swoon!

dear readers, things have been very exciting round here. on thursday the peeps were sitting watching the telly when the phone rang. it was sacha, herself's former assistant. i have always had a soft spot for sacha. he grew up with an irish wolfhound called scarlet who seemed to find her extreme size in no way a bar to leaping over the furniture and causing terror to the young sacha and his brothers. at parties, where i have to be kept on a lead to prevent theft of all the food, sacha has obliged. i suppose a lurcher is only like a small wolfhound...

anyway, sacha had some tickets for a concert. this was no ordinary concert. it was the zombies. these are not flesh eating monsters. oh, no. in fact sacha's dad is a zombie. this did not become apparent until sacha had been trying to get herself organised for at least two years. the office was always full of music and a zombies track came on the radio.

"that's my dad playing the guitar on that!" said sacha.

"what?" yelled herself, "that's the zombies!"

"i know - my dad was in the zombies." said sacha.

it would appear that herself is, and always has been, a big zombies fan. more particularly she is a big colin blunstone fan. this is the man who does most of the singing by all accounts. when she was a teenager herself used to put this man's dulcet tones on the record player (yes really, she is old enough to know what a record player is) to lull her to sleep. so he is ingrained into her psyche, or at least her eardrums.

so the idea that she might see the zombies live was a little too much for her. she jumped up and down on the spot, squealing in a most undignified way. it was quickly arranged that my boy would spend the evening with the peeps on the corner and would be collected in the middle of the night when the peeps got back.

the evening of the concert came around and the peeps made their way via many trains to shepherds bush. there was something of a scrum at the theatre. but the peeps were on the guest list, so they had to queue up with the important people. herself, needless to say, made the most of this. she is nothing if not a middle-aged groupie.

the concert itself was by all accounts wonderful. even himself, who has no history with the zombies and was therefore only judging things by the music, said it was the business. afterwards sacha took herself backstage in the hope of meeting young colin. it has to be said sacha was a little worried about the prospect of his former boss behaving like a star-struck teenager, when she is of an age when she will soon grow a beard as fine as mine. he gave her strict instructions to behave and she promised not to be too embarrassing. (dear readers, the devil is in the detail, as lawyers are prone to saying. how anyone would define embarrassing, never mind work out the gradations of embarrassment, is another matter.)

as things turned out the main man had a better offer. a man called paul weller, better known for his liking for jam, had popped by. there wasn't much of a contest really.... so herself is doomed never to be a middle-aged star-struck groupie, which is probably just as well.