Month: September 2023

Believing in Beauty.

Amy O3 Comments

A new statue for Arsène Wenger has been placed on the grounds of the Emirates since our last visit. After the match we wandered around trying to find it. You know my love for Arsène Wenger. It’s a bit out of the way and the grounds were so thronged with people, we struggled to find it. A nice steward pointed us in the right direction. Many people were lined up to take a picture with the statue and we waited patiently for our turn. Near the statue there were signs like the one above that surely reflected his philosophy. I recalled an article in which he was quoted in which he stated that he only facilitates “beauty in man.” I fell in love with Arsenal because of the beauty he so valued.

But that was at the end of the day and we should start at the beginning. We had breakfast again over near St. Katherine’s Dock, close to where The Big Half marathon was being run by thousands of people. After breakfast, we walked along the route where people were lined up to start and where some had already started and had doubled back to cross the Tower Bridge at around the 7-meter mark of the race. I am that annoying person who claps for every graduate at a graduation, so I am also the person who claps and whoops for runners who happen to be doing something I will not do. When I am giving (in my mind) motivating words to my kids, my family calls it “happy Mom talk.” When I am cheering at graduations and races, it’s “happy Mom cheering.”

I make no apologies. Except (mentally) to the people sitting near me. Sorry your ears hurt. Now start clapping for the graduates, you lazy, selfish beast.

Afterward, we took the Uber boat over toward the Eye and Big Ben just to enjoy the lovely day. It was shaping up to be a warm one.

In keeping with the theme of trying new things, I considered not having Sunday roast in London on this trip. That seemed over the top, so instead, I booked a different restaurant than I normally do, called The Marksman Public House. I found it by consulting an article. How does the article know? I have no idea. I ruled out some locations that seemed too close to Tottenham Hotspur stadium, although I was pretty sure they were not playing there on Sunday, and then focused on those not too far from the Emirates. The match was at 4:30, a little late to have Roast afterward, so we planned to go for lunch.

The Marksman turned out to be awesome. It had a more casual feel from the incumbent favorite roast place, the Princess of Shoreditch. The decor was light and airy, and people were laughing and relaxed. There were many big groups of people sitting near us, suggesting a popular family/friend gathering place. There was significantly less attention on food presentation. Importantly, there was plenty of attention on the taste of the food. We shared a crispy, perfectly seasoned, juicy whole chicken, a cloud-light Yorkshire pudding, deeply caramelized potatoes, and green beans and carrots with minted, crispy breadcrumbs. Perfect.

We both selected for dessert a thing called a brown butter tart. When it came, I was disappointed. It had sounded so glorious and looked so plain. Big lesson here. With the first bite I understood why no one bothered to make it look good. What would be the point? I’ve never tasted anything as delicious in my life.

We took the bus to the stadium and, because we were newbies to the new check-in procedure, went right in. Like all of the teams, Arsenal appear to be cracking down on the secondary market for ticket sales. In the past we would be sent a pdf of our tickets and would print it out to be scanned; this year, Arsenal require you to download their app and use the wallet feature of your phone for the ticket. A screen shot is not sufficient. As participants in the lottery, we would have been eligible to sell our tickets on Arsenal’s exchange, but we would not be permitted to transfer the ticket to other parties at will.

There is so little chance we will ever part with these precious tickets.

The check-in process went smoothly and we walked up a great many stairs to the novel location of our seats, high, high in the Clock End. I was shocked to realize that from our new seats I was not even able to see our old seats because there is a dip in the roof that conceals parts of the stadium. It had never occurred to me from our old location that most people in the stadium are unable to see all of the seats. We had a fine view of the field and the stadium was rocking when we got there. Literally. The chanting was deafening from the moment we walked through the turnstile until pretty much half time.

At the Clock End, you are very close to the opposition fans, and it became very clear what our role was to be: drown them out, counter their nonsense, and remind them they are guests, very unwelcome ones at that. It seemed the Man United fans were more organized than many who show their faces at the Emirates, but I’ve only once before sat this near the opposition. We had to endure their happiness when Man United scored the first goal, very much counter to play. We rubbed it in their faces when Arsenal scored our first goal about a minute later.

What to say about the match? In the stadium it felt like Arsenal had the upper hand and Manchester United’s only idea was to slow things down as much as possible and break our rhythm, hope for a counterattack. They executed their tedious plan well.

