excerpt no.4 - how to get tickets

The number was already in the phone. It was just a case of redial and we would be through. Additionally the website was ready to refresh in case the phone option didn’t work. However, as soon as it was 9:01 the phone was “line busy please try later” again and again and again. The website kept crashing and wouldn’t get past the first page-even if it loaded at all. Still being optimistic we thought that this might be an initial rush and then we would be ok. As this continued for the first half hour or so it slowly dawned on us that this assumption was much too optimistic. It probably would be (as it really is) just a case of touching lucky and getting through by chance. Amy kept trying the phone and I kept tapping away at the keyboard hoping that one of us would eventually succeed. This went on for an hour and as ten o’clock headed towards eleven o’clock the mood got grimmer and grimmer. The feelings of anticipation at nine were taken over by waves of desperation and defeatism. Much coffee was being drunk and many cigarettes were smoked (by me). To make matters worse the batteries on all the phones were running out rapidly and there was still no sign of getting through on the net. Message boards were gleefully relaying stories of people getting their tickets by five past nine and then heading out for a Sunday of celebration. Who the fuck were these people and how exactly had they managed to get tickets when we had been so unsuccessful, despite being so prepared? Were they doing something that we weren’t? Did they have a magic system? I was rapidly going through the five stages of grief; denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.