A dream

On Monday night, we watched our first episode of 'Breaking Bad' which had been told is the next thing after 'Game of Thrones', the next small screen blockbuster. Rather to our surprise, we were entertained by this first episode, despite our advancing years and despite the rather high level of violence. And strange to the extent that it came across, to me anyway, as a glorification of recreational drugs, this set in, if not from, the country very much in the lead, for now anyway, in the war on such. I associate to westerns, with the Apaches having become Mexicans and the cowboys having become the drug traders. Perhaps the inhabitants of the media world take a different line to that of the inhabitants of the beltway: in any event, it was responsible for some of the content of the interesting dream during the night that followed.

The location of the dream was a place in dream world which I visit from time to time, this being the first visit for some months. A house which associates to west London, perhaps Hammersmith (of Palais fame) or Chiswick, and in which I have rented a front downstairs flatlet for some time, convenient because of my living somewhere else while working in London. The landlady lives at the back and the rest of the house is rented out to DSS types, who like to use the common room behind my flatlet, between it and the landlady's domain. A new feature is that the landlady, who is rather older than me, has now acquired a son who is rather younger and a good looking daughter who is a lot younger.

My tenancy had been terminated, not because I was not paying the rent nor because I was rarely there, but rather because the landlady preferred to rent to the DSS types. But I had forgotten about this and being in London on some business or other on a bicycle, thought to leave the bicycle in the bicycle rack in the upstairs hall. Don't know why the rack was upstairs, but it was - and it was even more awkward getting the bicycle to the rack as the builders were in and who were, inter alia, redecorating the stairs. But I got there in the end, racked the bicycle and locked it with the red plastic covered lock which I really have used on my bicycle for many years. Locked the bicycle but worry about the small contraption attached to the pannier rack; a complicated bit of metalwork, a sort of doodle in metal. Maybe the sort of thing that one would make for one's O-level metalwork project, the sort of thing that one finds at Hook Road car booters from time to time. But a very important contraption and I wonder whether one of the DSS types will pinch it.

After a while I come back to find the builders are still there but the bicycle is missing, at which point I remember that I am no longer a tenant and have no right to use the bicycle rack any more. I have a row about it with the rather unpleasant son; I am sure he has got the bicycle. I hit him, rather hard, not something that I do in real life. He falls down and I fall asleep, waking some time later to find my keys missing from my pocket. I am sure that it is the son who has got them them but I can't understand why he is being such a pain.

Enter sister, with whom I remonstrate, but then one thing leads to another. Eventually I calm down.

Re-enter the now recovered brother, whom I find to be keeping a complicated scrapbook record of my blog, including a lot of original materials like tickets for concerts, programmes and leaflets from visitor attractions like Westminster Abbey. All stuff which I use and discard, usually through the shredder, so he should not have been able to get hold of it. Why is he doing this?

He then offers to return my keys against my signing an elaborate receipt to which are appended several pages of small print, which on the basis of a small sample look rather tricky. I really want my keys back, but is signing up to all this small print really a good idea? Will he copy all the keys before giving them back? Will I need to change all my locks? I think about going to law but then remember that he and his family have the law in their pocket and there is no way that I will get the lawyers to find for me.

At which point I wake up.

With thanks to Google for the image, said to be of the Palais in the 70's. Looks about right.