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breath away with its intensity, and when The Who played “Won’t Get Fooled Again”, I nearly cried. It was that sense of longing, of desolation particular to being amongst thousands of other people enjoying themselves; and I resented Gavin’s absence even more. At least if he turned up I’d have a shoulder to cry on.
    I decided that the encounter on the tube had probably affected me more than I thought. But it wasn’t just the man on the train, or missing Dad, or Gavin’s flakiness, or even the PMT which upset me that night.
    It was the teenagers with cancer, for whom the concert was in aid; a small brave gaggle of them in the audience, wearing matching T-shirts advertising the Teenage Cancer Trust, some with headscarves or baseball caps covering balding heads, a few with steroid-puffy faces. They looked bemused a lot of the time, probably never having heard of The Who until a few weeks earlier. The less-well ones had to keep sitting down, assailed by the loud guitars and ecstatic punters; old - to them - people who knew all the words to these boring - to them - songs with endless twiddly guitar solos. Whatever their music of choice was, it almost certainly wasn’t this. Nonetheless they clapped gamely, and smiled a lot, and cheered, when they weren’t looking tired or bemused. I couldn’t take my eyes off them.
    About halfway through the show, by which time I’d given up all hope of Gavin arriving, there was a hiatus in the proceedings. The doctor who founded the Teenage Cancer Trust came on stage to be presented with a cheque for a million pounds by the band. He gave a little speech of thanks, and when he announced that ‘some of his cancer sufferers are in the audience tonight,’ a couple of the group of teenagers leaped up and punched the air in recognition. The well meaning, middle-class crowd didn’t know what to do – wanting to applaud their bravery, but cognisant of the fact that it wasn’t at all appropriate to cheer somebody just because they had cancer.
    I couldn’t stop wondering what these kids were thinking; how they felt. Were they gazing at the thousands and thousands of healthy adults surrounding them, in seats and stalls and boxes: boxes of people all stacked on top of one another like battery hens, only a tiny percentage of them as unlucky as they were, and thinking it’s not fair ? Were they wondering if they too would ever get old enough to come to a concert at the Royal Albert Hall in celebration of a band whose records they adored thirty years ago?
    Suddenly my own gripes seemed unutterably trivial in comparison. Hormones – I was lucky that they were at least predictable. Missing Mum and Dad – well, yes, that was a loss. But it was nearly ten years ago, and I had my whole life in front of me. As for Gavin – I needed to stop moaning about him and decide whether to accept him, warts and all, or not. I knew he was unreliable, always late, dodgy – but hell, no-one was perfect. Stella was always trying to make out that the reason I didn’t ditch him was down to my own lack of self-esteem – but she read too many teen magazines. She had no idea, yet, how much you had to compromise in life; she was still young and beautiful enough to believe that she should have the best of everything, all the time. And as a matter of fact, I thought Gavin was good for me, on the whole. He was often sweet, generous, fun and, as far as I knew, faithful.
    Pulling myself together, I resolved henceforward to give him more of a break. He would almost certainly have had a reason for not showing up at the gig – after all, he loved The Who as well. He was the best thing that had ever happened to me and surely, if I met him halfway, then he’d be less cavalier about standing me up in future. He was a true original, and I was lucky to have him.
    So after the final encore, I bounded out of the Albert Hall, my ears ringing, on an adrenaline high from being at a great concert, thankful that Stella and I were