Green Hand

In last night's dream I was working my drudge of an admin job which was strangely situated in my parents' back garden. Next door there was a lush and blooming community garden maintained by a team of conservationists called Green Hand or something, and I had had my eye on their organisation for a long time. I arranged to do some volunteer work with them on my lunch break, and was recruited by a kindly, plump middle-aged lady with rosy cheeks. It was a hot summer's day and the two gardens were baking beneath a fierce sun. When my lunch break finally came around, I closed down my desk, and unravelled the hose pipe. My task was to top up the water in the pond next door, to maintain the biodiversity and ensure there was enough moisture for the amphibians living there.

In the community garden, I was about to start filling up the pond when I saw two salamanders mating. Such a rare occurrence called for a photo, so I took my phone out of my pocket. Just at that moment, my boss turned up and asked why I had abandoned my post. I tried to explain that it was my lunch break and I was supposed to be helping out here, but she led me away saying there were more important, work-related matters to discuss. I begrudgingly threw the hose down and followed her out of the garden, biting back resentment. I cast a quick glance at the many toads and frogs swimming beneath the surface of the pond, or sprawled out over lily pads.

When my shift ended, I explained to the Green Hand lady that I had been unable to complete the task she assigned me. However, she cheerfully told me that another job awaited should I feel up to it. In the fields behind the house, a herd of zebras had strayed too far from their pasture, and she wanted me to corral them back in. I went out into the fields, long yellow savannah grass tickling my bare legs. The zebras would run off as I got closer, so I circled round behind them and began herding them back towards where they needed to be. There were a number of foals with fuzzy manes and velvety muzzles, and all the animals were bathed in a soft golden glow. A feeling of intense well-being and contentment swept over me as I completed the job.

The Drunk Tank

In possibly the strangest dream I've had concerning the crowded tank motif, this time I was sitting in an Irish pub getting my drink on. Because I left it a few days before writing this dream down, I've forgotten quite a few details, such as who I was with and what the occasion was. Drinking some strange concoctions that were a mixture between Guinness and absinthe, I noticed that there was a large water filled tank in the centre of the pub. The water was murky green but I became aware of a glowing moth that had fallen in and was somehow fluttering about underwater. I was overcome with a desire to rescue the moth, but at the same time, I was afraid to go near it.

There was a net on a long handled pole nearby, so I scooped this into the water and tried to snag the moth. Whilst sifting through the sludgy water in an attempt to grab it, I became aware of all the other creatures inside. These other animals, mostly fish, were making half-hearted attempts to swallow the moth, but it managed to avoid them. At the bottom of the tank was a swollen conger eel with a venomous looking head and glassy, glaring eyes. The sight of it filled me with crippling terror, and I dropped the net into the water. The eel opened its tapered jaws and swiped at the glowing moth, but it managed to evade death once again.

Suddenly a stream of bubbles gurgled up to the surface of the tank, and a sperm whale bobbed into view. It was of course, much reduced in size, having the proportions of a big seal. The whale opened its mouth wide, showing gums that were peeling away from the teeth, and a tongue festering with infection. Something green and unwholesome oozed from the creatures mouth as it rested its chin on the side of the tank. It let out a low, lingering sigh, and died. As it did so, the head began to decompose, and a squishy set of inner jaws came burbling out, as though emitting a diseased tumour. The whole repulsive spectacle was like a hangover personified.

London Wildlife Park

In my dream last night I aimlessly walked the streets of London like a flaneur, waiting for Li to finish a conference meeting. It was a cold but sunny afternoon and, perhaps drawn by the greenery, I eventually found myself near Regents Park and the zoo district. Adjacent to the zoo was a dilapidated public garden called London Wildlife Park. A signs on the premise indicated that it was an extension to the zoo which had been built a long time ago during Victorian times. It was however, poorly maintained, overgrown, and with a general air of mildew hanging over it. Several ponds, lakes, and water fountains dotted the area, with paved walks interconnecting them.

A flock of bedraggled and pale feathered flamingos sulked beneath a weeping willow, and other water birds mooched sullenly across lily pads. Sea-lions and small crocodiles basked in the warm patches of sunlight that filtered down through the trees. A groundsman appeared on the scene with a bucket of feed and began to prepare the afternoon meal. Immediately the animals roused themselves from their inertia and kicked up an excited clamour. The flamingos squawked and called to one another, the sea lions bobbed up and down with expectation, following the keeper's movements, and even the crocs craned their heads in the direction of the lunch pail.

I took my camera out to take some photos of this unexpected menagerie just as one of the crocodiles lunged for the nearest sea-lion. They got their jaws locked together and thrashed about in rage, but were ineffective in inflicting serious injury. As I was about to take a photo, a young man in tight pink spandex blocked my view with his head and asked what I was doing. I tried to angle the camera around him but he thwarted me a second time, at which point I lost my temper and told him to get out of the way. "You don't want to go on a date with me do you?" he asked scornfully, and I assured him that I did not.

Missing my opportunity to photograph the fighting beasts, I tucked my camera away and decided to visit the main zoo to kill some time, but the young man persisted in following me. "What do you want?" I asked. "I think you're attractive," he said. "Well the feeling's not mutual, so piss off!" I retorted, but he refused to budge. He began telling me about the wildlife park and how it was reserved for aquatic animals, with the more interesting ones such as 'big cats' next door. I told him that I happened to prefer aquatic animals, at which point he wandered off and I was free to continue my visit.

Tywin's Trilobites

In this dream I was attending a sea lion show at another zoo with family. For some reason, my family are always present in zoo dreams these days, even though they've traditionally been lonesome experiences. I generally don't get on well with sea lions in dreams, having been badly mauled on two previous occasions, and last night's was no exception. It started with us watching the demonstration at a poorly attended show, sitting on concrete concentric rings around the main stage. There were three pinnipeds at the performance, a black sea lion, an albino fur seal, and a strange hybrid, a creature with the iconic spiraling tusk of a narwhal but the body of a walrus.

About halfway through the show I suddenly remembered that sea lion performances were cruel and so chivied my family into protesting. Our protest was probably one of the weakest and most impotent demonstrations ever made in the history of animal rights campaigning, and mostly involved us not clapping with the rest of the audience. A trick that the staff were particularly fond of making their animals perform was a maneuver involving the sea-lions balancing on their throats whilst raising their bodies and hind quarters vertically into the air and balancing in this position. It caused tremendous pressure to weigh down on their necks and spines.

Near the end of the performance, the white fur seal broke out of the arena and came galloping towards me. I decided that the best tactic was to show no fear and stand my ground, but this time it had no effect. The seal rammed into me like Pierre, our standard poodle, and began chewing on my arms and torso. I tried to push its head away but it kept bouncing back to deliver more bites on my hands. I attempted to run but it maintained a firm grip on my arm, so I started punching it in the head. As soon as it released its jaws for a second, I took the opportunity to run for the car as fast as I could, but the seal came after me in hot pursuit, honking and hollering in fury. I woke up before more damage could be done.

Tywin desperately wanted to devote more time to his passion, but matters of war kept him busy. Close-by the study was a cinema featuring a primitive projector showing films and documentaries about the history of life on Earth. I'm not sure where the electricity came from. I was an eager yet sometimes distracted student who spent a lot of time daydreaming, an unfortunate habit Tywin lost no time in punishing severely. I can't say he was a particularly pleasant master to be indentured to, but turn his mind away from war and onto his favourite subject and he would momentarily forget his ire to animatedly discuss biology. Get the facts wrong however, and he spared no quarter on discipline. In other words, I lived under the constant threat of torture and execution. Not an awful lot happened in the dream and I never got to venture beyond the walls of Casterley Rock, bound as I was to the tending of the trilobites.

Pinniped Protests

In this dream I was attending a sea lion show at another zoo with family. For some reason, my family are always present in zoo dreams these days, even though they've traditionally been lonesome experiences. I generally don't get on well with sea lions in dreams, having been badly mauled on two previous occasions, and last night's was no exception. It started with us watching the demonstration at a poorly attended show, sitting on concrete concentric rings around the main stage. There were three pinnipeds at the performance, a black sea lion, an albino fur seal, and a strange hybrid, a creature with the iconic spiraling tusk of a narwhal but the body of a walrus.

About halfway through the show I suddenly remembered that sea lion performances were cruel and so chivied my family into protesting. Our protest was probably one of the weakest and most impotent demonstrations ever made in the history of animal rights campaigning, and mostly involved us not clapping with the rest of the audience. A trick that the staff were particularly fond of making their animals perform was a maneuver involving the sea-lions balancing on their throats whilst raising their bodies and hind quarters vertically into the air and balancing in this position. It caused tremendous pressure to weigh down on their necks and spines.

