Breaking our supposed rule never to see a play on the first night we arrive in London, we located reasonably-priced tickets to Thursday’s production of the musical The Devil Wears Prada. It was easy to break because, as evidenced by even events in the dark on the last night of a trip to London, I still seem to be able to sleep through parts of any production.
I am a complete sucker for the movie and cannot resist watching it when it’s available on a streaming service. Meryl Streep is so deliciously bitchy. I could never tire of her delivery of “That is all….” Now, Meryl Steep is of course not in the musical, but add music by Elton John, how can this not be a load of fun?
Well, it was a load of fun. They liberally used much of the movie (which in turn was probably from the book, which I have not read). The actress playing–I’m just going to call it–Meryl Streep’s character (because she OWNED that role) couldn’t begin to match Meryl but she played it her way and it worked. The music was wonderful, the costumes were great, the actors did a wonderful job.
And, yes, I did doze off some. But I’ve watched the movie dozens of time. I could still follow the plot.
On Friday morning we embarked on an excursion to the The Somerset House where there was an exhibit on Soil. Yes, Soil.
It was unbelievably fascinating. Photos of tiny bacteria blown up huge, video of the sights and sounds of roots growing, a mesmerizing video of the development of a mushroom, including ethereal flows of spores. Information on gardening techniques. Stories of human response to plants, flowers, gardens. Every time I tried to hurry along some new narrative or visual captured my attention. Highly, highly recommend this exhibit.
That afternoon we took a long train ride to a different kind of exhibit, God’s Own Junkyard. This is a museum of neon signs, many created by one artist, Chris Bracey, who sadly passed away in in 2014 due to cancer. You can walk through the museum and see the works of neon art displayed and there’s a little coffee shop to sit and enjoy them while relaxing. It is very cool, and very overwhelming.
One thing that became clear to me seeing the Soil exhibit and this one in one day is the power of narrative. The way Soil was exhibited helped you to notice things you might have glossed over. God’s Own Junkyard had every square inch covered with neon signs and art. It was hard to appreciate each one individually.
But perhaps that is the point.
Later that day we went out to Battersea Power Station to view installations for the Light Festival. Battersea Power Station was formerly a literal source of electrical power for London that had been closed down in 1983 and much later converted to a very fancy mall. The light festival was a little, well, little, eight installations from very awesome to kind of ho-hum. But the mall….I am not a shopper but it was beautiful. I especially loved that they retained the old towers from the original building when they built the mall. It’s also full of old equipment from its past as a power station. There is an unbelievable amount of housing development around the mall. One of the reasons I love visiting London is the juxtaposition of old buildings to new, modern ones. This area was all new, but it was all awesome.
Our final tour was to the Brunel Museum, a museum in Southwark on the site of an engineering marvel of a tunnel under the Thames that was built by a father and son team. The tunnel was intended to allow movement of goods from one side of the Thames to another during a time when heavy boat traffic on the Thames made it very difficult to add bridges. The tunnel was started in 1825 and finished in 1843. It was never used to transport goods and initially was more popular as a tourist attraction for pedestrians. It is now used for train travel, ironically, by the London Overground.
You can enter the original shaft and, in the museum, view exhibits and equipment displaying how the tunnel was built and all the challenges the engineers and construction crew faced. Great little museum.
And close by, nice views of the city on a somewhat dreary London day.
After so many recent stays in Tower Hill, we were ready for a fresh, new place we’d never been. So for this trip, my husband selected a boutique hotel called Ruby Lucy in Lambeth. Lambeth is a neighborhood south of the Thames. It’s situated close to the Waterloo train and underground station, kind of a cool, old station. The station was exceedingly busy at all times, droves of people standing in front of the entrance to the tracks, staring at the board on which their track was to be assigned.
Ruby Lucy was a quirky little hotel with a great lobby and fairly spacious rooms. Each floor has an open tea station just outside the elevators and a communal iron board. Our room had a comfy queen bed and one of those crazy showers that is open-glassed on two sides to the room. It had a curtain on the outside of the shower; i.e., if you’ve failed to plan before you start your shower, the person in the room gets the choice of whether to draw the curtains or not. Good to be well enough acquainted before the trip so the choice made by the person not in the shower creates no drama.
