Here's what I was doing between 3:00 and 4:00 this morning

Kim and I were eating at a very nice restaurant, possibly Buca di Beppo, with musicians playing near the front door. It was dimly lit, and the musicians began a song that was captivating from the first notes: it strongly reminded me of a train gathering speed, and the string instruments were whirring rhythmically. The pasta I was eating was fantastic.   The next song was a Cracker cover. Then it was on the radio, and we were in a car driving at night.  The DJ started talking about Cracker, and we could see on the screen footage of the crazy interview that had everyone talking. Cracker was on tour in Australia, and two of the band members -- David Lowery and John Hickman -- were being interviewed at a school.  They were being interviewed by children, and (we could see this on the surveillance film) just a few minutes into the interview, the unruly kids started pelting them with candy.   The kids walked off. I was there, and I had one of the kids collared.  She was a young girl. I began to escort her to a classroom so that I could discuss her behavior with a teacher.   I was conscious of the fact that I was an American and everyone else was Australian. Did I know how these people would react?  I resolved to talk to these kids seriously.   We were now outside, walking down a very long, very steep hill comprised of concrete tiles. I was trying to keep up with the girl, but she was getting farther and farther ahead, even though I had longer legs and was trying to go fast.   Then we were actors in a movie.  The plot dictated that at the bottom I was to fall and badly break my leg, and the girl was to go for help.  I was supposed to fall and then call her back to help me, but she was sort of a bratty kid and I wasn't to let her know that I was actually acting and wasn't really injured.  She needed to actually believe I was badly hurt or else she wouldn't go through with it for the sake of the movie.   Then I began to suspect I was wrong and that she was actually a good young actress.  We were walking farther and farther.  Now we were in Greece, climbing a rugged hill.  I decided to climb out along this fallen pine trunk that was hanging over the edge of a cliff; I could use the trunk to climb from one part of the cliff to another.    I was out on this decrepit twisted old tree trunk, fearing to look down, when I realized that the tree was probably not going to support my weight.  I started backtracking, but the girl told me to keep going.  She knew Greek pines well, and climbed on them all the time. This one wouldn't break, she said. (She made a joke. I, still not looking down, asked her what would happen to me if I fell. She said that I'd really enjoy that vodka... that vodka they used here in Greece... that vodka that the Greeks used for embalming.)   I made if off the branch and climbed through the window into the room.  The girl had been getting older and older as the dream progressed, not as a plot point but just the way people's IDs in dreams keep changing. Now she was closer to my age and had been telling me her life story and her interests.   "So," I asked, "have you always been interested in entomology, or is that just a sort of sideline for the other things you need or want to study?"  The center of this large tiled room we were in contained some kind of large block-like machine made of brass or gold. I tried to get a good look at it.