I didn't win

I didn't win tickets, or rather, the right to buy tickets for the Led Zeppelin concert next month.

By rights, I'm a little too young to be a true Led Zep fan. I make a noise when I get up from a chair, a sort of cross between a duck laying an ostrich egg and a seven-stone weakling lifting 300lbs in the gym, but the egg still gets laid, the weight lifted.

My joints creak as I bend to pick up a piece of paper, but I can still bend.

I have my 'Craft' moments (Can't Remember a F***ing Thing), but can still remember my kids when they come and ask for money.

More's the pity.

And as I started young, I remember their songs, their lyrics. I remember lying in a darkened bedroom in my parents house, headphones the size of Volkswagen beetles on my head, volume turned up to eleven before Spinal Tap. I remember leaping horizontally 3 feet into the air as my mother, thinking I'd fallen asleep, sneaked in and lifted the headphones off.

I'm grateful, as now I will recognise the heart attack when it comes.

But I'm sad I didn't win tickets. Sad I won't be able to say to my grandchildren that, when the latest boy band covers Black Dog as an acapella harmony, all covered zits and rippling pecs, that I remember actually SEEING Led Zeppelin, the REAL Led Zeppelin, in concert. Sad that I will never have the chance to hear Stairway to Heaven, live, warts, bum notes and all. Something to look back on as the Craft moments take over more and more, knowing this is one thing I will remember, along with my generation's Kennedy, the Towers. I'm sad because I won't be at this last of the great concerts, when others will be, others who simply have money, but no right.

And, if I'm honest, I'm sad I won't be able to sell the tickets on Ebay and clear my cards. Sad I won't be able to persuade some corporate poseur that he should entertain his clients there, letting them hark back to their youth whilst he cynically reckons the value of nostalgia in future orders.

Besides, let's get real here. When I was too young to go to a Led Zeppelin concert, the joints Robert Plant was concerned with weren't the ones he has to smear with Tiger Balm when it looks like rain.

So, do I REALLY want to sit there, realising that they have subtly changed the lyrics, and now, in 2007, they're singing about a "Stairlift to Heaven"?

You bet I do.

Bugger.