Growth In Decay

When I first moved into my flat, the windows were... shall we say... manky?

One of the first improvements I made, in fact, was getting the windows and front door replaced with sparkly new plastic-framed, 'low energy glass' things that have little vents to combat damp, and a facility to lock the opening panes in a position that can only be described as 'ajar'.

Of course, life isn't so simple that these sorts of measures mean there's no condensation and damp, just that it's substantially reduced. Last time I gave the window frames a bit of a wipe, I found hints of mould. Nothing serious - not even as bad as I used to get on the windows at my folks' place.

Nevertheless, this led to an interesting dream last night - which is strange because it wasn't yesterday that I last wiped the window frames, it was months ago - whereby I found not just mould, but a whole strange ecosystem on my window frames. There were several types of moss, a large growth of mould and - most puzzlingly - a full cactus, spikes and all.

It was made up of little ball-shaped segments - like Golden Barrel cacti or, strangely, the hallucinogenic cacti from which mescaline is derived - but very, very small - at most about a centimetre in diameter - and very tightly packed into a small bush shape.

And growing out of my window frame.

Dear reader, I have not the words.

I remember pointing it all out to someone in the dream, but cannot recall what happened next. Given my aversion to all things cacti, a similar situation in real life would probably result in the application of fire to the whole window frame, just to be sure.

There is evidently some great distrust of mould deeply ingrained in my psyche.