Month: January 2025

Concussed London

Amy OLeave a comment

Because of the concussion my husband experienced the day we left for London, he was pretty well drugged for much of the trip and somewhat limited in what he felt like doing. My work hours could have enabled us to have some morning fun, but that was often not a time when he was moving around. He is normally a much earlier riser than I, but on this trip I was often awake before he was. Many breakfasts alone in lovely cafes. Solitary walks along the Thames. This does not suck.

We were staying at the Apex City of London, which happened to be a place we had stayed in the distant past. I remembered really liking that hotel but couldn’t picture what it was like. Staying at the Apex Temple last month reminded me how much I liked the Apex City of London, so when it came into our price point–a relatively rare event over the past few years–we booked it. It is very nice. Apex Temple seems a bit more recently refreshed and I would say is nicer. But this hotel is also pretty and had everything we needed, including plenty of space in our room and a good, public space to work. Apex City of London is in the Tower Hill area. We’ve stayed in Tower Hill a lot and there are always favorite places in the neighborhood we want to re-visit. It requires a bit of effort to do new things. But, given conditions of the spousal noggin, on this trip we did more of letting the activities present themselves to us.

Furry fandom meet-up. On the day we arrived in London, Saturday, my husband went right to sleep after reaching our hotel. I went out to get coffee at a shop I’d never been to before just up the street, Carter’s cafe. I was sitting at a table with my back to the window when I noticed other people in the shop taking pictures of the window. I turned around to see what I later learned was a gathering of the Furry fandom. They were on their way over to the Trinity Square Gardens so I wandered over to watch them parading into the park.

Music concerts. The hotel is located just next to St. Olave church, as I mentioned in another post. Twice during the week they had lunchtime concerts, one a piano concert and the other a viola concert. My husband went to both and I went only to the viola recital. The church is a bit dreary outside, though with a lovely garden. Inside was very beautiful and, to my very untrained ear, had great acoustics for the music. The violist was Teresa Ferreira and she beautifully played a great selection of music from baroque to contemporary with interesting commentary between each piece. What do I know about music? Not much. But I enjoyed the concert very much.

Medieval Women at the British Library. We visited the The British Library a few years ago to see its excellent exhibit of famous books and documents, including the Magna Carta, original compositions from the Beatles, the Gutenberg Bible, and lots of other amazing treasures. During this visit, we went for a new exhibit, Medieval Women: In Their Own Words. This was a great exhibit culled from collections of books, documents, and artifacts and describing facets of life impacting Medieval women. Yes, the overall message was “life is not so good for us Medieval women, and when it becomes good, bad things happen” but it was a lot richer than that. There were bright spots where women could express themselves with poetry, song, writing, business, power, beauty. We loved the exhibit and recommend it highly.

A tour of All Hallows by-the-Tower. We’ve walked by and seen this old church dozens of times but it never occurred to us to visit until we happened upon the restaurant Byward Kitchen & Bar for breakfast one morning. To get into the restaurant you more or less enter the church hallway, and I think the restaurant might be owned by the church. The ambiance of the restaurant is awesome. So awesome I fully forgave it the good-enough-but-nothing-to-write-home-about food that was served.

After breakfast, we wandered into the All Hallows by-the-Tower church for a tour. It was amazing. The church itself is very old, parts of it older even than the Tower of London. It was repeatedly bombed during WWII and significantly rebuilt after that. There is an interesting area in the basement where remnants of melting lead from the roof flowed down the wall after the bombings. The church contains notable art and exhibits of artifacts. Most interesting to us was tiled floors that were found during a renovation that were clearly remaining from the Roman settlement in place from 40 – 410 A.D. The exhibit also included an interesting diorama of the Roman settlement in London.

A search for Roman era rivers. One day my husband and I were out walking and my husband showed me one of his public art finds from a prior day, Forgotten Streams, a piece by Cristina Iglesias. The piece depicts the ancient River Walbrook which historically started near modern day Shoreditch and emptied into the Thames but is now a sewer, according to the London Museum. It had been a boundary of the early Roman settlement. I couldn’t find a good vantage point to get a decent photo, but it was a pretty cool installation.

That prompted us, along with seeing the diorama and Roman tiled floors at All Hallows, to try to find two lost rivers, the River Walbrook and The Fleet. The Fleet starts near Hampstead Heath and ends at the Thames somewhere near Blackfriar’s station. We found the Walbrook with greater ease than the Fleet. In the end, we concluded that the Fleet might not be able to be seen due to construction on the Blackfriar bridge.

