banal dream analysis

It was now Sunday morning. Harriet and Maisie sat at the kitchen table eating pancakes

"So let me get this straight, did Bernie say he was coming back from the cruise in eight weeks or ten? Was that from when you spoke to him last or does it date back to the time he left?"

"From the time he left, I think....What's the copper for anyway?"

"It's to heat water down at the property at South Buggan, it's a gas one, you fill the copper container with water and a mysterious heating process happens, it's better than a solar shower. There's a photo of it in our last blog. Mind you there's no gas on there yet, but it's my attempt to get ready for the peak oil crisis."

"Oh, it's good to see you finally changed your lightbulbs."

"You know, the fluoro bulb thing has never convinced me. I'm concerned it's yet another conspiracy....oh that reminds me I had a dream about you last night. You were living happily ever after and there was definitely a warm glow."

"Were Bernie and Helen in the picture......or had I become a celibate lesbian by then?"

"Oh no sign of them. There was another man in the dream, he seemed supportive, you were happy, and he was there, definitely there."

"Well I suppose it's helpful if you actually are there in a relationship. What did he do?"

"What in the dream? Not much, it wasn't a very long dream, but I got the sense he wasn't high powered and out there, you know, not an environmental lawyer or anything. Something quite humble, but so what, he was nice and supportive and not too blokey. It's the inner qualities that count after all, but I don't know where you're going to bump into him. Maybe he lives in a flat in Killara."

"I hate Killara, and Turramurra....... and Gordon. Bernie took me for coffee in Turramurra once when we went canoeing, it was one of the low points in our relationship.

"Well maybe you'll have to go to Tasmania to bump into the man in the dream, you should book the trip while Bernie and Helen are still on the cruise."

"I've only just been away to Mt Selwyn with Liz and the teenagers. When we went to Thredbo for the day, so the teenagers could go snowboarding, I realised that I could never be a snowbunny. I was the only person in the whole of Thredbo who was wearing wool, and you know that tea-cosy beanie that comes from the Fair Trade place, you know like the Fair Trade tea and coffee and is dyed and handmade by women in Bolivia. I wore that, it was alright till I fell over and all the snow got stuck to the wool."

"What did you do all day, y'know, Liz can't ski."

"She's getting better after practicing on the golf course at Thredbo. Well, we spent the first three hours sitting in the Alpine Hotel reading newspapers and listening to the conversations of the rich and vacuous."

"Did you order anything?"

"Well, by the fourth hour we felt a bit guilty and ordered a cup of tea. We were reading the Herald and discussing whether to take our explorer socks off and dry them by the fire. Nearby there were two men, legs akimbo, drinking peach schnaps and boasting about the exceptional value of their 20k two week holiday. You should have heard it, they even took a poor boy with them who was depressed as he'd just been expelled from Kings."

Just then Cedric walked into the kitchen and had a dramatic coughing fit.

"See he's just like the girl on the commuter train that gave him the flu in the first place. I'm sure I'm coming down with something."

"But doesn't he work at the bottle shop?"

Cedric replied,"I'm not just like the girl on the train. Look I've been covering my hand with my...I mean my mouth with my hand."

"Quick someone, get him some tissues."

"I've got some, look! I'm going, I've got the message. I'll just go back to my beanbag in my sunroom, but first I'm going to trim my maiden hair ferns."

Maisie made another cup of tea. "I've been thinking, you know a triangle can only remain eternal if it's equilateral, I can't see how a scalene or an isoceles could hold its shape over time."