12:56 
RB
11:13
More bad dreams last night. Things are pretty bad all round. Did I mention the fact that I can feel the pain even in my dreams now? No? That must have been somewhere else. Gym yesterday was hard, very hard. I really didn't want to go. The weather was atrocious and I didn't want to cycle over there, and once I was there I really didn't have much motivation to do the workout. But do it I did, because I really have to.
I'm just exhausted now. We both are. Frood is even pissed off with Oddbins to the point of mentioning getting his CV out, if only because it really ought to be updated anyway. I'm very frightened that he'll leave his job before I've found something to see us through any bad patches. Oddbins used to be a really good company to work for, back in the days of "old Oddbins", when the loyalty shown by staff to the company was reciprocated by the company to the staff. I remember when someone in Frood's shop was attacked by a robber. The guy sprayed him in the face with hairspray - but our man didn't know it was hairspray, thought it was mace or something and was badly frightened. The company gave him a bottle of a fairly decent champagne as a thankyou. That was old Oddbins. I don't imagine it would happen like that these days. It's a real shame, because the people who work on the shop floor are still the same cool people as they always were, but the company is treating them like shit instead of a valuable commodity. After all, the people on the shop floor are what bring people back to their local Oddbins again and again and again.
Bastards.
Last night's dream was another post-holocaust thing. I was blind, or at least I couldn't see as other people see to the point where I was considered disabled, and was in some sort of research station or habitat in a very cold place. Most of it was dig out of the ice. There were mountains and crevasses and ice cracks all around. There was also a big polar bear threat. People were starving, and had this dream of getting to a semi-mythical place down river where things were warmer and there was food that grew.
The plan was to send two people down river on this little fibreglass boat, the only boat they had, to get help. Obviously, as a blind person, I wasn't chosen, but then we were attacked by a polar bear. We weren't allowed to kill it, although we could use tranquilliser darts on it, even though it was attacking and killing us. I don't know why we weren't allowed to kill it. We actually had to take care of it while it was tranquillised. The polar bear attacked everyone, I was the only one who escaped. There was blood everywhere on the ice. One of the others, fast losing consciousness on the floor, told me to go. I didn't want to leave her, and was going to take her with me, but as I reached for the boat the rope frayed away into nothing, having been chewed by a bear, and I fell in. The river was fast and it whisked me away before I could do anything. The ride was terrifying. If I fell in the water I would have died in a matter of moments from exposure to the cold. There were sheer ice walls either side of the river, which rushed down in a turbulent, rocky stream. The boat was small and fragile, and was knocked from side to side between these ice cliffs. I was sure I was going to die. The ice was so thick it looked blue where it met the water. The water itself seemed dark, murky green.
I lost consciousness after a while. When I came to the river was calmer and slower. I could see colours other than white and white-blue. I could see, ahead, trees and a building that looked like some sort of villa. It had red tiles on the roof and a courtyard. There were lemon trees growing outside it. It was very like a dream. The warmth was almost a physical barrier, as if the temperature changed really suddenly in a solid boundary around this place.
I passed out again. When I came to I had been retrieved from the boat and was lying in/on a bed/sofa thing in what I presumed was the villa. There was a bowl of fruit on the table next to me. It had an orange in it and I hadn't seen fresh food other than meat in such a long time. I had memories of surviving in harsh arctic conditions for months, maybe even years, with the people who had been with me slowly dying of exposure, or exhaustion or malnutrition.
The people there were very nice, and had some sort of ecologically sound co-operative community. They were competent, knew what they were doing, but they hadn't counted on me being followed down there by the polar bear who had attacked my people. These bears weren't like the bears we have here, they were far more intelligent, and ever so angry. They were angry with us for something, and I think one of the reasons we couldn't kill them was because they were right to be angry.
I'm not sure what happened after that. The pain started waking me up and the memories get very confusing.
The pain really is very bad right now. I've been vomiting with it again. Plus ça change, neh?
Monday, February 26, 2001