Work Nightmares

"Last night I dreamed that someone had tweeted photos of me dressed inappropriately for the Rome Life Forum," I told Benedict Ambrose this morning. 

They were doctored, though. One of these photos--very unflattering--was taken from below and showed that I had very long rusty-red braids falling past my denim-skirted waist. My braids are nowhere near that long, and I looked unusually tall, as if in a funhouse mirror. 

Another one showed me wearing some sleeveless blouse of a shiny fabric quite unknown to my real-life closet. There was an outdoor pool quite unlike the one at the RLF, in which nobody was allowed to swim. Naturally these dream-photos were accompanied by thundering denouncements from whichever imaginary Americans had posted them on dream-Twitter and their viewers.

As I spend almost all my working hours on the internet, I think this counts as a work nightmare. As far as I can remember, it's the first one to feature Twitter. How very 21st century of my psyche.

Benedict Ambrose also had a work nightmare. In his he was in the basement of the Historical House with a group, and the ghost of a crying baby circled around and around his head. 

"Of course it was really a demon," said B.A., who believes all the ghosts of the peoples are demons, so he hotfooted it out of there. 

That was really quite interesting, as I used to get nervous in the Historical House basement, especially after a mysterious cold breeze blew down my neck, and prayed the Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel on my way to or from the laundry room.

There was also, occasionally, Something creepy lurking at the bottom of one of the ornate staircases, or at least I thought so, and once telephoned B.A., who was at a boozy men's party, to tell him that there was a Thing and he must come home. It was 2 AM or so, and B.A. had the phone on speaker, so there was great hilarity among the men and B.A. didn't come home for hours.

We preferred not to say anything to anyone about the cold breeze and the late January visits of the Thing out of respect for The (departed) Family and to avoid the visits of ghosthunters. I seem to recall there was an application of people who wanted to conjure up spirits in the drawing room and B.A. threatened to leave if they did. 

Demons and trolls. To cheer us up, I will relate that one of my sisters will land in Scotland on December 27, and I am now planning excursions, revels and sprees. 

What would readers like to do if they were going to spend 10 days in Scotland? Whenever I think of winter holidays I always want to go on a sleigh ride, but of course there is rarely enough snow anywhere but Quebec for such delights.