:: The Wendy House ::

In a small Siena courtyard the walls mimic windows,

forgetting to mimic shutters or reflections. 

Silence and darkness within the windowless rooms.

Protecting the people within from too much colour,  too much light,  noises from neighbours and the street,  from the prying eyes of passersby. 

In the silent darkness occupants can float on siestas unseen, unknown.

Freedom to dream of the luxuries of everything and nothing

Lucid dreaming is apparantly quite rare.  Excel has told me that the 10 friends and family who replied to my emailed question ‘do you lucid dream?’ were all wildly over educated, regularly creative (musicians, poets, designers, teenager), and all except 1 are either not-married or over the age of 30.  More specifically:

5/10 people do Lucid dream, including:

• 2/5 males
• 3/5 girls
• 3/3 immediate relatives

It’s fun,  I’d highly recommend it if you don’t already indulge…

One night before my holiday,  after drinking Stanlake Park champagne in the company of extremely charming, senior, neighbours,  I discovered the potential benefits of a champagne-induced dreaming.  Obviously these are only preliminary findings prior to systematic investigation.  The preliminary findings are looking good.  The dream qualities included but were not limited to:

• warm squishiness. 
• high memorability.
• good mood inducing.

A spiritual sensitive spent the night in the Wendy House guest room. He picked-up on Wendy House memories.

The house remembers several of policemen looking at the bedroom wall over the kitchen. On several occasions since I’ve since seen flocks of policeman on bicycles swarming past, the Wendy House. He also saw a fellow on the landing darkly dressed, silent, wearing a bowler hat, watching the police people search, not ominous. I wonder what the house remembers?

I wonder how I can find out what the house remembers through more conventional means than dream observations… …dreams have revealed nothing to me… …yet…

Eighth report in my ongoing investigations of cheese dream-inducing properties.  

Conclusion  very tasty dream suppressant.

Eating phase for Chimay:  1/6  nights produced dreams.     

Riding around on buses* in Birmingham, UK,  wandering through crowded flea markets watching the shoppers,  down alleyways bordered by red-brick Victorian terraced houses in Birmingham.  I got lost and didn’t know which bus to get on to go home.  So many buses to choose from.  Dreaming about buses,  England and Victorian red-brick terraces adds up to I had a fabulous dream.

Decontamination Phase.  3/3 nights without eating Chimay.  No dreams.

You too can play along at home:  How to play dreamy cheese

* I like riding on buses

Seventh report in my ongoing investigations of cheese dream-inducing properties.  

Conclusion  Mum was right for Stilton.  I recommend not eating Stilton for supper.  Nightly sleep disruption was unusual and unpleasant. The dream content was not substantially different from my normal dream content. The dreams didn’t warrant the ‘unusual’ label given to the female dreamers in a study conducted by the UK  Cheeseboard  where: 85% of females who ate Stilton had some of the most unusual dreams of the whole study.

Eating phase for Stilton:  6/6 nights produced dreams.  Four dream summaries from different nights:

Memory enhancement No storyline. No plot. Less like a dream, more of a vivid lucidly manipulated visualisation.  I remembered my uncle who died 20 years ago talking and laughing in his home.  It was good to see him again and remember the sound of his voice and laughter,  to see the way his whole body shook when he laughed,  to hear him jangling his keys in his pocket just like his brother, my father still does.  I saw him more clearly than I can remember him in waking hours.

Forgotten. All I remember is waking up briefly in the night thinking ‘that was a sad dream,  I must remember it’ then falling asleep again.  When I woke in the morning I couldn’t remember the dream,  just the mood.  

Celebrity Kitchen.  During most of this dream I was in the kitchen of a large Victorian terrace house during with David Bowie creatively exploring the versatility of vegetables and kitchen utenisils. Yummy.  I think it was a party but I didn’t see the other partiers in the house.

Work.  This is a common theme in my dreams during normal working weeks.  This specific variation combined and extended things that happened during the working week. 

Decontamination Phase.  2/2 nights without eating Stilton in the evening produced refreshingly deep sleep where I did not wake during the night or recall any dreams. 

