ON DREAMS, POLTERGEISTS AND WILTSHIRE

My Great Aunt was the sort of person who saw portents. “I heard the Banshee again last night,” she would intone with a chilling voice, just as the conversation began to flag. “I wouldn’t be surprised if someone doesn’t fall ill very soon. It could be terminal.”

She was, of course, very old. Born in Ireland’s western hinterland in the 1880s. She died over forty years ago, convinced that an admirer from her distant past had somehow tracked her down and come back to claim her. She had bumped into someone, or someone had served her in a shop, and he had looked at her in a kindly, funny, inquisitive way. As that person bore some resemblance to the memory she held of her admirer - she had no photograph - so, it must have been him, however improbable.

This brought her some comfort in the weeks before her (to us) unexpected decease. The memory of my telling her not to be so silly haunts me to this day. St Peter, it seems, had come in person to escort her home. No wonder she grew angry at my rationality.

This recall of Great Aunt’s foibles was prompted by a great crash this morning outside my bedroom door. The noise sounded as if a wild animal, of generous proportions, had attempted to break in. It might, I reasoned, even now be slavering in ravenous anticipation on the other side of the door which I opened gingerly and in some alarm. Fortunately, I encountered no more than a pile of books which had somehow contrived to throw themselves off the top shelf of my bookcase, scattering themselves loudly against the wooden panels of my bedroom door. Is this an omen, I thought, picking up the books and replacing them on the shelf, or am I still dreaming?

For I had just awoken from a particularly vivid dream of being escorted around a country house by the late Alan Clark - he of diary notoriety. Now, I have to confess to being a bit of a fan of the Clark diaries and I keep all three volumes on my shelves. While he was a bounder of the first order, full of loutish and prejudiced opinions and despite much of his behaviour being both juvenile and boorish, he nevertheless wrote with memorable elegance and humour about a very wide range of subjects. He himself may not have been a great charmer but his diaries remind me just how interesting life can be.

Now I doubt if any woman would feel entirely safe alone with Alan Clark, but in this dream I was a member of a group, and though he spent some time talking to me - indeed I felt quite flattered - I managed to hold my own without being overborne.

It was a house that we were looking around, not his castle in Kent. I wondered if it was Seend Manor in Wiltshire, where he lived at one time. I have never so much as been to the village of Seend, though I used to pass the turning for it many times when my father lived in Dorset. Wiltshire villages may have been on my mind as I had read Little Brown Dog’s picturesque description of the one she lives in just a day or two before.

The tour over, we were in the garden through which a stream flowed. I asked AC what it was called. He prevaricated and then said something that sounded like ‘Bulg.’ I have never heard of a stream called ‘Bulg’ - and trying to place it woke me up.

In that half-asleep, half-awake time that followed I tried to remember the names of the houses in the diaries. Try as I might I could not remember the name of the castle in Kent, though the name must occur two hundred times in the books: Sandling? Sandwich? Sandford?

No good, it wouldn’t come. I had to look it up. I went to the bookcase. ‘Saltwood.’ Ah, of course, that was it. I returned to bed.

It was at this point that the crash of books against door occurred. Now the volume I had looked at was on one of the middle shelves of the bookcase, which is in any case screwed to the wall. I didn’t touch anything on the top shelf. Why then should a pile of books dislodge themselves and crash to the floor?

So I began to wonder - am still wondering - whether this unlikely and unexplained event was in any way connected with my dream. I don’t believe in ‘signs’ or ‘portents.’ I will accept poltergeists, and have an idea anyway that this house, may be infected by a feeble and non-malicious species of poltergeist that occasional tricks us into thinking someone is at the front door, or upstairs, when they aren’t.

But books crashing randomly out of bookcases, could become aggravating. Clearly, I shall have to stop reading charming accounts of Wiltshire villages and eat better cheese.