Anxious of Ashstead

Dream time again. Possibly prompted by my muddle between left and right when directing a pleasant young black lady, whom I took to be an agency nurse on her first assignment to Epsom, from Station Approach to Epsom Hospital, an uncomplicated walk of around 15 minutes. Only two turnings to worry about. In the event, she told me not to worry about it and sailed off, quite happily, in the right direction.

I am on a train, heading north through Leatherhead, through Ashstead and Ewell West. The train is heading to London, but I am not sure whether I am going to Ashstead or Ewell West, having got hopelessly muddled between the two, Maybe I would do better to get off at Epsom and catch a taxi.

I have two of the small grey suitcases which I used to use quite a lot, starting in 1970 or so. Some bought new, some bought car booter. The once excellent, grey fibreglass suitcases which once used to be made & sold by Globetrotter. I think they now sell silly luxury goods out of a shop in the West End, Bond Street or somewhere like that. One small, usually used for papers, one slightly larger usually used for pyjamas, but on this occasion more or less empty. In the muddle about where to get off, I almost leave the larger one behind.

I get off at Ewell West, to find a station not much like the Ewell West I know, although it does have a station forecourt into which cars and taxis can pull. I associate now to Worcester Park, a station which I have only ever rarely got on or off at. But forecourt of this station presently empty. There is a group of us wanting taxis. One pulls in and I, rather unreasonably & rudely, claim priority. But I have no idea of what address to give the driver and he eventually gives up on me. Also rather rudely.

I retire to a place where I can get my papers out of the small suitcase, two rather scruffy sets of papers on short Treasury tags. There should be a couple of folds of A5 paper, each of which contained the name if not the address of the company which I am supposed to be visiting, probably to provide advice about something or other. (I used to work in a part of the civil service which provided free advice about IT to other parts of the service, civil and otherwise. Sometimes our advice was helpful. Sometimes we were just the warm up act for proper consultants, proper consultants to whom you paid lots of money and most of whom did not pay lots of tax). Can't find either of them.

I try to remember the name of either the company or the name of the road in which they have their offices. Various names seem to be on the tip of my tongue but nothing comes out. Except Dorking Road which I know is wrong. Dorking Road being the name of the road which does most of the trip between Epsom Station and Epsom Hospital. I associate now to the once thriving, now defunct, Bytes Computer Services outside Ewell West Station.

A lady from my section passes and asks if she can help. I bawl her out (in my quiet sort of way, never having been much into bawling in the private sector way), quite unfairly, for losing my papers. Exit lady, more or less in tears.

Still no progress.

Wake up.

Perusing the blog posts turned up by the search term 'anxious', it seems that I report dreams of this sort on a reasonably regular basis, with a good proportion being about running meetings or other events of that sort which are going wrong. Clearly a matter of some importance. I offer a sample at reference 1 below.

Thinking it about it now, I cannot remember an occasion on which I lost the address in quite this way. But I did turn up to meetings in far flung parts of the country, on the wrong day, on at least two occasions.

And perusing google, I find that Bytes Computer Services are alive and well, having simply moved from West Ewell to Leatheread. A company which I think started out, maybe in the eighties of the last  century, providing cabling and PCs for Surrey SMEs, at a time when a lot of such companies were just starting out into the world of IT. See reference 2.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/anxious-times.html.

Reference 2: http://www.bytes.co.uk/.