Horses racing around in my dreams…

What follows is all true.

So it goes: “To die, to sleep – To sleep – perchance to dream.”

Throughout my life, I never remembered my dreams unless I was suddenly woken up while having one – which, in the past,  maybe happened once every couple of years. I always thought this was a sad loss. I like surrealism and thought dreams must be wonderfully and literally fantastic.

This has changed.

Because I have some current calcium and kidney problems, I have not had a full night’s sleep since June 2020. 

I wake up every hour throughout the night, totally dehydrated inside my mouth. I have to drink water to rehydrate.

Quite often this waking-up happens while I am in mid-dream. So I temporarily remember my dream. 

By morning though, while I know that I woke up when dreaming, I have forgotten the actual details of the dream.

Very disappointing.

Most of my dreams are about organising events or performances.

Regent Street (Photograph by Luke Stackpoole, via UnSplash)

Last night, when I woke up in mid-dream, I muttered the details onto my iPhone – to remember.

According to that muttered memory:

The new owners of Penguin Books messed it up and were not making the right money, so they thought they would get more publicity by arranging daily horse races on Regent Street in London. Some of the races would be open to amateurs.

I watched some of the rehearsals for the races, with horses chasing each other round the curve of Regent Street.

And I dreamt about Penguin Books’ boardroom discussions on the practicality of staging the horse races…

Then I woke up in mid-discussion and so I don’t know the outcome.

Life is a bitch.

That actually IS what my dream was about, though I now feel obliged – oh yes I certainly do – to suggest that the winner of the main race could have been a night mare.

Let us all hope I don’t record another dream soon and won’t feel so obliged in future.

I talk to Kate Copstick about the smell of horses and the taste of human flesh

This evening I recorded a Grouchy podcast with Kate Copstick

Tonight, I recorded this week’s Grouchy Club Podcast with comedy critic Kate Copstick.

In 31 minutes, it included the growing trend of crowdfunding for the Edinburgh Fringe. Plus comedian Will Franken becoming transgender Sarah Franken… The risk of casting comics Lewis Schaffer and Patrick Monahan in a play… The increasingly prestigious Malcolm Hardee Comedy Awards Show… Disabled Romina Puma and sex toys… Abnormally Funny People… Robert Downey Junior lookalike Phil Nichol… Kate Copstick’s stage performance with Richard O’Brien, her encounter with Stephen Sondheim and her risk of being sued by Jason Donovan and Andrew Lloyd Webber.

But, after I finished the podcast at what I thought was a good point, we kept talking and got onto the subject of gay Soho nightclub Madam JoJo’s:

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John
Sex?

Copstick
Sax. Piano, base, drums and sax.

John
So you were performing on-stage, singing musical numbers?

Copstick
It was a little girl’s dream. You’ve got the microphone, the sparkly frock, the make-up. I was really, really lucky, because the theatre queen audience is so smart. They know their performers, the West End shows: all of that. It’s a really intelligent, knowledgable audience who also have a massive appetite for filth. It’s the best audience you could ever have for comedy.

John
You should do a musical at the Edinburgh Fringe next year.

Copstick
Oooohh! It’s on my bucket list – to get back on stage, before I die. Somehow, somewhere, sometime. I’d love to do another musical. I’ve done quite a few. What’s on your bucket list?

John
Before I die?

Copstick
Yes.

John
I’d prefer to die first, then I don’t have to bother.

Copstick
There’s not that many things on my bucket list. I want to meet a gorilla.

John
A guerrilla?

Copstick
A gorilla.

John
A one-way trip to Syria…

Copstick
A GORilla.

John
Why? They’re dangerous things.

Copstick
They’re amazing animals.

John
They’re like bears. Quite nice small and stuffed as children’s playthings. But I wouldn’t want to meet one up a dark alleyway.

Copstick
There MUST be things on your bucket list.

John
No.

Copstick
You need to think about this, John. It could happen any day.

John
Roll on.

Copstick
Edinburgh’s a dangerous place.

John
Frankly, I’d just prefer to die.

Copstick
All those hills, all those people that hate me… You might just get caught in the crossfire.

John
Anyway… Your bucket list.

Copstick
Meeting a gorilla. Getting back on stage. Spending a reasonable about of time with horses.

John
Like Catherine The Great?

Copstick
Not… Not as in… No…

John
Not having Biblical knowledge of horses?

Copstick
No.

John
It all ended badly for Catharine.

Copstick
What’s your favourite smell?

John
Smell??? I dunno. Strawberries?

Copstick
Really?

John
I have no idea. I’m making it up.

Copstick
My favourite smell is horse.

John
Stale leather and shit?

Copstick
No. Actual horse…

John
Precisely.

Copstick
You bury your face in its neck. Or when a horse breathes on you.

John
This is some sort of bizarre Equus thing.

Copstick
No. It’s wonderful.

John
This is sexual. You know this is being recorded?

Copstick
It’s not remotely sexual. It’s very calming. Horse and lavender.

John
Together?

Copstick
No, separately. Horse, lavender and the sea. the smell on a beach.

John
That’s just salt and stale seaweed.

Copstick
You are belittling one of the great joys of my life. The smell you get when scrunching down a beach.

John
On a proper beach, you can’t scrunch because it’s sand. You can only scrunch on shit beaches like Brighton.

Copstick
The beach I’m thinking of is scrunchable.

John
Where?

Copstick
St Abbs in Berwickshire. It’s stunning. I went there as a kid.

John
My mother was brought up in a cottage next to the sea in Wigtownshire. I scattered her ashes in the breakwater there when she died.

Copstick
I can’t believe you don’t have a favourite smell.

John
My toenail came off this morning. Look. I have it in my pocket.

Copstick
Oh my God! I will show you a picture of that woman’s maggoty vagina again.

John
I’ve seen it. It has lost its shock value.

Copstick
I can’t believe you are carrying around your dead, decayed toenail.

John
It happened this morning.

Copstick
Maybe there’s a toenail fairy.

John
I’m hoping to find a foot fetishist on eBay. There’s probably good money to be had out of dead toenails. It has dried blood on the inside – look. Do you want to see the real toe?

Copstick
No.

John
We are in the Mama Biashara shop. Do you want to buy it? There must be some voodoo equivalent in Kenya, isn’t there?

Copstick
Yes, it mainly involves mincing albino people.

John
What? Gay albinos walking funny? Or putting albinos in a mincing machine?

Copstick
Yeah. The mincing machine. Tanzania as well. They believe that the penis and wotnot of albinos is… and children. So there’s a big trade in kidnapped albino children.

John
And mincing them?

Copstick
They kill them and eat them.

John
With what? Sprouts?

Copstick
John, we are talking about killing and eating kidnapped children here…

John
Humans are supposed to taste like pork, aren’t they?

Copstick
I don’t know. Maybe albino children are more like chicken breast.