Hose

6 February 2011

In this dream I had a few hours layover in LA airport and ran into Ben, one of the people from my Antarctica voyage, and since he was setting up an exhibition stand at the airport I offered to help. He was keen but said he wouldn't need me for a couple of hours, so I wandered out to a supermarket and rented a hose for a few hours to kill time. When I say rented a hose, I mean not just in a packet, but one that was connected and running. So I wandered several blocks of LA trailing enormous lengths of garden hose and dribbling water behind me. At one point I came to an alley with some neat little shops, but a local man hurriedly advised me that a squad of the neighborhood authorities (not police but more like community constables with a bent for street cleanliness, grey-clad, almost like a militant wing of rubbish men in a way) were coming and flagrant use of hoses was forbidden. Luckily he had an idea and as the squad arrived on foot he was using my hose to blast off graffiti from a wall. The squad grudgingly acknowledged this and moved on, so in thanks I went to the man's father's shop and bought an interesting boxed set of stylised and abstract toy soldiers made sculpted from stainless steel. Then with time running out before my onward flight, I caught a taxi to the airport – though also bringing the hose with me still as that was due back promptly as well….