Some very amateur mudlarking. The tide was well out as we were walking along one day so we availed ourselves of some muddy stairs going down to the banks of the Thames to look at shells and other treasures piled up. After our attendance at the Mudlarking Exhibit last year I was curious to what extent it might be possible to recognize ancient objects. I found something that looked like an old pipe, similar to some we had seen at the exhibit, some broken dishes, and an interesting brick. Our finding was all catch-and-release not only because of the rules that govern mudlarking but, let’s face it, I had struggled enough before the trip to fit a week’s worth of clothing into a carry-on bag. I did not need to find room for a brick. Because the mudlarkers we met at the exhibit seemed to enjoy most of all the research into objects they found, I did a little research on the brick I found. According to the internet (yeah, I know, not really deep research), my brick was from a company that existed only for 30 years, and was at least 100 years old.

Helen Chadwick room at the Tate Modern. We arrived at the Tate Modern with limited time and mental capacity so we decided to take in a single room of the museum. The room we choose this time was the room devoted to British artist Helen Chadwick. Chadwick is known for her studies of the human body, early on mostly her own body, but later, on all the things that make a body a body. My favorite part of the exhibit was from her work in an IVF clinic and art she created with photos of fertilized eggs and dandelion seed heads.

And, of course, our week ended at the Arsenal vs. Aston Villa match. This was the only match that we had tickets for when we started our journey. Aston Villa has been tricky for us lately and this match proved no exception. I was seated next to a fun family that included a young boy whose favorite player was Bukayo Saka. His father showed me dozens of picture of the boy with members of the Arsenal team: Saka, Martin Odegaard, Leandro Trossard. On numerous occasions they had stopped by hotels that Arsenal stay at the night before matches and stalked them.

Arsenal played well and scored two goals, both by players who have been a bit short of goals lately, Gabriel Martinelli and Kai Havertz. But somehow Arsenal lost its footing and allowed two goals from Aston Villa. The second goal really knocked the stuffing out of the Arsenal fans and the family next to me went negative. The dad actually changed seats with the kid so he could mutter dark thoughts and feelings in my left ear. I don’t share this level of negativity, but I let him vent.

With the injuries so far this season, there were no great options on the bench to try and turn things around. Despite some excellent efforts from Arsenal (including a goal that was disallowed for a handball) and attempted late heroics, nothing good came of it and the match ended 2-2.

We saw three matches during the week and got all three possible results–a loss, a win, and a draw. Not an ideal week of results but, even limited by spousal concussion, I can’t complain about the week we had. It was awesome.

(En)chant(ed)

Amy OLeave a comment

So I take back what I said before the Tottenham match. Maybe only the Club People have lost their belief. Maybe they never had it, or needed it. Maybe they all just desperately needed cash that day. Or a good night’s sleep. But what I experienced at the match showed fan hope and fervent love for Arsenal. Yes, some momentary despair was in the air at times. And for sure a thing that was in the air was a lot of disdain for our rivals, Tottenham Hotspur.

I’ve been the the North London Derby only once before and, like that experience, this one did not disappoint.

The route to the stadium was unbelievably straightforward. Trains not too crowded, gates running smoothly. We stopped at the Armoury again because we had so much time on our hands after we got to the stadium even though we got a late start. It was almost empty.

All of these things made me double down on my worries about what the atmosphere might be like in the stadium in the so-called-by-me post-belief Arsenal world. The only sign that this was a match a lot of people might care about was the massive police presence outside of the stadium near where the Tottenham fans would come in. We saw what looked like a well-protected group of Tottenham fans being held over one of the bridges into the stadium to guarantee safety as we arrived at our gate on the East side of the stadium.

And then. And then. We got into the stadium. So many people standing in the concourse singing with great passion and energy. It was raucous, so loud. The stadium was full. Even the Club part where all those tickets had been up for sale filled in nicely.

The singing is one of the things that brings me the feeling I understand as collective effervescence that brings me back to the stadium again and again. You just feel like you are being swept up in this crowd of people and becoming one with them. I know it’s over a sport, maybe nothing that will change the world, but when I’m in it I feel goosebumps right into even my brain. Listening to a crowd of 60,000 people singing “North London Forever” gets me. Tears sometimes. But this time, oh my goodness, it was so LOUD I think you could hear it on the moon.

I think both of my visits to the stadium this week reminded me that even though I’ve been a devoted Arsenal supporter for more than 15 years I can never fully understand the history that is in the bodies of these fans. At an FA Cup match there were FA-specific songs, many of them I had never heard before. But huge numbers of fans in the stadium can pick them up and sing them easily just because someone got the inspiration and let the song in their heart OUT of their heart. Each song was just waiting for someone to start it.

