Dream locations : strangely specific
Feb. 15th, 2011 12:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnMy brain insists that last night I had a dream set in Oxford. But I'm pretty sure it is wrong. I spent 5 years, on and off, living in Oxford, which is a flattish town built on a muddy flood plain out of brick and sandstone.
The Oxford that I visit from time to time when asleep, is built of green granite, and it is much hillier, with steeply sloping streets and a river faster flowing and less lazy than the Thames - certainly much faster and cleaner than the Cherwell.
The dream Oxford still has a distributed university of colleges, but they look quite different. Less frilly (well, granite is tougher to carve than sandstone, I suppose) and generally more squat in shape. There are quite a lot of evergreen trees - yews and laurel particularly in the parks and gardens, though there is also one street that has a very impressive avenue of beeches. The beech avenue is very pretty, but annoys the street cleaner as the big trees drop so many leaves: several times I have heard him muttering about it. He seems rather a grumpy bloke.
While I was there, I bumped into![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kargicq in passing (in a pub). He was visiting the place for some purpose that now escapes me, but I remember him saying that he was staying in a B&B on Seawraith Road.
I can't remember the name of the pub now - Somebody's Head, I think - but it's one I've been to in several other dreams. It is a bit large and noisy, but it has a nice beer garden that slopes down to the river, and they have a large shaggy dog that pads around the bar area. The pub is one of the oldest buildings and has exposed beams.
Last night when I was there, I think there was some sort of motor rally going on. There were some very oddly shaped cars on the road. Some of them were so long and thin they didnt' look like you could get a human being inside them, or not with comfort, anyway. They were very shiny and new-looking.
The Oxford that I visit from time to time when asleep, is built of green granite, and it is much hillier, with steeply sloping streets and a river faster flowing and less lazy than the Thames - certainly much faster and cleaner than the Cherwell.
The dream Oxford still has a distributed university of colleges, but they look quite different. Less frilly (well, granite is tougher to carve than sandstone, I suppose) and generally more squat in shape. There are quite a lot of evergreen trees - yews and laurel particularly in the parks and gardens, though there is also one street that has a very impressive avenue of beeches. The beech avenue is very pretty, but annoys the street cleaner as the big trees drop so many leaves: several times I have heard him muttering about it. He seems rather a grumpy bloke.
While I was there, I bumped into
kargicq in passing (in a pub). He was visiting the place for some purpose that now escapes me, but I remember him saying that he was staying in a B&B on Seawraith Road. I can't remember the name of the pub now - Somebody's Head, I think - but it's one I've been to in several other dreams. It is a bit large and noisy, but it has a nice beer garden that slopes down to the river, and they have a large shaggy dog that pads around the bar area. The pub is one of the oldest buildings and has exposed beams.
Last night when I was there, I think there was some sort of motor rally going on. There were some very oddly shaped cars on the road. Some of them were so long and thin they didnt' look like you could get a human being inside them, or not with comfort, anyway. They were very shiny and new-looking.
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no subject
Date: 2011-02-15 02:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-15 03:43 pm (UTC)It seems odd to go to all the trouble of synthesizing a town (or importing one from a parallel universe) as a setting for what was otherwise a very humdrum dream, when it could just use an existing town or city, but maybe there are copyright issues or something.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-15 09:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-15 11:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-28 10:28 pm (UTC)Eek!
The Oxford I visit in dreams is not like the real Oxford either, but nor is it like your Oxford, which seems far more realised than mine. Mostly I just visit colleges rather than the city as a whole, generally either St Hilda's or Somerville (I had a lot of friends at S'ville.) The colleges seem to shift layout somewhat anyway, like a Diana Wynne Jones building, or Hogwarts I suppose, and are made more of ramshackle timber than stone. Plus there is a belfry. Odd.