Material Girl | We can only make plans and cross everything in hope

If so, you're still filling your diary with shows, live music and even holidays.

We all need things to look forward to and when the planets align and the coronavirus restrictions work in our favour some of our best-laid plans pay off.

Others don't and we just have to roll with the punches.

My eldest recently asked me to buy concert tickets for next July as soon as they came online before suggesting it might be too hard for me.

Are you serious?

I learnt to touch type at Corowa TAFE in the 1980s!

I am lightning fast on the keyboard! Speed typing is my super power!! 120 words per minute. Full words, correct spelling, punctuation and double spacing.

Remember the time I got tickets for seven adults to The Lune Lab? The Lune Lab is Lune Croissanterie's exclusive dining experience? Those tickets are hard to come by.

I signed up for the Ticketek waiting list on Louis Tomlinson's Australian tour now happening mid-next year.

The 2021 tour had already been sold-out before it was postponed.

The Melbourne concert venue was changed for the July 2022 show and the original ticketholders had first dibs on the new shows. But then more tickets were due for release.

Watching for the waiting list alert around midday on a school day last month, nothing happened.

No email.

No alert to newly-released tickets, as indicated and basically promised.

I headed over to the Ticketek website anyway to find some new tickets had been released in dribs and drabs.

I've been asked to buy standing tickets, of which I can't get four.

To be honest, I'm relieved.

I don't want my offspring and their friends huddled together with hundreds of others at a two-hour concert. Norman Swan would be having kittens!!

With no Plan B in place, I text my daughter for instructions. (I'm crossing fingers and toes that it's lunchtime at school and not the middle of a science class! Bad Mom!!)

"Sitting is fine, thank you."

MORE MATERIAL GIRL:

I find four reasonable seats mid-stadium for less than $100 each. I text a screenshot of them and wait for a reply.

"It's way off to the right. Stage in Mudd. *middle" (My typing is already under pressure.)

There is a delay as the screenshot is shared with other teenaged, would-be ticketholders at two different schools.

I have two computers and my iPhone running so I keep browsing.

When I get the nod on the original seats I am still distracted by my second computer. I think I have found better tickets. But I haven't. Finally, I start processing the order.

Ticketek needs each person's name and mobile number. I double check everything. Surnames. Especially mobile numbers.

I enter my credit card details and push process order.

The order won't go through as I've missed the insurance field with the *Asterix. Hello! Yes or no.

I tick that and then push process order.

YOUR ORDER HAS TIMED OUT!!

I start from scratch but now the tickets seemed to have jumped up to $400.

That's not within their budget so I keep searching, high and low.

Finally, I secure four tickets way up the back of the stadium for $99 each.

I input everyone's names and mobile numbers again, once more with feeling.

Order confirmed. Have a great time at Louis Tomlinson!

I'm sweating, I have knocked over a full tea cup and the tickets are in the boondocks.

I console myself that they're sitting together and not squashed in the mosh pit.

They will also have something to look forward to for the next 12 months.

Of course, those plans may never see the light of day.

You can only try!

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content: