You Can't Always Get What You Want

Don't know if you're a Rolling Stones fan or not, I am. So is my husband. We met at a disco (which would now be called a club) and fell in love whilst Mick Jagger strutted his stuff, wiggled his skinny hips and puckered those famous lips. At the time we did a huge amount of lip puckering of our own, quite a bit of strutting and definitely went in for hip wiggling, big-time. Sad though it is to think about it now when my hips have expanded to a size where they don't so much wiggle as wobble, back then we thought we were quite cool, actually, and looking back at the photos of us then, I think we really were. Years later we're still Stones fans, cavorting about behind closed doors to Brown Sugar or exacerbating our tinnitus by listening to Honky Tonk Woman on the car stereo way, way too loud, even though now we're supposed to be old enough to know better. But it's so great that the Stones are still around, carrying on regardless and doing their own thing as ever. I so identify with that. And, what's more, they're even older than we are.

All in all we feel that band is, somehow, ours.

So last night, the day before preview tickets for Martin Scorcese's Rolling Stones film "Shine A Light" were due to be released, I spent hours cruising the net trying to find out how to get tickets for the advanced simultaneous showing of the film at one of the selected cinemas across the UK. This is going out on April 2nd via satellite at the same time as the rich and famous will be seeing it in London, and is probably going to be the nearest we ordinary folk will ever get to going to a film premiere. I know it won't be the same fetching up at the Erdington Roxy, or wherever, but in spirit I'll be walking down the red carpet at the Leicester Square Odeon, should I be lucky enough to get some tickets. I'm already planning what I'm going to wear.

But I'm not experienced at booking this sort of thing, I just couldn't find a "how to" or "where to buy" site, however hard I looked. I've even registered with the film company website, hoping that this will give us a chance if there's a lottery type draw for tickets. Fingers crossed. But how frustrating.

Then suddenly, whilst I was writing this post, I took a quick look back at the website and, bloody hell, there was a new web address where I could get tickets, so I logged onto that only to be told that the cinemas listed in our area don't accept internet bookings for this one-off preview event. Bugger. They did however give the booking line phone numbers, so I rang and got put through to an automated phone service which bounced me round the various options until my ears bled. None of them were what I wanted, so I went round a second time, and then a third. Finally, when I got tired of shouting obscenities at recorded voices that wouldn't answer back, I decided to ring the cinemas direct, whereupon I was told that they couldn't do a credit card transaction over the phone, but I could either a) pick up some tickets in person (how quaint), or b) try again to get them from a different internet address. Great, back to square one. At least this time the voice at the end of the phone had the decency to sound shocked when I let loose a string of expletives which would have made a docker blush.

If there's one thing I can't stand it's being buggered about by automated phone services. If I'm going to be messed about with, I'd much prefer to have the satisfaction of being able to yell at a real person, not a machine. At least they have the decency to fight back.

So, once more into battle.

Press 1) if you'd like to hear a list of films you don't want to see.

Press 2) if you'd like to book tickets for a film you don't want to see.

Press 3) if you'd like to hear perfomance times of the film you don't want to see.

Press 4) if you'd like to send a band of drug-crazed machete wielding miscreants to beat our absolutely infuriating automatic phone service into a trillion smouldering pieces.


All in all, I can't get no satisfaction.

Oh no, no, no.


http://www.shinealightmovie.co.uk/