Róisín Ingle: I might be okay, but I’m not fine at all after trying to buy Taylor Swift tickets

Curse you Ticketmaster, weaving your little webs of opacity as I try to buy tickets for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour in Europe. Like thousands of us, from Warsaw to Walkinstown, I’m so impaired by the bruising agony of the chase, I can speak now only in Swiftian epigrams: I’m a crumpled-up piece of paper lying here. Karma is not in fact my boyfriend. I feel very much like an old cardigan under someone’s bed. I might be okay, but I’m not fine at all.

The past few weeks have been a deeply stressful time for us Swifties. In my experience, attempting to buy tickets has been a cross between the Hunger Games and that vintage British TV show It’s A Knockout with a little bit of Dungeons & Dragons and Deal or No Deal thrown in. There are four Swifties of varying degrees of devotion in my house. I’m their Fearless leader having first discovered the singer just over 10 years ago while giving out prizes at a school graduation. A girl in the audience sang Best Day, Swift’s ode to childhood reducing me to a blubbering mess. “Who sings that song?” I asked the girl afterwards. “Taylor Swift,” she replied. “Taylor, who?” I famously said at the time.

If you fail to understand the appeal of Swift, a master of emotional storytelling, that’s okay. The amazing thing about the world is that there is music for every taste. Just think about how strongly you feel about Bruce Springsteen/Yungblud/Rihanna/Coldplay/Cardi B/Ed Sheeran/Beyoncé/ insert your fave here, and you’ll understand why I was so desperate to sway gently with my boyfriend and daughters in the Aviva Stadium (or anywhere in Europe) watching Taylor Swift sing All Too Well, the 10-minute version.

I set to work slaying the Ticketmaster dragon. First of all you had to try to register with that company for the “presale” – you pre what now? – but that only meant you were in with a chase to win the lottery for a – come again? – presale code. If it turned out you were blessed with the sacred code, you then had to wait for an appointed day to log in online to see if you were far enough down the queue to actually buy tickets, that’s if there were any left that didn’t cost the price of a used car. Remember when you only had to queue up at HMV or that little booth in the Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre to buy tickets? Yeah, me too. Simpler, happier times.

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The omens are initially good in my quest. I’ve hedged my bets by registering for the presale in Dublin, Amsterdam, Vienna and Cardiff. I am not randomly allocated a code for Dublin or even Cardiff but I am granted one for Amsterdam. In an attempt to manifest the tickets, the way I see young Swift fans doing on Tik Tok, I imagine myself on a canal-side cafe in a Taylor T-shirt eating one of those paper cones full of chips that have been smothered in mayonnaise.

When the Amsterdam presale day arrives my friend Phil, who by some voodoo managed to get Warsaw tickets for his family, talks me through what to expect. He suggests I log in on a few different devices to better my chances. I log in on four devices – two laptops and two phones. Jesus, me nerves. The clock counts down, the moment arrives. I am in! I am in the virtual queue! I’m going to get to see Taylor Swift on the Eras Tour! There are, let me check, only 94,8551 people in front of me! Oh.

I Google the capacity for the Johan Cruijff Arena in Amsterdam which is about 55,000. Swift is doing three nights. Even with my terrible maths skills I work out that if most people ahead of me are buying four tickets – the maximum allowed – the chances of me getting four standing tickets are slim to sweet nothing.

Six hours later, no that’s not a typo, I am granted access to the ticket-buying place but the only ones left are part of the It’s Been A Long Time Coming VIP package and cost about €700 each. My finger hovers over the button. I’m sure the bank would understand a missed mortgage payment. “Look what Taylor made me do,” I’d tell them. At the last minute I decide Swift would not want me to spend the guts of €3,000 plus flights, plus accommodation just to see her for one night. In the end I give up, knowing I fought a decent battle even if I haven’t won the great war. My castle crumbles overnight.

(Later, as I sit there in my hurt, my boyfriend tries to console me by saying in his opinion the system is a fair one. He further tells me, and he actually thinks this might cheer me up, to shake it off. Foolish one.)

I haven’t given up. I know it’s not over until Taylor is wearing a flowing gown and singing her surprise acoustic songs in the Aviva next June. And I still have a couple of more chances. A generous friend has passed me his code for another presale. A kind stranger has gifted me her code for the general sale. At the time of writing I can’t tell you if I’ve been successful. I can only process the experience in profound Swiftian questions: Just between us did the experience of trying and failing to buy Taylor Swift tickets maim you too? How can a person know everything at 18 but nothing at nearly 52?

My tears ricochet. I wipe them. I ask myself WWTD (What Would Taylor Do?). Suddenly, it’s clear. Taylor would make lemonade from her lemons. Taylor would write about it. And so here we are. It’s me. Hi. I’m the problem. It’s me. And also Ticketmaster.