Morning, hope you’re doing fine today.
I am not sleeping well at the moment. It’s not that I’m not sleeping, it’s that when I do sleep I can only do so for what seem like small blocks at a time. I don’t know how exactly to describe it, because I’m dreaming very vividly, but at the back of my mind there’s a sense that there’s something preventing me from resting properly.
It’s almost like I’m tethered in the conscious world which stops me crossing over the unconscious world. As for the dreams, ooof. They are so involved, so busy, so full of stuff, I’m waking up feeling like I’ve run a marathon and beaten up by men with big sticks. I suppose there’s a lot going on to spark the subconscious into life, but even so it’s a bit much. They’re not light either, they’re … I dunno how to describe them … massive and industrial, perhaps.
Give me one of those old-style Arsenal dreams I used to have when football and this club was the thing that took up most of my attention. I’ve gone back through the archives to pick out some of them, because often I’d write about them here. Remember, players only love you when they’re playing.
04 June 2002
Last night I dreamt that Freddie Ljungberg had changed his hair and was now sporting a ‘Chris Waddle’ …with that Achy Breaky Heart mullet and everything.
I tried to tell Freddie that this was a shocking and frankly despicable way to sport ones hair, but he just said ‘Look, everyone’s doing it’ and when I looked around there were 60,000 Koreans in a football stadium all with the same haircut but with a red stripe. Then they started throwing things at me. Things like old cars, entire buildings and most bizarrely of all, Doberman puppies. All the while, Freddie laughed and flicked his terrible hair like some kind of fashion model. Most odd.
19 March 2003
Last night I dreamt that I was riding along on my scooter, and I had all the Arsenal players chasing me in a big truck, because I had a sticker on the back of my bike saying “Fack off you cahnt”. Igors Stepanovs was hanging out the window going “Caaahm back ‘ere you facking cahnt”, in a wicked London accent. Most odd.
19 Nov 2004
I woke up, cursed, and promptly fell back asleep where I had a dream I was football training with Arsenal. For some reason Patrick Kluivert was there too and he was absolute cack and a greedy twat too. He’d never pass when we were attacking and every single shot went wide. Then Nicky Butt and Graeme Souness had fisticuffs and there was some kind of nuclear explosion. I don’t remember the rest.
06 August 2006
I had a dream that I met Arsene and asked him about transfers. He told me he didn’t want to bring in anyone, he was happy with his squad and then we played 5-a-side with one of those plastic indoor golf balls. I scored a cracking goal too. Then a river appeared in the middle of the pitch and I went off in a hot-air balloon.
19 Jan 2010
Last night I dreamt we played Manchester United in a stadium which was not ours because the corporation that owned Arsenal had scheduled a Scritti Politti concert at the Grove for the same day. So Arsenal had play in a much more intimate venue, a stadium in Dundalk which began as a stadium but ended up as a kind of trendy bar with glass walls looking out over the sea. In the end United won 1-0 thanks to a Manuel Almunia howler.
I missed the goal as I had been called to the reception area to take a video call on my phone which turned out to be the equivalent of audio-visual spam. I went back and ended up chatting to the United keeper who was just laughing at Almunia. I then missed a relatively easy chance on goal to level things up and in the end I got the blame for the defeat.
29 June 2010
I think the World Cup and lack of Arsenal news is playing with my brain. You know those really vivid dreams you have when you put your alarm on ‘snooze’ so you can have another delicious 9 minutes of sleep?
Well this morning I dreamt I was at the Arsenal training ground for a briefing about a new player. He was a Brazilian called ‘Alexinho’ and he had the most awesome pencil moustache you ever saw in your life. Arsene Wenger was there and really tall and I got to ask him questions about the player.
“So he’s a forward then?”
“No, a midfielder”.
“A wide midfielder?”
“No”.
“A central midfielder then?”
“No”.
“A defensive midfielder?”
“No. Just a midfielder”.
“I see”.
Then Arsene started complaining that the front room of my parents house was not very comfortable because this is where he did all his World Cup commentary from. Then, just as I was posting something on the blog to say we wouldn’t be signing Joe Cole, the alarm went again.
17 Nov 2010
I dreamt last night that Robin van Persie bought Arseblog because ‘I want to get the truth out there about my injuries and about Nelson Vivas’. Naturally I was delighted and sought to give him a big thank you hug but he said he didn’t want to be hugged but I insisted and when I hugged him he crumpled into nothing like when Darth Vader kills Obi Wan Kenobi in Star Wars.
I was left looking at a pile of clothes muttering ‘The deal is still on right? RIGHT?!’
The deal, sadly, was not still on.
23 Dec 2011
I had a dream about a giant in a yellow sun dress who told me he’d invented something which would feed the entire world and wipe out starvation. It seemed a fantastic invention until it became clear the thing he’d invented made casseroles from the very earth itself and if mankind continued they’d have nowhere left to stand.
08 April 2014
Last night I dreamed that I was a sub for the FA Cup final which was being played on a mud-bath of a pitch at the far end of a school playground.
In the end I didn’t get on but Nicklas Bendtner did before he was immediately sent off for stabbing one of his own players because they deleted an Instagram selfie they took together just before the match. I don’t know how it ended up, but I’m taking some comfort from the fact that I was, at least, dreaming about the final.
Feb 12th 2015
I had a dream last night I was going to a North London derby at White Hart Lane with Tim Stillman. I was under strict instructions not to dress in Arsenal colours so I was all in dark clothes … except for a gigantic pair of shiny Arsenal branded clown shoes.
Inside the ground we got separated and I was set upon by a group of Sp*rs fans who demanded I carry out the secret handshake that would confirm that I, a man wearing a shiny gigantic pair of Arsenal branded clown shoes, was one of them. I didn’t know the handshake so they were about duff me up but at the last minute I made up a poem about Tony Galvin and that seemed to placate them.
I eventually found Tim sitting underneath one of the stairwells where he was writing in a notebook. “I don’t even watch the matches”, he said. “I’m just really good at guessing exactly what happened”.
Then I woke up.
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Sleep well folks, back tomorrow with more waffle and a brand new Arsecast.
