Pigs, elephants and oxbow lakes

Yesterday I was reading a news story about some pigs on the loose, the wanderings of which caused part of the M11 to close while emergency services attempted to round up the escapees. The vehicle in which they were being transported had overturned allowing some of the little darlings to make a bid for freedom – you can’t really blame them in the circumstances.

When I woke up at around 8.00 this morning it was not really much of a surprise to note then that the dream from which I had just exited had included a few of the porcine fellows. However, dreams being what they are, my pigs were not ordinary pigs.

One of the few things I remember from my geography lessons way back in the 60s – apart from my geography teacher breaking my plastic ruler on a desk when he borrowed it to whack it on the wood to call attention to the class - were oxbow lakes. For those of you who didn’t have the pleasure of learning such things, an oxbow is basically a u-shaped body of water which creates a lake when part of a river breaks off. I won’t go into the mechanics of the erosion etc – I can remember silt being mentioned quite a lot – but I will leave it to you to look it up if you feel the need to delve into such things.So, that is where my pigs were – on the piece of land that was surrounded by the oxbow lake in the making.

For some reason Jon and I were in a boat, drifting along the river (there was someone else too but I have no recollection who) when I looked to my left and saw 3 or 4 pink pigs. The strange thing about these pigs was the fact that each of them had a plastic bottle on their backs secured around their girth by a wide white ribbon.In the blink of an eye the scene changed to an office where Jon and I, plus this other mysterious person, were talking to some kind of official about something of which I have no memory. At the time of the changeover I had walked on to the piece of land and picked up one of the pigs, and between this scene switch the animal had shrunk to the size of a domestic cat, and although still pink it had morphed into a miniature baby elephant!

I awoke to the sound of a magpie chattering outside our bedroom window, just as a woman was examining the little creature to make sure it was in good health. She had a relaxed disposition which seemed to indicate that she saw such a thing on a regular basis.

How peculiar...... I have a theory on the bottles around the pigs but it would be interesting to see what anyone else thinks.