A dream

A dream last night concerning my life after manslaughter. It seems that I had killed someone, accident or manslaughter rather than murder, but still a serious criminal offence - except that somehow I had not been detected or implicated. The dream does not bother with any of the circumstances.

I am on some sort of a bicycle touring holiday in the north of England, putting in a modest number of miles each day and putting up at whatever country hotel turned up.

I come across some sort of traffic incident and a policeman asks me to take on managing the traffic at one end of the stretch of road involved. I am given one of those white batons that railwaymen use to dispatch trains on suburban platforms. But I get into a right stew about any kind of involvement with authority. I am sure I am giving myself away. I try, rather clumsily, to pass the baton on to someone else.

This fear infects my whole life. I don't seem to be able to do anything without worrying. Not least, because in the dream, I am quite sure that policemen in particular get to be very good at detecting when people are lying or are hiding something. But maybe that is only in detective dramas on ITV3. Perhaps most real policemen are not that good.

PS: the picture above is nothing to do with the dream but was brought to my laptop this (Saturday) morning by Sky News out of Microsoft News. 'Man travelling to Switzerland to end his life says terminally ill have been 'failed' by UK law ... David Peace, from London, can no longer speak and swallow after being diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 2019...'. Maybe the party that says it believes in allowing everyone to get on with their lives without interference from government, let alone the nanny state, will get around to fixing this one. After all a vote of 50% was enough for Brexit, so surely a vote of 75% should be enough for this much more modest change. See reference 1.

References

Reference 1: https://www.dignityindying.org.uk/.