Tag: home

The strangest things come to you when you are unwell. I do tend to compartmentalize sections in my life, sometimes without even realising that I have done so. But there are times when I don’t want to and somehow my subconscious tends to do it for me.

I often have a recurring dream about a particular place, where I own a flat, which is rarely used, but I don’t actually, nor have I ever owned. Bizarrely I tried to buy the flat I did live in many years ago, but was it did not go through and I moved on. With this particular place though I am always opening it up after a period of time and realising that this was indeed a nice place and I should spend more time there, but never seem to do so, I remember that it would have been a great party flat. I have never been a great party goer, or indeed held such an event but I can recall having a party there in one dream, it was filled with people dancing around, loud music, but everyone was just having a great time, with no stresses.

It is as though over time the dreams are building into a story, a section to which I return from time to time, filled with things from the past. Good and bad, little reminders, but also the promise of something new and exciting. I am sure a dream team would have something to dissect with this.

The flat occupies a corner of the block in which I used to live, on a high street when I first met my partner. Years ago, when I was a child, there was a haberdashery there on the corner, called Pollards, they had been there for 100 years and the shop had all the original wooden fittings and display cases. I was devastated when they sold up and the new owners ripped the guts out of the building and threw out the fittings onto the street. It was before the days when reclamation became popular, but these days there would have been a small fortune sitting there. They also sold school uniform, so I guess were an outfitter too, and occupied two floors of the building, but there were offices or flats to the rear too.

I always wanted to take this building and make it into something lovely, again I think I have a hidden architect within me. As I will often pass a building and then imagine turning it into a home. There is another building that since I was a teenager, I have wanted to transform into a great flat, or apartment since it lends itself beautifully to loft style living, It also has a rather nice double story flat adjoining it right on the corner of the road, owned by the Blockbuster video chain, before it went into liquidation. But boy, do I have plans for that part of the building.

Again, my mind is flitting from the property in my dream. I once had quite a strange dream about it, which strangely, I can still recall many years later. It involved rooms which were unused and contained various old Victorian style beds and blankets and the back stair leading up to it was rather grotty. It was a bit like a mixture of the flat where I had lived down the road, where passing the other doorways, the walls were so thin you could hear the conversation. In the dream you could hear babies crying and other signs of life, coming from the rooms, but I found the dream disturbing and did not venture into the rooms, at one time there was a baby cot, but no baby, as though it was supposed to but hadn’t arrived. I found it disturbing when I dreamt it and put to the back of my mind. It made me sad so I thought I had blocked it out, but again the memory has returned. Strangely, when I lived down the road, I had a baby pram, which someone had donated to the charity shop downstairs, I kept it because things like that were expensive and one day I might need one, like the bottom drawer which people used to have in olden days, where they saved things for their wedding, I had one for the baby. I would have donated it to a friend, but no-one at that time needed it. After a while, my partner suggested that someone else might find a use for it and we donated it to a local sanctuary for ladies who had to leave without anything, they got quite a selection from me. Thankfully it was also a turning point for that strange behaviour and I stopped collecting baby things. I think that was when the reality finally dawned that it simply wasn’t to be.

The rooms at the back somehow seemed as though they were not connected to mine and it was almost as though I had snuck in to a place I did not belong. Like the belongings I had left there were now somehow no longer mine but I wanted to return and get them and yet, they had not actually been taken away from me. It seems as though it is some kind of secret place, I would creep into the building where I return to from time to time, it contained things from childhood, a treasured thing, or a favourite outfit. Perhaps it is a metaphor somewhere in there to which I may delve to find out more at some point. There was a neighbour who would try and catch you coming up the stairs, although I am sure that she lived at a later place, but to avoid her I became adept at coming and going quietly. I once visited there and was trying to get my clothes back as though someone had taken them in lieu of something, perhaps like unpaid rent. At that dream I never thought that I would return to the place, but I can remember parts of that dream now, several years later and also whenever I dream again of the place.

I do not ever recall sleeping there. For some reason the entrance arrived straight into the kitchen via a staircase up the side street. Off the hallway near the bedrooms, there is a bathroom, towards the back of the building. The rooms are really plain and old fashioned, barely used and in a bit of a state. Which always makes me wonder why I return to the place and why I seem to love the flat. The lounge area really sells the place. The Kitchen and Living area is huge open plan. It has enormous huge windows, which had window seats underneath them where you could sit overlooking the street below, up one end, right on the corner of the building, there was a window or double balcony doors, which you could open and see a glimpse of the sea, past the bank and down the street opposite. The space is phenomenal full of light and has character, it was never meant as a flat and is about twice the size of the others in the neighbourhood at least.

Last night when I visited with my sister, we walked in, I opened up the shutters from across the windows to let the evening light of a busy high street in. It must have been hot, since I opened an industrial fridge- freezer, rather like the kind you would find in a newsagents to get her an ice cream. I looked around the corner of the kitchen area over the breakfast bar to continue our conversation. I was showing her around the place, although she had not been there before. She was immediately feeling at home, perched in the window on the window seat as I had done so many times, looking at the lights. She was going to stay there, I think just like that, we turned up and within minutes it felt homely again. Dusty and unused since God knows when , but we sat there with just those high street lights, didn’t put the real ones on inside and just talked, whilst eating ice cream on a summer evening.

That is the thing that always seems strange, when ever I visit there, there is always some kind of thing in the fridge, although last time I did have to go to the shop for some milk as I had visitors coming.
I don’t remember the conversation we were having but it was although we were preparing for yet another party in the place.

Last time I went past the building itself, it had changed hands once again, it had been turned into a coffee house, I’m not sure if they had put the upstairs balcony doors in for me yet. But it doesn’t retain any of the original features that I could remember. It seems that the flat on the corner has changed beyond recognition. Perhaps the metaphor is staring me right in the face, maybe my subconscious will no longer send me there in my dreams now. That is a place I don’t need anymore.