Dreamland

There's nothing quite so dull as hearing about someone else's dreams, wouldn't you agree?  You would?  Well, I respectfully suggest that you bugger off now then.  I feel like talking dreamland today.

One of the reasons I write here (apart from my craving for adulation, as clearly fame and valuable prizes will inevitably come my way) is to explore the psychology of television, albeit in a lame, made up and ethically dubious manner.  Reason being; I used to have TV dreams.  All the time.  They divide neatly into two categories:

1) The Wonderful World of Colour

Good dreams were astonishingly fun, yet oddly abstract.  They usually involved some well known London landmark, generally the GPO Tower, as it was in those days.  If you don't understand why this is a television reference, you are clearly TOO YOUNG.  However, I will take pity, attend the following image:

Look, just next to Big Ben.  Exactly where it is in 'real' life.

Imagine my disappointment when arriving in London for the first time and discovering that the (a) the skyline didn't look like this and (b) the whole city didn't do this at sunrise every day.  Happily, London Weekend Television had a huge tower block on the river with their logo on the roof and mental harmony was restored. 

So my dreamscape was filled with a kind of imaginary London, a mental landscape made up of shadowy images, and not-quite-realness.  My memories are naturally vague; there was one where I was journeying through television as though it were a place.  I stopped for a cup of tea in Adverts, which was a nice quiet bit where nothing much happened. 

Recently though, I dreamed that my set was suddenly old, teak varnished, like my grandmother's model.  Dark green geometric patterns on the screen, forming football results tables, but the team names were strange, from another world.  Then there was a brightly drawn map of England on a black background, a comforting voice-over describing weather and signal strengths, a sudden sense of Saturday tea-time in the Winter, long ago.  It was only a dream.  I woke up and really wished it wasn't, just for a moment or so.


2) They're Here!

And then, of course, we come to the bad stuff.

As any of my family will wearily tell you, my broadcast nightmares were regular, intense, detailed and hideous, quite frankly.  I'm sure you can imagine the kind of thing; children's programme puppets demanding human flesh.  Ghosts escaping from the screen (Spielberg and Tobe Hooper never answered my calls).  The phrase "they peel them with their metal knives."

Since I can't tell you about the ultimate horror (we have an in-house policy at Ghost Transmissions that we don't talk about the Rainbow Incident), here's a little blast that might cast light on both my state of mind as a child and my unhealthy televisual fixations.  I'm in a room.  Brightly lit.  A front room, with one armchair and a television set.  And the set comes on by itself.  Something awful is on the screen; some monster or ghost?  Not sure.  I turn it off, but the button doesn't work.  I pull the plug, but no difference.  I run to the door, but there's no door here.  Like a magnet and steel, the chair pulls me back.  I have to sit down.  Paralysis.  Can't help but watch.  I close my eyes.

But I no longer have any eyelids.




Well, now that everyone feels a bit uncomfortable around me, share the pain; who had bad TV dreams?  Did you hear the step of Hartley Hare on the staircase?  The Witch from Pogles Wood (who is still immeasurably disturbing to this day)?  Evil Edna, perhaps?  Or the evil of Servalan in your wardrobe? 

Tragically, I NEVER dreamed about Servalan in my wardrobe.  Truly, the unconscious mind has no justice.

Oh go on then, take over the universe and kill everyone.  Seeing as it's you.

A trawl of my files (yes, I've filed this stuff, got a problem with that?) give some peculiar examples. Ghosts.org has a view interesting examples; granted, most of them are presented as being true-life experiences, but would seem to very likely be waking dreams, or 'Night-Hag' style episodes.  'Muppet Dream' is a good one; essentially, kid sees the TV turn on by itself late at night, watches a strange version of the Muppet Show which seems to imply that the cast want the kid to get reeeeeaaaallllly close to the screen...and they don't look so much like Muppets any more...


And then, of course, Fortean Times recently republished their It Happened To Me collection.  A small boy wakes to see a TV set in his wall; a newsreader announces 'The Penguin' and lo!  One appears, leaves the screen walks to the bed and threatens to eat the lad.  It may still be on the site, otherwise, it's quoted in full in one of the three volumes, and no, I can't be arsed to go and look up which one. 



In dreams, I watch with you...let me leave you with this little snapshot of the human psyche.  In the 1990s, the 625 site invited some discussion on the subject of TV presentation (technical term for the bits of TV that aren't programmes or adverts).   An odd trend appeared.  It seemed that a lot of readers had been terrified by strange childhood visions.  A dreadful dream of a symbol that left the screen and followed them, sometimes attacking, sometimes just floating ominously in space.  Too many to be coincidence, there must be a linking theme, a source of this terror, a point of origin for the unearthly horror of -

It knows.  It watches. It's the YTV Ident.

Why?  Why could this be?  After all, what was the most popular YTV show of the early 80s?

I suppose it will just have to remain a mystery.