Last night, I had a dream that I remembered upon waking. This doesn't happen all that often, but it was the nature of it that made me want to write about it here. It was a nightmare. But not like the ones you'd have when young. The ones where you're being chased my someone or something, or you're lost and can't find your way home, and so on.

I'd been sentenced to death. It happened by default- I was involved in something, I'm not sure what, that led me to get sentenced. I wasn't even on trial, or in jail, it was just a judgement that was passed on a group, and it ended up on me too. Really don't know much about the details, cos it was a dream and I only remember some. It was the feeling of helplessness to do anything about the situation that stuck with me when I woke up. The feeling of injustice (cos of course I didn't deserve it. . .), and not knowing how to get out of the situation.

I never had the dream about falling. I don't think it ever worried me. But I had dreams about being pursued by all manner of baddies. After seeing the Tutenkhamen exhibit when I was younger, my 'favourite' nightmare was that I was being chased. . .not by the embalmed corpse, but by the men who had died in mysterious circumstances that some attributed to the curse of the Pharoahs (incidentally, did you know there was a mummified priestess from the time of Tut on the Titanic?). Visiting Wooky Hole in Somerset, England, we were told the legend of the Wooky Hole Witch, so for a while she tried to catch me.

When I was younger, I never got caught.

Now, my dreams have changed. It's not about the fantastical any more. My dreams are much more based in reality, and more and more often they seem to be about one of my biggest fears. . .inevitability. The inability to escape what might come after me. It makes me want to remember more of my dreams, see what's going on in my head- not cos I enjoy the masochism of it, but to see what else I'm worried about that I'm refusing to admit to. Or is this what happens when you get old? The everyday worries take the place of childhood fears. The tax man is the egyptologist, the prosecutor is the witch. And cos I'm getting older, I'm not as fit as I used to be, I can't run away.