Arsenal had a call for a penalty that was overturned by VAR and Man United had a goal that was ruled offside by VAR. It looked like we were headed for a 1:1 draw well into the very substantial 8 minutes of stoppage time due to Man United’s time wasting and the time spent on VAR reviews.

The noise was more intermittent as the match wore on, but the fans got behind Man United’s substitution that brought Harry Maguire onto the field. Even the Arsenal fans–especially the Arsenal fans–were chanting his name. If you’re struggling to score a goal, there are not too many defenders a team would be more delighted to take a chance against. That is until Man United introduced Jonny Evans as a another substitute defender. I couldn’t believe he was still playing. In his day, he was probably one of the better defenders in the league. He played for Manchester United years ago and more recently played for Leicester City, who was relegated last year. So although nothing much was happening for Arsenal, you had to feel optimistic. And, like the sign said, you had to keep “Believing in Beauty.”

At least 5 minutes into the 8 minutes of added time, our captain Martin Ødegaard hit a hard shot that deflected off of a Man U defender for a corner kick. Saka put it into play and while Jonny Evans got distracted by Gabriel Magalhaes’ antics in front of the goal, the ball bounced off the face of our new boy, Declan Rice. He had a million years to take aim at the bouncing ball and tag it off Jonny Evan’s leg into the goal. The Emirates went insane. When Declan Rice ran to the corner flag to celebrate with the fans the fans in that corner rose in a wave from their seats to join him.

With the subs and celebrations, we had no idea how much time was left and we all stood and sang with great nervousness waiting for the final whistle.

Instead of the whistle, the ball came loose in Arsenal’s half and our sub, Fabio Viera (a far better choice than Jonny Evans or Harry Maguire), put a beautiful through ball exactly where our other sub, Gabriel Jesus, could run onto it, feint to draw the last Manchester United defender into a fruitless slide, and slot it calmly into the corner of the net.

Bedlam. Joy. Unbelievable relief.

And now we are hoping the match never ends.

Acts of Hope

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We woke up relatively early and headed out to our favorite breakfast place in Tower Hill, White Mulberries. It’s just a coffee shop with typical coffee shop options (I always choose the yoghurt and granola), but the basics are beautiful, and it’s on St. Katherine Dock. Yesterday, we sat outside and enjoyed looking at the flowers and boats.

We had not done much research on what there was to do in London this weekend before we got to the airport, but while at O’Hare, I looked a bit and saw that there were a number of events around London associated with the Greenwich + Docklands International Festival. Last year we happened to be in town for the festival and enjoyed it a lot. Mostly acrobatic performance art, or at least that is my recollection. This year’s theme was “Acts of Hope.” Anyway, we selected a few things that looked interesting to attend and, after breakfast, headed over to Greenwich on the very fast (and, it turned out, a bit splashy) Uber boat.

That was a tactical error, because it turned out that, while there were many events around town this weekend that are part of the International Festival, the festival at Greenwich was, in fact, last weekend. This was readily apparent when the boat (which held very few people for a Festival weekend), pulled up to a subdued and relatively empty dock. We regrouped a bit and visited the Greenwich market before planning how to get to a play called Sliding Slope which was over at the Royal Victoria Dock, no place close. After a long bus ride over to the O2 center, we walked over to the cable car entrance where I first understood that we were actually going to take a cable cars to get across the river. I am desperately afraid of heights, but I was more afraid of missing the performance, so cable cars it was.

Sliding Slope was interesting. Marginally based on the North Sea Flood in 1953, it depicted a group of people gathered on a submerged rooftop living out their final days as seas rose due to climate change. Dark content for a (mostly) sunny day, but thought provoking and interesting.

After a brief respite back at the Doubletree, we took a bus over near St. Paul’s where we found a cute pub built by Sir Christopher Wren, The Old Bell. It was supposedly built as living quarters for the stone masons completing reconstruction after the Great Fire.

We had a quick pint before heading out to Sir Christopher Wren’s possibly more famous project, St. Paul’s Cathedral. This was to be the site of another Greenwich + Docklands International Festival event, Resurgam. We had attempted to see this the day before, but with the train delays we experienced, we arrived only as the performers were taking a bow at the end. Resurgam is a vertical dance performance by an American company called Bandaloop, starting high on the South side of the cathedral and ending at the bottom. The performance, Resurgam, was named for the inscription that appears on that same wall, meaning “I shall rise.”

