Now We Are Loads (My mate's name is Legion.)

On hitting thirty I had a dream in which I met myself and was very polite, an entirely believable reaction but not at all what I would have expected, so I consider myself quite lucky to have found this out. I really wanted to make a good impression, as I might upon a friend of a friend, but was probably a bit too formal as a result and it was my other self who finally broke the ice by bringing our foreheads together and vigorously rubbing the back of my shaved head.

"Now you have a go," he said.
I did. It felt odd.
I didn't have this dream again and we haven't stayed in touch.

On Sunday morning, two years after this dream, I found my doppelganger (see "General Interests" on the homepage) still bald and lying on his front in the corner of that area of the Shunt Lounge known as "The Penthouse". Having spent two years gathering mould (and, oddly, dolls) in one of the presentation rooms now used for storage, he'd been cleaned up and borrowed for a show. The people in the show had dismembered him, hollowed him out a bit so he looked baggier like Brando and given him spongy joints. I no longer looked much like him, but he also looked a lot less like me. Fortunately the cameras were there to capture the moment.

And I dreamt of this double again that night, not the other self, just the husk. More than one. I was curled up at Michael Palin's feet but could still see out of the train window a line of them standing on the horizon, like Gormley's Angel of North if you look east at the right moment out of a train going to Edinburgh. They were standing shoulder to shoulder and the line never stopped. And some were hanging from pylons, and some in fields, all dressed differently, hundreds and thousands of them. And the train was going round in a circle. I think it must have been a ride. A very arty ride.