They fell out of the sky like big drongo weights, yelling questions at me from a great height because they think they’re better than me, demanding I tell them everything that’s going on inside my brain, and when they landed I was forcedto stand up in front of a row of drongo microphones, and I thought about what to say, I thought really hard, there were long silences and that only made the drongos lean closer, until one of them yelled out again, “Tell us everything that’s going on inside your brain!” I woke up screaming, “Nothing! It’s actually totally empty, a chamber of silence, or at least nothing that adds up to anything significant or would give anyone confidence in my abilities to lead the great city of Auckland!”
They shot at me from every direction, hard and low, hard and at head height, I was standing on one of the courts of the West End tennis club in Auckland, set beside lovely green fields. Across the road was a lovely flat bay with lovely little boats in it, I am very familiar with these courts and play on them all the time with the same bunch of old guys who I trust with all my secrets, but I couldn’t make them out in my dream, they flitted hither and yon like shadows, hitting tennis balls at me without warning, sometimes I could see them slipping into dark shadows where they whispered things to drongos and the drongos wrote them down, and I woke up screaming, “Don’t f*** me over!”
There was a bit of rain flooding into people’s houses, too, but I was mainly concerned with the impact it was having on my parade, it was making it look very bad, very shabby indeed, like a great big soggy waste of space, people were walking past looking at it with dismay and disgust, I recognised Prime Minister Chris Hipkins, he just rolled his eyes, I recognised drongos, they were bending down to take a closer look at my ruined and pathetic parade, which began floating downstream, slowly at first and then picking up speed, and it was heading for the edge of a waterfall, there were rocks and rapids, and the noise of the water suggested that it was entirely possible I was about to descend into an abyss, and I woke up screaming, “Help! Help! In other words, I am communicating extreme distress and am fearful for my chances of anyone taking me seriously in my role as mayor of the great city of Auckland!”
Worst dream ever.
Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown. Photo / Dean Purcell
THURSDAY
Stayed awake all night so as not to have dreams.
Very effective but quite tiring.
I might have to go to work late.
FRIDAY
Got to work at 3pm.
I sat in a room with people around a table. They handed over documents and said, “Sign here.”
I didn’t like the look on someone’s face. I said, “I could do a better job than you. Get out.”
