I said I'd be writing about Leonard Cohen this week, having run out of room last week to talk about the singularly uplifting show he played at the Vector arena. A week is a long time in column land I know, and Leonard's been and gone, but there are still things about that night I think are worth mentioning.

Not that I'm any good for a review, really, to be honest I've forgotten most of the set list since last Thursday. I didn't know the song he opened with and while I recall the last number was an elegant and thoughtful way of saying goodbye, I can't remember the name of it to save my life.

Truth to tell, I wasn't really as much of a long-time fan as the diehards who surrounded me in their beaming, swaying hundreds, tears streaming down their faces as they listened to the likes of If it be your will and of course, Hallelujah. I did have the obligatory Laughing Len epiphany, discovering his lyrics at the age of 17.

We'd sit at the back of Mrs Breen's English class, passing around the lyrics to Suzanne or Bird on a wire, marvelling at their sad, mysterious sensuality when we were supposed to be making sense of Milton, or Patrick Kavanagh.

In terms of the songwriters who made us yearn for life, lust and experience, Cohen was up there with Dylan and Billy Corgan. We grew up though, and Suzanne somehow got left behind, with the poetry textbooks and homework journals and pregnancy scares.

It's been years since I heard any of his songs. Which is probably what made it such a remarkable thing to be a part of a decorous and devout cast of thousands worshipping at the altar of Len at Vector last week. A rapt crowd who greeted their idol with a standing ovation and found it difficult to keep their seats throughout the night, such was their delight at being part of the audience who received him.

For me the highlights were the songs that came with memories. I can't hear the arch incantation of Everybody knows without thinking of the devastatingly sexy arch of Christian Slater's eyebrow in Pump up the Volume, back when he was being funny and adorable, before he got fat and strange and started brawling with women on the street.

Famous blue raincoat is a song from the days of swooning, back when I knew the value of a good swoon and there were a few fellas of my acquaintance who benefited from that. New to me was 10,000 kisses deep, which proved I still have a swoon or two in me somewhere.

In fairness though, Leonard Cohen is a performer possessed of enough charm to make a graven idol tremble. From the moment he bounded on stage in all his puckish glory he had us in the palm of his hand, and he proceeded to woo and caress us all in turn, men and women, old and young alike until he had stroked and sung us into a satisfied kind of reverie, delivering us into the night beaming and content, if just a little disoriented from the wonder of it.