Richard Herring: Dream Herring, take charge and let me enjoy my free pass as I sleep
Friday 1 Nov 2013
I had a dream the other night in which a voluptuous, scantily clad woman was making sexual advances towards me.
‘I am sorry,’ I told her, ‘I am married.’ She was insistent but I showed her my wedding ring and shrugged my shoulders and she left, a disappointed, voluptuous, scantily clad woman.
How gallant and romantic I am, you must be thinking, and how much I must love my wife. Which is true. But when I woke up and found out the whole thing had just been a dream, I was furious.
Dreams are the one place I am allowed to do whatever I want but I had failed to take advantage of my free pass. Marriage can imprison my body but it cannot imprison my mind. That’s what I signed up for. How could my dream self let me down like this by so fastidiously remembering his vows?
Why didn’t the voluptuous, scantily clad woman tell me it was just a dream? Why didn’t I workit out? The fact a voluptuous, scantily clad woman was making advances to me should have been clue enough for me. Because that NEVER HAPPENS. Think, Dream Herring. Think.
I am not talking about myself there. I believe that all dreams are carried into our brains by a magical Dream Herring. He swims in one ear, poots out a dream from his magical anus (it is an actual fact that herrings communicate by farting – this one applies to me as well as the fish) and then swims on to the next sleeping person to guff out a surreal fantasy for them. That’s why people often say that something far-fetched smells a bit fishy.
More importantly, now I know the voluptuous, scantily clad woman is just a sprite of my imagination, why won’t she come back and have another try? Ever since this happened, I’ve just been dreaming about having to sit my maths A-level again. There hasn’t even been a saucy-looking invigilator to brighten up the terrible monotony of my dreamscape.
In reality, I am very glad to be settled down, not just because my wife is the most amazing woman alive and has brought me a happiness that I never thought I’d have but because I couldn’t be bothered with all the hassle of dating. Seduction is such a difficult and embarrassing thing to attempt. I don’t miss the desperation or rejection. I was pretty bad at knowing the right things to say and do.
Not as bad as Van Gogh, though. His technique to get the woman he fancied to fancy him back was to slice off one of his ears and send it to her in the post.
Most ladies prefer flowers or chocolates but for one in a thousand women, the surprise severed ear, arriving by mail, is the key to their heart.
It’s a bit of a gamble. Nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand you’re going to end up alone and finding it hard to put on your glasses.
But that one time, the woman will open the envelope and say: ‘What’s this? A severed ear? Brilliant! I’ve always wanted one of these. I’m definitely going to s**g whoever sent me this. He shouldn’t be difficult to find.’
Be warned, this is a technique you can really only use twice at most. Actually, probably just once. Because the second woman you try it on is going to see you and say: ‘You’ve done this before, haven’t you? This is your regular chat-up line. I’m not falling for that, like that other ear slag.’
Richard Herring’s show, We’re All Going To Die!, is touring nationally until April 2014. For tickets and details, visit http://www.richardherring.com
