This morning I woke from a dream in which I was supervising a student Mary from my bed. I found it hard to stay awake to listen to her and felt I was feigning interest and worried she would notice. She was talking about issues to do with adoption. Mary has adopted children herself, unable to conceive. Her barrenness suits her, I think rather cruelly. But in the dream I was kind in spite of my surprise to be once again dealing with this woman whom I find so scratchy and difficult, with whom I do not like working. In the dream Mary looked directly at me and I suggested we go briefly to see a short film that was relevant to her topic. It was towards the end of the session. We had very little time, but somehow I managed to conjure up Keith who agreed to drive us to the filming. Then we were flying over the scene, flying over the film became the film, then walking through the location of the film and I recognised with delight that it was my old school Vaucluse Convent. The girls wore smocks, gingham smocks over their tunics and brown stockings. I told Mary that they chose this school as one of the most old-fashioned in a bid to emulate schools of old, when there were boarders who suffered enormous privation. Some how boarders were like adopted children for the purposes of the film. I realised than that Mary’s time was up and I had ten minutes only to get her back home and to be ready for my next session.

We scrambled into Keith’s car. I asked him to rush. He looked sad and preoccupied.

‘Please hurry’ I said. I’ve only a few minutes more.’

I knew he’d understand but at an intersection when the lights sat on red for quite some time he complained to me of a sore stomach.

‘Anxiety?’ I asked ‘Or something else.’ He stood outside of the car now looking in at Mary from the curb while another young man, Paul, had leapt into his place while we waited for the lights to change. Paul was gossipping to Mary. I almost had to push him out of the car to make way for Keith when the lights turned back to green.

Keith sped and swerved between cars, nearly knocking over a pedestrian, a young woman in white, a Bo Peep outfit who ran down the middle of the road.

At one point, this earlier as we were leaving the school I saw a woman with artificial legs spread out in front, she was in a wheel chair, roll out of control onto the road, in Torrington Street. Now we were outside my daughter’s school. The woman’s legs dropped off and were narrowly missed by a car whizzing down the hill. The woman scrambled on her bottom from the wheel chair and grabbed back her legs but then she tried to pull the strap of her handbag from the spokes of the car’s wheel. It had become stuck there. The car was stopped now and I ran to the front to alert the driver. The woman without legs could not speak. All of this activity and I was losing precious time before I could get home in time for my next session. I woke just as we pulled up in front of my house.