I dreamt that Colin Gray, a former colleague from the University of Reading, had died. Dressed in black, all the professors were involved in the preparation of a document covering his major achievements. This was a rather formal affair, and only the professors took part. Lecturers and senior lecturers were not invited. In an almost ritually fashion, a huge scroll of rough packing paper was filled with all the pertinent information. I was doing the lettering with a black magic-marker. I remember getting teary-eyed on occasion, but I do not remember any of my other former colleagues. They all looked quite different in my dream. At some point the vice-chancellor joined us, and the chancellor himself was to join us a bit later. The vice-chancellor did not look like the man I knew, either. Interestingly, Colin was with us all the time. He even organized the whole endeavor, and it was he who decided what was to go where on the scroll. He was quite formal with his colleagues, but everything went very smoothly. When I woke up, I remembered that Colin was the head of my former department when I left Reading. He took over from me several years earlier. In my dream, he behaved like a proper, if somewhat unapproachable, head of department, too. But then I remembered that today was my mother’s birthday. Whence the tears in my dream, no doubt.