King Zog and the mystery of dreams

On Sunday night, I dreamt (amongst other things) that King Zog’s grandson was running a brewery a quarter of a mile from my house. Now this is the kind of thing you’d think I’d know, but it came as a complete surprise to me. Perhaps the fact that I was helping our church trumpeter to run a stall at the local school fair while chatting to Steve the mechanic and wondering why someone had graffitied “paint your barge boards” on our neighbour’s house had something to do with it.

The last time I had a dream that clear and specific was about 20 years ago when I dreamed an entire episode of “The Bill”, complete with ad break. The plot was based on lead being stolen from church roofs. Turned out it was the postman, who smuggled it out in his post bag.

Looking at all this from a scientific point of view, dreams are nothing more than our brain processing memories, experiences and thoughts from the day during the period of REM sleep. Scientists have found that our dreams are generated in the right inferior lingual gyrus (located in the visual cortex). So far, so factual.

In time-honoured family tradition, I shared my dream when I woke up. We went through it and managed to decode much of the seemingly random goings-on. I had a long chat with my neighbour the other day, during which he told me he intended to paint his barge boards[1]. We went back to school on Monday so I was probably thinking about the Christmas school fair where I bought a scented candle which I’ve never been able to find again. In my dream, the church trumpeter and I were selling candles, although all the ones which smelled of pomegranate and fig were gone by the time I came to buy one (incredibly specific for a dream. I even managed to get the fragrance when I sniffed them in the early part of the dream). My car needs an MOT, hence Steve the mechanic.

Where King Zog[2] and his grandson’s brewery came from, I cannot tell you. However, whatever that was all about, it’s given me my blog for this week. I’ve been tinkering with lots of different ideas, none of which worked out. King Zog flowed.

Dreams are transient and fleeting, but the odd one really stays with you. I remember lots of mine and this is the first, but probably not the last time that I’ll use them as inspiration. One of the most frequent questions writers get asked is “where do you get your ideas from?” Well, in this case, from a rather insane dream that left me feeling puzzled yet inspired.

I can’t explain all of my dream, but that makes it all the more interesting and inspiring. A big thank you to Ahmet Muhtar Zogolli, aka Zog I, King of the Albanians. I hope the brewery’s going well …….

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[1] Whatever a barge board is. I don’t know.

[2] Colourful first and only King of Albania from 1928-1939.