I agree, Amos. I'm glad I started it (preens briefly, notices how raggedy feathers are getting, desists...).

There are so many common themes in our dreams, as well - floating or flying, houses, architecture, monsters and landscapes, the dead and the dying.

And myths! Long ago, in real life, I had a Loathesome Lover. I've long since forgiven him and recognized why he was loathesome, and admitted his incipient good qualities and my own foolish youth, but at the time he was a trauma that took a good deal of getting over. Well, several years after we parted, he wrote me a perfectly friendly letter from the other side of the continent that was a combined apology for previous jerkishness and a hopeful description of his own attempts to become a responsible person. I was pleased for him. Several weeks later, he was killed in an accident.

Well! For months I had dreams about him, in all of which he was demanding my attention in increasingly freakish and sometimes frightening ways, and in all of which I refused in great anxiety to acknowledge him, speak to him, or even look at him.

One night I dreamed I was in the great room of a huge stone castle or hall. A long wood table stood at one end, heaped with dishes of food, baskets of breads, rich looking platters and casseroles and tureens, bottles of wine, candles galore, and glorious decorative groupings of flowers and vegetables. Around the table sat a couple dozen women, all of whom I knew to be my friends, although none of them resembled any of my real life friends. The atmosphere was warm and pleasant, and I sat down to join the feast and the pleasant conversation. After a time, one woman turned to me and said, "Do you know G____ is buried in this building?"

I rose from the table, remembering that in some churches, tombs are indeed under the floor, and sure enough, there were slabs on the floor at the end away from the table with names and dates on them. Shortly I found G____'s stone. I returned to the table, grabbed a string of garlic fists from a centrepiece, and with grim determination began twisting off cloves and stuffing them down in the cracks around the stone slab. But then I looked up, and there sat G____, at his ease on a stone pedestal and smirking. "I only want to talk to you." he said. And I replied, "But I don't want to talk to you!"

And with that, he disappeared with a flash and a bang, which woke me. Since then, I have only seen him as a rare background extra; a field worker, a sailor on a ship, a man in a crowd, and he catches my eye, smiles then turns back to his labours.

Now that's a dream that's as vivid as the night it was dreamed, twenty-seven years ago.