poor bridge...

i had a very involved dream last night but i only remember the very last bit before i woke up. i was traveling, maybe driving, moving somehow, going somewhere (i'm not sure where) when i was suddenly in what looked like a park. i think i was on foot, but i can't remember. i was in the woods and there was an asphalt path and some parked cars in a little parking lot, and the sun was shining. as i turned toward what i thought was a lake it became a river, and on the river was the burned out husk of the end of a bridge. it kind of looked like it had been bleeding. and it was, er, the ben franklin bridge. except it was much too small, and i actually cannot call to mind what the real ben franklin bridge looks like.

i think i've been listening to too many traffic reports on public radio.

I hate cattle.

Scotland is sinking into the sea and there's a big problem with stupid Aberdeen Angus cattle (the mammoth-like variety with great shawls of long, filthy red coats) wandering down hillsides, foundering among the ice floes (?) and drowning.

Me and my mother are volunteers helping out and making efforts to wade in up to our chests and wrestle the idiot, panicking creatures back towards land as they float and thrash, driving themselves further out towards the encroaching sea. It is utterly thankless work and the cattle, of which there are around four, stink to high heaven.

Unfortunately, among our wards is a massive bull, and as soon as we drag his head around towards the grassy bank where he fell in and co-erce him back onto terra firma, he starts getting a bit shirty. In a few minutes, Mum and I are having to take evasive action. This builds to a point where, at the crest of the hill, I am transfixed before a charging, screaming bull and mentally I project profile and bull-time views of exactly what ugly pjysical wounds are going to happen to my head when his head makes contact with it.

This leads me to rapidly consider what objects I could place between the bull and myself, and how good for protection they'd be:

• A vinyl record held out at arm's length


• My hand


• A halberd


• My boxer shorts, which are red


• A breezeblock hurled between the eyes


• A small house

Of course, this proves so fascinating that I become quite absorbed, and the bull, the hillside, the other stupid bloody cattle, and my mother -- all being figments of my warped little imagination -- disappear instantly.

I've never been to a rocket launch -- there have been few enough in my lifetime -- but I seem to remember that at NASA's main Houston site, you spectate from across a bay.

This is not Houston, I realise. For one thing, it's snowing. The beach where I sit on a piano bench -- at a baby grand piano, reasonably enough -- is covered by a goodly amount of snowfall. The other reason would be that the rocket, which I can see from my perch, is at least a kilometre out to sea, on a large floating fortress. The sun has sunk below the horizon and a bright, cold moon picks out the waves that break against its sides.

The piano starts playing by itself: a plaintive melody in sixths. On reflection, it's actually playing "Diving Station" by the Boards of Canada. This makes for a pleasant sound against the shushing waves, and everything is quite chilled for a few minutes. I lapse into admiring the moonlight on the rocket's curves, and the gleaming gyroscopes which skate up and down some of the bass strings on the piano, whirring insistently.

Then the rocket launches.

The floating fortress and the waves between it and the shore are silently engulfed in a spreading field of fiery gas. In the moonlight it looks quite unreal. As the rocket crawls hungrily into the night sky, seeming to move far too slowly for its mass, the flames actually reach the shoreline before me as they finally dissipate.

Of course, the rocket does finally disappear into the starry heavens above, and the fortress becomes visible through the smoke and steam that now hangs above the bay in thick gouts. It diffuses moonlight across the coastline, and since the piano has now closed its lid and locked its keyboard, the eerie light makes it far easier to stand up and walk homewards.