The stuff that dreams are made of

I dream most nights. Sometimes quite vividly, and very occasionally I have one that's nightmarish enough to make me wake up with a start in the middle of it and I worry for a few minutes that if I go back to sleep, it'll carry on from where it left off (fortunately, it never does). But generally I don't remember anything of what happened in my dreams the following morning apart from possibly the barest outline for a few fleeting moments. Maybe it was because this particular dream occurred right at the end of my night's sleep cycle - I don't know - but I do remember at least the finale of last night's.

I was back at school - or rather I'd just left. Because instead of staying on into the sixth-form and doing A levels, which is what I did at the time, I'd left at the age of 15. It wasn't altogther clear why but for some reason the impression I have (or had) is that I couldn't stop on. I think I may in fact have been expelled! At the time it wouldn't have mattered, but in my dream it did because the school-leaving age was the present-day one of 16 and not 15, so I'd left illegally - but without anybody realizing it. I was pretty sure my parents were going to get into heaps of trouble with the authorities as a result, although I seemed to be more worried about it than they were. Having been the youngest in the class I'd effectively completed my education and finished my exams a year early, so what the hell was I going to do or study for another whole year (the year in which I turned 16) - when I didn't want to go back and/or the school didn't want me back? I'd done all I needed to, so what an utterly futile waste of time it was going to be. At which point I neatly solved the dilemma by waking up!

I've no idea what brought that one on. Sometimes I can relate a dream to something I've seen or done recently which has a vague connection, but at the time when I was writing about my schooldays and putting up my website and I thought I probably would dream about it, I didn't. I daresay it's probably just as well that we don't have any real control over what we dream about. Or at least, I never have, even when I've tried to concentrate intently on something as I dropped off to sleep, in the deliberate hope of dreaming about it.