The Dream of December 27-28

I don't remember planning it, and I don't remember actually going. But I remember Kit and I being outside some kind of venue in Florida. I'm not sure where it was, the only thing I can say for certain is that it wasn't in Tampa.
We were going to see Porcupine Tree (unusual, eh?) and when we got there we got to see the opening band on this outdoor stage. But it wasn't really an opening band so much as a mixture of musicians that were not in a band together, really. Gavin was playing the drums, Danny from Anathema was playing the guitar. There were these two keyboard players whose keyboards were facing one another. I don't think they're "real" but the fair-haired one on the left was someone we knew from hanging out at the Mellotronen shop or something in the dream. He was in a band back in Stockholm and we'd secretly mocked him for not knowing how to pronounce Gavin's name. Anyways, the guys were really getting into it and it sounded great, but then there was this weird passage where the two keyboard players took turns hissing Gavin's name into the microphones. It sounded just like the bit in Trans-Siberian Orchestra's "The Lost Christmas Eve" where this kid is whispering "Christmas", "Christmas", etc. Except that this was Gavin's name and it clearly wasn't planned 'cause Gavin started laughing and almost lost his rhythm. Yeah, I know, like that's ever gonna happen.
After this gig, they started to clear away the stage, or rather the equipment placed on the ground, basically, as there wasn't really a stage and no fences or anything. So we realised that the "real deal" would not be out here. We spotted a stage and loads of amps through the windows of the building behind the outdoor stage and ran to the entrance. The line was long and we were really upset that we'd not gotten to the front. But as we got closer to the entrance we saw that people weren't moving towards the stage, they were mingling in the entrance hall. A bit relieved I asked Kit to take out the envelope with the tickets. As she did we realised that our trip had been so sudden that we hadn't told anyone we were coming. Not Mel, not Wes or Sam, and not Lynn (who in my dream had moved to Florida too). We were a bit downtrodden by our own lack of sense but at least we were going to see PT. So we got the tickets out of the envelope and there was this folded up, freakiskly long set of ticket-sized papers that had the shipping address, receipt, ads and sponsorship information on them (usually you get one or two bits added on to the actual tickets when UK venues send them to your home, but nothing like this!). Two of them would be our tickets and we had to find them. We could only find one and when we reached the woman checking the tickets we were really nervous about the whole thing. She said she'd find the second ticket for us (she seemed really nice), but after a minute she declared that there was no second ticket, only one. And of course we got upset but I managed to keep my cool and gave her my name and credit card number so that she could check her computer stuff for information on my purchase. She came back and said that I'd ordered one ticket for the indoor event and one for the earlier, outdoor event (clearly this doesn't make sense as we both attended the outdoor thing). Now I got really frightened as the gig was sold out and we couldn't get a second ticket. So I asked if she'd seen Sam, the tour manager. She hadn't and I begged her to let me go look for him a bit, since we had one ticket and all. It was all right so I headed for the stage and saw Steven over by a window. I darted forward:
"Is there any chance you could help me, Steven?" I blurted out before even reaching him and realising that it wasn't Steven at all, just a very calm-looking fan who'd donned the hair and glasses. He must've heard me wrong because he said:
"Sure, I can help you meet Steven later."
I wasn't sure if he tried to brag that he knew Steven or if he thought I was coming onto him and this was some kind of perverted game he was hoping to play. Either way I was surprised and disgusted and excused myself immediately.
I kept looking for Sam, and asked a couple of security guards who had no idea who Sam was. I even asked for "someone in the crew who speaks English with an American accent" as that only left Sam and Wes and seemed like safe bet they would've noticed. Nothing. Then I saw Hans and thought to myself: "I can not ask HIM to fetch Sam AGAIN!" and I didn't need to, because then he came out on stage. The beard was a little trimmed, but still there (so apparently his mother hadn's slapped it off his face yet, like he once told us she would).
"Sam! Sam!" I shouted and moved towards the stage. There was a lot of commotion around me but he still managed to hear me and came right on over. At this point the fear of the prospect of having to miss PT when we'd travelled so far to see them really set in and tears started pouring down my face. I felt like an idiot but I couldn't help it. I managed, somehow, to explain the situation to Sam and felt even more like an idiot when I heard myself beg him to help us if he could. He responded by giving me a great, big hug and tell me everything was going to be all right, he'd sort it all out. I wiped my tears and turned around to see Kit standing there, smiling and giving me the thumbs up for finding Sam. Apparently that kind woman by the entrance had let her in to help her look for Sam.
Next Sam told us to relax, the gig wouldn't start for ages and there was some kind of local teen marching band playing before them (and they sucked) and we should head over to the adjoining café before the gig and we'd still get to the front, no worries.
We sat down and the woman from the entrance served us tea and some weird looking cake-thing that apparently was a local specialty. You poured boiling water into it and it soaked it up and tasted even better than before. Really weird, but it was great. We looked out the window and saw this beautiful sunlit street (despite the fact that it had been dark outside when we queued to get into the venue) heading down from a lovely park to some really old stone houses and we were really impressed by this beautiful town. The woman came over and we tried to pay for the tea and cakes, but she said it had been taken care of already.
"What? Was it Sam who paid?"
She smiled and nodded and started talking about Sam and Wes and how nice they were. Then she asked if we knew if Wes was driving over from Tampe on his own (this is how I know we weren't in Tampa) but we had no idea.

I think this is where I woke up, and my first thought was that the view from the café window didn't match Florida. The stone houses were too old (like 14th, 15th century) and the park looked very English, nature-wise.
This dream was just a lot of the good experiences from our recent trip to the UK (which was a great success in every way, despite my worries!) mixed in with some odd stuff that I always find in my dreams. Blogs about the UK trip (that got extended to Finland) will be posted on www.myspace.com/campmanerg before New Year's, should you want to read about it.