It started like a normal day: get up, clomp downstairs, rub cat’s tummy, feed cat, eat breakfast, walk down street to bus with girls, drive to work. As part of the office morning chat, someone mentioned there would be another release of Taylor Swift tickets that afternoon: 2pm for Melbourne and 4pm for Sydney. I texted Steve and suggested he try to get Melbourne and I would see if I could get in the booking system for Sydney given that I leave work early anyway on Tuesdays to take Lara to her after school French lesson. After my morning team meeting, I had a text message from Heidi alerting me to the sale, followed a little later by a call in which she noted that paper tickets would be on sale via the Ticketek outlet at the record shop and offering to line up for the girls after preschool pickup at 3pm. ‘That’s very kind!, I said.’ And then I thought that I really should go myself.
I let my work colleague, Irina, know I was going and she asked if I could tell her how long the queue was when I arrived – it was also her early day.
I had a lot to cover off – finding the place which was inside a mall; asking mum if she could pick Lara up instead of me; keeping Steve up to date (he was still going to try for tickets at 4pm on the website); registering for Ticketek; and sending a message to my colleague. I texted her to say there were around 50 people ahead of me and just a few behind. ‘Thank you?’, she replied. ‘I’m behind you.’
‘OK, quiet please,’ called the record store’s owner. He let us know that we would be keeping our spot in the queue we were in and would play nicely in the sandpit, and we needed to have our credit card handy once we got to the front of the queue. People needed to be registered with Ticketek and to indicate what day and how many tickets they were looking for. We needed to ensure we had enough money in our account. And no talking, so that he and his colleague could hear the information being provided.
They moved the people who only wanted Sydney tickets to a separate queue and I progressed into the shop. The person in front of me asked if I could mind her spot. I agreed, and she returned a few minutes later with two camping chairs.
The next half hour or so passed quickly, and then tickets opened for Melbourne. We were silent as instructed. The queue progressed, and about 15 people secured tickets, each one leaving with a look of muted joy at their good fortune – muted because they were conscious that we were still all waiting. ‘Well done’, we called as each one passed us. They were sold out in about twenty minutes. Then we needed to reverse out of the shop and line up outside in the same order. Embarrassingly, I hadn’t really taken note of who was around me so I had to ask more than one person if I was near them. The young woman with the camping chair was further ahead of me than I had thought – I didn’t recognize the two other young women who ended up directly ahead of me. I wondered whether they had been immediately ahead of me and whether if not, it might end up making the difference between me getting tickets and missing out.
In the queue outside the shop, after 45 minutes or so I sat on the ground as many of those without camping chairs were doing. Heidi was still coming down with Sophia to keep me company or look for a ticket on another day – she had secured one already for the Saturday night. I scrambled up to talk to her and Sophia, who was resting in her pram. We chatted about all of it: what had happened that morning, what the girls knew, how many tickets had been sold for Melbourne, what Heidi would be wearing when she went, what the friendship bracelets are. . . The queue was growing to include a mother with her baby, school kids and small groups of friends, snaking around the upstairs area beside a balustrade facing the Reject Shop. I thought that I wouldn’t lean on the glass partition and railing in case the weight of us all tipped it over. The odd person aged over 65 approached someone in the queue to ask us what we were queuing for.
Looking more closely at a man a few places ahead of me, I realized he was the manager of Lara’s Oztag team. He was there to get tickets for Lara’s teammate and her sister and friend.
Then it was four o’clock. Again the queue progressed silently. There were only around 15 people in front of me. The well dressed young mother immediately behind me had popped out to buy a phone charger and had been working on her computer and I asked if I could borrow it as my phone was nearly out of charge. It didn’t work though, but the young woman immediately in front of me offered me hers. I was now only a handful of people away from the counter.
‘It’s all sold out,’ the record owner said. ‘No more tickets. I’m sorry. There’s no point in staying any longer, you can all go home.’ My colleague left and so did the well-dressed young mother.
The Oztag dad was at the counter at this point. ‘I’ll see if anything pops out for you,’ the record owner said to him. And he kept toggling between screens while the dad leant on the counter, head bowed. My colleague behind me and the well dressed young mother said their goodbyes and that it had been nice hanging out together. I kept my eyes on the counter – it didn’t seem to me that it was all sold out yet.
‘I have three tickets, Sunday night. Will you take them?’ The dad did. Next were the two young women, but they only wanted four tickets, so when two popped up, they stood aside for the young woman immediately in front of me. And then I was there.
I asked for two or three tickets, mindful that children under 15 years needed to be accompanied by an adult but I was willing to risk that by buying only two if they were available. ‘Two tickets, Monday night.’ I replied ‘Yes.’
Heidi and Sophia were waiting for me outside the shop. Some people who had bought tickets came to ask us where their seats were as we were scrutinizing my tickets, and I exchanged some anxious words with Heidi about the fact that I only had two tickets, wondering if I could swap Monday for Saturday with someone who had emerged with Saturday tickets so the girls could go in with Heidi. That’s not how it works. We made it out of the building and bumped in to a sixteen year-old boy in his school uniform outside, who had secured a single ticket and was intending to ‘ship myself down for the Saturday night’. I agreed that I would Facetime Heidi so she could see the girls’ reaction on finding out that they would be going to the concert, and we went our separate ways.
We told the girls together, after I had picked Lara up from French and bluffed through her fishing for information as dad had told her I was lining up for tickets but she didn’t ask me outright if I had been there. Rhea later reported that she was suspicious at Steve being at his desk with the Ticketek screen open, her suspicion becoming more acute after he called her over with his phone camera on, saying he had something important to tell them. On Facetime Heidi told them their tickets were right near the stage. They jumped for joy, literally, and later Lara went outside to have a cry.
They have now purchased and taken delivery of their complementary gold and blue sparkly dresses (sent to mum and dad’s house to avoid a mixup with a similarly-named street) and earrings; high-quality ear plugs; and huge supplies of beads which they are industriously using to make friendship bracelets – with help from Jessie and her girls who stayed for the weekend, they have 73 individualised bracelets, each one in complementary colours conveying a message or song lyric.
We’ve been working through logistics with advice from friends who have already experienced the concert. We’ll all drive down for it tomorrow morning. It will be a big night.
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