This series of stories will be titled 'I'm surprised I turned out as well as I did, given my childhood ...' 28

There was something about the house we lived in at 181 Primrose Hill.

Yes, it was old and in need of repair, the stairs were steep and there was no indoor bathroom – hardly ideal for a young and growing family.

There was something else though…

I used to have recurring dreams in that house. I don’t recall having the same dreams once we moved, and I certainly didn’t suffer with the same dreams coming to plague my sleep night after night.

Maybe it was just my young brain trying to make sense of the world, or maybe it was something else?

The first dream has been written about on my blog, here on Steemit, so I’ll gloss over that one.

I dreamed I was sliding down the steep stairs at around bannister height. I always felt safe and the dream ended at the bottom of the stairs, before I ‘landed’.

It turns out, my mother had a tumble when she was pregnant with me and she slid down the same stairs. My position in her tummy would have been the same position in my dream as I ‘slid’ down the stairs.

That kinda freaked her out when she found out about it. Hardly surprising…

The next dream I used to get on a regular basis was about the ‘biscuit people’ (cookies).

I’m afraid I can only remember the horror I felt when that dream took hold of my subconscious. I cannot remember what they used to do, only that from one angle, the ‘biscuit people’ looked like stick-figures and from the other side they were huge, bloated creatures.

The stick-figures strolled about, swinging their arms and then, once they saw me, they turned towards me and rather than being agile, swinging their arms, they waddled. Their arms were massive and bloated and their hands terrified me. Fat, bloated, textured fingers, too large to fit side-by-side on their hands, it made their hands seem twisted and deformed.

To a toddler (me) it was terrifying but I can’t explain why. I never could.

The next dream I used to have was about a log cabin.

Every summer, we went to my aunt’s caravan (trailer) at Skegness. We never went in a log cabin, so I have no idea where that dream came from.

There was a wolf trying to get into the cabin and I had been naughty, so everyone had gone out, leaving me behind as punishment.

This is the exact ‘wolf’ in my dream. A cartoon character from ‘The Topper’ comic.

I remember I was wearing my favourite navy blue velvet dress with a matching satin bow tied at the back.

All around the log cabin, there were flower beds with red and yellow tulips growing. There were chickens too… I’m not sure how they fitted into it, but I remember white chickens with red combs. (Looking back, it must have been the cartoon chickens).

The wolf kept trying to get in and I would dash from one window to the next to see where he was and what he was up to.

Then the cabin would catch fire.

I was trapped inside the cabin with no way of getting out and even if I did get out, there was a wolf waiting to get me.

The wolf then got a watering can – a red one, it was always red – and proceeded to water the tulips around the cabin. He deliberately ignored me bashing on the windows as the fire raged around me. He ignored the chickens and they ignored the fire.

I don’t know how that dream used to end.

One day, visiting my grandad (father’s parents) one of my uncles brought his brother along to visit. His brother was mentally disabled. (Please forgive me, I was no older than three or four and I cannot remember the term for his disability, all I remember is that I was wary of him and he sometimes frightened me).

I was outside in the garden – usually a safe place for me as the garden was entirely enclosed. Between me and the house was my uncle’s brother and I daren’t go past him to get to the house.

He picked up a watering can (a red watering can like my dream) and he tipped it up over me, soaking me to the skin. I’m not sure if there was any additives in that water… perhaps weed killer for the paths.

I screamed the place down and everyone came running.

They found me in absolute hysterics and my uncle’s brother in distress, holding the red watering can. He said he didn’t know there was any water in it and he was playing, pretending to tip it over me.

They couldn’t get any sense out of me, which is hardly surprising.

The thing is, the dream about being locked inside a burning cabin came ‘true’ in that the ‘wolf’ had the red watering can and I was stuck between a rock and a hard place.

I wanted to get out of the garden (where there were red and yellow tulips) and into the house – to the safety of my adults who would protect me. Who was standing between me and safety was my uncle’s brother (the wolf in my dream).

I was wearing the same dress as in my dream and he was using the same watering can. The similarities of my dream and my situation are not easy to explain almost half a century on, I’m afraid.

I don’t know why I was always scared of my uncle’s brother, I don’t believe he ever harmed me – or at least not deliberately.

I think the feeling of panic the dream induced in me, combined with the situation being exactly the same (without the log cabin, the fire and the chickens…) must have triggered a panic in my young mind and I had no way of explaining it to the adults and certainly no way of dealing with it.

As I think back, the explanation of weed killer in the watering can could explain the burning, if there were any additives, it would have felt like burning… or am I just trying to make sense of something I’ve not thought about in years?

Who knows?