What can be said about this? It was beyond magical. Beautiful dancing, beautiful music, on a beautiful building. It was not lost on me what a coward I am for being afraid of the cable cars, when these dancers were doing this. My hands were wet with sweat in some form of solidarity. Solidarity, that is, if they felt any form of nervousness. They did not appear to.

We walked over the Millennium bridge afterward with throngs of happy people who had enjoyed the performance toward our first stint, at Shakespeare’s Globe, as groundlings. The play was As You Like It. And what can I say but I will never try to experience a play at the Globe any other way. We were standing on the left edge of the stage with our arms resting on it. Yes, we stood for about 2 hours, but there was nothing tiring about it. We were in that play, seeing every twitch on the faces of the actors. Loved the play, loved the music, loved the experience. I even collected an apple from one of the actors, shown below.

And though it had been a big day and quite late when we returned to the hotel, I couldn’t begin to settle down to sleep. Maybe the plane ride back to Chicago?

New tricks

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I concluded my last post by commenting that Arsenal tickets would be in short supply next season and that turned out to be accurate. The historical source of all of my tickets except one—a season ticket held by a former colleague in the London office of my former employer—dried up this year. Too many people wanting tickets from that source. So we turned to the club and got “Red memberships.” This allowed us to participate in a lottery for tickets to home matches. New Trick #1. We’ve entered the lottery religiously for every match, and found success for only one so far—this week’s match against Manchester United. We’ve never before attended this match.

We’ll be in the “Clock End” this time. Our former tickets were in the North Bank, opposite the Clock End. I have mixed feelings about this. Arsenal has often been more productive in the second half, right in front of the North Bank goal. But we’ll be in the stadium, no?

News of getting the match tickets came late, about 3 weeks in advance. Flights were more expensive than usual and we ended up flying on United, a later flight than normal, closer to natural bedtime for someone living in Chicago. Maybe we would be able to sleep on the plane.

And, we selected a new hotel. Last year, there was something that made me long for familiarity. Maybe it was due to coming off the pandemic. We visited several hotels we had been too before, revisited many restaurants we visited before, and visited several attractions we had visited before. This year, time to mix it up. Our hotel this time is the Doubletree Tower Hill. Yes, a neighborhood we’ve stayed in many times. The hotel is nothing special, but location is great. The photos I’m taking are dominated by the Tower of London, the Shard, and Tower Bridge.

Because our flight was late into London, we checked into our hotel later than usual and had a shorter first day in town. That allowed us to be EARLY to a place we’ve never before been able to get into: Gordon’s wine bar, supposedly the oldest wine bar in London, which may make it the oldest in Europe. New Trick #5 (or maybe we are up to 6 by now). Gordon’s has operated since 1890.

When we arrived we were told there were no available tables in the wine cave, but were given a number on the waiting list. #1. Can’t beat that. We ordered at the bar while waiting for a table. I had a small glass of amontillado, having no idea what it was. The bartender promised it was “meaty” and had high alcohol content. I selected it because of the Edgar Allen Poe short story and because it actually did come from a cask. In googling it today, I understand it’s a sherry.

When we were seated in the very cool wine cave, I somehow convinced my husband to try the British Sharing Board, a board of Stilton, cheddar, a scotch egg, and a pork pie, accompanied by cornichons, jam, bread and butter. A scotch egg is kind of like a hard boiled egg in a ball of sausage. I’ve had one before at the Borough market. Warmed, on a bed of arugula. This one was served cold. I love love love cheese. However, the acquisition of the Sharing Board is a New Trick unlikely to be repeated. Somehow, I married a guy who is just not that into cheese.

We left Gordon’s and took the bus over to the Serpentine South gallery in Hyde Park to see an exhibit called “Webs of Life,” by Tomas Saraceno. The draw for me was seeing art made via—ok, they called it—a “collaboration” with spiders. Put your head around that for a moment. It was extremely beautiful and impactful. Intricate, varying spider webs beautifully backlit in a dark room. I desperately want to share photos of the exhibit, but we were required to check our phones before entering. This was to acknowledge the damage to human and animal life of materials and processes producing lithium batteries, which was also a focus of the exhibit. We were given the card below “from the artist” in exchange for checking our phones.

We took a long and fruitless train ride to view another attraction, arriving just a bit late. We will try again on Saturday.

Exhausted, because even the flight that leaves Chicago at about our natural bed time still requires sleeping sitting up, something we have consistently failed to successfully achieve, we went back to our hotel. Where we could be blissfully horizontal, a decidedly old trick.