I have the most weird and vivid dreams at times.

Last night I dreamt that I was on a spiritual retreat in India. I hadn’t been there before and I was excited to start even though I had no idea what to expect. I was dressed in my normal clothes and welcomed by someone there who pointed out the locker room where I could get changed into more loose clothes and to put away my shoes as we would be walking barefoot everywhere “to feel the earth beneath our feet”.

I remember being my usual curious self and opened my locker. There were others around me also changing and I just kept talking. I was too slow in getting changed because I was anxious to start.

The others were ready and they had moved onto the next area and I walked with them briefly to see where they would go so I didn’t lose my way. They stood watching a group of monks pray in the temple so I thought I had enough time to go back to the locker to change.

At the locker, I found a piece of paper which was my spiritual actions for my time there at the retreat.

I was to go to nearby boxes of vinyl LPs and pick out a few albums. I headed over to the boxes of LPs and flicked through them. There were many I hadn’t seen. Pan music, Englebert Humperdinck, Bay City Rollers, Mexican guitarists, there was one even that looked like Worzle Gummidge! (I later Googled this and it turns out he had albums). WTF? Who IS this character and why is he in my dreams?!

I looked down on my paper and on the list, I was to “listen to that LP for 52 times and then recount the beauty of the lyrics to the other members. Another task was to “choose your most favourite song and recite the words to everyone else.

I went back to my locker anxious. After all, I hadn’t seen an LP player anywhere.

How was I going to listen to LPs for 52 times when there were others competing for the same task?

How was I going to squeeze in time to listen to one song repeatedly?

What would happen if I hated the song and had to listen to it 52 times?

What if I forgot the words to the song? (After all, I have a memory like a sieve?)

At that moment, while thinking about it all, something dropped from the ceiling in front of my eyes that gave me a fright. At first I thought it was a gigantic spider but it was a wispy witch on a broomstick. She was about the size of my thumb and surrounded by brown smoke. Her hair was white and wispy like cotton wool and it seemed that she was hanging in mid air through this wispy hair.

Initially she was mean to me and said some nasty things but I asked her why she was doing this. She quickly changed her tune and apologised to me and asked what I am worried about?

I said to her that I had to listen to a song 52 times and there’s no LP player and what if I didn’t like it?

She shrugged her shoulders then she took me on a short flight around this “temple” on her broomstick. There was no one else about and it looked to me like I was in a school hallway. It seemed quite dark in the locker lined corridor and she left me in the corridors and explained that they were simply trying to help me find the music in my life again.

She said to not worry about the LP player or the tasks themselves because they’re not the most important things here and now and then said “everything will be alright” before she disappeared leaving me there in a dark corridor.

That’s when I woke up.