As far as I know I am a fairly normal fifteen-year-old, neither a complete psychological case nor a cut above the others. I listen to Radio Luxembourg, my hair falls forward in the fashionable style and I wear polo-neck sweaters, but I don╒t consider myself a great pop fan. It was therefore with rather a shock that I realised I had volunteered to obtain tickets for a one-night Beatle concert in Leicester.
I had rather hoped that my alarm clock would forget to go off at 5 a.m., but unfortunately it didn╒t. I dragged myself out of bed, pulled on all my warmest clothes, put a coffee flask, apples, some reading matter, and a folding stool into my canvas duffle bag and stumbled out of the house. It was cold and dark. About two hundred yards from my objective, the municipal box office, I became aware of a great talking and murmuring, which seemed rather unusual before dawn on a Sunday morning in Leicester. Turning the corner an incredible scene presented itself before my eyes. On either side of the road were piles of blankets, hot-water bottles, bags, and camp-beds, while in the gutters rolled empty milk bottles and reams of waste-paper, not to mention the queue! For want of a better word I call it a queue, but in fact it was a great mass of people stretching down the road for as far as I could see.
Stunned, I sat myself down along with fifty or so other people on the island in the middle of the road and just watched. It became increasingly apparent that there was no order about the queue and that there could be no rules. The only thing to do was to attach oneself anywhere in this mass and hope. I dumped my duffle bag on the traffic island and shouldered my way into a bulge of the crowd fairly near the front. Little did I realise that I would not see my duffle bag and its carefully chosen contents for the next five hours.
With the dawn things started to get rather nasty. As the crowd increased so did the number of police, and the amount of oxygen per person became less. As the first of many people started fainting and were carried to the waiting ambulances it became clear that this was to be a matter of survival of the fittest and who could hold out the longest.
Someone had an old guitar and the more energetic among us sang with hoarse voices the familiar strains of ╥She loves you, Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!╙ At 6.30 this changed to a fairly good-natured chant of ╥Why are we waiting?╙ but at seven only screams, groans, flashes of caustic wit and blaspheming were heard, for the pushing had started. The police at the entrance started trying to force the crowds back, the people at the back pushed persistently forward, those in the middle, including myself, were slowly being crushed together like the filling inside a gigantic sandwich.
At eight o╒clock we could not move and I had the unnerving experience of realising my feet were not on the ground. When I breathed I smelt only hot bodies and cheap hair lacquer ╤ it was not surprising that people were fainting at the rate of one every five minutes. We kept swaying backwards and forwards at an angle of forty-five degrees with no way of stopping or protecting ourselves. It was so hot people were having to blow on each other╒s faces to get cool. I was almost glad that my own thick coat had been half torn off, not so happy that I was in danger of losing my shoes. Some people were being crushed against the stone wall and shop windows, others, suffering from what I can only think was a sort of claustrophobia, broke down completely, having hysterics and screaming horribly every time we started to roll. They could not get out of the queue even if they wanted to and we were powerless to help them.
At 9.20 they opened the doors and let about twenty people into the booking office. They seemed to be taking ages. Some time later, more dishevelled than usual, we managed to get in. At once I breathed in deeply, put on my shoes, and peeled off two sweaters. The box office was up some steps. I belted up them with more energy than I thought I had left in me, only to find another queue.
This was a happy, small, ordered queue who knew at least they would be lucky and get hold of some of the elusive tickets. I listened with curiosity to the boys behind me debating on how much profit they could make when they sold their tickets on the black market. I staggered up to the grille and asked for two of the best tickets they had, as near to the front as possible.
Minutes later I came out clutching in my hand two little pink slips of paper and feeling rather like someone who has just conquered Everest. Was it all worth it? Yes, even if it was just for the smug satisfaction of seeing the incredulous and rather admiring looks of my friends as I recounted my frightful saga in full gory detail.
Have I, you ask, any advice to others thinking of doing this queueing lark? Yes, I have. It is, quite simply, don╒t.
