I've started to have considerably more dreams set in Cooksbridge, and two nights ago, one of them became rather more iconic than the usual fare. There was a big old rambling house at the side of the road, completely overgrown and dilapidated, lived in by a reclusive pensioner. Dominating the front lawn was an immense tree of a tropical variety, something like a spreading fig with overhanging branches and lots of dangling foliage - I'm not very good with trees! It excuded a stickly, slightly sour aroma, evidence of it being from a much warmer clime. Roosting in this dark and foreboding tree, well-hidden within the fronds, was a colony of medium-sized fruit bats, or megabats. Two species were present: Egyptian fruit bats, and a larger Epauletted fruit bat (exact species unknown), although I'm not sure how I possessed this information as I'm almost as bad as identifying bat species as I am trees.
I had to pass by the tree on my dog walks, and as the tree was bursting out over the pavement, I invariably came into close proximity to the bats. For the most part, they kept to themselves, hanging upside down in concealment, their leathery wings wrapped tightly around this bodies. The bats would leave the tree at dusk to go foraging, but what they ate around here was a mystery. There was a sinister narrative involving a diamond which was allegedly hidden inside the house, but I forget the details. The bat tree stuck in my mind throughout the day, and I got to wondering what might have triggered it, or what it could represent, if anything. I wondered if there was anything threatening about my dog walks that had permeated by unconscious. The majority of the dream had me back at university as a student, stressing about assignments and deadlines, a recurring theme.
