INTRO

Graham Greene's dreams, like his life, are full of 20th Century political, military and literary figures he knew--here, novelist Ford Madox Ford. But this dream's less about writing than it looks. See if you can spot what drives the plot of this seemingly aimless dream-stroll! I'll give you a clue: pun away.

THE DREAM

Talking to Ford Madox Ford I wanted to express my admiration for one of his books, which concerned the Spanish Civil War. He said he had never written such a book. Searching in vain for the title, I went to my bookshelves to find a book of his which might list the other. I found only two volumes in the Bodley Head edition--one a book of essays which I didn't know at all. His other titles were not given.

Suddenly (several times I had begun to say For Whom the Bell... but checked myself) the title came to me--Some Do Not.

We went for a very pretty country walk together. He told me of a legend that the Holy Virgin, standing on a hill, had bent down and picked out of the river we were passing a man who was drowning seven miles away from her.

"But the land is quite flat," I said.

"Not if you look closer. It slopes down past that old millhouse to the lock." People had spoken to me of the woman who kept the lock--a wonderful cook with a great interest in local history, which she tried to pass on to her sons.

We began to cross a field--nervously on my part, because it contained one large bull and a young one that showed itself too interested in our movements. I edged back on the road and, looking round, I saw the young bull had mounted on Ford's shoulders.

He didn't seem disturbed.

I walked on to the lock to wait for him. There was a delicious smell of cooking and the woman was talking to a neighbour. The lock was just at the entrance to a small town. Ford joined me. The woman said she recommended soup and fish. We said we would go into the town and buy a bottle of wine. She offered to send her son, who was dressed in a sort of smock like an old-time agricultural labourer, but we insisted on going. As we went Ford said to me, "Have you noticed that men don't like wearing anything that comes below the knee?"

OUTRO

The long country walk looks to me like a series of puns on his friend's odd name.

• Ford, the forename: the legend of Mary saving a man who presumably failed to ford the river.
• Madox: the touchy bull in the pasture that Greene fears may charge, that Ford carries around without effort (nudge, hint).
• Ford, the surname: to reach town, our hikers cross not a bridge but a lock; again, fording the stream.

This dream-type was first described over a century ago, by dream researcher & sexologist Havelock Ellis--dreams playing with a word, phrase, name or idea, yet never (inside the dream) just coming out to say it.

--Chris Wayan

SOURCE: A World of My Own: a Dream Diary by Graham Greene, p.8-9.
DATE: a guess; Greene's journal covers 1965-89, and this feels early in the range--low tech, and a writer from the first half of the century, not the second.

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