Near the end of the performance, the white fur seal broke out of the arena and came galloping towards me. I decided that the best tactic was to show no fear and stand my ground, but this time it had no effect. The seal rammed into me like Pierre, our standard poodle, and began chewing on my arms and torso. I tried to push its head away but it kept bouncing back to deliver more bites on my hands. I attempted to run but it maintained a firm grip on my arm, so I started punching it in the head. As soon as it released its jaws for a second, I took the opportunity to run for the car as fast as I could, but the seal came after me in hot pursuit, honking and hollering in fury. I woke up before more damage could be done.

Zoo Freaks

The other night I returned to the zoo featured in Eccentric Exhibits with my whole family. The zoo turned out to be in Japan and I had a fuller sense of its layout and attractions this time round. We began our tour by entering the same zone as the previous dream, only the chimps had been moved on and replaced with a large pangolin exhibit. I remember somebody commenting, "What the hell is a pangolin?" They sat curled into tight balls on the branches with their backs to us, fine white hairs jutting out from the cracks between their armour scales. Nearby was a terrarium holding frilled lizards from Australia only these curious specimens had a mantle of peacock feathers around their necks as opposed to the customary skin ruff. When they opened their frills, the feathers vibrated and rattled in a menacing manner like the Dilophosaurus from Jurassic Park. Other oddities in this revamped section were pale axolotls lying slumped on the floor of their tank with glazed expressions.

Eager to experience more of the zoo before I woke up, I left the building to see some outside exhibitions, accompanied by my eldest sister. Peafowl roamed loose about the grounds, but the overall park was far from scenic, being something of a drab concrete place with artificial waterways in dugout canals. Boat tours operated around the zoo, carrying passengers from one area to the next. Normally I'm not a fan of these sort of things, preferring to explore zoos on foot, but this one looked quite fun, chugging through flocks of waterfowl and penguins. Hoping to take a ride later, I went over to the 'Apple Zone' and saw a spacious cage holding what appeared to be two domestic tabbies. They lay alongside one another, giving each other head massages with their paws. Paradoxically, an albino ligeress was cramped in a tiny holding cell nearby. I tried not to get too close because it looked like she could easily escape should the notion take her. I noticed that her eyes did not match, one being green, the other lilac. Next to the liger was a sleeping normal tiger. I use normal to denote species, because this creature was far from regular. The information panel called it the Sega tiger, and sure enough, the cat's forelimb had been tattooed with the Sega symbol. More electronic brand advertising had been applied to its other leg. I remarked to my sister on how 'chavvy' the tiger looked.

The next part of the zoo promised real life dragons, and not Komodos either. A long runway fenced on one side with wooden panels with spy holes set into them was crowded with Japanese visitors angling for a glance of the legendary beasts. Whilst there were in fact real baby dragons on the other side, they were something of a disappointment. Squinting through the hole, I saw one of the plastic looking creature's waddling along clutching a large egg to its chest. The animal had stunted wings folded across its back, a dull bronzen glint to its scales, and a stance resembling a cheap garden ornament. A big furore concerning the arrival of some new dragon eggs was in operation and the guests seemed more interested in taking photos of these than the actual dragon juveniles guarding them. I decided that dragons were boring and woke up before seeing more. 

Cockatrice and Cassowary

A weekend dream featuring more animal visitors to the back garden, this time during the day. With threats emerging on campus in the form of ISIS arsonists, I was granted the day off and went home to the safety of Hao House. It was a blindingly hot summer's day, the sort that only ever really happens in dreams, and the garden was bathed in a fierce golden glow with a brilliant blue sky overhead. I stood in the kitchen looking out on the back lawn with Li when a loud cockerel crow broke the silence of the afternoon. A large creature with speckled brown feathered wings and a long reptilian tail flew in clumsy circles outside, crashing into the neighbours' trees and flapping around in the bushes like an oversized wood pigeon. I dismissed it as a "cockatrice, or basilisk" and focused my attention on an even larger creature right at the bottom of the garden, near the back fence.

It was a giant Southern, or double-wattled cassowary, a male, nearing the size of a Gastornis 'terror bird'. Its head and neck was a vivid toy box blue and its hair-like plumage a blueish black. The bird stalked out a small territory along the fence, as though patrolling an assigned area to protect. Knowing the highly aggressive nature of the Southern cassowary in Australia, I told Li that the mammoth bird must die, whereupon I began to arm myself with garden tools. As I gingerly approached the bird, anticipating a gruelling battle, I took note of the sickle-shaped helmet and javelin beak which could make short work of me, along with razor spurs on its legs which could eviscerate with a single kick. With my pitchfork at the ready, I got within striking distance and prepared to thrust.

