I have often thought how I would do a Lou Reed and spend a perfect day. Today however has been the polar opposite of Mr Reed's vision, an imperfect day if you will, as I watched it slide away…

I, like every other homosapien it seems, am an Oasis fan. Now, I’m not, like many who gleefully and smugly snagged tickets (do you sense a hint of middle-aged bitterness?) a Johnny come-lately: I have completed the full house of seeing Oasis back in the 90s and Noel and Liam separately in recent years.

So today I, fully aware that the websites would be ‘a tad’ busy, logged on to four devices (I know) to ensure I bagged a pair of tickets for me and t’wife. The day started at 8am and, even then, despite the tickets not going on sale for another hour, the See Tickets and Gigs & Tours websites had crashed, never to return, even after I logged off some seven hours later.

Finding myself in the queue for Ticketmaster on two separate devices, I sat, gently touching the touchpad to ensure the screen didn’t go stealth intermittently, as I genuinely felt like Jean Michelle Jarre in his brief, yet profitable, heyday, as I did little yet expected to reap the reward.

I underestimated their popularity however as 14 million of us logged in for one of the 1.4m tickets. I sat impatiently watching the line on the screen pulse, which is akin to watching your computer defrag (ask your parents) but then, 90 minutes later, I was in…or so I thought.

It turns out the queue I was in was merely the queue for ‘the queue’ and, finding myself 147,000th in line I cried a little and made myself yet another cup of tea.

Two hours later and I was smoking, down to 130,000th in line as I took a one-hour detour by driving to Cheshunt and back and then, at 3pm, I finally reached the hallowed grounds.

Because I had plumped for a Saturday at Heaton Park, the website gave me no other option but for that date, and that venue. Clicking ‘check other dates’ put you back at the start of the queue for the queue, but, despite that setback, it looked as if tickets were available: Clicking on them encountered numerous website errors and I even tried to bag ‘accessible tickets’ hoping that my bad back would, for once, come to the rescue, but to no avail.

Eventually the only option was a dastardly Ticketmaster Dick Turpin move which was ‘housery’ at its finest: Standing tickets which were £150 earlier in the day and in the previous day's pre-sale (which I entered but didn’t get invited too) were now, ‘in demand’ standing tickets, albeit it standing in exactly the same place as the 150 quid ones for a jaw dropping £350 (plus booking fee). I did put them in the basket and was given 90 seconds to complete my purchase with their new ‘dynamic’ pricing method, but I couldn’t justify the purchase, what with two kids, a mortgage and the other appendages of middle age, so I did what I should have done seven hours earlier and walked away.

So yes, I’ve had better days, although my pain was compounded by finding out that my daughter’s friend who ‘likes Wonderwall’ had bagged a pair for Wembley. Yours truly came unstuck and was left offering his right kidney on Facebook in exchange for a pair of tickets to watch the boys from Burnage make a late, unexpected, albeit now soured, comeback.

Am I bitter? Youbetcha! Am I happy for those who got tickets? Honestly no, and I know that makes me a bad man, but sometimes you just want the cards to fall in your favour and not be left half a world away don’t you?

  • Brett Ellis is a teacher