The hotel is located on Lower Marsh Street, which was a real find. Although we were quite close to the London Eye, Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, the neighborhood had the feel of being very far from all of those things. Funky and a bit gritty, the street was closed to all but bike and foot traffic and, during the day, had a great little market with mostly street food. There were so many other food options available that we never partook of the street food, but it was extremely tempting. We went to a nice Thai restaurant, Sino Thai, for dinner on the day we arrived and enjoyed Cuban tapas at Cubano the next night. We had a yummy breakfast at Balance one morning.
One of the cooler things about the neighborhood was an attraction I’d never heard of before, Leake Street Arches. We had been walking down Lower Marsh Street waiting for our hotel room to be made up when I noticed a garden path leading to what looked like an underground tunnel. Inside was a broad arch covered with some of the coolest graffiti I’ve ever seen. According to the web site, “London’s largest legal graffiti wall.” An artist was working on some fresh art with a can of spray paint.
My husband, who you may recall was recovering from a concussion on our last visit and not drinking, was looking forward to visiting all the Fuller’s pubs we could. With three in the immediate neighborhood, we were able to make a good dent in his goal. His favorite beer is a Fuller’s product called London Pride. I bought some for him for Christmas at Binny’s but it’s just not the same as knowing that it is being drawn from a cask in the basement of the pub. Or so I’ve heard. The Fuller’s pubs in our neighborhood were nice but not quite the pub experience we wanted. One day we left our neighborhood for the highly rated The Harp in Covent garden. Great pub with a fun crowd AND the requisite London Pride. But no food, so after one round and a great conversation with some interesting folks, we crossed the street to visit The Admiralty, a place we’d eaten on one of our visits in December. Also a Fuller’s pub. 5 Fuller’s pubs in all; not bad for a trip with boots on the ground for three nights.
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.
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 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.
Ridiculously, after returning to Chicago for a few days in which we purchased a Christmas tree and put lights on our house and I worked during normal U.S. working hours, my husband and I returned to London for the weekend.
Both of the aforementioned Christmas activities in Chicago involved challenges. We had a lot of burned out lightbulbs on our Christmas tree last year so I threw quite a few strings out. Naturally, I forgot about that so when I went to put lights on our tree this year, the usual selection was not available. I pulled some options from a different box and put them up, only to discover they were flashing lights. We lived with that for a few days until we concluded we felt stressed after turning on our Christmas tree. I ended up removing my first attempt and completing the effort again with newly-purchased options.
The lights for the house also had burned-out sections and my husband spent time–both before and after our trip–trying to find replacement bulbs, seeking suitable replacement light strings, rejecting such replacements, seeking others, and compromising until the exterior of the house was finally decorated to his–probably compromised–satisfaction.
Although our trip to London was brief, it was fully devoted to relaxation and enjoyment. We walked around town, enjoyed the beautiful lights and decorations, visited a pop-up skating rink at Somerset House, and visited a winter festival featuring (for us) choirs performing under a Christmas Tree in Trafalgar Square.
We enjoyed our new hotel neighborhood near the Temple tube stop. Walking from the Tube stop to the hotel, the area felt like no place we had ever stayed in London even though it was relatively close to other areas we’ve stayed in. Every time we were walking around I was hit with the sensation of novelty which would morph into familiarity and back into novelty. Our hotel was the Apex Temple Court, which had a lovely lobby and pretty, spacious, and practical rooms. The hotel was serving mulled wine and tiny mince pies near the reception desk. Mulled wine = fabulous. Mince pie = not my thing. Mince pie was ubiquitous in London. But so was mulled wine.
Our main entertainment, other than the Arsenal match, was a Tour via the London Transport Museum of Jubilee line platforms at Charing Cross Underground station that have been closed to the public for 25+ years. It still has working tracks that can be used for storing trains during slow transit periods, that then can be whisked into service during rush hours. The other use for this part of the station is filming movies and TV shows that have scenes in Tube stations. It was used in Skyfall, The Bourne Ultimatum, and even Paddington. They showed us clips from the movies during our tour. We got to go into construction tunnels and even in a ventilation shaft above train platforms currently in use. Interesting way to experience history and a part of the train system you rarely see.
