Classic Anxiety Dream and Poetry

I had a bad dream last night.

I woke up with my heart racing and slightly stunned.  It wasn't a nightmare as such, I had one of those a few months back where I did actually cry out in fear in my sleep.  This was during the bleakest time in my self worth and scared t'mrs more than it did me.  No, this was more of an anxiety dream.

Anxiety dreams I am sure effect different people in different ways.  Some people, for example, have that one where they are naked in public.  For me that is not anxiety provoking, indeed I quite enjoy those dreams.  I have two kinds of anxiety dreams which are probably quite common.  One involves heights: I am never falling in these dreams but more likely perched somewhere up high and too frightened to move.  In other versions I find myself in unlikely situations like flying a plane or on a roller-coaster.  I suffer from vertigo in real life; only yesterday a cliff edge scene in the film I was watching made me recoil; so you will NOT find me willingly on a roller-coaster or bungee jumping or hang-gliding or any of these things some of you maniacs do.  The height part of dreams are often involved in nocturnal thoughts that are otherwise quite nice and are barely a distraction from the rest of the dream.

The other anxiety dream I have quite often is about being late or more specifically being late and no matter what I do to try and get to where I am going, find myself getting more and more delayed and no nearer to getting there.  I gather these dreams are quite common among fairly normal people so not necessarily down to my being a nutter.  I've had these kinds of dreams since my school days.

In the dream last night I was due to be flying to Hamburg and I woke up late having not set my alarm; indeed already too late for the flight.  Then everything went wrong.  I couldn't find my passport.  I couldn't find the tickets.  All of the clothes I wanted to wear were still dirty in the suitcase from my last trip (in which case they would have been there for four years!) and I had no money for the train to the airport.  Of course this is all nonsense.

I have a real issue about punctuality; I can't bear to be late myself and it irks me terribly when others are late.  My travelling companion to Hamburg, Charlie, is at least as anal as me in regards to timekeeping if not more so and there is absolutely no chance we will not be at Gatwick two hours before our flight leaves.  The alarm WILL be set, in fact we will probably have an alarm each ready.  We will both have suitcases packed in advance and hand luggage replete with passport and tickets ready to grab.   Wifey has already agreed to drive us to Gatwick and is aware at how early we will want to leave (5am!).  Short of some natural disaster we are not going to be late.  We will be too early to check our luggage in when we arrive at the airport so will have to wait around, we will literally be the first on our flight to do so and thus the last to get our luggage at the other end and will have to wait around for two hours before we can board our flight except it will be three hours because the flight will be late.  So I'll end up having a pint or two and will then want a nap in the afternoon.

There here follows a gap of several days where I forgot I hadn't finished this blog because I've actually been busy!

Yes, several days have passed and not two nights ago I had a very disturbing dream.  In this dream I'd had a skull transplant.  No, I don't know how that would work in real life either but it didn't actually happen in real life, it was a dream, so sue me.  The operation had left me bald and disfigured and with massive cranial scarring.  Something then went wrong and a massive bulge appeared on the side of my already malformed head and I was told this was a tumour.  Did I wake up in a fevered sweat, panting with relief?  No, I woke up quite normally and thought "that was a weird dream" and that was it.

So what do I feel anxious about?  Surely as a privileged, white male I have everything I could ever want?  Yes, I suppose I do have a home, a job and food on the table so my lot is not a truly awful one.  But I am a born worrier.  To tell me not to worry would be like to tell me not to have brown eyes; I do and I will.  I am prone to stress, anxiety and depression.  I am not proud of this, I do not feel it makes me more interesting and I do not believe as some do that only intelligent people get depression.  I believe that perhaps the more intelligent people are likely to recognize depression as an illness and get it treated rather than lashing out at society.  Stephen Fry has recently admitted to a suicide attempt and in his admission said what I believe; clinical depression is an illness and there is not necessarily any reason for it.  People in the past have said to me "what have you got to be depressed about?"; they may as well ask what I have to have Colitis about.  Or what someone else may have to have diabetes about.  Wankers.

As a subtext, people who try to tell other people they have nothing to be depressed about are usually trying to let us know how they have it much worse but don't complain about it.  I meet people like this a lot; "I have such a terrible time but I never mention it or complain" (apart from now?); so not only self obsessed but conceited too!  It isn't just depression either.  The same people who make jibes about someone having "man flu" when they have said they have a cold are then the worst people to know when they are ill.  By the way, that "man flu" joke... so ten years ago, really, even if you use it correctly.

