THE DREAM - The dream: I'm in a sort of field trip/study setting and there's a 'pond life' project. We're looking at what we can catch in an old plastic washing-up bowl....some small fish and a insects have been scooped up from an big pond like lake. There's water-skaters, nymphs, the sorta stuff you'd expect from a lake or pond. It's my job to show them to everyone, count them up and then go and put them back in to the lake. As I'm bending down at the edge of the pond to return the stuff we've caught someone in the group yells "Shark out there!" and just at that moment two big sharks rear-up out of the water, levitating there, trying to bite each other like two old sea-lions locked in a battle. The thrash and bite at each other, their white underbellies pressed against one another, standing up out of the water, in clear view in front of me, it's real scary! (They are always Great Whites in my shark dreams - and I have about three a year!) Some blood is drawn somewhere and one of the sharks has then flopped out onto the land by the lake. Someone then must take the shark indoors or maybe it sorta slides, but we cut to an interior, like an old changing room in a swimming pool and the shark that came out of the water is flopped out in there. He's huge, he's under this cover thing so I can only see part of him. I make a suggestion to someone "Hey, for the sake of having more stuff in the pond and to give the shark a chance, why don't we put him back?" I exclaim. So someone then grabs the tail of the shark and and carefully picks him up holding underneath to take him back out to where the lake is. At this point, looking down at the huge shark, I notice that he is in fact only small, more like a dogfish size, a sorta mini Great White. He's picked up and taken out to be returned. Dream ends. Of note: This is the very first time that there's been two sharks in one of my shark dreams and it made me think about it in a different way. I scanned the web for 'shark dream meanings' and think I've cracked it: it's about friends! Also it's the first time a shark has morphed in size, getting smaller like that which I have no idea about!

THE REALITY The day leading up to this dream I'd been out on a long walk with two friends, we'd been by the canal strolling from Islington to Camden in North London where we live. There's lots of water about, parts of it are indeed pond-like with all sorts of wharfs, leaks, grass and muddiness. (Interestingly, part of the same canal flows past a school where I did some unsuccessful and really tough teacher training). I think that on the walk, feeling mischievous and insecure, I tried a little bit to pit these two friends against one another. Only in a playful sorta way, and that I also remember feeling insecure when they walked on ahead at one point and even asked if they were talking about me. I also feel I should have more friends generally. I think the two sharks in the dream represent the two friends - for the first time thanks to finding it suggested on a website after putting 'shark dream meanings' into google I can see that sharks can in fact represent people as well as feelings, the website even went on to mention 'treacherous friends' too! On a visual note, I also watched loads of 'youtube' content recently about that trainer in Florida that got tragically killed by the Orca at the 'Marine World' place and when the shark in my dream was taken indoors it looked really huge and for a moment I swear it was an Orca instead of a shark. So thanks to the internet and a suggestion that sharks could be treacherous friends I do understand thing differently this time. Makes sense really, cos primevally we do all come from the water, from the sea and from lakes, and in the water you're evolving, safe, except that is, from sharks!

INTERPRETATIONActually the dream might be a symbol for a theme going through the dreamers mind at the time. The dream seems to mention big sharks and little sharks. If we translate the shark's symbolism into the word "aggressive" it has obvious relevance in the dreamer was worried that his friends were taking an aggressive and oppositional tone with him. The dream is long and complex but my best guess is that the dream deals with this type of theme "I just worry that my friends were taking an aggressive and oppositional tone with me."