With regard to relaxation, we visited the historic Gordon’s Wine Bar, one of our favorite places to hang out and have a glass of wine in an outdoor garden under a very functional heating unit. We also visited a ridiculous number of pubs considering we were in town only for a long weekend. I love the pubs in London under normal conditions but during the holiday season they are beacons of warmth and cheer. They are decked to the hilt with lights and candles and garland, have special, fun menus and drinks, and are full of cheerful Londoners in Santa hats and Christmas sweaters and holiday tights. We visited Old Bank of England, Williamson’s Tavern, The Admiralty, and Ye Olde Watling. Old Bank of England is one of the grandest pubs I’ve visited, which I would have said about The Admiralty if the prior day I had not been in Old Bank of England. Williamson’s and Ye Olde Watling were cozy and friendly. My husband declared the Blade of Beef & Ale pie served in Old Bank of England to be the best beef pie in all of London. I think my favorite meal was just a delicious hamburger from The Admiralty. And the Hedgerow Berry Mess was also yummy.
It was all so very lovely, I was surprised upon returning back to Chicago to see an opinion piece in the Washington Post entitled Britain’s merry, miserable Christmas trees. I know this is behind a paywall so let me give you a synopsis. The author, Mark Lasswell, describes a national pastime in Britain of “lashing out at the comically forlorn approximations of holiday trees on public display.” The leading photo is of a tree in Trafalgar Square. A member of Parliament is quoted in the article as saying this tree resembles “a wonky corn on the cob.” It did look a little sad in the photo.
Photo credit: Kristin Wigglesworth/AP as shown in The Washington Post 12/17/2024
Then I realized I had been standing near that very tree only three days ago. How did I not notice it looked like that? What I remembered: everything was so pretty. So festive.
I dug through the photos on my phone to see if that really was the tree in Trafalgar Square. I did not have a photo, but I had a video of a choir performing right next to the tree shown in the Washington Post. It never struck me in the moment as a “comically forlorn approximation” of a holiday tree. But, yes, it’s not the most glorious. The fact checkers for The Washington Post had done their jobs admirably.
I can only guess that the persons decorating the tree at Trafalgar Square said, “Everything else looks so amazing, no one will even notice this tree. Let’s get this over with and make better use our time with mulled wine at The Admiralty.”
Although we weren’t able to do much London stuff in this visit, we did have Saturday gloriously open for fun around town.
Sadly, storm Darragh, which caused rain and winds all over the UK that day, wanted her say. So we made two plans that were respectful of her and one plan that ignored her completely.
It was pouring rain in the morning but we stepped out with our most rain-resistant shoes and umbrellas and went to the highly-rated local diner, Peter’s Cafe, for breakfast. It was nothing fancy but I had a perfectly delicious, basic, and reasonably-priced breakfast of eggs on toast with a latte.
After that, we went over to the Gunpowder Plot Experience close to the Tower of London. This is a tourist attraction whereby you participate with a group in simulating the attempted coup of 1605 on King James by Guy Fawkes. It’s a combination of interactive theatre and virtual reality. Not our usual thing! It was a lot of fun, albeit a part of history I’ve spent zero time thinking about. We played the part of Catholic co-conspirators. My favorite part of the experience was the virtual reality. It’s not that it felt actually real, but it produced some interesting effects and sensations of being there. With virtual reality, we flew over the city, took a boat over to Parliament, saw the aftermath of the attempted coup.
After that nice, dry activity we took the bus over to Millwall’s stadium, The Den, to take in some Championship football. We’ve attended a Championship match in the past at Fulham after they had dropped from the Premier League and before they came back up. Championship matches offer a grittier, and some say purer, experience than the Premier League. Whatever. We just wanted to go.
Millwall currently sits in the bottom half of the Championship and was playing on Saturday against Coventry City. It was very easy to get good tickets because of the expected bad weather and probably that thing I said about “the bottom half.”
Coventry City was even bottom-er in the Championship, and only recently started being managed by the villainous Frank Lampard, formerly of Chelsea. The fans at The Den seemed particularly annoyed by the presence of Frank Lampard. One guy near me shouted at him and insulted him the entire match. There is no possible way Frank Lampard heard a word of it, so far away were we and as windy and rainy as it was. Maybe Frank will read this and know the truth.
The chanting is a bit different at Millwall than at the Emirates. The chant we understood best went something like this:
We are Millwall No one likes us We don’t care
It was a bad day for Millwall and good day for Frank Lampard. Coventry City ended up winning the match 0 – 1. It was his first win as the manager of Coventry City, we learned the next day.
We took the bus over toward our evening activity and stopped nearby at a nice pub, The Royal Standard. Beer for my husband, mulled wine for me. Fish & chips for him, Avocado & Mango salad for me. Brownie for him, Apple, plum & Damson (don’t ask me) crumble for me. Very delicious, and a nice atmosphere.
