When your phobias gang up on you

I was nervously preparing for my last-minute role as an MC introducing a Shakespeare play to an audience, when a fire alarm went off. My apartment, due to a raging gas fire in the fireplace, was going up in flames. It's not often that both these recurring dreams arrive together, in a nice, neurotic package.

It's kind of like that day a few weeks ago when there was a hospital fire that went on for hours, followed by a repetitive and cryptic message on the PA system reminding staff that the hospital was on "condition yellow", and then the Blue Angels started dive bombing the city in a quite loud, arrogant, and militaristic fashion. Good times.