Dosser's Dreams

By Alexander Rodger

We all dream when we sleep. Whether you can remember your dreams is neither here nor there as we all daydream.

Both nocturnal dreams and daydreams are part of our mental health and how we see and interpret the world.

 

Dosser’s Dreams are about the dreams of Dosser, a fictional character that emanates from his dreams.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Sep 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9781398492066

Alexander Rodger

Born in Scotland but brought up in Ghana, Alexander did an MA Hons at the University of Edinburgh in Politics and Philosophy, followed by an MA in German and a doctorate at the University of West Berlin. Turning his back on the academic life, he produced 27 plays, five films and several documentaries. After the fall of the Berlin wall, he moved to Paris and works as an author and music producer.

Book preview

Dosser’s Dreams

Alexander Rodger

Austin Macauley Publishers

Dosser’s Dreams

About the Author

Copyright Information ©

Acknowledgement

Rover is in the Huff

If You Weren’t a Fucking Woman, I’d Bite Your Fucking Tits Aff.

You are skint

Lockdown

Pouring

The stench is appalling

Rat-arsed

The Collected Thoughts of Two Amputated Brains

I Always Wanted to Commit Suicide

The Problem with the Coffee Kitty

Happy Encounters

I just gobbed him

Waiting on the Perfect Job Ad

Aspects of Being an Asshole

Gum shoes

You Can’t Win Them All

Prices

Decision

It Is Forbidden to Play the Trumpet Underneath the Kitchen Table

Disappointment

The Duck Race

Laurie’s Valentine’s Day Card

My Ideal Partner

Planned Commitments

How to Treat a Woman Right?

I’m Not Afraid of the Dark

Hector and the Brother-in-Law

My Lawyer Is Sending Me to Prison

’The Life of a Drinker Is Not an Easy One

Why I Am Not a Vampire

Why All My Womenfolk Are Either Dead or in the Nuthouse

The Wrong Track

Side Street Walking

Unsolicited Amputation

Tales of Dragons and Invisible Pussy Cats

The Life and Times of a Born Wanker

About the Author

Born in Scotland but brought up in Ghana, Alexander did an MA Hons at the University of Edinburgh in Politics and Philosophy, followed by an MA in German and a doctorate at the University of West Berlin. Turning his back on the academic life, he produced 27 plays, five films and several documentaries.

After the fall of the Berlin wall, Alexander moved to Paris, and now works as an author and music producer.

Copyright Information ©

Alexander Rodger 2023

The right of Alexander Rodger to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398492059 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398492066 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

PJ Blumenthal

Jan Quinn

My worst nightmare is being beaten up in the streets, naked, because I have just released a book based on a mathematical and, by definition, a philosophical theory that does not exist.

This has had grave consequences on various aspects of quantum physics, mathematics and philosophy and music into the bargain. It has been a best seller, and I am rich and famous.

My second worst nightmare is that I have to sit my higher mathematics again, and I know nothing.

And I mean nothing.

Nothing.

Have got used to that word throughout life and its variation: nothingness.

My own personal nightmare follows on from that.

It all stems from not being.

And not nothingness.

The following involves examples of other dreams and nightmares…

It is four in the morning or so the church bells down the road tell me, so I half open my eyes.

The lamplight seeps in through the cellar window, and the harsh wind is blowing hard outside. I have been dossing here in this derelict cellar for three nights in the centre of the city. No water, no electricity, no comfort: just a place to park my bag with the few possessions I have plus a sleeping bag while I walk the streets going nowhere.

The few friends I have left that still speak to me call me Dosser as I doss where I fall.

Park benches, cellars, empty beds…anywhere.

I am a dosser.

I open up my eyes fully and see a pair of yellow vertical eyes staring at me on my chest, and then I feel the weight of something and feel a movement, some warmth.

And then I realise that it is a rat.

I sit upright, the rat scurries off, and I scream.

I jump up and gather my bag and run off into the cold night to dream elsewhere.

Yup, I am Dosser, and these are my dreams.

Rover is in the Huff

My owner’s name is of no relevance if you can indeed call him an owner of anything at all.

He doesn’t appear to own anything these days, or at least that’s the impression I’ve been getting. It’s not as if I have been starved or neglected, although I suppose I am or have been. I am certainly not complaining about it in any case. I’ve just got the impression that there isn’t enough money kicking around these days for the small needs of the likes of me, not to mention the needs of my owner. It’s the kind of cash that we are talking about that concerns the buying of a can of dog food or anything similar. It’s not that I am averse to spuds, or mashed potatoes as such, but that’s the only thing I seem to be getting nowadays. Day in, day out; mashed potatoes is getting on my nerves. It’s alright, but it is, like, monotonous. He’s eating the same as me and I know it, because I follow him everywhere, so I know he’s not sneaking a sly steak here or there, so it’s just a matter for me of grinning and bearing it.

As I said, he doesn’t seem to own anything these days apart from me, and as we have both been going through this potato patch with one another for some time now, and we console each other with the fact that at least we’ve got each other, I am now very angry.

I am more than angry.

I am in the huff.

It’s not the heavy starch diet that’s been bothering me the most, it’s more those comings and goings at seven in the morning that are really ruining my health and mellow frame of mind. There we all are snug in our respective beds, dreaming our respective dreams, when sure as hell, two, three times a week the doorbell goes and I’ve got to jump up and run to the door barking my lungs out, not sure at all what time of day it is, until the commotion dies down. I know he doesn’t like me barking at this time of day but what else can I do when some bastard chooses to ring at this godawful hour? Or when the doorbell rings: you simply have to get up and run to the door and bark your head off, and when the door opens you stand there growling until you’re told to back off and retreat to the background, still growling threateningly as if you were going to gnaw the visitor’s leg off, and if you know them you act friendly and get patted on the head for your troubles. Hoping for a bone.

Whoever they are, we always go through to the living room and if they are new visitors. I am always at my owner’s side ready to bite their legs off at the slightest hint of a command from my owner.

The visitor that came today was a new one, so he was treated accordingly.

Youngish, deceptively friendly unlike the normal one that arrives at this time in the morning, who’s not friendly and I think a bit frustrated. Whatever the case, he too was a bailiff.

Who else would visit at seven in the morning?

And he too, like the others, wanted money. I think that this time it had to do with tax debts, and like all the other bailiffs he wasn’t going to get a penny as we didn’t have any money to give, knowing that I hadn’t noticed any great improvements in my diet of late. So I waited and listened to the usual questions, filling in the forms, confirmation about how high the supposed debt was and how there was no question whatsoever of my owner ever being able to pay even the slightest fraction of it as he was unemployed, unemployable and generally frustrated. I knew