A Bactrian camel--the one with two humps--was parked up to the seafront near where I live. A garage had taken the place of the beach cafe. A sign said SELF SERVICE and the camel was leaning over its shoulder with the fuel line in its hand pouring petrol into each of its humps: the humps had miraculously opened up into a pair of hairy hatchways.

Upon completing its business, the camel strolled off down to the beach whistling. The beach had gathered itself up like the sands of the Sahara: I can remember my five-year-old dream-self groaning at this cliché--I was an odiously knowing child.

A chap came out of the garage and asked me to pay. He was an almost-image of the rotund ice-cream man from the real-life cafe, except that in the dream he was extremely tall and skinny with big veiny hands. I searched my pockets: no money. I searched them again and the pockets had gone.

The garage/ice-cream man said (something like): "Well, you could sing for it."

So I had a go but my mouth had disappeared. In fact, my head seemed fairly absent and the more I felt around the less of a body I seemed to have.

The man started calling for me and wandering about and looking. He laid his big horrible veiny hands on the ground and started to slide them around. His hands seemed to get even bigger.

I could still him just as if I still had eyes and a head to put them in.

My last memory of the dream is of a red telephone box--that really (and still) exists on the seafront--ringing its heart out for what seemed like three days as Big Hands conducted his idiotic search for the invisible infant Nickels.

SOURCE: The Tiger Garden: A Book of Writers' Dreams by Nicholas Royle, p.179-80

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