"I'm going to get tickets for us all, " my husband said, full of enthusiasm. "They're really good.

You'll enjoy it."

Our son and daughter - and their respective other halves - were very doubtful. They gave in, but only under protest and once they'd exhausted all possible excuses.

Bill Wyman and his all-star line-up didn't sound like their kind of music at all. These old-timers were appearing at Shepherd's Bush Empire the very weekend we were due to be in London to babysit. My husband, who had heard them in Newcastle the previous year, was full of proselytising zeal. We all really had to go.

They were good, too. Though none of the rest of us was quite as enthusiastic about them as my husband had been.

What got me, though, was the way, as he settled down in his seat for what was supposed to be an evening of pure enjoyment, my husband carefully stuffed ear plugs into his ears.

All this way, all that expense, all that enthusiasm - and there he was blocking out as much of the sound as he could. "I can still hear, " he protested. "It's just a bit too loud, that's all.

It makes my ears hurt."

He claims that the Queen wore ear plugs when serenaded by Brian May from the rooftop of Buckingham Palace for her Jubilee celebrations.

But even if he's right (and how on earth does he know? ) I don't suppose Her Majesty has ever pretended to like Brian May's music.

To be fair to my husband, there's much more amplification these days than there ever was when we were young. In those days, you were more likely to be deafened by the audience (all those screaming girls) than the performers. Nowadays, it's not just in concert halls that the sound's belted out at painful levels, but also in cinemas and by dance bands. Perhaps the younger generation are already so hard of hearing that they need that extra noise to be able to hear anything at all.

Or maybe we're just getting old. My husband's Aunti Vi used to say, aged 90 plus, that she still felt about 15 inside. I know exactly what she meant.

I do too, though without the terrible anxieties of being 15: will I get spots just before that dance? Do I look silly/fat/ugly in this? Will he like me?

Will my friends like me? Will anyone like me?

So, inside I feel pretty good, a happy, well-balanced 15-year-old, eager to grab hold of what life brings.

Aunti Vi may have felt 15, but she clearly wasn't. She was a bent old lady who threw on the first clothes that came to hand, not caring what state they were in, and got off trains at the wrong station (like the time we were all waiting at Durham and she had to be carefully and kindly shepherded on after getting off at Darlington - the old British Rail at its best) and was given suddenly to falling asleep in the way old people do.

Like Aunti Vi, I don't look 15. I look like what I am, one of that invisible bunch of people who are the 'wrong' side of 55. I may feel 15 inside, but on the outside bits of me ache or sag or wrinkle, and variously give the lie to what I feel.

But maybe it doesn't matter. After all, my husband didn't care what anyone thought of him for putting ear plugs in his ears. He enjoyed the concert more than any of us. He just did it in his own way.

Published: 16/06/2005