Leeds Festival and Other Stories...
I tried to do a proper update about all of this, but it was far too long for anyone but me to read, so I'm going to go for the easier and more readable option of bullet pointing it all. Here goes!
*12 months ago I go to my first music festival and love it. Come back and buy 2 tickets for Leeds 2008. Accidentally buy 2 tickets for Reading 2008 at the same time. Spend Autumn '07 being very skint. Tickets are booked with my Nan's house given as the delivery address.
*March '08 - Nan goes into hospital. May '08 - I move out. Forget all about changing delivery address of things in rush to move.
*August '08 - Too late to change delivery address. Sell Reading tickets on Ebay. Arrange for a mail collect at Denton Sorting Office so I can pick my post, including Leeds & Reading tickets up there. Assured that they will be kept there for me and won't go to the house.
*18 August - go to sorting office to collect post. It's not there - I wasn't properly informed about how to set up a mail collect, even though I stressed the importance of it to a someone who worked at the very same depot only 4 days earlier.
*Head round to Nan's house. Locks have been changed, and the only 2 people likely to have keys are on holiday. Phone up dodgy locksmith and break in. Collect post.
Phew. Breaking into my Nan's house wasn't the ideal way to start my 2nd Leeds Festival experience, but hey ho. It's quite funny looking back, but at the time it was stressful and upsetting. To have to break in to the house I called home for so long was uncomfortable, a feeling that was compounded when I saw how easy it was for the locksmith to get in - He just wiggled a bit of card in the door and it sprang open. Eep.
Anyway, I finally had my hands on my tickets for myself and friend Rosie (She completes her Nurse training this year so I bought her the tickets as a congratulations present) Jeff, on the other hand, had left his sister in charge of getting their tickets. On Monday, after our morning of criminal activity, we discover that she ordered them from This site . Hello. Even someone completely new to the internet could tell you that's a tout site. To paraphrase Jeff, even though my knowledge of how to make a website is very limited, I could still have put together a more convincing site than that. But, somehow she thought that it was genuine and cheerfully sent £400 to the guy who runs it. On the Monday before the festival, he's not answering his phone, the answerphone message says something dodgy like "I'm probably in a meeting", and me and Jeff spend the night wondering a) if me and Rosie will be going alone and b) How his sister fell for such a blatant scam in the first place.
We found someone selling a spare ticket on the Leeds forum though, and we all made it in the end, and had a great time despite the mud, and the fact that, on top of being scammed out of £400, Jeff's sister also had her shoes stolen.
I think I should do a separate update about the festival later on, as this is a mammoth enough entry already!
*12 months ago I go to my first music festival and love it. Come back and buy 2 tickets for Leeds 2008. Accidentally buy 2 tickets for Reading 2008 at the same time. Spend Autumn '07 being very skint. Tickets are booked with my Nan's house given as the delivery address.
*March '08 - Nan goes into hospital. May '08 - I move out. Forget all about changing delivery address of things in rush to move.
*August '08 - Too late to change delivery address. Sell Reading tickets on Ebay. Arrange for a mail collect at Denton Sorting Office so I can pick my post, including Leeds & Reading tickets up there. Assured that they will be kept there for me and won't go to the house.
*18 August - go to sorting office to collect post. It's not there - I wasn't properly informed about how to set up a mail collect, even though I stressed the importance of it to a someone who worked at the very same depot only 4 days earlier.
*Head round to Nan's house. Locks have been changed, and the only 2 people likely to have keys are on holiday. Phone up dodgy locksmith and break in. Collect post.
Phew. Breaking into my Nan's house wasn't the ideal way to start my 2nd Leeds Festival experience, but hey ho. It's quite funny looking back, but at the time it was stressful and upsetting. To have to break in to the house I called home for so long was uncomfortable, a feeling that was compounded when I saw how easy it was for the locksmith to get in - He just wiggled a bit of card in the door and it sprang open. Eep.
Anyway, I finally had my hands on my tickets for myself and friend Rosie (She completes her Nurse training this year so I bought her the tickets as a congratulations present) Jeff, on the other hand, had left his sister in charge of getting their tickets. On Monday, after our morning of criminal activity, we discover that she ordered them from This site . Hello. Even someone completely new to the internet could tell you that's a tout site. To paraphrase Jeff, even though my knowledge of how to make a website is very limited, I could still have put together a more convincing site than that. But, somehow she thought that it was genuine and cheerfully sent £400 to the guy who runs it. On the Monday before the festival, he's not answering his phone, the answerphone message says something dodgy like "I'm probably in a meeting", and me and Jeff spend the night wondering a) if me and Rosie will be going alone and b) How his sister fell for such a blatant scam in the first place.
We found someone selling a spare ticket on the Leeds forum though, and we all made it in the end, and had a great time despite the mud, and the fact that, on top of being scammed out of £400, Jeff's sister also had her shoes stolen.
I think I should do a separate update about the festival later on, as this is a mammoth enough entry already!