I am on a bus at 7.30am. Nothing particularly unusual about that except I have the week off work. This is voluntary. Jez Butterworth's new play The River opens today and tickets can not be bought in advance.

It's sort of like day seats with a back up plan. Thirty tickets are available from the theatre box office at 10am. The rest go on sale online at 9am, fastest finger/Internet first - the play is on at the Royal Court upstairs so there aren't a lot of tickets.

Poly is doing fastest finger. I am queueing. If we don't succeed today we'll be better prepared tomorrow.

This is theatre fanatic in action and the tension is a little addictive. The mystery of not knowing what you are going to find when you get to theatre. Will I be too late (it's happened several times for day seats)? Will I be there really early and have the comfort of knowing tickets are a certainty while being slightly irked that I could have had an extra half an hour in bed?

Or will I be on the cusp, taking a calculated gamble that not everyone in the queue takes two tickets? I've queued for two hours to have the person in front nab the last ticket before.

Soon I'll find out...

Update...and here is what happened.