Building bridges

I had a series of stress/angst dreams last night, triggered by being forced to do stuff for a dealer who I had vowed never to work for again, about 30 years ago. He finds it very difficult to tell the straight truth and even more difficult to part with money. He reminds me of my late brother in more ways than one.

In the first dream, I found myself back at my childhood home, peering through the kitchen window at my parents, who were seated at the table doing their accounts. This is something they did do on a weekly basis when they were alive and still struggling to keep up the huge house on a small income. In the dream, I gave up the idea of asking for a loan and just paid them a visit for its own sake. In reality, my brother had cleaned them out years ago.

My mother was very pleased to see me and did not seem to understand that the reason I had not visited sooner was because she has been dead for many years. I did not have the heart to use this as an excuse.

In the next dream I was seated with many friends in an outside restaurant such as those found in Rome, and the courtyard of the place was hard up against one side of a very ornately carved stone bridge which towered over us by about 50 feet.

I noticed the very open and loose joints in the stonework and gently pushed at the nearest large block, which moved a shifted very easily, rocking on its own bed. I told my friends that we should not be sitting under this bridge because it was dangerously unstable. They took no notice of me.

I left the table and went out into the street to safety. Just as I did, the whole bridge came down on my friends with a huge crash and clouds of dust.

Looking back at the courtyard I saw that all of them had been buried under tons of fallen masonry. I took my phone out and tried to call the emergency services but - as always in these dreams - my phone didn't work. I went from place to place trying to borrow phones, but none of them worked either.

This morning I hear that the collapsed bridge in Genoa which killed 42 people a couple of years ago has been replaced with a modern structure designed by the same man who created The Shard in London. Funny things, dreams.