Here's one from the recent archives, a dream with slight Barbe-content:
I was working in an office that turned into a pub after 5pm, at which point the lights were dimmed and all the people who worked there would loosen their ties and settle down to their desks with a pint. The office was long and thin with bench seats, and hinged in the middle so that it could be bent into a right angle. Apparently the idea was to make it look like a train carriage designed to go round corners.
After I'd grabbed a drink - and I have to say, it was the best f..king pint I've ever had - I started chatting to a couple of colleagues who turned out to be in the Fall (one of them looked a bit like that lanky, blond, northern bloke with a 'tache who turns up occassionally in 'The Office', who makes me think of Marc Riley), and they reminded me that not only were the band playing there later that night - as soon as Mark E Smith turned up - but that I was going to be playing drums for them.
I was hugely excited for a few seconds, until I remembered that I can't actually play any instruments. "I can make noises," I said, to which the lanky northern bloke replied "well, make noises then." He looked at his mate with a "cyuh" sort of face and carried on drinking, staring ahead and looking surly.
I started shitting myself then, as I pictured myself on stage, completely unrehearsed, trying to make noises with whatever was lying about - banging spoons together, dropping marbles onto tin trays, making armpit fart noises etc - and add them to the mix without sounding like some desperate bloke making stupid noises just for the sake of it. You can imagine how chuffed MES would be with that, can't you?
Just as I was thinking up an excuse to bail out with, Smith turned up, looking a lot like Alan Rothwell [ed. note: the smiley man who presented schools prog 'Picture Box' which was mentioned in a thread we had here the day before the dream]. After he was introduced to me he asked: "Where can I get a violin round here?" As it happened I knew of two jewellers in the precinct who sold violins, and I said it would be quicker if I got it for him. Smith agreed and said to make sure that the instrument had "just three strings. Thick strings."
After that it gets a bit hazy, just a lot of running around in deserted, mustard-yellow precincts. |
