IN YOUR DREAMS

I have nothing in my head on waking. My memory banks wipe themselves completely every night. I have my CV taped to the back of the bathroom door to get in character each morning. Harold once, for a joke, substituted a potted biography of Joan of Arc, but couldn’t bring himself to strike the match at the crucial moment. He left me tied to the woodpile for several hours, mind.

Have you ever confused dreams with reality? I do it all the time. Unlike some people, who remember their dreams as soon as they wake up, I am always of the impression that I don’t dream, as my mind is such a blank first thing in the morning. Then I will become very confused, convinced that the Eiffel Tower was in the middle of the Grand’Place last week, or that Tony Blair has resigned, or something equally implausible.

I could have sworn I read a review of a new film the other day which featured a talking ape, the result of an explorer’s moment of madness with a female gorilla. Yesterday I threw out a load of old newspapers, and possibly by mistake the magazine with the film review in it. But perhaps I only dreamed I read about it, as I have scoured the internet and cannot find any reference to it.

Perhaps it is because I watched “Gorillas Revisited” on BBC4 last night, presented by honorary gorilla David Attenborough, and came to the obvious conclusion in my subconscious. It looked back on the original BBC “Gorillas” documentary from 1979. This was the one, some of you may remember, where a considerably younger Attenborough was sat on by a young gorilla and looked to be enjoying the experience. The gorillas were feared missing presumed dead after the appalling Rwandan tragedy of 1994, but a team of cameramen found them relatively unscathed after the war. The Rwandan government is now supporting a new conservation programme, and the gorillas are breeding again. Which is good news.

Wikipedia says the name “Gorilla” “ … derived from the Gorillai, a "tribe of hairy women", described by Hanno the Navigator, a Carthaginian navigator and possible visitor to the area that later became Sierra Leone circa 480 BCE”.

Now, if Hanno the Navigator had a thing about hairy women, he could have fathered a whole tribe of humanoid apes, such as the one featuring in my dream film. Just because the gorillas don’t talk to David Attenborough doesn’t mean they can’t. I refer you to my learned friend Gorilla Bananas, if you require further convincing, who may well be descended from Hanno the Navigator.

On the other hand, as gorillas are mainly found in the Congo and Rwanda, and not Sierra Leone, perhaps what Hanno found really was a tribe of hairy women.

Wikipedia also says “Due to their diet of plant life, gorillas often have bloated stomachs”. There’s nothing worse than trapped wind.

Not that I have any desire to go and gawp at gorillas. Apparently “eco-tourism” is bringing in plenty moolah for the conservation project. It could at first glance appear rather dangerous for the apes, who are susceptible to the same diseases as humans, although the project is well policed and humans are not allowed to get too close or stay too long for fear they will transmit some human disease such as the common cold or RSI. I suppose this is where a bit of directional farting might come in handy.

The project managers say that the apes find the humans interesting, like a kind of running soap opera. Do they know Pauline Fowler is dead, I wonder? Killed by a bowl of fruit, which a gorilla would find very ironic. If this is the case, then the eco-tourists should be applauded for paying all that money to go and be laughed and farted at by gorillas.