Our final activity of the day was Edwyrdian Tales’Christmas Ghost Stories at Charlton House. Charlton house is a 400-year old former manor house, so a great setting in which to hear three old ghost stories. For me, it was only two ghost stories, for, as good as the program was, I was exhausted from a long week and being in the cold and rain for hours (and maybe the mulled wine had something to do with it). I slept like a baby during the first tale about Jerry Bundler. Well refreshed from my nap, I thoroughly enjoyed the next two ghost stories, “Smee” about a haunting that occurs while people are playing a game at a holiday party and “The Kit Bag,” where a lawyer is emotionally haunted both by his involvement in a trial for a horrific murder and actually haunted by something in the bag in his room. The stories were performed by a single actor, writer, and historian Matthew Wood, who did a wonderful job transporting us to a time in which these stories would have been very popular. Great atmosphere and great stories, well told.
It was good to get out into London at last before heading back to Chicago.
About a month ago I got a survey from Arsenal. Arsenal do a LOT of surveys. Usually they are about your experience at a match. How was the process of buying tickets? How was the process of loading your digital pass? Were the stewards pleasant and helpful? How was the food? You get the picture.
But this one was different. To paraphrase, because I wasn’t planning to write about this and can’t recall the exact details of the questions, it wanted to know have I ever heard racist chanting or speech at the Emirates? Have I ever heard misogynistic or homophobic speech? Mistreatment of the disabled? Tragedy chanting? This last one I think is unique to football. It is chanting and taunting about tragedy that happened to football supporters or players. For example, the Hillsborough disaster, where dozens of Liverpool supporters were killed in 1989, has been the subject of taunting by supporters of other clubs.
In this survey, I was able to honestly respond that I’ve never heard any of those things while attending a match. However, the survey had one more question. Have I ever heard bad language at the Emirates?
Well, yes, I have indeed.
And, the survey wanted to know, did I know how to report this bad language to the club?
Er, no, I did not.
Never let it be said that Arsenal is not sincere in its efforts to make sure you understand you’ve been heard. In a useful touch before the Manchester United match last Wednesday, the Arsenal announcer explained at the outset of the match how this could be reported. You can text a number and tell them the seat number of the person producing the bad behavior.
Good to be educated.
The match had quite a late start, probably to work through issues of getting people to the match with public transportation on a night when there would be evening rush hour and when there were several matches in London. We had to get creative anyway because the normal route was just a no-go due to all the fans trying to get the stadium.
We were rewarded with what I perceive as an unusual light show show before the match. From our seats high in the Clock End the fire cannons were producing flame so big that we could feel the heat.
We were closer to the opposition fans than ever before, which means we were part of several critical sections responsible for being alert to drowning them out. It was challenging because they appeared to be feeling energetic.
If I’m being honest it wasn’t the most exciting match. Manchester United seemed pretty committed to slowing down the match and breaking up any action and usually when someone tries that, they are able to succeed. But Arsenal have a not-so-secret weapon that works even in this case. We are able to score from corner kicks more often than any other team. And when working against a team that is trying to break down flow, we tend to get lots of chances to take corner kicks.
Anything I might say about why Arsenal is so good at scoring from corner kicks is a waste of typing. In this morning’s The Athletic there was as comprehensive an analysis as you might ever want. Even I, who am deeply interested in this topic, started skimming the article after about two yards of scrolling.
The fact is, even if you know Arsenal are good at corner kicks and you know exactly why Arsenal are good, it’s still very hard to stop us.
Not long after half time, Arsenal had a chance at a corner kick. My husband and I were probably seated about as far away from that action as you could possibly be in the stadium, but we couldn’t fail to see Decan Rice’s inch perfect kick and Jurrien Timber’s expert glancing header into the net.
That helped open the match up as Manchester United sought an equalizer, much to Arsenal’s advantage. Even so, the next goal was also from an Arsenal corner kick in the 73rd minute. In this case, I could see Bukayo Saka’s lovely kick but how it ended up in the goal was more mysterious. There was a weird delay from the point of impact before the Arsenal fans in the North Bank put up a giant cheer. After the match I could understand why. The original kick ended up on Thomas Partey’s head, which he hit so hard it bounced off William Saliba’s butt and into the goal.
Happenstance? Saliba celebrated so thoroughly that you would have sworn that means of scoring actually was the plan.
In any case, that left about 20 minutes of breathing room with Manchester United looking like they would not be able to score a goal even if there were six days available.