Summary.  Characteristics of Stilton induced Wendy-dreams:

• reliably produced every night. 
• dream mood varied from sad through reflective, serious, to happy.
• Content varied from parties and work to detailed visual experiences.
• remembering the dreams varied from easily recalled detail through to difficult to recall whether I had even dreamed.
• sleep disruptive,  I woke every night,  then fell asleep again fairly promptly.

You too can play dreamy cheese:  How to play dreamy cheese

Sixth report in a popular sporadic investigation collecting cheese dream-inducing properties.  

Eating phase for Havarti:  5/6 nights produced dreams.  Dream memories lasted beyond breakfast.  Dreams were based in rare though normal life activities. 

Three outline examples:

Moving office with appearances from colleagues across my 20yrs as a working gal.  The building that we moved into used fireman’s polls as a way to get downstairs.  Reminiscent of ’snakes and ladders’.  Quite a lot of fun was had by all as we unpacked our boxes,  drank lashings of tea, tried the firemans polls and had water-fights.  

Visiting the beach with Flat Eric and a climbing club that included everyone I’ve ever climbed with and some people that I know climb but haven’t climbed with.  Flat Eric did some amazing technical moves on some overhangs then we all went wind-surfing and small dhingy sailing in a Costa-Rica type location.  

Faerie Tour of UK pubs.  In a storyline that could have been produced by a collaboration between Harold Pinter and Alan Bennett my friends and I spent a summer touring real-ale pubs,  Inns,  staying in them and regularly dressing-up as faeries is the evenings.  Some larger fellows look a tad silly when wearing faeries outfits.  My outfit was black and actually maps to many clothes that I have in my closet,  though I don’t have a black tiara and wings.   The dream mainly covered our escapades on tour.  Excellent fun.

Conclusion?  Very nice result.  I’m not publishing a decontamination phase because I plan to stay with Havarti for at least a couple more weeks .

Summary.  Havarti induced Wendy-dreams are:

• very cheerful
• consistently produced.
• exaggerations of pleasant plausible realities.
• persisted into early waking hours memories.
• social events full of actual friends, family and work colleagues from throughout my life.
• excluding wierd morphing of people and things into wierd unfamiliar people and things.

You too can play dreamy cheese:  How to play dreamy cheese

While I was still under 5″6′ Mumzie would regularly remind me

“don’t eat cheese before you go to bed.  It will give you a bad nights sleep and nightmares“   

An informal survey of US people revealed that naught-out-of-three had been given similar advice by their Moms.  Are US Moms unfamiliar with the dreamy properties of cheese or is dreamy cheese a myth?  This post summarises my undercover research studies aimed at revealing the Wendy-dream-inducing characteristics of my favourite nibbles by eating them after 7pm for 7 nights in a week.  Here’s the dirt so far: 

• Normal dreams:  Cream cheese, Stilton
• Forgettable dreams = Brie,  Danish Blue
• Dream suppressant = Soft goats cheese, Edam,  Chimay
• Exaggerating life dreams =  Danish Blue, Havarti
• Dreams of social activites =  Havarti
• Disrupted sleep = Stilton

Everytime I get the inclination to take another cheese under the covers I will update this blog post.  You too can send me the outcomes of your undercover investigations and I’ll publish them here if you play by the official rules detailed in  ’How to play dreamy cheese‘ and show due deference to UK cheeseboard research.

colleague:  I dreamt about you last night

wendy: yes?

colleauge: you were angry because I hadn’t finished this work

wendy: really?

colleague: you had metal braces on your teeth

wendy: grrrrrr…    …gnash…    ...sounds like a nightmare  

colleague: not really

This week I’m eating Salemville Amish Blue cheese from Wisconsin.  It is moist, flavourful, crumbly and tongue-slitheringly creamy….

 Eyan reports that Microsoft Word losing 2 hours of his intellectual effort and a Gouda supper prefaced this rocky dream:

I was with my mother on the coast somewhere - the coasts were rather open and vast, somewhat influenced by photos I saw on Flickr.com. I climbed down a rocky ravine to get down to the beach (this is more influenced by the upper Algarve) My mother was urging me on. But, true to style, I got stuck and was in grave danger of falling off and breaking a good few bones.

