A different past

I was living in a large house in spacious grounds. Early one morning I went out for my run, as is my want, and noticed a girl from the community carrying a wide basket and picking up litter, a task I complemented her about. We walked together and soon joined another community member on his morning walk. Initially the path we took was well known to me, one I often ran barefoot. And so on leaving the property we turned left onto the main road and then after a while turned right onto a side road. I found I was seeing stuff around me that, when running, I had not noticed. Soon we turned right onto a stony track that, hitherto, I had avoided as a barefoot runner. The track I supposed ran parallel to the main road but continued for several miles before looping back to where it started.

A few days later the experience was repeated but without turning onto the stony track. I thought I ought to have known the road so was surprised to find a stretch of water on my right terminated by an old mill building where a few men were up to their thighs harvesting some sort of vegetable that grew in the water. They each had a large-brimmed hat and these and what old-looking clothes they wore were the same dull green colour as the building behind them. They told us what it was they were collecting - it sounded something like mangroves or mongoose. I thought I would help them from the side but accidentally slipped into the water where I was greeted as if I were one of them. After some merriment I decided we should return as I was getting cold.

When eventually we got back home, all had changed. The road our home was on was now only a narrow, flower strewn path between cottages and I recognised from my childhood days a chapel on the right. I entered and found it familiar yet somewhat decrepit and predating the improvements and additions I had witnessed as a boy. We met an old church friend who, on hearing my story, suggested I should walk up the road to my house where I would meet my wife. Sure enough, on entering what I supposed had been my home, seated at the meal table were Ali and several others including known to me. One person I did not recognises introduced himself as my uncle.

It transpired that I had re-entered my existence on an alternative time-plane, one in which I existed together with my peers but in which our surroundings were perhaps 100 or more years historic. One in which this relation of mine had not died in childhood.

It was, of course, a dream. But such a prolonged dream. During it I woke twice to empty my bladder, returned to bed, thought I was taking an age to get back to sleep only to find myself immediately re-immersed in the dream. And such a vivid portrayal of landscapes, such detail and depth of colour, my eyes feasting on the scenery and able to almost zoom into areas of interest.

On waking I was made aware in an instant of a kaleidoscope of events in my life, things ranging where I have been so, so blessed to areas of abject failure and utter depression.