In the dream we're all sitting in a Roman bath-house. I don't remember what we're wearing but we're comfortable in the heat so it can't be much. We're arranged casually around a set of little cafe tables with plastic cups of coffee that we're not drinking yet because it's too hot. We're sprawled on dinky little aluminium chairs that screech on the tiles when we move them about. I'm playing with my camera, putting a new film in and swinging it about on its strap. The others are reading a newspaper, passing pages and sections about when they've finished, having lazy squabbles about whose turn it is for the fashion pages. "I don't want the sodding budget!" yells Alice, exasperated, and we all laugh. There's a fairly tacky interview on the radio behind me in which the interviewer is sucking up to some fashionable DJ like there's no tomorrow. When one of them says something particularly banal we laugh at it and say it again in silly voices.
I lean back to take a picture of the sky and discover that the new film I've put in is black and white. I take the picture anyway, making sure to include the tops of the columns and the edge of the tiled roof. The roof's open above the pool, you see, and we're on a big tiled area beside it.
Beth and a girl I don't know get up from their chairs, sighing with the exertion, and say "We're going to try and make that dodgy shower work now." The rest of us groan and catcall, shaking our heads. The dodgy shower's shown a remarkable ability to wait until you least expect it to do anything and then shoot a thin jet of extremely cold or extremely hot water at you. Like a water pistol. But they grin, amble on over to the wall with the showers against it and start playing with the dials. Casual sadists that we are, we watch. Sure enough, they get hit. We laugh, yell encouragement and turn back to whatever we were doing. I go back to watching the clouds drift across the patch of sky I can see.
Sally saunters into my field of view and says "Hey, camera girl, can I be a punk? I'm bored of being dignified." So I grin and kick the chair out from under me and we go to the other side of the pool where there's a plain white wall, perfect for portrait shots. Sally snarls and gives V signs beautifully, and we're howling with laughter for the rest of the dream.
