Arsenal DNA

'Are you extra busy this afternoon?'

'No, why?'

'I'm on a bus to London. Do you want to see the Arsenal under-21s?' 

So we went and were surrounded by dads taking the kids out for the afternoon. It was sweet. It was also cheap - £4 for adults and £2 for children. 

Photo tricksed up with ToonCamera to anonymise faces.
I have a thing about privacy.

There were just short of six thousand on the Arsenal side and about a hundred Blackburn fans, who fascinated me. Had they travelled down for the match or were they expats on a nostalgia visit? Was this a Lancashire Bar/Bat Mitzvah in which London-born children learnt about Northernness? 

The Arsenal lot cheered every time one of theirs did anything (though the loudest cheer was when Fulham scored against Man United) and booed when the Blackburn players were announced. Perhaps they shouldn't have booed, but I doubt the players minded. It felt almost affectionate, like a collective 'you're a proper footballer now'.

Chicken nuggets as praised by the Secret Footballer.  

I'm not even going to pretend to do a match report. There's one here. Arsenal beat Blackburn 3-0.

Last chance to see.

Arsenal and London Metropolitan University have brought shiny buildings to the southermost end of the Hornsey Road and directly/indirectly they're pushing out the businesses that clustered there when the area was cheap.

The car repair workshop's been there thirty years and it looks like it my be gone soon. In an Opie and Iain Sinclair way I wanted to record it, so here goes:

Round the corner a flat is for sale at £675000.

Channeling Herbert Chapman

This is the Hornsey Road taken over by fans leaving the Emirates:

They'd watched a goalless draw with Chelsea and were quiet except for a little boy saying 'I think we played much better than them' at the top of his voice. It was like a morose carnival procession where the rules of normal life were upturned: we could walk down the middle of the road and everyone was heading the same way and thinking about the same thing.

It also felt (and yes, I have been watching a lot of Dr Who lately) like time travel, because this crowd could have existed and would have had the same thoughts and conversations a hundred years in the past or in the future.

Change the clothes and can't you see those two tramping home from a disappointing nil nil draw under Herbert Chapman?

We're goin' to the Emirates and we're gonna get married.

If Arsenal take up most of your waking thoughts and half your dreams and you're about to get married Arsene Wenger might send you a letter congratulating you on your 'perfect match'.*

If your intended feels the same or is very very kind you can get married at the Emirates on the Hornsey Road and tell everyone to call it the Ashburton Grove of love. 

* Write to The Charity Department, Arsenal Football Club plc, Highbury House, 75 Drayton Park, Highbury, London, N5 1BU two months prior to the event, include the full names of the bride & groom, the date of the wedding and the address to which it should be sent.