The Pure Life of Dreams

September 14, 2025September 15, 2025

A Party for High School Girls and Boys, a Bath and a Boat

The party for high school girls and boys was up some stairs in a hall on the island but when we arrived there we were already late; somebody had hung a wooden sign from the lintel ‘No Boys’ with an ‘X’ underneath. Presumably girls were still allowed and they were trying to stick to a quota.

August 29, 2025August 29, 2025

Driftwood People on Vacation in Indonesia

Elaine and I are on vacation in Indonesia and we are looking for a place on the beach but it is quite crowded. We find a place amongst some rocks where we can put our beach towels. The rocks are a pink hue and have been smoothed down by the ages so that they are fine for lying on. Their curves conform, closely enough with our bodies.

Elaine and I step out towards the waters edge. I walk on into the ocean. The sky is bright with the sun, and I find a low tide area where I can sit. In front of me are some black volcanic rocks, boulders piled up, that jut out of the water.

‘Are you ok swimming near the rocks,’ says a boy from the beach.

But I am okay. I know that the boulders may surround me where I am sitting but the biggest pile is further out to sea, maybe twenty meters away. They are not threatening despite their dark craggy look. I feel the rocks against my thighs where I sit.

Then I go back to shore.

‘It’s too crowded where we are,’ I say to Elaine. ‘Let’s go over there,’ and I point to another less rocky area where the beach does not have sunbathers.

I walk on ahead while Elaine goes to get us coffee. When I get to the area I realize that the old cove is under a huge barn which has wooden beams that are rotten with age. The sun projects through the holes of the barn onto the sand.

Then the sun disappears behind some clouds so the sand is no longer brightly lit. I step through the rocky path up into the main area of the barn further along the cove.

The barn I has an extremely high ceiling, perhaps three storeys high. Wooden trestle tables are scattered on the sand, along the cove. I find a table to sit at.

The sun comes through the holes of the ceiling’s rickety old beams. The beams remind me of driftwood. It is an ideal spot I think. And just I just beginning to wonder whether Elaine will find me when she arrives, balancing two coffees in shallow glass bowls. Each bowl has two or three coffee beans floating in it.

I take one of the coffees and as we sit a local man comes up with a large glass bowl of coffee ice cream.

‘Oh, I forgot I ordered that.’ Elaine nods at the man. Elaine and Dad settle next to the old wooden table in reclining chairs and face each other while we eat our ice cream and drink our coffee.

The sun shifts through the beams at us and I look up to make sure it will not go away.

I feel something clawing, or pawing my left shin. It’s Elaine’s ex-husband, Aaron. He sits next to Elaine but he’s playing footsy with me under the table.

‘Stop it you twat,’ I tell him.

Main photo of driftwood on an Indonesian beach via PickPik.
Photo of boys larking about on another beach in Indonesia also via PickPik.

May 26, 2025June 24, 2025

Jwee is having a Baby

Jwee and I are lying naked in a white room, our limbs enfolded. There is a soft pale lighting emanating from the window. On Jwee’s right arm is a line tattoo of two overlapping crosses, one cross red and upside down next to the black one.

As we caress each other I write this sentence down using a large ivory-coloured ballpoint pen. The tip of my pen is the size of a roller ball deodorant but the words come out clearly in black ink on the page, though the sentences are written in a disconnected form, written wherever there is space on a parchment which I have placed along the arm of our chaise long.

No matter, because as a whole the sentences will paint the full picture.

Jwee looks up at me, her perfect tan round face in mine. Her beautiful smile with her trademark blue wire rim braces is more radiant than ever.

‘I will have the baby,’ she says. She is talking about Zach’s baby. This Zach is not Leif’s son as introduced in previous dreams. This new Zach is Jwee’s unfaithful and crotchety Western lover living in Bangkok.

I’d first met Jwee next to Twister’s in Nana Plaza six months ago. In that encounter Jwee told me that she wanted a second child, a sibling for her eleven year old daughter, but being already thirty six meant that her biological clock placed her on borrowed time. I tried to remain positive.

(One day, dear reader, I will publish the full story of beautiful Jwee, but for now the story will remain hidden on the other side of my parchment, waiting for the sequel to Flying with the Cormorants.)

‘You mean in England?’ I ask her.

‘Yes.’

It means that Jwee will come to England to have the baby, and Jwee and I will be able to carry on our affair after it is born. I can barely contain my joy. I hope that it means she will move from Thailand permanently, or that at least, we can spend a lot more time together while she’s in England.

We lie together in a cool jasmine shade, still and in silence, on the chaise long. Presumably the baby is Zach’s, not mine, but no matter.

Down the left side of the elongated parchment I write the next scene.

Jwee and I stand together waiting to board the airport people mover. Jwee is behind me. She’s wearing her white thigh length boots with her long wool grey dress. To my right is Zach and another bargirl who stands in front of him. To the right of them is a third couple waiting to get on.

We are waiting for the train doors to open, so that we can climb aboard. The doors are solid iron and painted a uniform beige.

Jwee takes my arm and swings my hand in hers. Her fingers feel soft and tender in mine. Zach does not seem to mind that I am pairing with Jwee, after all he has another woman for the night. He doesn’t know about Jwee and I. He doesn’t know that when Jwee comes to have the baby, Jwee and I will continue to have our affair.

