This is also not a dream

About 12 years ago Monica and I are in adjacent toilet cubicles of a bar very early on a Sunday morning. We have been drinking a great deal of gin all night long , we have flirted with the rubbish band and danced like twats in this total dive for hours and had ourselves a fine time.

Monica flushes, dis-engages her door and goes to wash her hands as I realise my cubicle has no toilet paper. I say her name with exaggerated tragedy MONICA!!! and request her assistance. As she passes some under the wall to me I hear a girls voice Oh my god – is your name Monica? My names Monica too!. The voice sounds like it belongs to someone significantly more drunk than either of us.

A conversation ensues between them regarding the relative uniqueness of their name. My mischief nerve is tweaked. Emerging from the cubicle behind them I stumble up to the handbasins, exclaim You’re both named Monica? Ohmigod, my names Monica TOO! and join in the conversation. In some sort of Jungian instant collective-thought prank, more toilets flush and more women (in various states of drunkeness) emerge to join the group proclaiming This is amazing! I’ve never met another Monica IN MY LIFE!, Jesus I’ve always hated being known as Monica, I felt so alone etc. etc. until about 7 or 8 of us are clustered around the mirrors going all ‘Monican’ on each other (to my Monica’s delight).

Monica MK II is blown away. She has to go get her friends. They’ll never believe this. The rest of us laugh, wash our hands, fluff our hair and filter off into the streets as the sun rises.

This is also not a dream

Once of many, many times I was walking along the waterfront towards Hunter Street. It was one of those days where a storm is in the offing and the sky is simultaneously strangely bright and grey – like it’s been solarised with an 80’s fairlight video effect.

The area was largely deserted and a dog was barking with such a persistent rhythm that my steps had fallen into pace with it and I was so tuned in I could barely hear it for a while.

Approaching Mawson Place, I realised that I could smell smoke. Still neatly tucked away on it’s shelf below the orange public telephone, the Hobart phone directory was in flames. Kind of unreal looking. Kind of surreal looking. Kind of like another 80’s video effect now I come to think of it, a clumsy superimposition.

A large black labrador, the source of the barking, stood facing off against the flaming phone book, persistently coughing out his deep, cycling pattern of WOOF.

As I stood staring – a stupid art student mainlining the visuals straight through the eyeball – a cyclist whisked by and without missing a beat snatched up the phone book and threw it into the river.

Some men on a boat cheered and the lab wagged his tail.

This is not a dream

In 2004 Matt and I were at a market near a coach station in Prague looking at the sort of crap people sell at markets all across the globe. Looking off a little absentmindedly, I was literally jerked back to attention as Matt grabbed my shoulders and physically moved me to prevent a small man from gaining access to my backpack.

He was dwarf-tiny (without being dwarfish), furiously wrinkled and brown. Like a pickled walnut with a face. Not really dark skinned, he just looked completely tobacco stained from head to toe. Foiled at pick-pocketing he then grinned broadly at me, took my wrist in the strongest grip I have ever felt and started to drag me away down an avenue of market tables. I can remember feeling incredulous that this teensy mini-thug had enough strength to haul my bulk away so easily. Matt grabbed my other wrist and after a brief struggle won the tug of war.

Much later at the coach station we split a slab of fried cheese and a pickle, caught a bus to Paris, watched the Charlie’s Angels movie repeat three times and our passports were taken away in a bucket on the German border.