After an evening scoffing meowmix; Matrix leapt out of a seamingly deep coma with this dramtically delivered dream report:

Meow meow meow MEOW meow MEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOW

Fifth report in my ongoing cheese investigations. 

Eating phase (Danish Blue cheese supper):

6/6 nights produced dreams.  Unfortunately dream content was forgotten promptly.  Dream impressions were mostly reminiscent of those I have during a ‘fever’:  intense, bizarre, rejuvenating with some pleasingly adult content.

Decontamination phase (no Danish Blue supper):

Cancelled.

I’m planning to continue investigating Danish Blue across the weekend to check if sleeping-in will improve my memory for the content. 

Shifting directly to another Blue cheese when my current Danish Blue supply runs out.

Conclusion?

Danish Blue consistently produced dreams.

Dreams were intense, bizarre and blue.  ..mmmMMmmm….

Dreams rarely persisted to morning memories.

 

A special guest entry written, edited and coloured by language specialist Eyan (aka WhitePrince):

Now time to tell you my Gouda with Cumin seed dream before I go to bed:

It starts off with a Japanese boy being interviewed in a tv programme about a plane crash he was involved in. For the sake of clarity I think the Japanese boy is the author’s alter ego. He couldn’t be much further removed from the author’s ethnic profile, but there you go. As the interview progressed, images from the plane crash were shown, which, of course, then became a reality, or a dream reality let’s say. The Japanese boy was pinned to the back of his seat terrified as the plane was losing height very quickly. He was aware he was about to die. At this point the author chose to terminate the performance as he knows plane crashes are rather distasteful. He woke up breathless, but this was probably more due to dust mite allergy than anything  else.

From a scientific point of view - to what extent did the cheese have an effect on the subjects dreams ?

Things to be taken into consideration -

a - The subject is a regular air traveller. He has experienced some very intricate flying manoeuvres, especially in Iberia planes over the sea whilst coming in to land at Barcelona airport. Some pilots should understand that planes do not make u-turns like a stolen car would do when driven by tearaway teenagers.

b - He is a fan of Johan Grimonprez’s “Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/dial-history/, a art video film mainly about hijackings. He has seen it again twice recently at the Caixa Forum art centre http://portal1.lacaixa.es/Channel/Ch_Redirect_Tx?dest=1-38-00-00000. In the film there are interviews with hijack hostages. There are also Japanese in the film, both hostages and Red Army hijackers. For American sensibilities this is probably not a recommended film.

c- He suffers from allergies and asthma, so any dreams involving frightening, breath-taking situations may be attributable to this.

Hope you enjoyed the show. Thank you and goodnight.

Eyan wisely outlines a clear impact of waking life events and interests in dreams.  Waking life events have lead to my own investigations this week going awry heavily due to more

• fish-eating
• cheescake eating
• varied cheese intake.  (Roquefort bread, Brie, Cream cheese, Edam BabyBel).  Yummy!
• Abnormal alocohol consumption (mulled wine,  mud slides etc)

Wendy free-form-dream-diary-till-January

Fourth report in my ongoing cheese investigations. 

Eating pase (Edam cheese supper):

5/5 nights produced no awareness of dreams. 

Half way through the week I skipped the supper and that night had an Outstanding,  unpublishable, dream.

Decontamination phase (no Edam supper):

1 Vivid,  long, extremely enjoyable dream about living in a Victorian red-brick townhouse with many colourful guests and secret passage-ways under carpets & behind furniture.  Wonderful textures and details.

I ate seafood on the two nights that I didn’t eat Edam and did dream.  I don’t normally eat seafood.

Conclusion?

Edam is a dream supressant.

Seafood may be a dream stimulant.

This week I’ll be eating mostly mini Babybel.

Third report of my cheese-dream intestigation. 

Eating phase (Cream cheese supper):

3/6 nights produced dreams.  Nothing vivid, lucid, outrageous.  Nothing where the content is even worth reporting or ‘unpubishable-ing’.

3/6 nights.  No dreams.  Pah!

