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More dreams in the Barbelith psychic space, but also unusually “patriotic” for me (or something). The following I can only attribute to, before going to bed: reading Policy, trying to organise a refreshing Scots Barbe-meet in the Gathering, watching bits of a film on Cromwell a few weeks ago, reading Bill Duncan’s The Smiling School for Calvinists in bed, my flatmate showing me yesterday twenty year old photos of him on holiday, and late-night pizza. All of which I clearly must avoid in the future.
Anyway, in the dream I was watching a film, but wasn’t actually otherwise present. The setting was a divided Britain, where three English dukes’ forces were struggling to wrest control of the land from the others, some hundred of years in the past. It was dark. It’s always dark in the past right? Watching over this was a figure who may have been one of the Dukes (or the main one) or some other sort of important observer in a flame-lit royal hall of some kind. Haus was there, though his presence was more suggested than visible, he seemed to be representing nebulous “European interests” in the conflict, and may also have been or was linked to the sinister duke – who himself looked somewhat like an obese Descartes. Fade.
Cut to a traditional pub somewhere in England, but clearly in the more recent past, probably the eighties, where the conflict is still unresolved and the film quality is better and less scratchy. Duncan F is there, a harmless lone Scot dismissed by the rather unstylish masses that fill the pub celebrating… something. Playing the part of the jovial Scotch fool to perfection, he then weaves through the bar on the way to the gents exclaiming “I’m pished! I’m pished! I’m pished!”. When he arrives in the deserted, moonlit bogs, he quickly undoes some sort of latch and motions for a crew of men waiting outside to furtively enter through the window. Cut to six or seven young Scots men huddled in the bathroom, beginning to pull out a variety of weapons: chibs, bats, a chain, even though they are all typically like cheeky, ruddily healthy young scallywags pretending to be serious, and they have broad grins as they prepare to spring the surprise on the unsuspecting patrons. Big Dunc leaves off camera and there’s the brief sound of drunken laughter and a suggestion of warmth and light. Then the camera pans round, and moves towards the keyhole of the door, and as it does it’s here that it becomes obvious that it’s been shot in the eighties, as instead of a skilful cgi focus point travelling through the keyhole there’s a glitch, it slows down, there’s a loss of focus and then we’re through the door. The party is in full swing, people seem to be getting off with one another, and it’s building to a climax when the camera pans round to the gang of beaming jocks standing in the doorway, in the bare buff, sans "weapons", striking a sort of “wahey” pose and with some mooning of the assembled ranks a la Braveheart. Cue a loss of focus as they proceed to join the astonished revellers who quickly shed what’s left of their inhibitions and their clothes, as the unity of the land is restored… in some fashion …
And at that point I woke up (at about half six) feeling, well, really weird, and not like going back to sleep at all, surprised at my obviously hitherto repressed attraction towards the unashamed, gallus Scots everyman, and not really being sure how I’ll look any of the Scottish clique in the eyes again. |
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