“Dreams can come true,” warbled songstress Gabrielle in her 1993
chart-topper, Dreams, followed by a line that remained totally incomprehensible to me until I Googled the lyrics this morning (“Look at me babe, I’m with you,” as it transpires).


And that’s the thing about dreams: they’re utterly incomprehensible most of the time too. Take last night, for example. I dreamt that aliens arrived at my flat via a black hole and gave my dogs the power of speech. Cool, you might think, but all the dogs would tell me was that one of them likes watching Star Trek. And let me tell you, THAT doesn’t happen in real life – she always sleeps through it. It would have been nice to hear that the dogs loved our walks in the woods or were really pleased with the colour of their bedding, but no. One of them just said, “I like Star Trek.”


So what was that all about? Were I the paranoid type I would have wondered whether my new Silentnight memory foam pillow had been sabotaged by the Argos back-of-store team who, for a laugh, had pre-loaded it with someone else’s memories just to mess with my nocturnal musings – but the fact is, my dreams never make any sense in the cold light of day anyway. Much like Gabrielle’s lyrics. And, by the way, it was the picture of the laydee on the front of the pillow packaging that seduced me into buying the memory foam pillow – there she is, stretching out in a blissful way, eyes shut, mouth curved in a gentle smile, obviously as comfy as an old slipper.


Great, I thought. That looks a bit more aesthetically pleasing than my usual dribbling dream state. But I still woke up with drool and a crick. And, obviously, my night wasn’t so silent, what with the sound of the black hole cracking open and the dogs talking drivel.


It must be so much simpler being a dog and knowing that the only dream you’re ever going to have is that one where you’re chasing rabbits and your paws twitch a lot. Or, in the case of one mutt I saw recently on YouTube, your paws twitch a lot then you leap up and run into a wall. Sleeprunning – that’s something I’m never likely to suffer from. And I’m now wondering whether rabbits dream of being chased by dogs or do they just dream of grazing peacefully on grassy downland. And then wake up and go to graze peacefully on grassy downland? They won’t be troubled by dreams of aliens, I’m sure (as Philip K Dick obviously was when he posed the question: Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? in his 1968 sci-fi novel). Or being trapped in a huge mansion with many tiny corridors that go nowhere or end up on a cliff edge. Yes. I probably need help…


But why do dreams seem so logical while you’re actually dreaming them? Theories abound, of course, and I once studied Freud’s thoughts on the matter in The Interpretation Of Dreams. Much as I’m a fan of the good doctor (for Heaven’s sake, he prescribed cocaine for his patients!), I can’t be arsed to go into detail here (for which read, ‘can’t remember’). Suffice it to say, it wouldn’t have been a good idea to tell him you’d been dreaming about trains and tunnels. Or flying. Or toothache. He’d no doubt have had a field day with my mansion.


I’ve always fancied being able to dream to order – you know, like the inhabitants of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. How great would that be? Dystopia? I think not! Dose me up on Soma and I’d be a happy bunny. Not the kind that was about to be chased through its dreams by dogs, mind.


The best dreams are always the ones you can’t get back into. The number of times I’ve woken just at the wrong moment in a fabulous dream only to fall asleep again and end up dreaming of mansions. But if I wake up from a nightmare I’ll be straight back in it again when I drift back off. Bah!


I’m hoping the memory foam pillow will come into its own next time I dream I’m rich and famous with a yacht, a string of racehorses, an Alpha Spider and a mansion… uh oh! Maybe not.