WonderWoman had a similar experience with ‘Laughing Cow’ cream cheese:

“Despite slavering Laughing cow onto several begals, I have no dreams to report whatsoever. <unpublishable caveat>”

Decontamination phase (no cream cheese supper):  1 night. 1 forgettable dream.

Conclusion?

Rather like not eating a cheese supper at all. Pah!

Recommended for the unadventuous.  I’m beginning to suspect that soft cheeses are just not dream-tastic.

This week I’ll be eating Edam.

The WhitePrince, who is experimenting with coloured emails, reported yesterday that after eating Edam:

I dreamt we were in your kitchen, each making his or her own breakfast and talking about <unpublishable>. You filled your French-style coffee bowl with frothy hot milk and I ate my weetabix from a large white cutlery tray. You were displeased when I accidently put sugar on top of your frothy milk.

Eating phase (cheese supper):

All 6/6 nights consistently produced looooooooong, dull, dream sequences.  Dream content was forgotten quickly.  I did manage to remember scenes of ‘packing’ and work related problem solving.  Yawn.  With one disturbing exception the dreams were soooooooo dull they sent me straight back to deep sleep!  The exception on the 3rd night suddenly woke me from a dream of my death (Saber plunged into my heart).

Unlike the British cheeseboard study participants, I would not summarise the dreams as either ‘Nice’ or ‘Cryptic’.

Decontamination phase (no cheese supper):

1 night. No awareness of any dreams. 

Conclusion?

For me,  Brie produces dull, forgettable, dreams. 

Not recommended.

This week I’ll be eating a cheese with a very promising, US relevant,  name: Philadelphia, ‘brotherly love’

W cheese-o-phile

WonderWoman recently wrote: 

“Not too much to report from the Babybel I’m afraid. Did dream, but nothing even mildly exciting. Thinking about trying out some Laughing Cow tonight”

If you’re feeling inspired,  send me your dreamy-cheese reports at whendeeeAThotmailDOTcom!  You can investigate any way you want,  this is what I’m doing:

• eat a specific ‘type’ of cheese after 7pm in the evening everyday for a week (between 5 and 7 days). 
• Photograph examples of the cheese supper before tucking-in
• note dream memories for each of those days:
  • no dream remembered
  • dream awareness - quickly forgotten upon waking
  • dream plus a content description.
• note any unusual external life influences during this week.
• compare dreams with pre-cheese-supper experiences for any noticeable differences.

 Brie report almost complete….coming this weekend…what cheese next? 

W  ..mmMMMm…..

According to the British Cheese Board (snigger):  

‘all female participants who ate British Brie had nice relaxing dreams’ (my emphasis)

Nice? 

I’m looking for action-adventure with good and bad guys,  shape-shifters, magic,  high-speed chases and unexpected wackiness.  ‘Nice’ doesn’t really describe what I’m looking for. 

NICE?!

Were the girls using ‘nice’ as a euphemism for something more ‘naughty’ (unpublishable)?  That might explain why the boys eating Brie reported experiencing ‘cryptic’ dreams.  At a euphamistic level more girl-’nice’ dreams would be an EXTREMELY good result for Brie.  Just incase,  I’ll double the planned portion for tonight.  I had a ‘long’ dream last night but I wasn’t sufficiently lucid to know if it was ‘nice’ or not….

Wendy anticipating-’nice’-dreams

First report in my ongoing cheese investigations

Eating phase (supper):  Throughout the 7 nights after eating soft goat cheese I was unaware of any dreams.

Decontamination phase (no cheese supper):

• 1st evening had a fairly short ’dull’ dream.
• 2nd evening  dream involved steering a thick Persian rug down a steep tree-covered mountainside.  Hooray!  Much fun. 

Conclusion?   For me, soft goat cheese is a dream supressant.

Tonight I’m shifting to Brie.  …mmmmMMMMmmmmm….

W Loves-Cheeeeeeeeeeeese-and-dreams

The night before Snewtea moved I dreamt about the move.  In the dream I’m

Driving through the backroads of Leicestershire.  I drive straight to SnewTea’s new home in Leicester city center.  His home is a stunning victorian townhouse near ‘The Charlotte‘  concert venue. This is wonderful.  I think I’ll move to Leicester too.  I’ll be able to walk to great gigs and  find my home and car easily because I know my way around.