Unexpectedly, the bird ignored my presence and seemed in no way alarmed or distressed. My resolve first began to falter, and then drop altogether when I realised the cassowary was harmless. Li came outside to join me and we inspected the surrounding area. Despite the great weight of the bird, the lawn was mostly untrampled and there was no damage to speak of. Some plastic portacabins which hadn't been there before had appeared, but other than that, we were content to leave things as they were. It was then that we discovered a nest hidden among the flowerbeds, with a solitary egg in its centre. As the cassowary became used to our presence, it allowed itself to be stroked, and eventually hugged. We decided to keep it on as a  pet to drive away unwanted intruders, yet it was also free to leave through the same way it had entered, through some broken slats in the fence to the meadows beyond.

The cockatrice, on the other hand, was not to be tolerated.

Silberrad Lions

The End is a big student party that takes place on campus once a year at the end of exams. Typically the squares are heaving with students who have been drinking since the early afternoon and in recent years, a small army of security guards have maintained a presence to control who enters and leaves. On the day of the End, university staff are advised to leave work an hour early in order to avoid the lockdown.

Last night I dreamt that the festival would be taking place predominantly in the new Silberrad student centre, where I work full time. I was working during the event on the ground floor, whilst the Vice Chancellor entertained distinguished guests on the first floor, and the SU decorated the building in the manner of an old-fashioned Italian town. It was already dark outside by the time the first of the students made their appearance, and despite security's perimeter barricades, some townies looking for a fight had somehow managed to slip in.

Two of the men started following me around and giving me grief, but because I was in work mode, I was not allowed to break protocol and defend myself. I reported them to security but they had their hands full and were unable to help. Some hours later, I heard a scream, followed by a roar, and the next thing I knew, the centre was overrun by lions. For some odd reason, the fact there were lions was not so much surprising as the fact that they were able to get past security without anybody noticing.

As the chaos unfolded, I took the opportunity to revenge myself on the two townies. I picked up a broken drinks tray and gashed the bigger of the them across the back of his neck, severing his spinal chord with its sharp side. He slumped to the ground gushing blood and his friend came running at me in rage. I lured him away to the lobby where I knew the lions were and left him to his fate, then made my escape up a back stairwell.

Having a more detailed knowledge of the new building, I was able to avoid a good mauling, at least until the end of the dream when dawn broke and the lions started hunting me properly. Just as they had me cornered, a park ranger dressed as a great white hunter turned up commanded them to lay off me. He told me not to show any fear, as they were just like big dogs, with more bark than bite. Looking about me, I saw that many students were already dead or dying, and the car park was full of ambulances and police cars.

My attempts to stand up to the lions were pitifully meek, my gaze deflected by their glowing amber eyes and enraged, wrinkled snarls. Sensing my fear, they came running at me again, nipping my arms with their fangs and raking my back with their claws. The ranger told me to stick my elbows out and push them off, but the experience was too traumatic so I decided to wake up. This is not the first time I've dreamt about lions being a threatening presence.

Below is an image from Giovanni Battista Piranesi's 'Imaginary Prisons' series which I'm convinced has wrought a strong effect upon my dreamscapes over the years.

Japan Aquarium

I recently returned from a two week holiday in Japan, where some of the aforementioned zoo and aquarium dreams came to pass, most significantly the latest one involving a hippo attack. I may blog about it at a later date. However, it is not just dreams that have a habit of forming my reality, the reverse also occurs. The other night I had a dream influenced by my last day in Japan, where I visited an aquarium in Sunshine City, Ikebukuro, Tokyo. The aquarium was on the roof of a high rise shopping mall, yet in the dream it was part of a leisure centre, or onsen.

In the dream, it was my penultimate day in Japan, and I went to the swimming pool with my family. The indoor pool was enclosed by glass panels, on the other side of which was a restaurant and expansive aquarium tanks holding many species of tropical fish and manatees. It was time to leave however, so I made the decision to return the following day with Li to explore further. True to our plans, we came back the next day and paid our admission. It was a wild, stormy day with a pink sky and frequent squalls of rain, a typhoon on its way.

The aquarium was divided into three zones: tropical, coastal, and polar. The largest zone, the tropical, was the one I had glimpsed the day before, with the fish and manatees. Because I had entered from a strange angle, I was unable to find this particular section again. The coastal zone was situated outside, adjoining the sea, and a number of sea-lions frolicked in pools and performed tricks. There was also a fun fair here with rides, arcade machines, and various cafes. The polar zone was indoors and was essentially a massive tank filled with floating ice floes and polar bears. There did not however, seem to be any solid land for the bears to climb onto.

