"Suicide Is Painless..."

...as the song goes. From the 'M.A.S.H.' theme tune if you recall. Not a sentiment I would ordinarily accept or embrace.

Yet a dream has me pondering.

I'm in a hospital, a patient clearly so something must be wrong. Drastic action required. In this case - or at least in this dream - suicide by self-shooting is the great leap forward.

Have to be careful - as one does in such circs. - that no one else should be hurt, so can't hang around with loaded pistol in the ward as such, but must seek unoccupied corridor.

A crowd gathers - as it would these days - to enjoy sight of man blowing his brains out.

There was a droll cartoon some many years back of a chaplain attending a possible 'jumper' - man threatening to hurl himself off a high building roof. Police say to chaplain 'Talk him down Vicar!' As man comes flying down to his doom chaplain cries out through the megaphone 'Left leg up a bit!' Not hugely amusing if you've ever known a friend - as I have - die this way, but you see the essential humorous intent: it just wouldn't happen that way, therefore it's funny. What sadly these days wrecks the humour are reports - not infrequent - of people yelling 'Go on, jump then you saddo' and other such heartless comments.

Anyways, so there I was in the dream attempting to inform the voyeuristic mob why self-immolation was the way to be - or rather essentially to cease to be.

A rank failure all round it seemed, as people just drifted off leaving me alone with an absolute peach of a young woman. Someone one knew, someone one didn't quite remember ever having understood until this moment how much one desired this gorgeous creature, but now indeed a woman perfectly prepared and willing to be so desired.

Gosh and all that jazz. Was the chance of some carnal congress with such a one, skin as smooth as glass, a better bet than instant annihilation? One should jolly well cocoa!

That premise though firmly established, Miss Smooth-As-Glass promptly announces she fancies - nay definitively intends - visiting said hospital Chapel ante the carnal congress thingy.

Bit of an unwarranted distraction from the the main event, who would not dispute; but, ever the gen'leman, one must but oblige. So we swing open the door of what proves to be a tiny room, though gloriously furnished with all sensual trimmings even - I kid not - a couch avec shedloads of the most softly seductive cushions...and so forth.

Not so much too much information, as too many radical contradictions even for a dream. Surrealism is all very well in its place (Real Madrid - 1 : Surreal Madrid - Fish... and so forth) but this was way pushing it.

I make my excuses and flee - as it says in all the best tabloid headlines. Dreams? I'd rather face French rugby's Chabal homme-de-homme, as it were, than such febrile nonsense.

Herr Freud, you may have the night off!