This morning I dreamed that I watched a policeman in an unmarked car pull over a woman driver directly in front of my house. The woman stood at the window of the police car and talked down to the policeman through his open window, the reverse of what normally happens when a person who has been stopped sits in their car and waits for the police to come to their car window to address them.

‘You provoked me with your driving,’ the woman said’. The policeman listened and then they were both outside of their cars face to face on the nature strip. The policeman started to write out a ticket. I could not hear their conversation now but I watched as the woman, aged somewhere in her mid thirties grew visibly upset.

Whatever she had been accused of doing seemed to come as a surprise to her and although I could see that the policeman’s manner had softened in his approach to her, he continued to write out a ticket. He went back to his car and I went over to the woman who was now sobbing to the point of breakdown.

‘He says I was going at 33 kilometres an hour, three kilometres over the limit. If ever there was such nitpicking.’ She wiped her eyes with her hand. What’s more, they say I have a blood alcohol reading. How can I?’

The policeman returned with a tester and the woman blew into its nozzle.

‘I haven’t had a drink since last night,’ she said, and I hoped for her that she did not drink so much the night before that it might still register in her blood. Clearly it did not because the policeman told her she could go after he handed her a parking ticket.

Next I was in a police car with three male policeman, rollicking chaps who enjoyed one another’s company. Somehow I had lost my handbag and they were taking me to the police station to sort it out. I had gone earlier to a shop and put my handbag and my daughter’s handbag down on the floor. I stood and watched a couple go through a dance routine. The girl was young, maybe only eighteen or so and dressed like a hillbilly, the man was almost double her size and perhaps three times her age.

They came together in a sort of country style dance, back and forth. It was not clear who was teaching whom to dance. I turned away to look for something to buy and when I looked back my handbag had been completely emptied of its contents along with that of my daughter.

The man owned up to it at the young woman’s prompting and he gave me back my belongings. Some how it seemed he would only rob those he did not know and for some reason he considered me to be an acquaintance.

Was I going to the police station to report him? I do not know. My memory of the dream peters off here.