A girl called Bart

I was in a shop and they had a new cafe. I queued up and looked at the menu. I couldn’t decide what to have, so when I got to the counter I asked what the pasties were on the counter. She didn’t know, so I asked for 2 sausage rolls and she said I should have 3, so I did.

I went and sat at a table to eat and started filling in a workbook I was working on. One of the questions was “Why do you write?” I half-jokingly put “If I write something good then I might get the girls.”

My friend Nelson, who was sat next to me at the time, read this and told me there was a girl who’d been watching me who liked me. I looked over and a girl with black hair leaned forward and looked at me. I went over and she got up.

She was a nice looking girl. Dark hair, I think she had braces and a bit of an indie rocker vibe. She was a bit shy and said she was acting awkward, but I said she wasn’t. I was quite confident (this is how I know it was a dream!) We chatted for a bit and she said her name was “Bart, or Bar, or Bort.” I recognised Bort as a Simpsons reference.

She gave me a note which said “I was going to ask you back to my place to go to bed, but that can’t happen now, haha.” And her phone number. I said I’d text her later and we both left quite happy.

There was then a bit where a police officer who wore wigs was actually a bad guy and called himself Deumont (and kept having to correct people who pronounced the silent T at the end). There was a bit of trouble and they arrested him in the end.

I then went to a cinema where I’d been watching a film with schoolmates. I think the snack at the shop had been an interval break. I couldn’t remember where I’d been sitting. One of the people who was sat next to me had joked on the way in that he was going to sit in the central seat. I found what I thought was my seat and ended up two seats down from Bart.

She had what I thought was a ukulele with her. I asked if she played and she said no, she was learning. She then asked if I’d like a go. The guy sat between us pointed out how thick the strings were. They were rubber and about as thick as a straw (only solid). There was a brown plastic stick at the top, a bit like a whammy bar, that was important somehow. The strings had a band around them a few inches the bottom and were connected to a block of wood that was attached to the body of the instrument.

Bart told me it was called a Mirth. I tried to play it like picking a ukulele, but the whammy bar fell out of place and the strings came loose from the bottom block. I reattached them and she showed me how to play it gently. It made an interesting sound. A bit like plucking a violin, but more ‘metallic’ and mysterious. Kinda like playing a staccato note on a theramin with a plucking sound. I did a bit of fingerpicking and produced some noise, then handed it back.