Dream, The Impossible Dream

LPB JM, Like Cindy Lauper and
Acorn Electrons
Held My Heart

Well, I am a little down-at-mouth this morning, as opposed to down-at-heel on most others, but I'm going to be strong despite the fact it is 20+ years of dreaming down the pan.

And it will sound silly and daft, but it is because I managed to mis-manage my way to missing out on a guitar body on Ebay. It was a BIN too, not even an auction that I got sniped on, most silly.

So what was it?

Well, aeons ago, the very first Jazzmaster I saw was in a book. I used to trail around the guitar shops of Birmingham and they never had 3D ones. And the foto that I obsessed over (and I'm not proud of such things, no young man should spend so many hours in his room lusting after unobtainable images in magazines, let's face it) was a Lake Placid Blue Jazzmaster with a white 'plate and old school white witches hat knobs. I mean I hadn't even knowingly heard one never mind played one at that point, but it was up there with an Acorn Electron as an Objet de lust. Oh, and the woman out of EBTG, bless her. And Cyndi Lauper.

Anyway, ever since then and many, many Jazzmasters since, I've never been able to get one - old ones never seemed to pop up when I could afford them, and the Custom Shop and AVRI alternatives were oddly dearer still, so no dice.

So when I saw a Lake Placid Blue nitro finished JM body on Ebay, my heart gave a little leap. And for two days I kept looking at it and for some reason, so deep and dark a nefarious little niggle of a no reason, I didn't press the Buy It now button. I even checked the spec with the seller and measured my freezer, but still, nada.

And so this morning I woke up determined to go ferrit and fulfil that wee dream of mine.

But it had gone.

I knew it as soon as I opened the Watch List and it was down at the bottom. 'Ended' next to it, cold and heartless like a fish without morals.

Ended.

And whilst I am obviously sending this tale of tragedy in to Simon Bates if he is still alive/on radio/not been outed as a friend of Savile, as this would clearly get them weeping across the country, I still don't understand my reluctance to just buy it while I could.

Maybe it was because I had this unspoken fear that I couldn't live up to such a guitar after so many years, so many juvenile dreams awaiting crushingness, I don't know. But when it came to it, I just couldn't do it, and I think that is something that will stay with me for the rest of my living born days. I now know what sort of man I am, and it isn't a nice feeling. I don't need a mirror to see the weakness of character, paucity of spirit, or the zit in the middle of my forehead.

So looking forward, what do I do?

Do I save my pennies and visit the custom shop?

Wait in forlorn hope for another opportunity, or do I go nettle grasping and sort it out myself?

So that is what I am going to do. I'm going to buy a nice Jazzmaster body and finish it myself in LPB nitro. Then I'm going to stick it in the freezer and then the airing cupboard a few times until the lacquer crazes, and then I am going to make that guitar, my perfect, beloved, poison dwarf of a guitar and then I will keep it forever.

Because sometimes you have to be brave and sometimes you have to be selfish and sometimes, just sometimes, you have to make a stand in this life, walk the incessant talk and tell the world that this is who you are, this is what you were always meant to be and this is my time.

So help me god.

First though, One Direction were on iCarly yesterday, so I need to watch that. Apparently Harry gets ill and Gibby has to step in to hilarious effect.

So that will be The LPB One, sometime in 2013. If my bottle doesn't twitch again.

La la laaaa