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baroque_mongooseI have, I think, mentioned before that my dreams tend to be extremely odd. Last night's was a cracker.
I was, for some reason, in someone else's house; I don't know how I got there, but I think I was in the wheelchair, which is unusual for dreams (in dreams I can generally walk around normally, and even run if I need to). Then the owner came in... in a mobility scooter, and not like the one I have, which purrs around very quietly. This one had a very noisy engine, to the point where I initially thought they were bringing a motorbike into the house. She turned out to be a lady perhaps ten or fifteen years older than I was, and not at all surprised or disconcerted to see me. She showed me into the living room, which was decorated in a rather astonishing fashion: the furniture, the curtains, the wallpaper, the cushions, even the carpet, all had exactly the same design, which was a rather swirly sort of light grey pattern on a white background. The effect wasn't so much co-ordinated as confusing. Then we went through into the hall and I met a younger man who may have been her son or her grandson, and he seemed a bit spaced out. There were several flights of stairs there, all going at odd angles (yes, typically for me, this turned out to be one of those buildings apparently designed by M C Escher). And I asked this man where the loo was.
"Oh," he replied, "it's across the road. You'll need to use the pericycle."
I gathered that this was some form of transport, but I never found out exactly what, because at this point I woke up and realised I needed to go and use the actual loo (which was highly annoying, because it was 3 am and a chilly night).
This morning I find that the word does exist, though it doesn't mean anything like it did in the dream; Wikipedia tells me that the "pericycle is a cylinder of cells that lies just inside the endodermis and is the outermost part of the stele of plants. It has various functions, such as strengthening the roots, producing lateral roots, and forming the vascular cambium and cork cambium." I'm not a plant biologist, and it's safe to say I'd never come across the word before; I was, however, rather chuffed that if my brain was going to come up with words all on its own, it did at least pick two compatible roots (all right, I shall intend the pun) to glom together. Both "peri-" and "-cycle" are Greek in origin.
So I'm now trying to imagine exactly what the contraption mentioned in the dream would have looked like. Obviously it's got to be some sort of pedal-powered device, because that is what "-cycle" always means when applied to a means of transport; but what about the "peri-" bit? Well, "peri-" means "around", as in "perimeter", "perimenopause", and similar words. So is it just an ordinary bicycle that goes round and round a looped track? Or is it perhaps a quantum bike whose location is not sharply defined over a given area?
I don't know. I never got to try it out; when I went back to sleep, I did not revisit the same dream. But I may still have to invent it.
I was, for some reason, in someone else's house; I don't know how I got there, but I think I was in the wheelchair, which is unusual for dreams (in dreams I can generally walk around normally, and even run if I need to). Then the owner came in... in a mobility scooter, and not like the one I have, which purrs around very quietly. This one had a very noisy engine, to the point where I initially thought they were bringing a motorbike into the house. She turned out to be a lady perhaps ten or fifteen years older than I was, and not at all surprised or disconcerted to see me. She showed me into the living room, which was decorated in a rather astonishing fashion: the furniture, the curtains, the wallpaper, the cushions, even the carpet, all had exactly the same design, which was a rather swirly sort of light grey pattern on a white background. The effect wasn't so much co-ordinated as confusing. Then we went through into the hall and I met a younger man who may have been her son or her grandson, and he seemed a bit spaced out. There were several flights of stairs there, all going at odd angles (yes, typically for me, this turned out to be one of those buildings apparently designed by M C Escher). And I asked this man where the loo was.
"Oh," he replied, "it's across the road. You'll need to use the pericycle."
I gathered that this was some form of transport, but I never found out exactly what, because at this point I woke up and realised I needed to go and use the actual loo (which was highly annoying, because it was 3 am and a chilly night).
This morning I find that the word does exist, though it doesn't mean anything like it did in the dream; Wikipedia tells me that the "pericycle is a cylinder of cells that lies just inside the endodermis and is the outermost part of the stele of plants. It has various functions, such as strengthening the roots, producing lateral roots, and forming the vascular cambium and cork cambium." I'm not a plant biologist, and it's safe to say I'd never come across the word before; I was, however, rather chuffed that if my brain was going to come up with words all on its own, it did at least pick two compatible roots (all right, I shall intend the pun) to glom together. Both "peri-" and "-cycle" are Greek in origin.
So I'm now trying to imagine exactly what the contraption mentioned in the dream would have looked like. Obviously it's got to be some sort of pedal-powered device, because that is what "-cycle" always means when applied to a means of transport; but what about the "peri-" bit? Well, "peri-" means "around", as in "perimeter", "perimenopause", and similar words. So is it just an ordinary bicycle that goes round and round a looped track? Or is it perhaps a quantum bike whose location is not sharply defined over a given area?
I don't know. I never got to try it out; when I went back to sleep, I did not revisit the same dream. But I may still have to invent it.