Over the top of the polar tank was a fancy restaurant where diners could look through the glass tables  and see the bears swimming around beneath. Some of the tables had holes cut into them where cubs could poke their heads through and be fed and petted. I stroked the neck of a polar bear cub and it felt warm, despite the freezing water it had emerged from. I snapped a few photos of the other polar bears performing underwater acrobatics, then spent the rest of the dream trying to access the manatee hall but getting lost in gift shops instead.

Colchester Zoo Hippos

In my dream last night, I went to Colchester Zoo with family, most notably my mother who has never been, but we never made it past the gates. After parking, we discovered a sign saying that the elephants were currently off-show due to winter conditions. This 'off-show' message simply meant that they were now housed in a temporary shack on the outskirts of the car park, along with several other animals. This dream was triggered by my recent research into zoos and the fact that many are now opting out of exhibiting elephants after it has been proven they do not adapt well to captivity and are prone to psychological trauma and stereotypical behaviour.

We went over to see the elephants in their 'temporary' accommodation and they greeted us with curled trunks. I was soon distracted however, by the barn-like exhibit next door housing hippos. Colchester Zoo has never had the common species of hippopotamus, only pygmies, so I was understandably excited. Due to the muddiness of their pool, I couldn't tell how many there were, but I watched them swimming around for a long time. There were also other animals in this mixed enclosure, including waterfowl and small antelopes. As I watched, one of the duikers went charging into the wired electric fence on the perimeter and got its foreleg hopelessly tangled. Unable to move, the antelope fell onto its side, twitching spasmodically as the current coursed through its leg. An African wood stork flew over and clamped its long yellow beak over the leg, hoping to free it. The electricity then got both of them, and I moved away from the pathetic pile-up to see the hippos.

Hoping to get a good photograph of one yawning, I leaned over the fence as a large male reared his head from the muddy pool. He then opened his jaws wide, mud pouring from his cavernous maw. My mother was pressing into me from behind, towards the mouth, as I desperately tried to backpedal out of harm's way. We both toppled over onto the ground as the hippo's mouth came within inches of us, its rancid breath reeking of rotten vegetables. My sisters laughed at us as we lay in the dirt, shouting "Honeyford!" which is our mother's nickname. I've been dreaming about hippos an awful lot lately, so I'm wondering if some big event concerning them is on the horizon.

Hippo Attack

This dream is raw with its immediacy and I set it down whilst fresh. I was visiting a small zoo out in the countryside with a limited number of animals including baby elephants, chimpanzees, gibbons, various hoofstock, and hippos. After watching the baby elephants prancing about their outdoor enclosure, I went inside the indoor paddocks to see the hippos. There were two of them, male and female, grazing on piles of hay in adjacent but separated stalls. The male was hemmed into a green metal pen not much wider or longer than the dimensions of his considerable girth. Heavy jowls wobbled with every chomp of the hay, whilst next door in a more spacious holding area, his mate also fed.

As I watched the slightly smaller cow feeding, a strange woman suddenly appeared in the enclosure. She had climbed a fence and sneaked in through the back which led to an outdoor area. Creeping closer, she reached out an arm as though to stroke the hippo. The hippo, noticing her presence, stopped chewing and let the hay fall from her mouth. There was a brief moment where woman and beast stood frozen, eyeing one another warily, then the spell broke. The hippo swung round with a speed belying her immense bulk and charged at the lady who broke into a run. The woman made it outdoors before the hippo caught up, and what happened next occurred beyond my line of vision. The shadows cast by the sun however, showed the woman's fate. I saw her being tossed around like a rag doll in the jaws of the hippo, in a similar fashion to how I witnessed the shadow of my sister being chinned the day we went to Catholic Confirmation.

The next thing I knew, the lady was chasing me, screaming for help and gushing blood from multiple puncture wounds, mostly notably a deep laceration on her shoulder. I ran as fast as I could to get away so she wouldn't bleed over me, hoping that a keeper would appear and assume first aid responsibility. Eventually a member of staff came to her aid and bandaged her up, telling her she was lucky to be alive but the wounds were superficial and not life threatening. Later on, the woman came over to me, still shaken up, and expressed her amazement at how fast hippos could run.

