Purple flower pots and other weird and wonderful things

I’ve had the flu for well over a week. This may explain why I am not my normal alert (hmm) self. I sincerely hope it explains why my nights have been haunted by dreams of purple flower pots! For three nights running I’ve been dreaming of huge purple flower pots, so heavy they’re almost impossible to move, so purple they look like Fiorentina flags. (For those not in the know, Fiorentina is an Italian football team)

Somehow, my dream is a treasure hunt. If I find the flower pot, I will achieve riches, new car, success at work. If I don’t… oh dear, oh dear, the salt mine beckons. And yes, it is a salt mine, complete with a mummified Celt in tattered tartan togs. (Now that makes me want to share that particular story with you, but now doesn’t seem the right time, except to tell you the story proves people were into tartan patterns ages ago, like when we first domesticated the sheep.) While we’re at it, we could discuss men in kilts. What is about hairy shins and tartan skirts that makes so many women sort of lose their poise, a somewhat drooling expression pasted across their features? Well, neither here nor there, and the mummy in the salt mine was more draped in a blanket than decorated by a kilt, so this skirt thing is a relatively modern use of glorious tartan patterns. Have I digressed? My brain nods frantically, waving a WANTED poster featuring a … oh, God, a murderous huge purple flower pot.

Needless to say, I never find the dratted flower pot. My dreams have me careening from Stockholm to Salt lake City to Caernarvon – and everywhere I look for this over-sized purple thingy, nowhere do I find it. I’m sort of close in Caernarvon; I think it’s the proximity to an important historical site (Prince of Wales thing; this is where that particular title for the heir of the British throne was born) that sort of has the purple in the pot wanting to reveal itself – you know, royal blood calling to royal colours. And why, one might wonder, is purple considered a royal colour? I myself prefer blue – or rich red. In my sleep my brain does it’s own little thing, presenting me with an in-depth analysis as to the colour purple. In ancient times the purple dye was a disgustingly expensive luxury, made from some gland or other in a shellfish. Therein lies the root to expressions like “born to the purple” or “Imperial purple”. (Why do I know this? When did I learn it? My brain sort of chuckles, telling me it knows much much more than I think it does. Not sure if that’s a relief.)

My dream drops me into the sea, and I’m thinking (I am very rational in my dream) that boy is this a stupid place to look for a flower pot, no matter how big it is, because the ocean is more or less endless, and what am I supposed to do? Crawl across the Atlantic while searching the bottom? As I approach the Atlantic ridge I get distracted, because now I am suddenly dreaming about Atlantis. Not that I think Atlantis ever existed in the mid-Atlantic. No, I firmly believe Atlantis was situated on an island in the Greek archipelago (So why the name, protests my fever addled brain. Why call something Atlantis when it’s stuck in the Mediterranean? Good point, but I am incapable of dissecting this further. Flower pots beckon…)

There is a drop in temperature. Ice floats by me, huge chunks of – help! – purple ice. I worry there might be polar bears and swim even faster. I am approaching Newfoundland, breast-stroking through the waters where the Titanic sank. Oh dear; in my dream I pull up my feet, uncomfortable with swimming in what effectively is a graveyard. More ice, masses of ice, and in one of those ice blocks I see the flower pot, sort of grinning at me as it flows by, dragged along by the Gulf Stream towards Greenland.

Halfway through one dream sequence I notice I’m speaking Latin. Now that is weird, I know for a fact that I don’t know Latin – well, beyond the odd useful quote or so. Probably hypothermia, what with all this ice. My dream takes off into a tangential exploration of language, and my flower pot quest takes a distant second place to a very interesting debate re subconscious language skills. I dream trilingually most of the time, but that’s because I AM trilingual. Now and then I wake up convinced I’ve just had a long conversation with Homer in Ancient Greek (I wish; besides, it isn’t Homer I want to talk to, it’s Leonidas, King of Spartans, although I suspect we’d have major issues, he and I, as his view on women would probably have been very…err…old-fashioned? Misogynist? And did the Spartans speak Ancient Greek? Yes, my dream decides, they most certainly did) but mostly I dream in languages I know. Well, except for the present Latin. Hic jacet flower potus… Hmm. Nope, no flower pot here either, and WHAT’S WITH THIS DRATTED FLOWER POT  ANYWAY?

For three days I’ve woken exhausted – and even more disconcertingly, I remember my dreams, making me worry that this is some sort of augury. I have no idea  what an insistent flower pot might mean; should I buy new orchids? Is this my brain happily looking forward to spring and Easter? You know, yellow daffodils in a purple pot would look quite fetching, wouldn’t it? Having said that, I’ve never seen a purple flower pot. A quick google indicates this is more due to me never having SEEN them than to them not existing. Phew. Somehow the fact that they exist makes me relax. It also makes me consider that maybe there are a lot of other things out there that exist despite me never having seen them. Like dragons for example. I wouldn’t mind finding out that dragons were real. But there are a lot of other things I prefer keeping relegated to the realm of make believe. Like werewolves  and vampires and things that are slimy and big and go thump in the night.

I have defined a strategy to handle my flower pot dream. I shall simply go out and buy one, and should the darn dream return I’ll just grab hold of the pot  and shake it at my subconscious. Seems like a very sane thing to do. Did I mention I’ve just had the flu? I wonder if I might still be running a fever….