Tragedy: A sign that good karma is coming your way?

Woefully, I have not managed to procure a ticket to see Led Zeppelin at the O2. I've decided to come to terms with this disappointment as quickly as possible. What's the point in moping, aye?

I do feel like my attempts were half hearted anyway. Here they are:

Flirting with the PR (who'd already given tickets to two of my colleagues, who are apparently "working" at the event)

Making it clear to editors of certain British music magazines that I'd give me shoe collection for a ticket

Offering the world (or all of my Facebook and Myspace friends) my lovely car in exchange for a ticket

Putting a desperate plea at the bottom of my email signature (I must email hundreds of people a week, I got one email back saying "Someone" might have a spare ticket. "No one" did)

Emotionally blackmailing my boss (my whinges just got an exasperated "Elizabeth, I can't even get myself a ticket!")

My final option was to go to the O2 today and hang out while all those smug bastard ticket holders got their wristbands. Maybe, just maybe, one of them would have a spare plus one. And maybe, just maybe, that person will like blondes. However, I've decided I can't be arsed with that. I am giving up hope and going to Primark to buy a sweater dress and then I'm going to hang out with the most rock and roll people in Romford instead. They're almost as cool as Led Zeppelin, and at least they're a lot younger.

The last time I felt this miserable and desperate was when the Rolling Stones played the Astoria in August 2003. I had tried my damnedest to get a ticket through regular channels (the tickets went on sale before I started working in the music industry so I couldn't blag them because I was living in the innocent and just world then). The gig was on two days after I started I got my job at the NME. I asked my new boss (Mr Exasperated, as mentioned above) if he could get me in and he said "There'll be other gigs!" and smiled. Then I had to watch as all these suits went off to the gig looking smug and saying stuff like "I love the Stones! Satisfaction! What a tune!"

The next day I showed a very, very unpleasant side to my personality by grilling every person who got into the gig about what Stones albums they owned and what their favourite songs were. None of them, in my visciously jealous eyes, deserved to be there. In my blazing green fury I was the only person who deserved to be there. And I wasn't. Maybe it was God trying to teach me that You Can't Always Get What You Want.

I'm pretty sure that my reaction to all those Barneys who got tickets for the gig may have had Karmic consequences in my Led Zeppelin ticket request. If I had been happy for them and said inwardly (and outwardly) "Good for them! I'm glad they had a chance to see this once in a lifetime gig!" maybe Ahmet Ertegun himself would have come back from the afterlife to give me a backstage pass.

I did end up getting major positive Karmic consequences three years later though. I met and interviewed the Rolling Stones, went to two stadium gigs for free (paid to see them at four others) and got in to see them at the Beacon Theater gig in New York that Martin Scorcese has filmed. It ended up being the best Stones gig of my life. Probably more magic than the Astoria would have been.

Maybe I've got Led Zeppelin Karma coming in the post. Hopefully even more so this time, as I swear I won't be bitchy to the lucky people who went.

And PS, of all the people going to the O2 tomorrow, how many of the have pictures like this one?



Oh shit, I just bragged. Is that going to affect my Zeppelin Karma?