Me:  "I have a cold."
Unfunny person: "Aaaah, do you have man-flu?"
Me: "Sorry, I think you have misunderstood.  I said I have a cold.  If I'd said I had flu but my symptoms were merely cold-like then the joke would work.  You're not very bright are you?"

I've had flu twice in my life.  It was really horrible.  I know the difference.  The only real upside to having Ulcerative Colitis is that because I am on immuno-suppressant drugs I get a flu jab every year so I'm not likely to ever have that again.  The other thing that is really horrible, by the way: Tonsilitis.  I've only had it once but it hurts like hell and I couldn't swallow properly for six months after! Anyone who gets that regularly has my sympathy.

I am currently a third of the way through three weeks off work.  I have some minor money worries, as always but nothing like those of four years ago.  Much as I don't love my job, being away from it for a while seems to be helping me realise it isn't as dreadful as I sometimes have myself believe.  And now the bad news!

Trawling through the charity shops of Emsworth a couple of days back I bought myself a couple of Blu-rays (Goodfellas and Scarface) and Stephen Fry's "The Ode Less Travelled", a book about the writing of poetry.  I used to write poetry and then I stopped, thinking it was a bit pretentious and I wasn't very good at it.  Well, so what?  I don't care if it makes me a mewing pansy and I start wearing a floppy hat and scarves indoors, I used to do it because I enjoyed it and it was cathartic! So watch this space... bloody awful poetry coming soon!

On food, nature, name-dropping and The Jesus And Mary Chain

It is fair to say I like my food.  I can pack a fair amount away if I am enjoying it; whether that be a Chinese takeaway or my mother-in-law’s tri-weekly Sunday lunch.  I watch TV shows about food, I read about food, I try to cook and I even partially plan holidays around food (or did when I could afford holidays), indeed I spent my honeymoon in China, mostly to visit somewhere I and my wife hadn't been to but the possibility of eating Chinese food every day for two weeks did not dissuade me at all. 

I like most food.  I have just eaten a bowl of mussels, prawns and squid in a sweet chili sauce.  Very nice it was too.  I realise that not everyone likes seafood but I MOSTLY love it.  Much as I like food there are still certain things I don’t like.  I like seafood very much, the only thing I have tried so far that I really didn’t enjoy was whelks; similar to jumbo winkles and chewy as heck; oversized bogies from a person with a mucus membrane infection.  I have enjoyed oysters, rollmops, crab, kippers, squid, scallops, smoked or poached salmon… most fish you can think of really.  One thing I haven’t tried and probably never will… jellied eels.  When Manuel chides the chef in Fawlty Towers with “cockney stinking eel pie” I relate to his sentiments entirely.  I would try eels and I can cope with jelly in a pork pie but together; ugh!

It is now another day (the words were not flowing freely last week) and the most recent meal I have cooked was a fish pie that had in it cod, smoked haddock, salmon and king prawns as well as yellow and green peppers and courgettes.  In a gesture towards my weight the mash was made not with butter but fish stock and garlic (usually we use vegetable stock but we have run out!)

I watched Masterchef avidly this year.  I don’t always catch it but this year I had a favourite competitor that I wanted to win… and she did!  Her name is Natalie Coleman, she was a chirpy cockney and a bit of a raver by all accounts.  Predictably some of the coverage after her win was about a woman making it in a man’s world… oh please, get over yourself.  This is 2013, this boys against girls stuff really is so 20th Century.

Much as I like Masterchef and much as I like cooking I would never be tempted to enter, no matter how good I became because I just know I couldn’t hack the professional kitchen.  Indeed, you should hear the language that comes out of me when I’m trying to co-ordinate a roast dinner.  You’d think I was my cousin Jason!  I would like to be better technically though and am exploring the possibility of some classes when I am eventually free of debt.

Masterchef is by far not the only cookery programme I like to watch.  My favourites are probably The Hairy Bikers.  

There is something about their personalities that makes up for the fact they are technically probably not the best of chefs on TV and the travel aspect of their shows tend to be more human and involving than many others.  I have also enjoyed the works of Jamie Oliver, Rick Stein, Gary Rhodes, Delia Smith, Sophie Grigson and Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall.