Jersey Zoo

As well as zoos, another recurring dream features my old neighbourhood of Looseleigh in Plymouth. After visiting there again last summer, the frequency of these dreams increased to an almost nightly basis. I was staying in a hotel with Li, my line manager, and two friends Darren and Irina, on the same road where I used to live overlooking the woods. Because the neighbourhood was in a valley and the woods on a ridge, it always seemed as though they were looming over the houses. It was night time and the trees presented a black, formidable screen against a starlit sky. We were informed that at 12 o'clock noon the sun would rise and all the trees would glow a glorious green, so we sat around the window waiting for this to occur. The minutes ticked away with slow solemnity and I felt my anticipation rising. I made myself a cup of coffee to pass the time and to stop myself from falling asleep, but unfortunately the dream shifted before we got to witness the sunrise.

In the next part of the dream I was at Jersey Zoo, but it was a very different place to the green Eden of reality. When I was a kid I had a video called 'A Day at the Zoo with Phillip Schofield' (back before he had white hair) and this was my introduction to Gerald Durrell's famous conservation-minded zoo. Now renamed the Durrell Wildlife Park in recognition of the naturalist's legacy, it's a place I've always wanted to visit but never had the means to. In my dream, almost the entire zoo was shoved into a warehouse, with plain concrete pens for the animals. Three featureless dens separated by electric wire housed various species and subspecies of bear, including polar, Russian, Asian black, sloth, spectacled, sun, and Tibetan blue. The Russian bear rolled around the exhibit on its back, bored to death of the sterile surroundings. The gaunt polar bear was kept apart from the others and had nothing to entertain itself with. On the edges of the warehouse were filthy, cramped primate cages. A jumbled assortment of small mammals, birds, and reptiles made up the rest of the zoo.

It seems like I had some form of authority in this dream, because after witnessing the squalid conditions, I went straight to the director of the zoo and told him that he had to make some major changes. The director agreed that these changes were necessary and was only too happy to cooperate. Working together with a small body of staff, we drew up a redevelopment plan that would open up the enclosures and expand the zoo beyond the warehouse. I told them they had a year to effect the changes, and that they must prioritise the primates and bears. True to my word, in a year's time I returned to the zoo and was pleased to see improvements in progress. The monkeys had green and spacious outdoor exhibits, the gorillas enjoyed a lavish, tropical playground, and the bears... well, the bears were moved on. Much like the real Jersey Zoo, most of the animals were critically endangered, and attendance figures had proliferated since the revamp.

I took a walk around the zoo surveying the new developments, paying particular attention to the 'Bat Arch' where visitors could stand under hanging Rodrigues flying foxes and Livingstone's fruit bats.
On a sour note, I was unhappy to discover that the old warehouse had been turned into a booming entertainment arcade with obnoxious pop music blasting from speakers. I told the staff that this noise level was unacceptable for sensitive animals and she agreed to speak to the technicians. Li was with me by this point, and we were both entranced by a beautiful giant Pacific octopus that had the ability to float in the air as though underwater, and also turn invisible by mimicking its surroundings. We watched it bobbing around the arcade hall, twisting its tentacles into weird and wonderful patterns. Things took a sinister turn when it decided to attack a wheel-bound elderly woman with a bald head.

Striking out with its tentacles, the octopus grabbed the wheelchair and began dragging the woman towards an elevator shaft. Her carer let out a scream and tried to pull her away, but the animal proved too strong and won the tug of war. With the wheelchair in its clutches, it squeezed through the elevator doors and ascended the shaft. The disabled woman jumped out at the last moment and clung to a metal beam, screaming and kicking. I managed to get her down and then climbed the building's stairwell onto the roof to retrieve her stolen chair. The octopus had melted into the tropical foliage of the rooftop atrium and was beyond locating. I radioed security to keep an eye-out for it, suggesting that they confined it to a tank from now on. Despite this hiccup, I believe that my short stint as deputy director of Jersey Zoo was a resounding success.

Midnight Seal

This was the first dream featuring Hao House so I suppose it's notable enough to write down. Bear in mind that I dream a lot and only a small percentage of them make it to the blog, most often as not they're not fit for public scrutiny! In this dream I was sitting in the living room at night with my older sister watching animal documentaries when my other two sisters, who were in the garden, shouted for me to join them. I went outside into the summer night and heard the gentle rushing of surf not far away. The whole back garden had opened up and was no longer bordered by the neighbours' fences on either side. I saw reflections from the moon dancing on undulating ripples and smelled the sharp tang of sea salt. The sea had come to our garden, separated from the lawn by a stretch of pebbled sand and gorse.

