My Beautiful Launderette

How was it for you? Were you one of the 28 million who tuned in to the Last Night of The Proms Olympics?

Did you wonder why you cried at the video of Freddie or the shot of John Lennon or rush to go on line to order The Kinks "Greatest Hits" and The Who's "Tommy"?

Did you yearn for the joy of "Only Fools and Horses" as the memories of that fabulous series flooded back and you found yourself mouthing "You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off."?

Even the Spice Girls seemed fresh yet strangely the stars of the 80's and 90's hadn't been treated so well by time. Whereas the pensioners of the 60's and 70's seemed to deny entropy; and had a freshness that lit up the Eastern skies.

Elbow were the bee's knees, Roger Daltrey was in fine voice. But didn't we realise how much we all missed Freddie - memories of Live Aid and Radio Gaga breaking through 28 years of  irretrievable experience.

Last night was glorious, happy and glorious. Yet there was, I believe, for those of us who had been teens in the 60's a bitter sweetness that tempered the evening air.

Looking around at all those lovely, vital, youthful faces - open to the newness of the future I felt a sense of loss remembering (faintly) my youth and the tremulous stirrings of what the future might hold.

That future is now my past and my present. Those infinite possibilities have collapsed into fixed events which are the arc of my life.

And so I went to bed, unable to sleep remembering the death of my mother, and my father, the end of my first marriage, my digs at university, my friends and those oh so distant days when Roxy Music was played day in day out.

But what I want, what I really, really want is what I have. A partner, a soul mate and a loving person - an accidental happen chance who is the culmination of all those years, all those memories, all those sightless turnings. What a way to celebrate!