Something in the voice and the gullible nonsense of these stories recalls Ten Thousand Dreams Interpreted, an old book I once found in a charity shop and kept because it amused me. It was a dictionary of objects and concepts (‘knife’, for example, or ‘failure’) that supposedly often appeared in dreams, followed by a short declaration of what each foretold for the dreamer. A great many of the entries had a certain meaning, but a different meaning if ‘a young woman’ dreamed of them. I still remember some – I used to recite them at dinner parties. Tadpoles indicated ‘unease in business’. But if a
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