I Dream Of Hamsters

I dreamed that I was going to have to share my living quarters with hamsters. They seemed very large to me at first, but that was I realised because I was VERY CLOSE UP. Do you ever dream in close up? I sometimes do.

[I wonder how much films have shaped our dreams. I remember that when I was young with a black and white TV, I dreamed in black and white. I can distinctly remember my first “colour” dream.]

As I was calmly, unrealistically considering a life alongside dozens of caged hamsters, I turned around and said to whoever [someone with whom I was intimately connected. I can’t recall who they were – it was my significant other, a friend or some close family member]

“Thank God I like hamsters.”

In that dream-like not-quite corpereal way in which you THINK the words and without jaw movement, the words seemed to resonate in the space… in the room I was in, which was a biggish Edwardian house… full of cages… they were heard by the people I was with – although it was not exactly EARS that were hearing, me being asleep, it was more a sense of minds, hearts… a sense of other personalities which exist outside of waking consciousness being with me… it was a very dreamlike dream, if you know what I mean…

I can’t say that I really do like hamsters, though I possibly could put up with them if I had to. I used to have a pet hamster called Keirkegaard when I was twelve years old. Don’t get me wrong though, I can’t say I was blessed with the most classical education – I learned about Keirkegaard from Monty Python records.

From the same Cambridge Footlights-style sketch I also learned a drinking song about philosophers which has the final couplet,

I think it was written by Eric Idle, the lovely Rutle.

Can you see the resemblance?