In reality I don’t have a front garden, just a concreted area big enough to hold four bins, for the separated recyclables, and a few plant pots. It also serves to provide a seven-foot gap between our front door and the sidewalk. There’s no separation from our neighbours’ concreted front area, and their front door is ten inches from ours.
This is by way of comparison with the front garden I had in my dream. It came as a pleasant surprise, as if we had moved up in the world since I last took any notice. Perhaps we had taken the plunge and moved to East Cowes, as mentioned in my last; and discovered we could get all this and still have some change in our pockets. I discovered that we had a well-tended lawn and some trees. What particularly caught my eye, though, was some pretty little flowers which had grown by themselves in the margin of the lawn, where it meets the long path to the front door. I was looking at these with wonder and self-congratulation: what a beautiful place I live in, down to the smallest detail!
My reverie was distracted by a murmur of voices nearby. I looked up to see a middle-aged man and a slightly younger woman, intent on what they were doing, in a corner of the lawn, under the largest tree. “My word!”, he was saying. “We’ll get a good price for some of these.” They worked professionally, packing books in boxes, using sheets of grey cardboard as dividers to separate them alphabetically or by topic. Then I saw some of the shelves I’d made, standing under a tree, with only a few books left on them. I tried to piece together what had happened. Perhaps I’d had a clear-out and put my unwanted books out there, with a sign inviting passers-by to choose one. Stupid of me not to remember the details, such as whether I’d left a box for donations.
Never mind, whatever I’d said, there was no way I’d been prepared for dealers to come along and strip the lot. I was getting more annoyed by the minute, tried to keep calm before asking whether they had thought to ring the front door bell before ransacking my possessions. They instantly looked up in the middle of their packing and froze like rabbits caught in the headlights, I couldn’t tell whether from fear or simply returning my glare, trying to stare me out. No apology, no explanation. When I turned aside for a second, they went back to their packing. I could take no more, started to rant at the top of my voice, ordered them to drop everything and get off my land. They fled without looking back.
I went closer, saw that my sign had said, “Help these unwanted books find a new home! Enjoy!” I felt so confused and guilty that I woke up.
Not so Bernard Black, from Black Books, as my clip shows, from Episode 1.
a wayfarer’s notes 
Your dream reminds me of something that happened to me in my waking life. As I was reading it, I was picturing it taking place in the same setting and context.
A few years back we cleared out an area in our front yard that was getting overgrown, and in doing so, we unearthed a bunch of large, flat rocks. (The previous owners seemed to have a fetish for these flat rocks, as we’ve found them everywhere around the house.) I dug up these rocks and set them aside in a pile, because we were planning to reseed the grass there. One morning I was out there working on this, and a woman from the neighborhood walked by and saw the rocks and asked if she could come back and take them away. I didn’t want the rocks, so of course I was more than happy to let her have them and to get rid of them. The woman showed up about a week later with her husband, who was pushing a wheelbarrow. They had shown up at a somewhat inconvenient time, since we were just about to go somewhere, and I don’t remember exactly what all happened, but I remember it being a whole lot more fuss and aggravation than I had been prepared for when I had agreed to let the woman take the rocks. My wife was a bit upset and annoyed by the whole thing, and I think I remember her being a little snippy with the woman. The whole incident became a reference point for situations where you agree to something that seems like it’s no big deal but ends up being more of an imposition than you bargained for.
I had another similar incident involving an old lawnmower I was throwing away. I was putting it out front with the trash when, again, a neighbor came by. They were interested in the lawnmower and asked me to set it aside, so that they could come back for it later. I pulled it out of the pile and set it over behind the fence. The person never came back. The lawnmower sat there for another week or so, until I finally put it out with the next load of trash, as I had originally intended. I wasn’t really put out by this, but it did annoy me a little.
So yeah, your dreams reminded me of these things. The feeling you decribe at the end seems close to how I felt after the rock incident: confused, anxious, and a little guilty.
LikeLike
P.S. If I didn’t explain that rock story very well, it’s because I don’t remember exactly why it ended up being more of a hassle, which is pretty much the key part of the story.
LikeLike
I’ll give you £200 for the leather-bound ones. I need them to go with a sofa I have.
I remember watching Black Books for the first time. I couldn’t believe how hilarious it was. All I have to do is just look at Dylan Moran and I burst into laughter. I’ve watched every episode so many times that I have them all memorized. I keep hoping in the back of my mind to come across somebody in my life, who I can exchange all the lines with. That isn’t an easy person to find around these parts.
It wasn’t so much them taking your books that angered me. It was that the bookshelves you built were sitting outside like they were no better than Bryan’s dirty old rocks.
Very disturbing dream. But as much as your family adores you, it’s a good feeling to know that nothing like that will ever happen to you or your things.
LikeLike
Yes we do the same, watching those episodes of Black Books again and again.
I can imagine the aggravation when they came to collect those rocks. Often when we’ve had old furniture to get rid of, I’ve thought of offering them on Ebay for people to collect, but we always end up giving them to Central Aid, round the corner. Sometimes they sell them on Ebay.
LikeLike