I dream I am in an elevator between first and third floor, alone.  I want to go up but after I press the button the lift jerks and starts to plummet downwards towards the basement.  It is as if it has come off its moorings. 

 It drops slowly, jerkily but I am not too fearful.  I believe I do not have a long distance to travel before the lift hits the ground.  I wait for the impact but instead find myself outside the body of the elevator and now in the lift well hanging onto the elevator cable, which has become a long suspended ladder with loose planks ascending into the darkness ahead. 

 All I can do is climb one rickety step after the other in the hope that eventually I might reach daylight and some way out of this dark lift well.  I cannot think for too long about where I am, or where I am going.  I dare not look back down behind me into what I imagine is a pit of darkness. 

 I am hopeful but fearful all at once.  It is simply a matter of holding on tight and putting one leg in front of the other, one step at a time. 

 Royal blue is the colour of my daughter’s evening gown.  We are in the foyer of a large shopping centre early in the morning before school begins.  Today is the day of the school formal and all the girls assemble in their evening gowns. 

 My daughter has her hair up on her head but she has forgotten the adornment she had bought earlier to put into her hair.  I run from shop to shop trying to find one, but there are none available. 

‘Don’t bother, Mum,’ she says.  ‘It’s alright.’ 

I cannot settle until I find one. 

 I have been through shops like this before in my dreams, and in my waking life.  Bright shops with pristine merchandise laid out in rows.  Bored shopkeepers and sales girls stand around ready to pounce, desperate for a customer, more for something to do, someone to talk to, rather than from any need to make a sale.  Though that would be an advantage. 

 These shopkeepers to whom I pitch my request are all helpful but none can supply me with what I am looking for.  It is a fruitless mission.