15th of January 2014

The morning of joining the queue at City Hall to buy Frank Skinner
tickets. Two people were already waiting. It was 9.55 and we had 5
minutes to wait so I opened the conversation.
"Are you here for a Frank Skinner", I said to the lady who was just in
front of me in the runner-up spot.
"No, I'm waiting for Peter Andre, he's waiting for Frank Skinner",
pointing to the man in front.

"Ah Peter Andre". I said, "he doesn't give up, does he?"
She smiled. He smiled. I smiled.

The man in front - the hardest core Frank Skinner fan in our group -
asked her if Peter Andre tickets were just going on sale today too.
"No, they've been on sale for a while", she said.
We were engaging, communicating, almost like real human people.

I made a couple more gentle digs at Peter Andre and the man in front
smiled at our gentle banter as a woman approached to take a position
behind me.

Now we were four. Three Frank Skinner fans and a Peter Andre enthusiast.

I thought of various other cheeky comments about the Andre but spared
them. It might have been the place but it wasn't the time. It didn't
seem right when I'd donated such a generous spirit to the group.
Besides, it was three against one.

The man at the front was hoping for good tickets and informed me that
Ticketmaster didn't have a very good allocation. This was good
information that I had thought to research myself, but hadn't
bothered.
I had some info to swap in that I knew that Ticketmaster had an hour
head start, selling from 9am instead of 10am.

When you want tickets for something you always assume that millions
are going to be queuing up when they go on sale but Frank had perhaps
dropped a little bit off the radar. So while I was sure it would sell
out it was becoming obvious that that would not be necessarily
immediately. Not with three Skinner fans and a Peter Andre enthusiast
in the queue.
However, we were painfully aware that 6 billion people have access to
the phone lines and might have been ahead of us in the queue. Yes, I
mean you Viagogo.

I said to the new lady behind me - "Who did you come for?"
"Frank Skinner", she replied.
"Really, I had you down as a Peter Andre fan!"
She laughed.
Then there was a pause.

"Who have you come?" for she returned.
I laughed. "I'm been played at my own game. I said"
She laughed
Time passed.
It wasn't raining.

The box office door to Wonderland eventually opened.
The laborious process of each individual buying tickets was about to
take place - giving their postcode, their name and address... was it
always so difficult?
There were two box office staff and it was to take up to 5 minutes per
buyer. Numbers two, three(me) and four were about to become irritated
when we realised that one ticket seller was dedicating herself to the
phone line serving people who haven't even queued.
We were all about to be outraged.

But that hadn't happened yet. We were blissfully innocent.
We'd had our little bit of banter about the two acts and up marched
our leader, the first man in the queue who'd smiled his way through
our extended four-way.

"Six tickets for Peter Andre please", he announced.
As he slapped his forehead and quickly corrected himself, we all erupted.