That Was a Busy Night

Even two or three nights later I still cannot work out the contextual setting of a very clear dream I had the other night.  

Why was I, a mere civilian, allowed into an operations briefing room of a fighter squadron of the Royal Air Force?  Why was I allowed to listen to the planning of an imminent sortie? Even more mysteriously, why did I meet one of the pilots after the briefing who happened to be female?  Why did we walk together on the lawns outside the briefing room next to the runway where jets were taking off and landing silently?

i asked her where she would be flying to.

'It's only a training mission.  Escorting one of the junior pilots out over Turkestan and back.  No danger, just a training mission.  Will make it back home for dinner tonight'.

We seemed to walk and talk for ages while more planes landed and took off silently.  In one sense everything was real.  The grass, the jets, her beauty even in a flying suit.  In another sense it was very surreal.  The silence of the jets, listening to an operations briefing, walking with a beautiful pilot just seconds before she was due to go on a sortie.

it was time for her to leave.  I looked into her deep dark eyes that would soon be seeing Eastern Europe flash by.  The same eyes that would monitor the displays of flight information  vital to her safety.  Despite wearing full flying gear she still had time put on the richest and darkest red lipstick I have ever seen.  We kissed each other platonically and hugged each other tightly.  I felt her uniform crunch and crease through our embrace. Then she was gone. Gone from my embrace and from my dream.  

I stayed on the airfield watching the jets leave on their missions.  Before I left I heard that two pilots on a training mission over Turkestan had died after their aircraft had been shot down.  They had only taken off a couple of seconds ago.  How had they flown so far so quickly?  How could that happen so soon when my eyes could  still see hers?

I didn't feel like I was mourning or grieving it was just a feeling of  'why'?

'Come on Alan, let's get everyone on the bus'.

My late brother Brian was calling me from the inside of a yellow school bus like the ones seen in American movies.  Brian was always the one in the family who organised everyone else.  He was the 'fixer' who organised family parties, holidays and helping out others.  Always there to help others.  He even knew alternative routes almost everywhere in the country and for that matter, everywhere in the world.  

The bus lurched over a deeply rutted road jumping potholes and trying its best to throw my brother and I out of our seats like a bucking bronco.  Brian was chuckling away with each movement of the bus.  If he was so good at sorting out the best ways to travel then how did we both end up in this particular situation? I could not ask him 'how' as he was no longer travelling with me.  He was gone from my dream.  I was left alone on the lurching bus wondering if I had really met a female fighter pilot who was now dead in some far country. The sight of her eyes and lips remained strong and crystal clear in my mind.

I would hardly call these nocturnal adventures 'revels' but they are now ended. The actors who took part in the dream have left the stage melting into nothingness as if they were only vapour but they were real for that fleetingly brief moment they appeared in my dream during a very busy night.