“My dream discussion intertwines unhappy schoolboy experiences with happy wine and food memories rather than aspects of anatomy,” writes wine columnist RICHARD CALVER.

It is usually boring when people share with you a dream that they recently experienced.

Prof Jim Davies writing for Scientific American says these are the reasons for the boredom induced in others, to you it might be fascinating, but it’s generally very ordinary.

“We tend to think of dreams as being really weird, but in truth, about 80 per cent of dreams depict ordinary situations.” he writes.

“We’re just more likely to remember and talk about the strange ones. Information we do not understand can often rouse our curiosity, particularly in the presence of strong emotion.

“Just like someone having a psychotic experience, the emotional pull of dreams makes even the strangest incongruities seem meaningful and worthy of discussion and interpretation.”

But at the risk of being boring, I want to talk about my liver dreams. Not the fact that wine consumption is very likely to be damaging my liver.

Put simply, as the body cannot store alcohol, it must metabolise it at once. When large amounts of ethanol hit the liver, it damages the liver cells. Boom, long-term damage ensues if consumption levels remain high and the liver’s repair mechanisms are not given time to kick in: they call it the liver because without it you’d die. 

But my dream discussion intertwines unhappy schoolboy experiences with happy wine and food memories rather than aspects of anatomy. 

At the primary school I attended near where I lived as a child, in Tooting, London, they made us sit in front of our school dinner until we had finished it, every last morsel, or get the strap.

When they served liver and bacon, I knew that the strap was forthcoming. My strangely oft-repeated nightmare is of eternally sitting in front of a plate of congealing hard, overcooked English liver, tears falling and never being able to leave the table, ever. Strangely, even though the nightmare liver is decidedly cold and curling, it seems to feature when I am sleeping in an overheated room. 

On the other hand, a recurring happy dream is centred on the bicycle trip I undertook with a friend in the Loire Valley where in the hotel where we stayed in the charming town of Blois, I ate a superb meal of thinly sliced liver dipped in breadcrumbs and cooked with butter. This was foie de veau, or calf’s liver, frite or fried.

With this dish we ordered a Sancerre pinot noir, 2010. Although famous for sauvignon blanc, Sancerre also produces lively pinot noir. 

The earthiness of the wine and the bright acidity went extremely well with the rich slightly metallic taste of the foie de veau. 

As a schoolboy I’d never have imagined that a happy food dream would feature the hated liver. The dream also features an almost effortless bicycle ride, as if riding on a cloud, to reach the hotel restaurant that served food on traditional checked tablecloths. The effort in the dream relates not at all to the actual effort we put in when cycling 50 or 60 kilometres a day. But that’s the beauty of dreams. 

Prof Davies is probably right: most people don’t enjoy hearing about other people’s dreams. But if mine encourages just one reader to swap memories of overcooked school liver for foie de veau and a glass of Sancerre pinot noir, then perhaps the risk of boredom was worth the effort.

News all day, every day at CityNewsQBN.com.au.