Anxiety dream

At least I think that might be the term for the dream I have just woken up from.

A work-centric dream, despite having been retired for getting on for fifteen years now, drawn from several major spells of employment. Which is unusual in that my work-centric dreams are usually drawn from just one such spell.

Despite being work-centric, at one point I got caught out in a sharp shower and had to shelter in the entrance to Wood Green tube station, Wood Green being a place where we used to live rather than  a place where I used to work. The main result of this shower being that I failed to buy my bread and sausage, or whatever it was that I was to have for lunch, and went back to work without it.

The sharp shower was probably the result of almost being caught in a sharp shower on leaving Waterloo Station yesterday afternoon, while the sausage was probably the result of almost buying some kabanosi at a street food stall outside the Festival Hall shortly afterwards.

Work was a complete disaster. Some of the people in my team were efficient types who were carrying on despite my having completely lost my grip. But they were coming to ask me about stuff about which I should have known, but had actually completely forgotten and had to put them off until I had a chance to find and catch up on my notes.

There was also a project meeting at 1500 about Version 2 of something and I was having great difficulty remembering what the something was all about. Someone from my school days turned up to remind me that they were all waiting for me.

Unfortunately, I could not find my papers for the meeting. I did not seem to have a working computer from which I could have extracted them and had to get onto the IT support people to get one. They were efficient enough, but it was going to take an hour or two. Part of this seemed to involve pulling a red monitor (and clouds of the plastic nuggets such things are sometimes packed in) out of a pull down hatch in the roof of the office. Another part, discarding some small red leather laptop, the sort of thing a lady might keep in her handbag, but completely useless for real work.

My desk space in the open plan office was a complete muddle, with wires trailing all over the place and other peoples' stuff all over the place. At least, at least in theory, I had a desk space. We had not moved into the world of universal hot desking.

And then I realised that I had forgotten the password to my account on the corporate computer system and that I had to talk to the support people about resetting it. And then that I had forgotten how to get to their part of the building. And then, abandoning that project, I found that I had lost my Filofax, which would at least have reminded me where the 1500 meeting was - and provided the paper & pencil with which to appear efficient.

To cap it all, I had lost my jacket which contained my mobile phone, which would have contained enough stuff to get me through the 1500 without losing too much face. Someone found my jacket for me, which turned out not to contain my mobile phone.

At this point I give up and wake up.