• the commute from Leicester UK to NW USA is impractical.
• I got lost trying to find my way back from SnewTea’s actual new home.
• I miss local Leicestershire produced, fresh, red leicester and Stilton.   Dreamy cheeeeese!  Excerpt,  from this research where the sponsor has a major investment in ’spinning’ the results:

85% of females who ate Stilton had some of the most unusual dreams of the whole study. 65% of people eating Cheddar dreamt about celebrities, over 65% of participants eating Red Leicester revisited their schooldays, all female participants who ate British Brie had nice relaxing dreams whereas male participants had cryptic dreams, two thirds of all those who ate Lancashire had a dream about work and over half of Cheshire eaters had a dreamless sleep.

As reported the research is fundamentally flawed because we don’t know what these people dreamed about when they weren’t eating the specified cheese, or what other potential dream modifiers they were experiencing (e.g. alcohol, waking-events etc)…. Doh!  Nonetheless,  it is a fun little read.  That the UK has an official body called the “Cheese Board’ caused rampant, cat-scaring, guffawing in the Wendy House.

I will start investigating the US-cheese-dream relationship for one gal, unsponsored, uncontrolled, and un(counter)balanced, on high doses of tea….  

What the HECK? 

It is CHEEESE!

Wendy on-dreamtastic-week

Etymology: Mrs. Malaprop, character noted for her misuse of words in R. B. Sheridan’s comedy The Rivals (1775)***
1 : the usually unintentionally humorous misuse or distortion of a word or phrase; especially : the use of a word sounding somewhat like the one intended but ludicrously wrong in the context.

This was a high school English literature class text for me.  The whole class read it out loud taking turns to play respective roles.  Fun!

 

<Warning: useless personal trivia blog-entry>

In last night’s dream:

i painted a fabulous picture and hung it on the wall in my garage

At this point I was unable to distinguish between dream-state and wake-state.  The fabulousness of the picture was a clue to dream-state I completely missed.   Then:

i went upstairs from the garage to gather friends to give me constructive feedback on my picture. 

This is when I realised it was a dream because:

my home was full of beautiful people having a party. 

Nice,  but not realistic that I’d be in the garage painting while there was a party going on upstairs.  I’m not a complete Sociophobe.  Now I know I’m in a dream things could really start to swing pleasant ways for me: 

I herded a couple of trusted friends to the garage which had unexpectedly morphed into a flea market. We pushed our way through the crowds to where I’d originally hung my painting.   

It had been sold!  I couldnt show it to my friends as promised.

Lucidly I tried to find out

who to? how recently? could I get a photograph of it? an address of the purchaser?….. 

NO joy

I cried

Non-lucid behaviour.  It was a beautiful picture,  I wanted to keep it.  The picture had gone and the dream wasn’t letting me find it using typical wake-state strategies.  Lucidity didn’t help me out on this one.  Next time I’ll try something more radical and less ‘realistic’  like

• simply go somewhere-else and just ‘find’ it there.  
• forget about it…  …theres fun to be had!

Wendy Woke-up

In the dream lucidity hit me when I realised that:

I was sat in the bleechers of an Amercan Football game with a group of friends in the DAMN cold, with cloudy skys and poor view of the game.

What?!  Outrageous,  why on earth would I want to be outside in the cold unable to see the boys on the field?  Lets get this dream on track! 

I persuaded my friends to go in search of a warm drink (probably Tea) as we moved through the crowd there was a speedy, spectacular sunset,  the temperature rose,  the wind stopped,  the crowd stood up and started dancing and drinking beer. 

The best bit was that the changes took on their own momentum.   Unexpectedly: 

the football team turned up on a stage right in front of us.  They weren’t a football team at all.  Close up I could see they were actually ‘Martin Stephenson and the Daintee’s” all wearing Zorro outfits and singing “Candle in the middle”

OUTSTANDING Result!  The song sent me back to relaxed deep sleep

W sleep-singing