I hope this dream means that Jwee is truly pregnant as she wanted.
Photo by Mark Fischer via Flickr.

October 3, 2024June 9, 2025

True Face of Thai Dancer is Reflected in the Books

Now I have my tickets I head towards the big top tent of the circus. The tent has a maroon covered canvas and in one corner and on a platform there is a group of Thai dancers in long maroon tunics, colors matching the tent. There are both boys and girls there and they dance in a steadily rotating circle and wave their arms above their heads.

The platform is surrounded by a red and brown painted picket fence which protects them from falling and a ladder leads up to their platform. At the top of the ladder two stacks of hardback books guard the entrance either side.

I am standing on a separate platform the same height as them but a few yards away, and decide to take a picture.

I step down to ground level and walk over to the ladder going up to their platform and from the bottom, I hold up my iPhone and aim it between the two stacks of books.

The face of a Thai dancer comes into view in the entrance as she circles the platform and though my iPhone is almost out of charge I take the picture and it captures the partial profile of the dancer’s face between the books.

Another woman with same maroon tunic sees me capturing the picturing.

“Hey!” she calls out accusingly as I look down at the picture on my camera.

I need to escape to the canteen.

Although only the front of the dancer’s face and her nose was visible through the entrance (her hair and the back of her head being hidden behind the left hand column of books), and although the ledge of the platform hid her body, her face is visible in its entirety, visible square on, in the reflection from the books.

Her face is lit in a silvery light. It is flat and slightly square and is framed with short straight black hair. It’s as if the books were acting as a mirror.

I am standing at the doorway leading into the food hall when the woman who called me out catches up with me.

I show her the photo, show her dancer’s face fully visible in the reflection from the books and the woman holds up her phone.

“Air transfer it!” She says but my phone’s battery charge shows red.

The woman is taller than the dancer whose photo I took and I suspect she is the leader of the group.

I hold the phone up and at first the transfer will not go through. I check my bluetooth and try again.

But this time the woman brings her phone flat against mine so that they are face to face and touching. This time the photo transfers.

The woman turns away from the doorway and the food hall tables and calls back to the dancers, “Hey, I got a picture from Bethesda!”

Did I reflect the real picture of Anyamanee in my story about her?
Blossom photo by Brett Sayles via Pexels, saturated for effect.
Thai dancer photo by Neo Siam via Pexels.

May 17, 2024July 26, 2025

The Pain of Things Left Unsaid

It was my last day in Hong Kong and I hadn’t had the chance to say goodbye to Dee.

We’d only met up once during my visit and I was doing my final walk back up the shoreline path in Lamma. Lamma, with its narrow paths and hustling stalls on either side.

Hopefully I would see Dee on my way.

People, many people were pushing past me as I climbed the path. I knew not where else to go, though I knew that Dee’s house was somewhere off to the right at the end of the path, somewhere after the path split into two.

At the fork, the right turn followed the shore, the left went into the forest, but I reckoned I’d have to turn around before then, to head back to the pier. Any later and I would miss the ferry back to Central.

Further down the path I’d left one of the restaurants and was pushing past people up the hill when, as luck would have it, I saw Dee coming down towards me. She was with a girl.

Dee saw me as she approached. She was wearing a formal pale green frock with pleated skirt. Her hair was short bob blonde.

Once she was near I spoke, “I’m leaving Hong Kong today.”

Her friend carried on down the path to give us some space to talk.

“Oh,” Dee replied, and we hugged.

Her skin was pale, her shoulders rounded and plumper than I remembered, against the pale green straps of the dress.

We embraced and my face was close to her ear. I wanted to say, “I love you,” but her friend was still in earshot and I was afraid.

I thought I would say it just as we were parting, but before I could spit it out, suddenly Dee said goodbye and turned away.

Instead I continued up the hill, following the line of the shore, knowing that I’d missed the chance and that it was gone forever unless I double backed and caught up with her; unless I caught up to wherever she was going.

I was still kicking myself as I approached the fork.

The stalls either side of the path had thinned out.

A couple of lads were walking towards me and one of them made a joke about the other. I caught the joke and tittered as I passed them, and then the first one, the joker, said, “You think that’s funny?”

“No,” I replied, even though I thought it was. Yes, I’d got the joke even though I hoped he hadn’t realized it.

His friend squared up to me and began to push me, and so did the joker. So I pushed the friend backwards until he stumbled and fell hard onto the path.

The joker was harder to deal with, and only when I pushed him against the low cut wall that separated the shore from the path did he fall. He fell over the wall onto the pebbly beach below, and when I looked over the wall to make sure he was OK, all I could see was that he was riled up.

The joker stormed back up the stairs to the path and squared up to me again.

His friend was still lying groggy on the path.

This time I used the joker’s momentum. He ran at me and instead of pushing him away I deflected his force and projected him over the wall good and proper.

By this time the joker’s friend was coming to – just as the joker fell head first over the wall. The joker’s arms and legs were splayed apart as he landed.

I wasn’t afraid of his friend – instead his friend looked over the wall at the joker with me, but the joker looked like he was out cold this time. He looked unlikely to get up any time soon.

Photo by Judy Gallagher via Flickr.