Recurring Dreams: Spider Attack!

I have always had recurring dreams.
Some good, some bad.
When I was a kid, mainly bad!

Luckily in my adult life these recurring nightmares seem to have mainly been replaced by the downright weird (Gathering up stray cats in a floating ice cream van after central London has been engulfed in water, anyone?).

I am at least aware of the origins of one of these recurring nightmares: the movie Arachnophobia.
It was on the television one night and I really did not want to watch it. I also didn't want to go upstairs on my own because I was already creeped out for some reason or another.
So there I was, waiting for my older sister to come up to bed with me, trying desperately to keep my eyes on my sketchbook... failing miserably and being witness to massive spiders galore!!

For weeks afterwards I had the same dream:
I was sat alone on the sofa when suddenly giant spiders would approach from every direction.
I was powerless, glued to the sofa, just waiting and watching as they crept closer and closer....

I would dream this every night and feared the time I had to close my eyes and go to sleep because I knew what was waiting for me..

Then one day my family and I went to a science centre - you know, one of those places where you get to try out lots of different things and learn about how the human body works etc..
Well, my mum spotted a section on the human mind.
In the room on a table was a box.
A Dream Box.

Oh the claims it made! Allegedly all you had to do was write down or draw a picture of the nightmare you had been having and put it in the box. Once there, the box would contain that dream, and all the worry associated with it..

A miracle! Maybe I could get away from those blasted spiders for good!
I nervously drew my picture and put it in the box...

That night as I got tucked up in bed, I thought about the Dream Box.
There's no doubt I was skeptical, I had but also secretly had fingers on both hands crossed for the spiders to have vanished from my sleeping life.

I had no need to worry, I drifted off and all night dreamed pleasant dreams of kitties and candyfloss and all the lovely things that should fill a young girl's mind.

I know as a rational human being that the nightmares went away due to trickery of the mind and by writing my worries down I had externalised them and therefore lessened them.

But part of me still wants to believe it was also a little bit magic..

Michael Jackson and my awesome mother!

When I was growing up I, like many people, was utterly obsessed with Michael Jackson.
I couldn't imagine a cooler person and was mesmerised by his singing, his dancing, clothes, everything.

I would spend hours listening and singing along to his music, trying out the dance moves with my friend Doug.

Doug could emulate every move Michael Jackson did perfectly.
He would slide, step and moonwalk his way around the wooden floor of his mum's kitchen.

I could do nothing more than stumble and step around in time (usually) with the beat.

I was SO jealous!!

Turn's out I'd never grow up to be the female MJ at this rate!

My 8th birthday was coming up so I went down to the shops with my mum to look at potential presents.

We'd got a few things and the shops had started to close when, in one of the many charity shop windows, I spotted the most awesome birthday present I could possibly imagine!

It was a gold jacket.

One very similar (to my untrained eyes at least) to a military style one MJ had worn on tour..

I just HAD to have it!

Being in a charity shop, it was only a couple of pounds so my mum bought it as I tugged on her sleeve excitedly.

It was massively too big for me but I insisted on wearing it for my whole birthday, pulling the sleeves around my elbows all day.

It turned out my mum had also made me a special birthday cake.

It had black, grey and white icing with the shapes of a hat and white glove on it.

The glove even had silver edible balls on it to make it look shiny like MJ's white glove!!

I decided then and there that I officially had the coolest mother in the world!!