As mad as a basket of...

Frogs. I'm worried about frogs, frogs and insects.

I have a dilemma. You see, for a man with so little to worry about, I worry far too much. It’s the little things that worry me these days – unfinished business, unwatered plants, unwanted tasks that I keep putting off – and of course the bigger things too; sometimes I wonder if I’m looking for a meaning to things when of course there is no meaning, no pattern, just randomness living the lie of order. Perhaps that’s why I wake at first light, my head buzzing with tiny worry insects. Tiny, tiny, worry insects: but an early morning buzzing nevertheless.

So that’s part one of my dilemma. The flipside, as is so often the case with dilemmas, is what takes place after I’ve woken up to my early morning insect plague.

I dream.

I dream short dreams one after the other. It’s almost like those public information films I remember from the sixties – almost, but not quite. Watch out there’s a frog about!

At times I can almost control these dreams. It’s the half-waking state; they call it lucid dreaming I think. Other times, as is the way of most things, I’m in control for a minute or two and then the unexpected happens and I find myself on a tube train without my trousers, in an embrace with somebody I really shouldn’t be embracing, or wading waist high through a field of frogs. This happens more frequently when I’m in Wales, perhaps it’s the country air or maybe it’s the sound of the frogs - sorry sheep – bleating.

A field of green-brown frogs bleating and jumping in the early morning light.

And that’s my dilemma. In order to get to my dreams, which I usually enjoy even without my trousers, bleating frogs and all, I first have to put up with those pesky insects and let’s not forget – a careless cuddle can become a muddle! Just where did I put those trousers?