I must admit, probably due to age, brain death and the red wine, that the
significance of the date had actually passed me by.

Like the other 71,996 our little band, Jennifer, Matthew, Thomas and me,
travelled some considerable distance to be at the Tribute concert and we
wouldn't have missed it for the world, God Bless Freddie and all who sail in
the clouds with him.

It was my second visit to Wembley in a week, having been there the previous
Saturday to witness a travesty of Justice when Sheffield someone, or other,
just happened to beat the Reds.  But that is completely irrelevant.

The Tribute concert is, for many of us a focal point, its the proverbial
question "where were you in Wembley", not where were you when the tribute
was on?  Almost all the Queenies we have met, and there have been
multitudes, went and we all have memories that we savour personally.

Mine, and you have to remember that I hate stadia concerts, relate to the
frisking and confiscation of bottles of coke and sandwiches and the huge lag
between the video and the sounds (we seemed to be in Finchley, not row 10 at
the back).  Metallica were brilliant, Bowie was crass, Annie Lennox looked a
tad intoxicated and as if she had been made up by a racoon, Elton John
strove manfully (?) for the high notes and only George Michael seemed to get
it right.  U2 seemed to be anachronistic, the South African link implausible
and Liz Taylor suitably gauche (albeit the message was exactly right,
despite some prats in the audience [BTW did anyone catch "Third Rock" last
night and the classic comedy line as the Cop burst in "Ass Freezeholes"]).

But, for me at least, the event was made unbelievable by Queen, who, in
their usual (except they did it without Freddie) manner stole the show.  I
remember the tears coursing down my cheeks, despite my insistence that they
wouldn't, the unbelievably huge lump in my throat and the mixture of joy and
sadness that the evening had come to its inevitable end.  It took us, and
the seemingly hundreds of thousands of supplicants, an absolute age to clear
the venue, and even longer in the car park, where some very enterprising
individual (or some might say callous) had set up an ice cream van.

The funny thing is that the memories are almost all good.  I do have some
regrets, primarily around not getting a T-shirt, and losing my ticket stub,
but in the overall analysis they are only figments - Freddie was, is and
always will be vibrant, real and amazingly there!

Love to all