Firstly, huge apologies for radio silence over the last few weeks. Various life strands conspired to give me some sort of micro burnout, which I expertly dealt with by doing nothing about it! Anyway, let’s get to the matter in hand: queues.
First, I’m going to tackle the big one. The one that’s causing laptop screens across the world to be refreshed so frequently, they are very far from refreshed - more like in total meltdown. Yes, the virtual queue for the pot of gold at the end of the sodding rainbow for tickets to Taylor Swift’s (punches keys rather vigorously as I type that) tour next year. That is, if you can even join the queue. What sort of world are we now living in that I, as a Brit, am denied the sweet agony of joining a queue, and not even for my own benefit!
Today I sent a frenzied message to a friend on Facebook who posted that she was in the hallowed queue. I sounded like someone from some 1940s spy film. ‘Did you get the code? Were you sent the link?’ Was I missing some key strategic move that everyone else was in on? Could I, in fact, do something radical like just go onto the main website and buy tickets? No I could not. That would not serve to whip up enough of a frenzy. However, even my friend had been subjected to more obstacles than a Tough Mudder course and had been suddenly thrown out of the queue (the audacity) and into a new one.
Like everyone else, I had grudgingly registered my interest on the Ticketmaster site several weeks ago. I say ‘grudging’ because I resent having to jump through hoops. It’s bad enough getting tickets for anything these days, but this was a newer fresher hell. Grudging also, because I have not been brainwashed by the Swift spell, but I have a teenage daughter in full thrall (and therefore have actually been brainwashed by proxy). My mind did a rapid flash forward to this time next year when WhatsApps between friend groups will be blowing up between those who have been ‘Taylored’ and those who have not. This could be a seismic cultural divider. Hoards of women years down the line tentatively broaching the subject with each other: ‘So, were you one of the ones who did, or didn’t..?’ Imagine!
It took me a solid hour to reach the front of the pre-registration queue alone. I kept violently stirring the chilli con carne, refreshing the queue page featuring a tiny figure walking but making little headway, and couldn’t even concentrate on Evan Davis on PM. After feeling that my life was ebbing away, my reward was to learn that I had achieved the grand feat of registering for a thing so that I may receive the infamous link to allow me access through the hallowed T.S portal a few weeks hence. Or, I may not. In that case I could be put in another queue i.e. waiting list. I started to believe that it might be easier to secure a Doctor’s appointment.
This week ‘things’ started happening. Celebratory yelps on social media that these Willy Wonkaesque Golden Tickets had been secured. There are some of us (it feels like pitifully few) who are having flashbacks at being picked last for the netball team as we scroll through our emails and spam to see no evidence of the elusive link/code. Not even, ‘You’ve been relegated to the waiting list, loser.’ What a virtual slap in the face.
As if I weren’t grudging enough before about this whole process, it leaves a bitter taste. At least if I can join the usual collective bun fight to secure tickets for a concert (i.e. every other concert on earth), I’m in with a sliver of a chance and I might get some decently priced resale ones. With this though, it’s arbitrarily decided whether I’m even in the fray or not and I’m not sold on the bot reduction argument. My cynical side loathes the frenzy that’s been created around even getting a look-in especially given the demographic of the fanbase. My daughter will have to endure a whole year of friends going on about it, but let’s just add it to the ‘life’s not fair’ bucket.
I’ve got wise to the bands inevitably adding extra dates to their tours now. Recently, my son got some Arctic Monkeys tickets, great seats at a very reasonable price. Having secured tickets for Blur’s incredible show in Wembley last weekend, I managed to secure two extra seats. The significance of Blur playing Wembley Stadium was totally lost on my daughter who endured them as I wildly pogoed around to Song 2, Park Life and Girls and Boys with her brother (a recent convert). Not even when I said, ‘But these guys have the word ‘rebuttal’ in their lyrics.’ She was probably being stoic, convinced that karma would come her way in the form of Eras tour tickets. But no. A quick scan of a resale site reveals tickets starting at a mere £600 and going up to £3000, so people might well start selling their pandemic pets (especially those pugjack/doggle-oggle iterations with a host of genetic mutations which can go for ££££).
Despite it being in our national DNA, I feel that we’re starting to weary of ‘the queue' (we probably reached peak queue following the death of the Queen, which caused its own furore). I know I definitely am. The harder it is to get into something doesn’t make me desire it more. Quite the opposite. I remember trying to get a reservation for The Fat Duck years ago for a special celebration. The reservation was akin to this: ‘Call at the appointed hour and millisecond when the owl has hooted thrice and when the month contains two syllables and two vowels.’ It enraged me so much trying to get through, I lost all interest in somewhere that was so prescriptive. I don’t want to work that hard to have a special time. Exclusivity is just tedious.
Even where I live, there are waiting lists for kids to engage in any activity. When mine were much younger I questioned my sanity in being put on a waiting list for something that was basically an expensive way of exchanging a multitude of germs accompanied by a tambourine.
The only place I’ve been (erroneously) subjected to queue shaming was last summer, in France. I’d taken my place in the long queue outside a beautiful patisserie in Deauville praying that they wouldn’t have sold out of their sublime coffee éclairs by the time it was my turn. My husband, who’d been on other gourmet shopping errands, came to ask me something and was upbraided by the man behind me for queue barging. ‘I can’t believe you’ve just been accused of jumping the queue in France,’ I giggled to my husband. ‘I mean, come on, we take queueing to new heights.’
For now though, I’m suffering from extreme queue fatigue.
Me too! Although it did make me slightly misty-eyed for the Ocado queue during lockdown.
I totally loved this