trip to the beach. I'm given a motorcycle to ride, which I'm handling O.K., though I've only ridden one once, and going slowly. I notice that Andy (Hodges) is behind me on a bike and I offer to swop. We all arrive at a beach and go into a house where we sit and have tea with an Irish girl who offers me a job for April and May, which is ‘ecological', pays O.K. and involves me riding around on a bike. I consider taking up the offer.

I return to England – there, in a house, I meet up with Karen, Janette, John and some others. The latter go off to buy some acid but I think they might have forgotten that I want some so I try to phone them. However, I can't remember J and J's no (I keep confusing the old one with the new one) – finally, I remember, then we all get into a taxi. Nico Cassinelli is with us and as we approach our destination he whispers to me to remind me not to get ripped off. We arrive at a pleasant pub with wooden trestle tables and ask directions to Birmingham University from some youths. They don't know where it is. John is affronted by their lack of knowledge; ‘These kids can't even tell me how to get to Birmingham Uni'. To pass the time I start doing one of my stand-up routines and people we don't know gather round to listen. I joke around with one of the young lads, saying ‘I don't usually like to have a go at people…' but I see that he's laughing along with the rest of them.

I'm in the house I grew up in, in Harwood ( Bolton ) with Miguel Ballabriga. We're chatting and I've just got a big bag of weed which I intend to smoke. I look out of the upstairs window and see a bloke sitting in the cabin of a huge articulated lorry. I go back to chatting then a while later look out again. He's still there, but this time sat leaning out of the cabin and looking about him. I also notice that he's put some cables (one of them orange) from under the lorry to the house. I don't like the look of this so I stash the weed in a bathroom cabinet behind some shampoo bottles (with some difficulty – one of them nearly falls out) and say to Miguel I'm going to go out to confront him, then if there's a problem we'll call the police. Miguel says ‘we're not going to call the police though, are we?' and offers to come out and talk to him with me, as ‘it'll come across more'. I agree.

The telephone rings to wake me up. A pity – I'd like to have seen what happened next.

A girl (the actress who plays the ‘summer girlfriend' in an episode of ‘Black Books') comes to my house and insists that everyone leave the room so she can kiss me, but then after a quick kiss she starts teasing me by not letting me get hold of her. Later, after a series of scenes I can't remember, I leave the house (where I used to live in La Paz ) and see her playing chess with someone on a porch under some concrete stairs.

John sends me a copy of a CD he's recorded. I absolutely love it; free jazz with long, wailing sax solos in it (in the style of Sun Ra) and I can't stop listening to it. I ring him to tell him.

I go to María's bar (Pulp) and she's explaining how we could put improvisations on there, and we're chatting in general and every now and again I see a black teenager in a ‘hoodie' coming in and out of the door. Later, two other black guys come in and ask if their friend has been in. I describe the bloke I've seen and when they hear that, they say ‘Run! He's got a gun!' Even though he isn't there, I run out of the bar with someone and we continue running down the streets where, sure enough, there is a gunfight. Bullets hit the pavement, making sparks, and we have to jump over them as we run looking for a bus.

Later I'm back in the bar and María is showing me where we could do the improvisations. It's a sort of pit and there is a performance going on. To see it, we have to look down into the pit at a small screen where the performance is projected. A woman in a group of people to our right is whispering and María says ‘I hate that, when people talk over the performance'. At that moment someone goes and tells the woman to shut up. She says she is complaining because the colour on the screen is not natural. And as she says it I notice she's right. It's all tinged with pink. The projectionist alters it so that it's better.

Then we all go to eat. I want to talk to María but she's running around making food and answering phone calls all the time. In the end she prepares a salad for me, as I'm vegetarian, but I notice it's got ham in it.

I'm sent on a spying mission to Russia , though I have no knowledge of anything at all. I have to sit on a bench and eavesdrop a conversation near a pool, while a colleague on the same bench eavesdrops another conversation. We return to base ( England ?) and my boss quizzes me. I say I couldn't find anything and he says it doesn't matter. ‘Now comes the funny part; I'm going to die'. It takes me a few seconds before I realise he means he's going to stage his own funeral. I will have something to do with this as well, apparently.

I'm sitting on a stool in a café, with Marga (my ex) opposite me. Marina (her daughter) comes up to me from behind and hugs me. Marga has already said ‘Ah, Marina ' but Marina makes me ‘guess' who it is, with her little face next to mine and her hair hanging down. I decide to ask her a question that ‘only Marnia would know the answer to' (I forget what I asked) and having ‘guessed' who it was, she runs off outside to play.

I see her playing with her friends through the stone gates of what appears to be a graveyard. She's concentrating very hard on something. I ask Marga if I can go off and play with Marina and she says ‘yes'.

Once again a very sad dream, once I wake up, as I miss Marina enormously in my waking life. At least she's still there in my dreams

I'm sitting at a desk doing a Media Studies exam. The paper is a glossy full-colour brochure which I don't understand at all. The first question is about Friends, but I don't know if I have to answer all the questions, write a critique or what. I decide to start writing something but in the end leave off and decide to sit there until the exam is over.

I have to leave town because the Nazis are coming. I arrange to leave with Karen, but separately so as not to arouse suspicion. I check out the bus route but see that it has been cut off with chicken wire and now it looks like an old overgrown disused railway. I find where to get on the new route and plan it so that Karen gets on first then me. I leave the house, go to the stop, get on and climb the stairs to the top deck where Karen is, as arranged. But then I remember I've left my rucksack in the hall and will have to run home to get it.

I go to visit Iñaki in his office. For some reason, Lizzie, my fellow teacher, is there. I go into the garden (!) to look for him and find people sitting around smoking joints. I want to leave as I have things to do but start talking to a gay couple who want to sell their house.

After a night out in Oxford , I end up in Jericho in the early morning, accompanied by Joe, who I'm teaching with at St Joseph 's. It's 9.15 a .m. and I realise lessons must be starting and there's no way I can get to the school on time. I start to panic. I try to ring from a pay-phone to tell them where I am, I notice my bike isn't where I left it and I keep making a mistake with the dialling until I notice the numbers on the pad aren't in order, but all jumbled up. In the end I borrow Joe's Blackberry to ring and even then I can't get through.

I´m watching TV in J and J's old place in Birmingham when I notice a small moth on the carpet behind me, then a few more, then something that looks like a grasshopper or dragonfly, or a big blue cicada. I point out that they're getting in through the French windows. Apparently, when this happens, it's John's job to mop the (carpeted) floor. He wants to finish what he's watching on TV, but Janette badgers him to get going. I notice that if you pat the carpet, hundreds of the little moths ‘bounce' up. I try to help by batting out the bigger blue and green ones that are flying around and just as I'm observing that “they're quite pretty, really”, one flies into my right ear. There's a loud, high-pitched noise in it for a while but I decide the best tactic is to stay still until it comes out. Eventually it does so and flies off. John appears to be annoyed with me, as if this is all somehow my fault.