Out On The Razz

I knew I was dreaming, I was in charge of the adventure, and for much of the time I was aware of being both a free-floating consciousness and a body lying in a bed. I don't remember ever having quite this experience before.

I flew towards a window. I knew I could pass through the glass without feeling any resistance- and so I did.

None of what followed was of great significance in itself. I was mostly flying blind, out on the razz, entering spaces I sensed rather than saw- and knowing there were people in them. I was never afraid. If I demanded vision I got it- sometimes after a struggle. Among other things I saw my own arms oaring me through space, a girl with red hair, some young girls floating beside me like putti, a cottage among trees and on two occasions an expanse of foliage that relapsed into a kind of roiling green porridge- which might have been the primum materium out of which all these things were being formed. Why so much green, I asked myself, why not some blue? So I tried to make some- with limited success. Faces when they showed up were individual rather than generic; they were people not monsters. Did I invent them or call them to me? Were they fantasy creatures or the avatars of other travellers on the astral? Contact with them was groping, blundering, experimental. The girl with red hair had her eyes closed. I heard voices off- all male- disembodied as if speaking on the radio- but none of them was saying anything particularly sensible.

When I woke the transition was gradual- a slow, gentle transfer of consciousness back to the physical.

Crests

What one earth...?

But they were never intended to be shown this way; their proper context- is/was above the stalls of the Garter Knights in St George's Chapel, Windsor.

There are only 24 knights at any given time. When one dies their seat in the chapel is given to someone else- and their crest is discarded. These are some of those crests- all, I believe, 20th century. It would be a melancholy collection- redolent of mortality and all that- if it wasn't such fun. They're currently on display in the great gatehouse at Layer Marney Tower.

There are the crests of some significant people in the mix- including that of Sir Winston Churchill- but I couldn't tell you which was whose- I just see them as pretty toys- the sort of thing that might come out of a Christmas cracker (a very big and expensive one) or an oversized Faberge Easter egg. This is the one I wanted to take home with me...