A hard Day's knight

You can over-think these things, so let’s do exactly that. I’ve had a run of stress dreams lately, so much so I’m starting to lose sleep over it.

The latest involved a broadcasting great - the late, legendary Sir Robin Day. It struck while I spent the night alone camping out in a 200-seat church. (It's called champing and an account of my waking moments can be found at the end.)

It may have been the unusual surroundings that set my mind off-piste but the upshot was that I was wrestling on the ground with Sir Robin, who took exception to me crumpling his top hat. How the crumpling was sustained was not documented.

Now, I can understand it would have caused mild annoyance on his part but I felt a full-scale assault was a little uncalled for. And for a man who would be 99 now, had he not died in 2000, I can vouch he was as robust in a clinch as he was in any of his television interrogations.

Luckily, I woke before too much damage could be done either to me or his reputation and in the early hours I did some googling and indeed found a picture of him in a pristine top hat. Happier times.

I also came across his obituary in the Guardian, describing him as “the most outstanding television journalist of his generation”, although fellow broadcaster, the splendid Dame Joan Bakewell, was far less complimentary about his attitude to female colleagues. That part, at least, made me feel a little better about taking him on.

But I digress.

It did add a celebrity flavour to the normal stress dreams that have become a bit of a sleeping habit of mine. I have a rather small repertoire (insert 1970s sitcom laugh here).

I often find myself in the school hall, having just discovered it’s Maths A Level exam day and I have done no revision. My lack of preparation can partly be explained by the fact that I never studied Maths A level but you would think after 40 years I would have sorted this out in my head by now.

And then there’s the bus. I’m usually on the top deck when I discover my bottom deck is unclothed. Heaven knows where I keep the bus pass. (Too much detail?) I have to configure a way of disembarking with my dignity intact. I have had this dream more often that I have actually been on a bus, always suitably attired. I believe - I have to believe - that these naked-in-public incidents are the stuff of many people’s nightmares. They are, aren’t they?

Many such dreams relate to our own work anxieties. I once had to read live on air, without faltering, a script that had every other word missing. I think that was a dream but after so long things start to blur.

We all have our own settings for such experiences. On the morning of the 2001 FA Cup final in Cardiff (this bit’s real), I interviewed the groundsman of the Millennium Stadium, as it was then called. He told me he had dreamt that night that he arrived pitch-side half an hour before kick-off to find the grass was six foot hight. He was still scything his way through it all, as the last chorus of Abide with Me was drawing to a close. Luckily this was long before the line-drawing advent of VAR.

And a friend of mine who was the manager of a publicly-owned mansion recently recounted how he’d woken up in a sweat, having walked around the grounds for hours in the dark, weighed down by carrying thee human heads as he sought a suitable place to bury them. The word "suitable" here is doing a lot of heavy lifting. As indeed was he.

I could go on. Really I could. But it seems to me that the common thread is that these dreams always remain unresolved. That’s the real stress. The problem is never actually dealt with. Well, only by waking up and coming to what passes for our senses. There are of course plenty of people who might have a field night, analysing this nonsense but I’m bracing myself for the next instalment. Would a little maths revision and a bag of extra clothing by the bed for any unexpected bus journey be a wise move?

As for Sir Robin - he had many memorable moments, including in 1982 when his questioning prompted the Defence Secretary Sr John Nott to storm off set as he clumsily unclipped his mic. Look it up if you've not seen it before. It’s probably the incident for which he should be remembered most. Not grappling around in the dirt with me. Hat or no hat.

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