Two fragments

Two fragments of dreams from last night, illustrative, I think, of two of the ways in which such things are constructed.

The first was a dream set in break in a car journey at Cartgate Services on the A303 (of reference 1). During this break, I became very concerned about the need to get on with the journey, to catch the 1726. With catching the 1726 being a real enough incident, taken from my trip of yesterday to London, but being a train, quite inappropriate to a car journey. Anxiety about making a time fair enough, but bringing in a train, no. It was as if the sleeping brain is a bit careless about assembling ingredients from memory when it is making the new story that is a dream. If one or two of the features seem to fit, wheel it in, without bothering to check the fit of the others. Without bothering to adapt the ingredient to fit its new home.

The second was a dream set, roughly speaking anyway, from my time in CCTA (central computer and telecommunications agency, then part of the Treasury) but drawing on a contractor (aka consultant) from my time at the Home Office, a contractor who had managed to carve out a very lucrative nest for himself and his employer. A contractor who was now making a very poor fist of chairing a meeting of around twenty people at CCTA. One of those meetings with a tendency to degenerate into a shifting population of sub-meetings and more or less irrelevant conversations. With the dream nicely improving my own role, with my being able to deftly insert a bit of direction into the meeting without ruffling the chairman's feathers. And concluding with my offering to write the note of the meeting, something that he was far too busy and important to bother with, but which would leave me free to decide what was decided.

A very important role, as those familiar with the workings of meetings and committees will allow.

From which I now associate to the word 'secretary', once the person who captured the private thoughts and deeds of his or her master, then the public deeds, then the shift of power from master to servant, all too necessary in an increasingly complicated world. From which I further associated to the leadership role of general secretaries in trade unions and soviet unions. Or of permanent secretaries in governments. Or of Samuel Pepys, whose springboard to power was his humble role as Clerk of the Acts. To the way that the written word trumps the spoken word.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/the-stones-of-cartgate.html.