The latter named Mr FW also falls in to the category of food writer and I have enjoyed his written works.  This is a guy who cares about food; how it is produced and how it is used.  Like him I think it is important that food is shown respect, especially if like me and Mr FW that involves eating things that used to be alive.  If you are vegetarian or vegan, I am sorry if it offends you but I consider myself an omnivore and I have no plans to stop eating meat and/or fish.  But to give an animal a life of misery before eating it, well, the hippy within me feels that not only is it ethically wrong but it contaminates what we consume with bad vibes, man.  Similarly some people sneer at organic produce but if I could afford it all of my food would be organic and/or locally sourced.  The GM issue is not one I know much about but to my ignorant mind the thought of tampering with the genetics of something we are going to eat doesn’t seem like a good idea.  I say I am against it but I really don’t know enough about the issue (the other day I embarrassed myself by not knowing what Monsanto is so thank you to Jessica O’Brien for pointing me in the right direction on that one).  

If you have children, I don’t, then the question is would you want something genetically modified in your child’s mouth.  Sadly, that does kind of assume that all parents care about their children’s nutrition.  I of course only know intelligent and caring parents but there are still those that would still serve their kids Turkey Twizzlers and act as if Jamie Oliver is a monster trying to deny them their human rights.  There is no entrance exam for having kids.

Another food writer I have enjoyed the work of is Giles Coren and not just because I have enjoyed exchanges with him on Twitter (he described my rhubarb plant as “bolted like an old horse”).  Giles Coren is the son of the late Alan Coren who  I somehow knew was on Call My Bluff even though I don’t remember ever watching it.  He is the brother of Victoria who presents TVs trickiest quiz show (Only Connect… getting a question right on this bugger really does give one a massive sense of achievement) who is married to comedy actor, presenter and writer David Mitchell who I respect hugely.  I therefore can’t help but feel that Giles, Victoria, David (Victoria and David, great name for a couple!) and I would all be great friends if I had any form of talent within me.  I digress.  I am currently re-reading Giles’ collection “How to eat out” which I recommend very much.  He has a sometimes acerbic style but clearly does not have any huge conceits about his own worth, I have seen him praise a sausage roll in the same manner some writers would praise Powdered Anjou Pigeon.  I have also enjoyed his work with Sue Perkins on TV, both have a very natural style to them and to this day they remain my favourite ever TV partnership.  If you feel that television presenters should act with a certain amount of decorum then their shows may not be for you but I loved them.

I have also enjoyed watching shows by Heston Blumethal.  As a former holder of the best Restaurant in the world trophy for The Fat Duck (fuck you everyone who pokes fun at British cooking) he is clearly a unique talent in the culinary field but his TV work tends to be more based on the sensational.  His 80s meal, Halloween feast and giant ice-cream cone all looked like great fun, at least once edited to a television format.  Again, I wish I could be just famous enough to get invited to one of his dinners with my mates David Mitchell and Giles Coren.

Finally, whilst I continue to name-drop (I’ve had a chat with Mark Gatiss on Twitter too… about Dickens no less!) and moving away from food, my mate TVs Chris Packham is on our screens again with the return of Springwatch.  I have enjoyed the work or Mr Packham since I was a teenager and he presented The Really Wild Show and as it became clear he liked the same kind of music as I do I became more interested in his work.  A mutual fondness for The Jesus and Mary Chain is therefore responsible for any knowledge I have about wildlife.  My reference to “my mate” is a running joke based on my once meeting Chris during a talk he did for a local wild life charity, Brent Lodge.  He signed a couple of his books (one that we bought from him there and then) and was friendly enough for a Southampton supporter.  I don’t profess to know much about Wildlife but I always try to catch Springwatch as often as I can.  Chris has a little thing that he does each series where he shoe-horns song titles by particular bands in his narrative; this season it is The Clash.  I know The Clash a little but not well enough to pick up all of the references; unlike the series where he did The Cure and The Smiths, I did very well then.

Springwatch is an important show I think; nature, wildlife, farming and food are all connected.  I wish I was a better shopper and a better eater but financial restrictions do mean I have to sometimes do things I’d rather not such as shopping at Tesco.  I hope to improve.  This is why I got in such a strop last weekend when I based my whole Saturday around the fact that I was going to the Farmer’s Market in Emsworth but wifey had got the wrong week.  Still, I got a couple of new shirts out of it.