Back in June of this year, shortly after looking myself in the eye and becoming a retinal screener, I took a break from the intraocular pressure of work and rewarded myself for all that eye strain by going online and ordering two tickets to see Taylor Swift at Wembley Arena on November 23rd.

She's the teenager on the left. Kids these days don't know they're born. And sure enough, when I did my GCSEs in the summer of 1989, she hadn't been. But apparently she's already earned eighteen million dollars so far this year. Which is at least seventeen million more than I have. It makes me wonder what I've been doing with my life.

Ticketmaster don't always send out your tickets when you book them - in fact they say you might only get them 7-10 days before the concert, but in the past I've always received them much sooner. However, I was on the Ticketmaster site on Sunday night, booking two tickets for The Nolans at the Brighton Centre (DON'T ASK), when I noticed that it said my Taylor Swift tickets had already been dispatched. It suddenly occurred to me that I couldn't remember ever receiving them. I assumed I had - after all, they usually arrive within a few weeks of ordering, but I've been a bit blinkered by eyes in the past four months, so I wasn't sure.

As a result, I've spent the last three evenings taking over the night shift from Amelie, and continuing her good work by turning the flat upside down in an effort to find them. Needless to say I failed. So at 9pm last night I finally e-mailed Ticketmaster, told them my tickets had been lost in the post, and asked if they'd cancel them and issue me with new ones.

At midday today, my original tickets arrived in the post. I wait four months for them to come, and they arrive on the first day of a postal strike. What are the odds?