Notes from the Boneyard: Rolling with it

Drifting along. Completely cut loose from purpose. Each day the same as the next. That is until your friend from Liverpool calls you and gives you two free tickets to the gig of the century in Croke Park. You didn’t wanna go, but now you’ve been handed a lottery ticket.

It’s Thursday, the gig is Saturday. You have to make some last minute changes to your diary. But you accept the tickets, with gratitude. Then the next question is who to give the spare ticket to. Word travels fast in the village and your phone rings off the hook, with all kinds of offers. People willing to fly from New York and whatnot. Maybe you should sell them and buy a house. But you would be a fool to miss this once in a lifetime spectacle, you throw caution to the wind and decide to go and see what all the fuss is about.

Hotels booked, and a companion by your side, you head off in the vehicle for Dublin. The city is buzzing, more than usual.

A fine day too. A sea of drunken people in bucket hats line the streets. It’s like being back in the ‘90s, but bigger. You drink cocktails and hop on a bus with friends old and new. Excitement is rife. Then as you approach the gate you pull the tickets up on your phone. You’ve checked the tickets a thousand times in the last 24 hours.

But now they display a different message. Now they say VOID. Surely a glitch in the matrix. A mishap.

You go to the box office where this will take only a few minutes to sort. Right?… Right?

One hour later and you’re still standing there, wondering what’s happened.

The guy at the box office is scratching his head in confusion. This doesn’t happen. You’re calling your mate in Liverpool who gave you the tickets, bugging him with your horrors while he is at his kid’s birthday party.. Nobody knows what happened. You call friends you know who work for the production company, management, roadies, but everyone is in the gig and not answering.

The whole world is in there and you’re out here in your sad bucket hat. How did this happen?

When you all finally work out what went down, it’s too late.

You hear the band playing in the background as the box office guy breaks the news that some dimwit in an office in London voided the tickets when they heard the original recipient wasn’t attending. The tickets were yoinked from your clutches and placed back in the system, for two other lucky sods to nab. You walk the walk of shame back to the city, deciding to make the most of it, to polish the turd, drowning your woes in a loud club that you’re too old to be in. Someone messed up and someone needs to put this right. But it won’t be tonight.

You recall the last time you went to the bands gig 15 years ago and how you got thrown out of the guest bar by the lead guitarist and his thug bouncer. (See Boneyard #46272). Are these two incidents connected? Or are you destined to have the gods mock you from above?

And now back home, a few sleepless days later, you are spending every second trying to make it up to the companion who you took along. You are painting their decking and cutting their grass. What’s the moral of the story here? Don’t do a good deed or you’ll end up with egg on your face. You vow to never go to another one of their gigs.

It only ends in tears and blood.

But now wait… what’s this? Two more tickets have been offered for the Chicago show, next week? Yes, you say, I’ll take them, with gratitude. And so the next venture begins.

What horrors lie ahead this time?

To be continued…