difficult situations

I was part of a group of people who were gathered at a university. We were all travelling on an escalator, up to the floor where our class would take place. At the third floor, some of the group, led by G, stepped off the escalator and continued on foot up the stairs. The rest of us wondered why when it became apparent that toward the top, the escalator became narrower and spiraled around in tighter and tighter circles, so that we were forced to step off the escalator onto an extremely small platform, at precisely the right time or we would either be squashed against the ceiling or fall off the escalator to our deaths at the bottom. We were packed so tightly on the escalator that it was doubtful that any of us would be able to make it off without harm. It was moving quickly. As I approached the platform, the person in front of me was having trouble alighting the tiny platform, so my opportunity to make it off the escalator was particularly brief. I stepped out onto the platform and only had a second to gain my balance, while the person behind me missed her opportunity altogether. I tried to then step into a chute that would take me down to the correct floor, but I felt terribly afraid and backed away. I sat down on a wooden bench and waited for my heart to stop pounding and my legs to stop shaking. I wondered if G would appear and help us. Eventually, I again approached the chute, but now, it was so small that I was unable to fit inside it. It was only the size of a standard letterbox.

Later again, I was driving down Bender Parade in Newcastle, in the neighbourhood of my childhood. My car, a big white sedan, had a problem, perhaps a crash as, although I cannot recall an accident, the bonnet and the road in front of the car were covered in sharp shards of glass. I decided to get the car home which was in the street adjacent to the road I was on. First, I had to get the car to the bottom of the hill so I released the handbrake and followed the car down the street, keeping a tight grip on the back end of the car to stop it rolling freely down the hill. There was a kind of lip protruding from the boot of the car so I was able to hang onto it. Eventually, I slowed the car at the bottom of the hill where I needed to turn it left and push it up the street to my house where I thought I could park it on the driveway. (The junction of these two streets, Bender Parade and Clayton Crescent, was where my maternal grandparents lived when they were alive.) I stood behind the car and pushed with all my strength. My shoes slipped on the bitumen and I made very little progress. Whilst I pushed, I also wondered how I would get inside the car to put the brake on when I/if I made it to the driveway. There seemed to be no solution to the problem.