Far out on the water, I saw the sleek forms of dolphins cavorting in the moonlight, streaking through the calm like flashes of quicksilver. I then saw something bulky and ponderous hauling itself along the shore towards me in the dark. It seemed like a big dog crawling on its belly, rolls of fat quivering during its approach. My sisters ran down to greet it and the animal snorted affectionately through slitted nostrils, a large grey seal come to pay a visit. Once it reached the grass, it rolled onto its back and waved its flippers around as my sisters tickled and stroked its belly, clearly familiar with the animal and its antics. I believe the dream was most likely inspired by the two hedgehogs who visit the garden on a nightly basis. Over the weekend Li and I watched their midnight courtship for a full twenty minutes.

Eccentric Exhibits

Another dream, another zoo. I was with family again and it was late in the day with a couple of hours before closing. The zoo held a lot of promise and I remember feeling excited to be there. Entering an indoor exhibition hall with a rainforest theme, I found a spacious chimpanzee enclosure with a family unit inside. They seemed in better health than the ones described in 'Babylonian Zoo' and the babies were swinging back and forth on tyre swings. There was also an aquarium divided into separate tanks containing various fish including a giant freshwater stingray, a sawfish, and a weird crustacean-type thing with a ring of serrated teeth.

Suddenly the enclosures merged together to allow all the animals access to one another. I watched as the sawfish scurried through the water, making a beeline for the toothy crustacean. The sawfish's first few attempts to eat it were unsuccessful, repelled by the spines/teeth. Eventually, by using its saw, it dislodged the critter from its anchorage in the sand and flipped it sideways into its mouth. I heard the crunching through the glass. Meanwhile. the chimps kicked up a riot in their waterlogged enclosure, climbing higher up the artificial trees and hanging ropes.

In the second part of the dream I was on campus again, taking a walk by the lakes on my lunch break. It was a brisk, Autumn afternoon before October term and some construction was underway for the new intake of freshers. I noticed that a cave had been dug near the lakes, with a path sloping into it and a maintenance man on his hands and knees doing some welding. Looking past him into the subterranean passage, I saw a glass-fronted terrarium with a long snake, a boa constrictor, draped over a tree branch inside. A gold plated sign outside read that it was the 50 year old 'SU Snake' to commemorate the university's 50th birthday. The campus zoo continues to grow.

University Murders

The University of Essex has often been a threatening place in my dreams, churning out such horrors as a pink lady ghost with hooves for feet, and a headless woman in a tree by the lakes. The most recent disturbing dream featuring campus as a backdrop took place during a bad thunderstorm and was inspired by the real university murders. It was a muggy, summer's evening and I was waiting outside the SU in square 3 for Li to leave her office.

 

Due to  the lateness of the hour, it was already dark, but there was still a large number of students around for clubbing. A blinding flash of white light lit up the squares, swiftly followed by a bone jarring peal of thunder. Forks of lightning speared the purple sky, like witch's fingernails clawing the atmosphere. I took shelter in the entrance of the SU, watching as students ran this way and that to escape the sudden downpour of rain.

 

By the time Li joined me, the squares were awash with puddles. We needed to get to the car park, so we held hands and made a run for it, lightning flashing overhead. A depression in the path near the lecture theatre had filled up with a muddy puddle, too far to jump over and impossible to circumvent. I was wearing my best two toned brogues and knew that wading through the mud would irreparably ruin them. Unfortunately, the other route to the car park was likewise blocked, so we were left with no choice.

 

I took a running jump and landed in the middle of the mire. The mud oozed up my thighs, deeper than I had imagined. After much heaving, I managed to pull myself out by clutching strands of grass on a nearby bank. I told Li to join me on the grassy slope, and paused beneath a tree to wait for her to catch up. As she struggled through the mud, I noticed a trainer dangling from the branches of the tree, then a foot, and the leg it was attached to.

 

Next thing I knew, a whole body had fallen on top of me from the tree, a woman. Her cold legs were wrapped around my neck, in a similar fashion to what happened to me on the rapids at Centre Parcs. Blood trickled onto my shirt, mingling with the mud. With a horrified squeal, I trashed about to untangle her and managed to throw her off her. She slumped onto the grass where she lay with marbled, shocked eyes - bleeding from multiple stab wounds.

 

Li caught up and I pointed out the body out to her, at which point we noticed other corpses in trees around the sports centre grounds. It appeared that there had been a massacre of students and the killer had clumsily attempted to hide them out of sight. The instinct of terror overcame us, and forgetting all about our ruined clothing, we made a mad dash for the car park, screaming all the way.

