The phrase “spanner
in the works” springs to mind when I recall trying to get tickets for Glasto
2011, but, in reality, a whole toolbox would have been more appropriate. I had
all the above to contend with, but hadn’t accounted for a joker in the pack. On
the first Sunday of October 2010 I wasn’t even in the country which sort of
made things a bit tricky. We were in our second week of a two week, long-standing
holiday in Florida. In retrospect, it was pretty poor planning to be away at
that time but what can you do? However
much I enjoyed and loved being on holiday with the family and having a great
time in America-much better than I could have possibly expected- for just a few
hours, I wished that I could be transported back home through some magical Star
Trek device to Liverpool, so that I could be sitting at my PC, coffee by my
side, ashtray overflowing, phone in my hand and desperately hitting redial
and/or refresh in an attempt to get those elusive tickets. But no, I was
thousands of miles away; a literal ocean between success and failure, and had therefore
had to put a cunning plan into action.
Well, it wasn’t
exactly that cunning. In fact it was the only plan that I could think of. I’m
sure those of a more creative bent or those who could have possibly passed
auditions for The Apprentice would have come up with something better than I
did but all I had was to rely upon someone who I could trust to actually get
out of bed in the U.K. for 9 a.m. on a
Sunday morning and try to get tickets on my behalf. (At this stage, I
must add that this was well before I’d written and published “Turn Left at the
Womble” and before I’d made loads of contacts through Twitter and the like. Nowadays
I know that there are shed loads of reliable people I could have turned to assist
me in my hour of need. Back then, however, I was pretty much on my own).
Coincidently,
and very unfortunately, my two best friends were also abroad on holiday at the
time. They would have been the first people I would have turned to but there
was no way round it. I was then left with the idea of asking a work colleague to
try for me. This was trickier than expected for a couple of reasons. Firstly,
everyone I worked with knew of my plight and, being generally a very helpful bunch
of folks, most of them wanted to help. Secondly however, a number of people, quite
understandably and although wanting to assist, were a bit wary of what they saw
as a bit of an onerous responsibility. This left three or four people who were
happy to take the risk and give it a go for me. Instead of asking all of them
to try, I decided to just pick one person. Looking back, this may not have been
the best tactic. I should have given myself the best possible chance and run it
like a mini-phone bank/call centre operation by asking all of them to have a bash
at it. Maybe there would have been success in numbers, but logistically it was
just too difficult to organise. So I just had to ask one person; someone who I
knew I could rely upon but at the same time, avoid giving offence to everyone
else.
That (un)lucky
person was Sam, who I’d worked with for ages. Sam’s better half worked in IT
and had their house totally wired up with hyper-fast broadband; multiple PC’s
and stacks of mobiles. They had the technology! If they couldn’t do it, then
no-one could. Additionally, they were those sort of people who were invariably
up and about early every morning, even at weekends so a 9.00 a.m. start on a
Sunday would be a piece of cake. (I think that everyone else was quite relieved
that Sam had picked the poisoned chalice-it was a bit like the Harry Potter
sorting hat in reverse).
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