And with the Tottenham match, that history came out in a different way. Now, singing is used to inspire the team. “We love you Arsenal, we do,” is an example. It’s also used to reward the team. After a player does something particularly impressive, the fans often reflect that back with a chant. It might be that player’s special song bestowed on them by the fans, like Gabriel Magalhaes song or might be a tune everyone knows that inserts the player’s name. When Ethan Nwaneri, a homegrown 18-year old, does something well, the fans sing, “He’s one of our own, he’s one of our own, Ethan Nwaneri, he’s one of our own,” just inserting his name into a familiar construct everyone knows.

Big Gabi is sung a lot because, lately, he scores a lot. On a corner kick, which Arsenal is recently quite good at, his is the head that usually produces the goal. But it’s more than that. He just delivers a complete performance, like he deeply cares about doing his best. Fans appreciate and notice that.

But chanting is also used to put an opponent in its place. And although I would say the chanting at the Emirates is typically 80% for our team and 20% against the other team, when Arsenal plays Tottenham that balance is substantially changed. Probably 50% of the chants were for Arsenal and 50% were against Tottenham. And let’s face it, don’t we all get more creative when our brains are doing the devil’s work? Some of the anti-Tottenham songs were as choice as could be. And largely unknown by me. It’s not yet in my DNA the way it is for my fellow supporters. I am just a new visitor to the history of this great rivalry.

We were close again to the Tottenham supporters and the job of an Arsenal fan close to the enemy is to make sure they are drowned out. It was a tough challenge. Although Tottenham was abject, they still managed to score first and that really energized their fans and demoralized ours. But even when we could not muster a real song to drown them out, we perfected our booing to cover them up as best as we could.

But Arsenal came good, scoring 2 goals. One from a corner and by Gabriel (although they later gave it as an own goal against a Tottenham player) and a bit later by a shot taken at distance by Leo Trossard. He had kind of a terrible match but he took a shot and the keeper did not stop it.

Then Arsenal managed to keep Tottenham at bay until the full 90 minutes + 5 added were up. I was a wreck for the last 30 minutes along with my compatriots. And so, apparently, was our captain Martin Odegaard, who collapsed on the field when the final whistle blew. So much soccer in so few days. And probably so much relief to ultimately hold on to the win.

And then “North London Forever” once more. Twice as loud as the loudest I’d ever heard it, at the beginning of the match, which was already twice as loud as the loudest I’d ever heard it before Wednesday.

We were happy, relieved, joyful. But we celebrated en masse on our way back to the train with the not-lofty but so familiar call and response:

“What do you think of Tottenham?” (Every Arsenal fan knows the correct answer is “Shit.”)

“What do you think of shit?” (Every Arsenal fan knows the correct answer is “Tottenham.”)

The day they stopped believing

Amy O1 Comment

Every time I’m watching TV and Arsenal has had a goal scored against it or a poor result, I’ve opened the ticketing app to see if the setback has had an impact on people selling their tickets on the ticketing exchange. It never has. This has given me a picture of resilience among the fans. Their tickets, by and large, have been precious and their belief in the team has been firm. True, at least, if ticket retention can be understood as a leading indicator.

That said, fans have been more vocally upset about how Arsenal has been doing. Which is to say, basically not really challenging Liverpool for the title. Arsenal sits in 3rd place with a game in hand on the second place team. Hardly a terrible season but after narrowly missing out on the Premier League title last year and a little less narrowly the year before that, and Man City falling apart spectacularly, yeah, you feel like why can’t this be our year? It can’t because Liverpool is much revived after losing its beloved manager Jurgen Klopp for a new guy, Arne Slot, and striker Mo Salah having an amazing year. As well positioned as Arsenal are in the results table, Arsenal’s point total is technically as close to 8th place as it is to 1st. Every rare time Liverpool falters, so too does Arsenal.

Now there are plenty of extenuating circumstances. Most importantly, there has been one important injury after another. Although Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta has shown he will happily rely on a team sheet that is working for him match after match, he has had significantly more limited options for much of this season that preclude putting his best/favorite team on the field. I’ve rarely been disappointed by the lineup he puts up but there is a lot shifting around. And the results are not ideal.

My husband and I realized there were three home matches within one week this week, so we endeavored to get tickets for one of them so we could justify going to London and try to get the others. We had failed to put in a ballot for the Manchester United FA cup match and our ballots were rejected for the Tottenham and Aston Villa matches. We had a reasonably easy time getting tickets on the ticket exchange for the Aston Villa match (club seats, so not ideal, but at least in the stadium). We bought plane tickets and organized a hotel. We had no further luck in getting tickets for the other matches before Friday, when we would leave Chicago.

