Nothing To Worry About

The house in the dream was a combination of the freestanding suburban house I grew up in and the terraced house in Oldham where I lived for half my adult life. Birds were coming in through a broken letter box at the back: two jays and a budgerigar. The next door neighbour had died or moved away and their family were clearing the house. I wanted the chance to sort through the things they were getting rid of and bag myself some junk but it wasn't offered and I didn't like to ask.

I wandered up the narrow back garden, taking a quick peek through the hedge at the neighbour's garden which was all under grass and quickly withdrew because a woman in an Edwardian dress was approaching from their back gate- and came to a rocky cleft with a stream running through. I looked down into a place where the water had pooled and saw the upper half of a man's body lying at the bottom. He looked to be in his twenties. Was it a mannequin? Was it a corpse? Should I ring the police? But then he moved and there was nothing to worry about..

Lots Of Long Words

I hadn't thought to check the pills and supplements I take to see if they were vegan- which was remiss of me, but having jacked in the cocodamols I thought I'd do a review of everything else- and it turns out that the things I take for hay fever contain lactose and the ones I take for general all-round wellness are made out of little fishes. Rats! And we have something like a lifetime's supply of the dratted things...

I am sniffly at the moment (shouldn't have been sweeping leaves yesterday) and instead of fishy loratadine I'm taking berberine- which wikipedia tells me is "a quaternary ammonium salt from the protoberberine group of benzylisoquinoline alkaloids found in such plants as Berberis".

"Benzylisoquinoline": try saying that with your mouth full...