Well, warm is pushing it a bit, but a bit of foresight on my part last year and the parting with £60 saved me all sorts of discomfort.
Sure, I cursed myself on Friends' deadline day when, despite repeated attempts by my newsagent, the fax wouldn't go through, further attempts at work just met with an engaged tone, panic about a monthly unit meeting that was fortuitously delayed by an hour, and finally, ten minutes before the meeting kicked off, my fax went through.
Then, the agonising wait, the daily inspection of my bank balance, the panic when my employer 'forgot' to pay me - but remedied this on the Friday before Covent Garden processed my request on the Sunday...phew...but not after I had sunk into depression, hearing of various people who had already got, or not got, their tickets.
Then, on Tuesday 'public' booking opened, and led to quite a thread on rmo
So much for the Covent Garden online ticketing system. It crashed in an ugly
heap under the weight of demand the moment booking for Period 4 opened at 10:00, taking the entire ROH site with it. It is still inaccessible. Somebody needs to sign the capex for more capacity or rethink the whole thing...From fiasco to farce. Having finally struggled to its feet for a few minutes, the booking system allocated me excellent seats for Rigoletto, took my credit card details and then suffered a relapse in the middle of authorising the transaction. Needless to say, the site is once again completely inaccessible...After queuing for two hours under the colonnades in this cold weather, I gave up empty handed, as I had to go to work...Yeah, got there in the end. I think I'm going to need a new F5 key on my keyboard now though...You're lucky. I need a new LCD screen. Or at least I will do once I've removed the keyboard from it...
Or, as the Guardian put it
At the Royal Opera House, tickets were going on sale for Richard Wagner's The Valkyrie. This was a special event. Wagner is to opera lovers as Cliff Richard is to sexagenarian dinner ladies, and The Valkyrie is the poppiest of his many pop hits (his Saviour's Day, if you like - only five hours long, and with more incest). Add to this that the hero Siegmund is to be played by Placido Domingo, and you will understand: these tickets were hot...I was there at 6am. The box office opened at 10. There were people queueing before me. I had no thermals, but cut a dash with pyjama bottoms under my jeans and a borrowed Cossack hat. I am no wimp, and have been called brave by dentists, but it really was stark-bollock freezing...In conditions that would have Ranulph Fiennes screaming for nanny, a retired civil servant chatted amiably about Poulenc.
Like I care.
I've got a ticket for two different nights.
Count them. ONE. TWO.
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