LEARNING TO FLY

It was the best job in the world, getting paid to dream. Well, I don’t think we were paid, but we all lived together in a dormitory/academy kind of place and spent as much time as we could, sleeping and dreaming. Every evening at six we would phone our dreams in to headquarters.

I don’t know how I ended up here; I just know I enjoyed it very much. I did notice however, that I came here about the same time as I started flying in my dreams. The academy took a special interest in flying dreams.

The other people there were a weird mix of characters but very nice and friendly and helpful. There were men and women, old and young, neat and sloppy, stern and gay. There was a guy called Harold who was on the same team as me. He was a happy chap, a bit like the guy from Notting Hill and I think he fancied me because he was always smiling and hanging around.

Anyhoo, one day I was late in phoning my dreams through to headquarters because I had blithely slept right through the reporting time. When I awoke, Harold was very concerned that I had missed my call and bustled off to try and organize another. I wasn’t too bothered though, for I was in a very good mood as I had just had a most amazing flying-dream.

But before I tell you about that I better tell you a bit more about my dreaming. Or my dream-flying really. Most of us know what its like to fly in our dreams. Well I suppose everyone does, because I do it quite a lot. It’s become a sort of hobby of mine really. Hardly a day or night goes by that I don’t fly. I’m pretty good at it now, though thinking back, I remember how hard it was in the beginning to even get off the ground. I had to use all my will power and even then I could only rise veeerry slowly, and only a few inches into the air. And sometimes when I finally managed to get high enough, the flight was disappointingly short.

Another problem in the beginning, you might remember, is not always being able to go where you wanted to go. If I saw something I liked and wanted to take a closer look, it would take ages to turn and head in that direction. It was like swimming through treacle. If I wanted to inspect a certain cloud, or tree, or bird, I had to once again use all my willpower and concentration to get there.

Anyway. Those frustrating days are behind me now and I can pretty much fly where I want and pretty quick too. And this is where we get to the point of my story.

On this particular day, when I had overslept and missed my regular six ‘o clock phone in, I had just had the most remarkable dream of my dream-flying career. This time I dreamt that I was carrying someone, and that I was flying them fast and low around a cape headland where there were many shady trees and meadows stretching out along a curving shoreline.

The person in my arms seemed oblivious to me and was enjoying the ride immensely. He or she was very excited by the experience. The person’s head turned this way and that at every new sight they saw, a bit like a baby on it’s first outing in a buggy. There was no end of wonderful things to see.

Now. I love flying fast. I am good at that; but when this person started pointing here and there, obviously wanting to go there, I can tell you I was hard put to fulfil their wishes. When you are carrying someone, it’s like trying to turn a jumbo jet at high speed. All that stopping and turning and up and down is a very tiring business and requires a lot of effort – I just couldn’t get any momentum going. But the person was so excited about the whole thing that I didn’t have the heart to resist.

Anyway, the big surprise finally dawned on me when the person in my arms wanted to get closer to a seagull sitting in a tree. He didn’t point this time, but I picked up what he wanted – a bit like ESP. Then I realized how frustrated he or she must have been, because I had probably been missing many of their silent signals. But I can’t be blamed really; it takes a long time to tune in to a persons wants and needs.

But it was while we were approaching the seagull – when I saw how slowly I was in responding to the persons wishes – that I realized that in my first flights, there must have been someone carrying me, and trying to intuit my wishes, and that’s why things had been so slow in the beginning. But now, here I was, an experienced flyer, helping someone else learning to fly, just like someone had helped me…without my knowing it.

I remember when I woke I had a big, proud smile on my face, and when I told Harold about it, he congratulated me and rushed off to organize a special out-of-hours phone call to headquarters for me.