I guess you could say our luck got worse on Friday because my husband slipped on ice on his morning walk and was concussed. He showed up at my bedside in the morning with a head wound and his hands experiencing burning pain. We drove through a snow storm to the emergency room where he had a CT scan, two staples, and got prescriptions for pain relief and muscle relaxants. The doctor said it was technically ok to go to London, but given the pain he was in, we decided not to. We got home and I started working. We hadn’t cancelled anything because it was already too late for some of the arrangements and didn’t matter when we cancelled some of the others.

Late in the afternoon, I detected some strange activity. “Uh, what are you doing?” I asked my spouse. He said “I’m packing for London.”

OK, then! I had not packed or, really, even showered that day due to the early morning excitement. But I can be flexible, too. So I did those things and we flew to London that night. I knew by the time we were at the airport there’s no way we should have gone to London, but my husband would not hear of turning around.

He’s not seen much of London so far this week, but he’s finally off the muscle relaxants and more alert. He is keenly hoping to have a London Pride before we leave London.

I’ve also not seen much, because I’ve been working. But I do get a lovely walk each morning and to work in a cozy hotel lobby facing a pretty courtyard next to St Olave’s church where supposedly is buried, uh, “Mother Goose” and diarist Samuel Pepys.

That brings us to the first match on Sunday where we were fervently hoping the Arsenal ticket exchange would be opened to people who had not balloted for Manchester United FA Cup tickets. That never happened given high demand from people who had unsuccessfully balloted. Instead I arranged to have roast at The Marksman at noon after which we would supposedly attend the match. The exchange had closed and, while we had a yummy lunch, with regard to tickets for the match, we had nothing.

In any case, Arsenal had a match to contend with. Although I thought Arsenal played great in the first half, we continued to have trouble scoring and the tide changed again in the second half. Manchester United was pretty dire, but they still managed enough action to score first. We scored not too long after that, with nice work from Gabriel. Meanwhile, it seems our injuries just kept piling up. Gabriel Jesus left in a stretcher. Jurien Timber had to be subbed out. Manchester United did a lot of fouling and had a man sent off with a red card. But even so, we could not break them down. And it didn’t look like we would be able to. We had a chance for Martin Odegaard to score a penalty. He has never missed a penalty. But his kick was saved by the keeper that day. The match went into overtime and then into penalties to settle it.

And from there, our keeper David Raya saved none of the penalties and Manchester United missed none of their kicks. Meanwhile, the Manchester United keeper saved one from our Kai Havertz. Very disappointed to already be out of the FA cup competition.

Once we were back to our hotel after watching the match I noticed something I’d never seen before in the age of watching the ticket exchange. Tickets for the Tottenham match were in bigger supply than anything I’ve ever seen before. There have been days I’ve clicked for a ticket probably hundreds of times and not seen a single ticket. On Sunday, I was seeing an available ticket on almost every click. I couldn’t access any of them, but they were there. Keeping in mind this Tottenham match is on a weekday night and therefore a bit less desirable, probably, for many people, this is a match against our biggest rival by far.

The next day, the number of available tickets was even bigger and not just for club seats. My husband and I managed to find and buy non-club seats together. All day Monday and Tuesday the number of seats available was at unprecedented levels. Just this afternoon, a few hours before the match, more than 30 seats were listed and available. It’s true they were mostly club seats and as I previously stated, when sitting at the club level, you just kind of feel like people aren’t quite into it. Still you would expect some interest and excitement in this match.

I know it’s just behavior on a ticket exchange, but this marks the first time in a long time that Arsenal fans seem to have lost hope and belief. I am sad for sure and yes, here we are probably knowing this year is not the year.

I’m leaving for the match soon. I know a lot of things can happen. It’s hard to imagine they will be positive things.

But I do believe in this team. If not today, or this year, some day and some year.

Wish us luck.

Armoury represents

Amy O2 Comments

The holidays came up with great urgency and I never finished posted after attending the Everton match. I know you’re dying for my thoughts, both of you.

Rarity of rarities, after being lucky in the Arsenal ballot for the Manchester United match and organizing our travel for that trip, we happened to be watching Arsenal play Nottingham Forest on TV when, just after half time, I decided to click on the Arsenal site to see if I could get a ticket for the Everton match. One came up right away, I clicked it, and it was truly available and not snatched up by someone else.

