Dreams of Failure

Red Admiral, Vanessa atalanta

Saturday night was a tiring night, full of dreams of failure, and I woke up feeling very depressed.

The first dream was about going back to work in an office somewhere - I think on a cliff by the sea. And someone asked me how I was getting on.   Terribly, I told them. I don't know what I'm doing and I can't understand anything.  And I felt in my dream that that was depressingly true of every job I have ever had.

In the second dream, I was driving one of Col's cousins to hospital to pick up her husband - her ex-husband who she divorced decades ago - from hospital after his knee surgery.  As I was telling her about my knee surgery I found I had turned right round (she was in the back seat for some reason), and I had forgotten I was driving.  I whirled round just in time to find I had almost crashed us into a great gaggle of cars, parked on a clifftop carpark.  It was a dead end, and we were dangerously near the edge.  The cousin then took over the driving and got us out of there. And I felt a complete failure.

The third was in a pub, leaning on the bar, talking to said ex-husband, who had had his knee surgery that day. His knee was bandaged but he was leaning casually against the bar, drinking a pint of beer.  I was saying to him that it took me a couple of days before I could stand after my op and another couple of days before I could go home.  What a wimp I must be I thought as I watched him nonchalantly swig his drink and deal with the pain.   And I felt - yes - a complete failure.

Do I sense a common theme?

Perhaps the editing work I am doing on what may be my next published book triggered this, as it all now seems too trivial to publish, and not like real writing at all.

But why the cliff-edge theme?  Is that also an about-to-fail/fall thing, or the fear within my body as it feels itself slipping inexorably towards the cliff - to the "huge and birdless silence"  (Larkin "Next Please").

When old age happens - I mean real old age - threescore years and ten stuff, you feel the wrongness of it.  I notice some people look shocked, stunned, shellshocked by it.  If we lived in the Darwinian world they want us to believe we do, then surely it would be a natural process.  I, for example, have well and truly passed my evolutionary sell-by date and should be happy to go.

But that's not how I feel at all.   It feels so wrong, such a shock.  And the older I get the more precious, wonderful and interesting the gift of life seems. And I know that I have hardly begun.  But whether I shall be able to continue living for ever, on this wonderful planet is up to my Creator. 

It will be an "undeserved kindness" for every one of us. So we can all hope, if we listen to Jehovah, and do our best to follow in Jesus' footsteps

Captain Butterfly left quite early on Sunday - laden down with metal detectors and sandwiches - and I went to the Meeting at the Kingdom Hall.  I had to do a hasty shop on the way back, as Jacks was coming over for supper and I had planned fish and chips. But, in our morning phone chat, she mentioned that she had fish and chips on Saturday - with a friend who had come for lunch.

So I managed a curry supper for us - and it fed Col and me yesterday too.

Yesterday was my Eye Test, at SpecSavers.  It is very technological now, and included a complete scan of my eye.  Things are going better than I hoped, for which  I do thank God.  And what a wonderful complex creation the eye is.

Surely Darwin himself would no longer believe in his Theory if he were around now?

But I need new glasses - and was completely baffled by the choice of lenses and frames - and came away feeling I had made all the wrong choices.

Another failure!

Oh dear, oh dear.