I’m not someone who regularly remembers dreams. On the whole, my only dream memories seem to be packed with Freudian friction and incredibly odd symbolism. Like last night, I dreamt that I pissed on a bush* and then this guy took us to Berry Pomeroy castle (near where I grew up) and they’d built a huge car park in front of it (it was being dismantled)… but the dream didn’t really go anywhere.

A few months back, I had another dream that I woke remembering. I was strolling around a pleasant Mediterranean town (it looked both Catalan and French) when I happened upon a bar with a couple of tables outside. Sat at one of them was George Bush Jr., nursing one of those Spanish brandy glasses with a pitiful measure of rubbish brandy. There were no Secret Service guys around, so I stepped up and immediately recommended Cardinal de Mendoza as a good Spanish brandy.

He was grateful and bought me a glass too, so I sat down and had a chat with him. My main memory of this chat is that Bush was a charming guy, occasionally clipped but mainly talkative. As I smoked a Ducado, I chatted with Bush about Iraq (he admitted he was wrong but that it had happened so there was nothing much to do).

But when we moved on to crime, we disagreed. I said that I thought that America hadn’t dealt with poverty sufficiently under his presidency. He argued that the sort of people I was talking about were mostly criminals. Shortly afterwards, we went our separate ways; I crossed a bridge and saw Bush’s bodyguards come out of the woodwork.

After I woke, I had the dream of Bush, the good ol’ boy, the bon viveur, the OK guy on my mind… and the taste of Cardenal de Mendoza brandy in my mouth. I liked him.

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* Yeah, I know