While I stepped away from the match to find my credit card, Arsenal scored. This is the story of my life. I cannot turn my back on the TV during a match without regretting it. But goals can be watched on replay and tickets do not come so easily, so I was satisfied with the tradeoff made. After I’d completed my purchase, I compelled my husband to click on the Arsenal web site to try to get a ticket. He clicked twice and one came up. He clicked it and it was also truly available. Unprecedented.

So we happily planned to come to London for the weekend.

Both of our tickets were Club level tickets which seems to be secret of getting tickets at the Emirates. Don’t get me wrong–the goal is to be in the stadium and Club tickets are awesome. It’s just that it’s a lot more fun to sit somewhere else. People are more into it. The reason Club tickets are so often the first to come available is probably because they are held by people or entities who just don’t care that much to always be present and when present, maybe a tad jaded.

I had hoped to be able to buy a different ticket and then sell this one, but the first opportunity I had to buy a ticket on the Arsenal web site outside of the Club level was on match day. And it became clear that it was not possible to buy a new ticket and then sell the old ticket. The Arsenal web site requires you to sell first and then buy. Too risky.

We started our match day by visiting the Armoury, the large store on site at the Emirates. A person in my life with whom I exchange Christmas gifts had wanted some merch. And there is no place like the Armoury for Arsenal merch. It has just about everything a person could own or use or look at with an Arsenal logo on it.

I mentioned in my post Report this that Arsenal is constantly keeping its finger on the pulse of its fans by surveying them. They had reached out a few weeks ago with a survey about whether I’d ever heard abuse or bad language at an Arsenal match. After the Manchester United match, they reached out with a typical survey about my experience at the Emirates. Was everyone polite? Was everyone helpful? Was the food good? But that was cursory. Once they got that out of the way, what they really seemed interested in was: had I visited the Armoury on that trip?

I had not.

I have to paraphrase what they asked next because, again, it didn’t occur to me I might write about this and I did not take sufficient note. The question was quite odd, so giving it my best shot.

To the best of my recollection they asked me what do I think the Armoury should represent to fans?

WTF?

But I like to be helpful to the club. First I wrote cheerfully, “Weird question!” Then I believe I wrote, “It should be a palace of crass commercialism.” To which I hope the marketing person who reviewed my answer thought to themselves, “Job done. One happy customer!”

Based on the one change we noted in the Armoury, one of my fellow fans who responded to the survey must have said “It should represent a disco,” because now there is a DJ at the Armoury on match day. He was right at the entrance, obstructing the ever-present mannequins of Arsenal players I believe I complimented in my survey. The music was lively, upbeat, optimistic. Danceable.

After looking at everything, and I mean everything, my husband found just the right thing for my Christmas gift recipient and I was whisked through the line to pay for it. My important job done, we went up to the Club level and enjoyed a Camden Hells lager.

My husband and I were not sitting together during the match. My seat was in the Clock end and I was pleasantly surprised that the fans near me were quite enthusiastic. The first half was fine. There was no score by halftime but it looked like Arsenal could get the job done. Everton had very little interest in scoring but a lot of interest in making sure Arsenal did not, either, and they defended stoutly. Martin Odegaard had a hat trick of missed chances and you just knew Arsenal would break through in the second half.

But once the second half started it looked like the wheels had come off for Arsenal. It was the same dynamic, Everton defending and Arsenal possessing the ball, but not very energetically and not with real purpose. With metronomic and hypnotic passing from side to side in front of 11 defenders. I still felt that anything could happen, but 90 minutes ticked down and nothing did.

Perhaps there were actually so many Club tickets available because everyone predicted the Arsenal v. Everton match was going to end in a scoreless draw. As it did.

I didn’t hear this, but my husband said in his section there was some booing at the end.

There haven’t been many times I’ve had to leave an Arsenal match disappointed, which made me decide to put together my personal statistics. I’ve attended 24 matches live. The record for those matches is 17 wins, 5 draws, and 2 losses, an average of 2.33 points per match. Over the same time period, what has been Arsenal’s home record? An average of 2.16 points per match, or so says Microsoft Copilot. It’s AI so it’s got to be legit, right?

I hereby declare my presence at the Emirates to have statistically significant impact on the club. Pretty sure my record is better when I wear the red jersey to the match than when I wear the black jersey, as I did on Saturday. Lesson learned.

After being queried about what the Armoury should represent to fans, I now eagerly await the survey from Arsenal in which I have the opportunity to explain what I represent to Arsenal. They do take action on their surveys and I think I can get behind the action they might take when this information becomes available.

I might wait until I get my stats back up a bit.