Long life | 19 January 2017

I am very bad at remembering my dreams: I would have been a poor patient for Dr Freud. But I know that as a little boy most of my dreams were rather frightening, even if I can’t recall them in detail. An oft-repeated dream involved a monstrous apparition that would rush down from the sky into my bedroom and be about to attack me or gobble me up, when I would suddenly leap awake, much relieved that nothing unpleasant had happened. I can’t describe what the monster looked like, except that it was amorphous and not human. Occasionally the dressing-gown hanging from my door would suddenly transform itself into its hideous form and rush at me from across the bedroom. Then, too, I would wake up in time to save myself.

The other kind of dream I had as a child was of an opposite kind and would credit me with some great achievement. I would dream that I had written a verse of poetry unequalled in beauty and wisdom anywhere in literature, but would wake up without remembering any bit of it. On one occasion, however, I did recall something of the kind. I dreamt that I had written the most beautiful tune in all of music; but, unlike Sir Arthur Sullivan’s ‘The Lost Chord’, some of it remained in the mind even when I woke. The only problem was that it was a very feeble tune that I remembered, a tune that was similar to that of the national anthem, but not even as good as that. Waking up on these occasions was less a relief than a disappointment.