Antediluvian Nightmare

For quite some time now I've been dreaming about hippos living in the lake on campus. This is likely due to a combination of the following factors:

a) The upcoming dissertation on zoos
b) Ongoing re-development at the lakes
c) Wishful thinking (hippos are my favourite animals)

In this latest dream, plans were being set forth for a small zoo on campus to push the site as a 'green space' and therefore make it more attractive to international students. My MA supervisor and I were unhappy with the scheme, believing it would compromise the animals' welfare and pose a danger to students. It wasn't just hippos they were planning on bringing in, there was already a very large Nile crocodile floating around, with later plans for introducing polar bears. As outlandish as this combination seems, these species are frequently thrown together in my dreams.

I went down to the muddy borders of the lake to make a preliminary inspection as part of the Wild Writing team, intending to write it up as a habitat management plan. An iron railing had been erected around the perimeter, over which I watched the lone crocodile motionless in the water. Only its ridged back and top of the head showed on the surface. A big green specimen some 9 feet in length, it was more than capable of making short work of anyone foolish enough to go for a swim. The hippos, along with some extra crocodiles, were later delivered, and I returned the following day to see them.

Highly territorial creatures, the hippos were clearly distressed by their new surroundings and were not at all happy to be sharing it with their reptilian neighbours and natural sworn enemies. Fighting for space, caked in mud, and catching all manner of local diseases, it was like witnessing a scene from primordial times; a heaving, churning mass of savage water behemoths battling for supremacy and survival. The watercolour 'Duria Antiquior' by Henry De la Beche came to mind, as it frequently does when presented with the raw, 'red in tooth and claw' aspects of nature.

After witnessing this distressing sight and discovering that the plans for polar bears were still going ahead, I wiped my hands of the project and decided to write a damning critique instead. I also began researching reintroduction sites in Africa for when the ludicrous campus zoo came to its inevitable end. The theme of animals being squashed together in unsanitary, claustrophobic environments features an awful lot in my unconscious and is a constant source of inspiration for creative works.

Babylonian Zoo

Since I was born, I've been having dreams about dilapidated zoos. To my infant mind, the zoo was a veritable paradise filled with strange and exciting creatures from the far flung corners of the globe. Going to the zoo was the ultimate buzz (and still is if I'm honest) but concerns about animal welfare came secondary to the thrill of seeing them in the flesh.

Over the years, and more recently after a tour of zoos in China, my stance has started to change. Today I will begin writing a 20,000 word dissertation on the topic, tentatively titled: 'Degenerative Fascination - The Enduring Allure of Zoos and Aquaria in Contemporary Culture.' Despite questioning their necessity in today's world, zoos have continued to exude their influence over me, a power that simultaneously fascinates and disturbs.

Last night I had another of my zoo related dreams, this time set in China. It was a Babylonian themed super park featuring all manner of attractions and the largest of its kind in the world, covering hundreds of acres. There were rides, hotels, bars, casinos, and shopping arcades all built with ostentatious Babylonian inspired architecture, palm trees, and sparkling water courses. As is often the case, although boasting a dazzling facade, conditions for the animals were squalid.

I walked through a grimy primate section with Li, peering at depressed chimpanzees through smeared perspex. The indoor sleeping quarters were tortuously cramped and the animals were covered in their own feces. One of the females birthed a premature, blob-like foetus resembling something out of a Lynchean dreamscape. The baby clung to some wire mesh, quivering convulsively. Next door, two glum orang-utans slumped listlessly in a corner, seemingly fed up with the world.

Roused by screams and growls, we moved on to the next exhibit where we saw with horror that an endangered bongo and her two calves were about to be fed to a pack of half starved African wild dogs. An overeager bitch wiggled through the adjoining barrier and clamped its jaws onto the antelope's upper eyelid in an attempt to bring her down. We watched the tussle with growing agitation, sick to the stomach.

Suddenly there was a rusty screech and a metal shutter was raised, letting in the blinding sunlight from outside. The bongo ripped free and bolted through the hatch, closely followed by her two calves. The rest of the wild dog pack were released a few seconds later and they tore after their prey onto an immense race track encircling the perimeter of the park. The roar of an engine kicked in, followed by the whooping of fat American cowboys who had paid to follow the chase in a jeep.

From a raised viewing terrace, we saw the sun glinting off the jeep's metal and a long cloud of brown dust billowing from behind. The cowboys were rich ranchers and entrepreneurs from Texas, hideously drunk and profligate in their excess. I shouted all manner of insults at them, but my words were lost by the roar of the chase. We didn't stay to watch the hunt to the end, but I did give Li a lecture on the European Animal Welfare Act.