Female,
63, student (transcribed)
The first one relates to a dream that I had repeatedly when
I was about seven or eight years old. It occurred probably
about half a dozen times during that phase of childhood.
I was born in 1944 while the bombing was still at its
height. Therefore my mother, father and I went to live with
my grandparents in a village near Guildford in Surrey. And
that was a three-storey redbrick old Victorian building
with a shop on pavement level, and two floors above it the
flat where my grandparents lived. On street level behind
the house was a very interesting large outhouse with a
wooden floor, and an old painting on the wall of a soldier
dying by moonlight in the First World War. Lots of old
things in there too, but it was largely empty. Below the
shop, which I used to love to play in, was a cellar. The
shop was an off-licence, Westminster Wine Company. The
cellar was immediately below the shop, and of course under
the stairs down into the cellar was a space with
interesting old objects in it; a Second World War gas mask,
a special policeman’s truncheon, an old delivery bike from
the shop. And this part of the cellar was full of old
wooden beer crates and other interesting things. There was
an old store to the street, where there was a side alley,
where deliveries were brought into the cellar. But behind
there was a further cellar – that was empty except for one
or two very old and rather beautiful bottles, which were my
discoveries.
In my dream I visit my grandparent’s house and go down into
the cellar and the first cellar of course is interesting
and full of all these relics of the earlier days of my
parents and grandparents. And I decide to push through into
the second cellar. It is when I get in there that I see in
front of me a very large lion, with a huge shaggy mane. It
opens its mouth and roars and I am fascinated by it; afraid
though not terrified, but notice then that I am utterly
paralysed and rooted to the spot, and that’s when the dream
ends.
I’ve other dreams with reference to my grandparent’s place.
Dreams that I could fly down the stairs from the upper
floor of the flat to the lower. Typical flying dreams that
I think people often have. And much of it was related I
think to the fact that I felt very secure at my
grandparent’s.
We moved away from there after about 18 months when the war
ended in Europe. Nevertheless the theme of redbrick
Victorian houses, which have always been attractive to me,
for some reason or another, later persisted in my dreams
which I had continuously throughout my life. Although it is
not always the same house, it is often a different redbrick
house or a large flat in a very old redbrick house, but
it’s always Victorian. In some of the dreams I have bought
the house at a cheap price because its dilapidated and I
have to do it up, but I never quite get round to doing it
up. And I live in only a small part of it, and then every
now and then I go out into a larger part of the house and
realise that Its still dilapidated and I hadn’t done it up
as I had intended. At other times I find that I am trying
to explore it and I get to the other side of the house and
can’t get back. Sometimes I’m trying to explore it and the
entrances to other rooms become impossibly difficult to get
through. Like having to climb up a sheer wall and then
squeezing through a tiny gap at the top, or squeezing
through a door that is far too small. Once I went outside
the house and walked round the outside of it and noticed
that it had life-size niches in the walls all the way
round, and in each niche was a classical statue in pale
stone. The theme is always the same – I have this wonderful
large old house, but I am only inhabiting a small part of
it.
The redbrick dreams usually occur about every two or three
months, as I’ve got older less often. They were always
accompanied by a feeling of frustration that I had occupied
only a small part, or that I hadn’t refurbished the
buildings, which were beautiful. It refers to my creativity
and that I never made the most of what I’ve got.