ODD DREAM

My brain seems to have latched on to a different meaning of the word “cold.” It understood, not the cold in the head I’ve been complaining about, but rather winter’s cold. It came up with this dream...

We’re booked on a flight—to New York, I think, from London, except that it’s certainly not Heathrow or any other airport that I know of anywhere near London. It has been snowing (hence the “cold”?) We arrive by car and find a spot in a parking lot not far from the airport. And thinking, for some reason, that we have ample time, we decide to leave the bags in the car and take the tube in to Victoria Station. Despite the weather, we have the notion to take the long walk from there up to Westminster Abbey (another brain misapprehension, I suppose, with the much-ballyhooed “Royal Wedding” happening this week!) then on down Whitehall and back via Buckingham Palace.

Absurd idea! We arrive at the crowded terminal and find the passengers for our flight gathering in a kind of tour group, ready for departure. Ellie checks the yellow file in which she always carries our travel information: the flight is scheduled for 3:25. I look at my watch. It’s already 3:30. But the young man who’s handling tickets and bags says brightly: It’s alright, you have another fifteen minutes.

So I have to run back to the car park to retrieve our bags, and it’s a whole lot further than I had imagined. I’m running down through the slushy snow and ice in a narrow alley, and realize I’m never going to make it. A cab comes around the corner to let out a passenger, and I seize the opportunity. The cabbie seems glad to have a fare, but he abandons his cab and instead brings over a tandem bicycle. I mount behind him, and we pedal madly on toward the car park.

Bags in tow, bumping along behind us in the snow, we head back for the terminal. The "cabbie" falls off the tandem and has a hard time getting back up: my rollie suitcase is incredibly heavy, and he grimaces and strains his back trying to get it back upright. The journey to the terminal, if you’ll forgive the pun, is interminable. And when we do arrive, the group of passengers has disappeared. No worries, though, Ellie spots us from a corner cafe and waves us over. I feel for my wallet, thinking that ten dollars will be a generous remuneration for the cabbie, but of course I can’t find it. Then I realize that I’m wearing a jacket, unusually, and that I put it in the inner breast pocket.

Relief! But then there’s the trouble fumbling for the right bills. I find a five, but otherwise it seems there’s only a twenty. But wait… sorting through a confusion of banknotes, I finally succeed in sorting out a four-dollar bill, and a two. Which would make eleven, more than I had planned to give him. No matter. No time to worry about it. I hand the man the bills and we join the party headed for the aircraft—again down narrow alleys filled with the debris of winter, snow, slush and ice...

Do we catch the flight finally? I have no idea. I awoke in a state of total exhaustion, recalling that the kitchen trash is overflowing and needs to be taken out.

Any dream interpreters out there?