Don't it always go to show

Maggie and I may be among the last few people in the world who are awoken by a clock radio alarm. A thirty year old clock radio at that. The wake up programme is Hoy empieza todo on Radio 3, a contemporary culture and music station. We don't listen for long, even if we're very slothful it will only be about twenty minutes though the programme stays on in the background.

I change the bedclothes on Friday. As I fought with the duvet cover the main presenter on the programme was talking to the organisers of a "pop" festival that runs in Miranda de Ebro in Burgos about 700km from home. They said that they were giving away a package of two tickets, travel and accommodation for the festival and to enter all you had to do was to make a comment on their Twitter account.

Now I've never quite mastered Twitter but, eventually I posted something as to why I wanted to go. I said I was old (and may die before the next one), because I was poor (and I wouldn't be able to afford to go with my own resources) and because I was English so that understanding anything around me was more or less impossible. I added that one of my delights was complaining and that at a festival at two in the morning I could complain mightily about my aching back.

Yesterday evening someone from the programme sent me a message via Twitter and asked whether I would go to the festival if I won. The messages went back and forth in very dodgy Spanish on one side but the last message said "Me das un email y un teléfono para gestionarlo todo?" - can you give me an email address and a telephone number so that I can arrange it all.

I presumed that I had just won something. I broke out the gin that I'd promised myself I wouldn't drink.

This morning, three minutes before the clock radio burst into life, I got another Twitter message. "Lo siento Chris, al final en la última ronda no os ha tocado! Quizás el año que viene." Sorry Chris, in the end, in the last, round you didn't win. Maybe next year.

Very disappointing.