never Miss a beat

I had this dog barmy dream last night that Pearl Harbour happened again except instead of kamikazes, there was an alien forcefield in the middle of the Pacific Ocean trying to destroy the world (the Hong Kong skyline really got it for a change in my dream) and nobody was quite sure why but as Earth was under attack, the American Navy (the David to the aliens’ Goliath) decided to retaliate with their minds (to an extent) and not just their brute force to destroy the enemy using tactics from that boardgame… not Kerplunk, the other one… anyway EVERYTHING BLEW UP EVERYWHERE and it’s all a bit of a haze after that because then I woke u… oh. 

The great thing about dreams is this: they happen when you aren’t doing anything better with your time (because you’re asleep) and they’re free. In that respect, dreams are sort of exactly like press film screenings: they usually start at 6.30 (after work but before evening plans – a limbo 90-minute period where people either hang about the pub/Pret, queue to top up their Oyster card, play basket wars in M&S, or go to a gym), they’re free and you bump into a random selection of people from your entire lifespan (including people you’ve never met IRL but they’re off the telly), exactly like in a dream.

Last night was no different. My time at the Battleshit (oops, typo) press screening was thus: I walked into the Empire cinema in Leicester Square, I sat down, I dozed off for a couple of hours and the memory neurons in my brain took a little trip down to Hollywood’s Collective Action Lot making a megamix mess out of such bombastic epics as Pearl Harbour, Jurassic Park, Armageddon and Space Cowboys (it all goes a bit Sailor Geriatric towards the end but I won’t spoil that bit for you). At one point I bumped into my boss, then I saw that woman off The Review Show, someone I went to uni with, and – I think – Al Murray. Yes, my night watching Battleship was like a dream.