Holy Grail

I have been a Beatles fan for 44 years now (since December 8, 1980 to be precise when John Lennon was shot, radio stations played Beatles songs all day long and my Dad explained to me who he was) but being born after the band split up of course made it impossible to ever see them perform life as a unit. I didn't actually have it on my radar that Paul McCartney still toured until Highflyer mentioned that he saw him perform in Vienna about 20 years ago. While we were on vacation in Norway this June the topic came up in conversation and just out of interest I googled whether Paul McC was still playing, knowing that he had already celebrated his 80th a couple years ago. It turned out he would end his Got Back tour in the UK just before Christmas and tickets were about to go on presale that very week. Well, I put a reminder in my calendar and successfully bought two tickets from a reseller website. I could not believe my luck until I mentioned this to an intern over lunch when I got back. She more or less pitied me for my naiveté and made me believe it was almost 100% certain I had been scammed and would never actually receive those - not exactly cheap- tickets. The fact that I was supposed to only receive the tickets the day of the event, i.e. last Saturday, when I would obviously have sorted out flights and accommodation did not make me incredibly hopeful. In the end I received the tickets 10 days before and everything worked out fine. I also had a mean cold just before flying out and ticking off the usual pre-Christmas commitments, but the concert was just as magical as I had hoped for and it was essentially one massive Beatles singalong consisting of 20.000 fans directed by the legend himself. This really was something I had on my bucket list and was not sure was even possible to tick off so I ended up giving the most wonderful Christmas gift to myself, even more valuable because I got to experience it with someone who appreciated it at least as much as I did.