An unusual dream

A dream in two parts.

The first part associated to TB, although nothing in the dream was much like either the place or its customers. It seems that I had suddenly decided, on the basis of inspecting a score, that I could play the piano and that I had offered to put on a show, in a large high room in a pub, complete with a stage. All rather shabby. Some of those iron pillars you get in big old London pubs. As the time approached, I thought I had better have a go on a piano, to find that I could not play a note. Manage to get my brother along to do the business for me.

He makes a manic start, arms and body flying about, on a rather shabby upright, tucked in beside the stage. Does a couple of pieces, then decides that he has had enough and I have to go on after all.

I have difficulty getting onto the stage, in part because I am worried about messing up my fancy clothes. But I end up clambering all over what seems more like the outside of a tumble down building than the stage of any pub that I know.

The audience, sitting in groups with their drinks, at tables scattered around in front of the stage, starts to get restive. Some rather rough looking women start to make unpleasant comments. I think it unlikely that I am going to get them back on board with the sort of show that I am likely to be able to manage.

Cut to the hinge between the two parts, with me trying to order drinks at a bar which towers high above me. But I think the bar had grown big, rather than me grown small. Barmen looking down at me from a great height.

The second part had me all worried about my sons wanting to start out as handymen, work of which they had no experience and for which they had no tools. Not clear why they wanted to strike out in this particular line of business - with handymen not even being very well regarded among craftsmen, barely counting as fellow craftsmen at all. I associate now to the time when I worked as one, with most of my fellows having been craftsmen, but who were by then more more or less retired. Or making excuses for being there. Perhaps filling in until something better turned up.

Should I let them have my tools, although I did not have two of anything much? Was it up to me to buy tools for them? Associating here now to a carpenter I once came across who was made very conspicuous by the newness of both his tools and his toolbox, an improper version of the sort of black wooden toolbox, about two feet long, one foot six high and six inches wide, carried by most building site carpenters at the time when I was trying it on. Was I responsible for the various messes they were likely to get themselves into?

Getting ever more worried, I think I woke up.