Although it is often the case that fans chant and we can’t tell what they are saying, what happened next was perfectly clear. At least 50,000 people in the stadium started singing, “You’re f*cking shit, you’re f*cking shit, you’re f*cking shit, you’re f*cking shit!”
Now, recall that we now know how to report such behavior to the club. In this case, we were all saved the effort. It would be impossible for the club not to be able to report it to itself.
We had the extreme fortune of being successful in Arsenal’s ballot for the Manchester United match so no additional persistence was required to get tickets. Unfortunately, the match was midweek and I’ve just taken a 4-week sabbatical from my job. I felt disinclined to ask for the almost full week off required to travel to London to be there for a Wednesday match.
Also, my husband was scheduled for his upcoming Italian language test on Thursday in Chicago after the match. Virtually no way we could get back to Chicago on Thursday and also see the match. Fortunately, the Italian test is delivered on that day all over the world. We found it was possible for him to reschedule in London. Meanwhile, the cost of airfare was a nightmare. We actually found it significantly cheaper to stay in London for the full week than traveling back the day after the match.
So we decided to leave for London on Monday night with plans to study (him) and work (me) all week. That might sound like a bummer but it turned out to be pretty nice. We stayed in a hotel that we’ve been in before, the Doubletree London – Tower of London, not because we love it so much but location is great, rooms are a bit more spacious for a week-long stay, and it promised to be a good place to work.
I work so much more efficiently with a second monitor that I was a little nervous about how productive I could be on the road. But I researched and found a very cost-effective and sweetportable option from ARZOPA that could fit into my backback with my laptop. It was pretty perfect for my needs and the price was right.
My husband works better in quiet so he used the desk in our room and I worked from the lobby. I’d go down in the morning with my stuff and all day long I was pampered by the staff with cappuccino and tea and at mealtime by my husband who would pick up sandwiches and quesadillas and bring them back.
So yes, it was London and I was working and not seeing much of London, but here is the equation I learned: Playing from London > Working from London > Working from Lombard, IL.
I was out in London mostly in the dark. Walking around the neighborhood in the morning, going to the match on Wednesday night, meeting a friend for dinner on Thursday at our favorite London restaurant, Dishoom. But London is so lovely at Christmastime in the dark. Trees and lights and markets and everyone is so damn cheerful. During the evenings while I was working the lobby became a loud nightclub with lights everywhere, loud music, everyone dressed in sparkly skirts and tuxedos. And the staff took care of me by bringing me glasses of wine.
One morning we were out walking next to the Thames. It was so magical with lights playing on the surface and mist in the air. My husband looked at me and said, “This never gets old.” In a trip that really did not involve much fun, where we stayed at a hotel we’d been to before and ate mostly at restaurants we’d eaten at before, where not much was novel and everything was just nice, I can only agree.
It’s continued to be difficult getting tickets to Arsenal matches after our more reliable source dried up before last season. Currently, we’re arguably able to get tickets because we paid the club the annual membership fee of about $60 to be “Red Members.” A Red Member is able to participate in the Ballot for each home game, essentially a lottery. About 5-6 weeks in advance of each match, the lottery opens and we are able to enter a ballot for one ticket per person. Then a few weeks later, we receive an email from the club about how we fared. If we are successful, our credit card is charged for the tickets and we can plan our travels. (We refer to this as “winning the lottery.”)
If we are unsuccessful in the ballot, two additional avenues remain for receiving tickets. We can attempt to buy them in Arsenal’s official exchange, which for most matches is limited only to those who were unsuccessful in the ballot for that match. Or, we can attempt to use secondary websites where tickets are resold, like StubHub. We refer to the latter as “illegal” tickets, not that they are technically illegal in any way, but the club really does not want them sold that way and has been hammering away at eliminating this market. And you are for sure taking your chances about whether you will actually receive them and whether they are legit.
Many of the secondary resellers guarantee your purchase in the sense that if the tickets are not received and/or not legit they will intercede and make sure you are made financially whole. Which is ok-ish when your failed ticket only involves you taking the Tube across town and being turned away from the match. For us, we have invested in air tickets and hotels and taken PTO, and being repaid for the failed/illegitimate tickets doesn’t quite get the job done.
We had a fair amount of luck with the ballot early last season. We applied for all matches except for a couple during the month in which I was undertaking daily radiation therapy for breast cancer. (BTW: I’m fully healthy now!) We were able to get three matches via the ballot. My husband was able to get one ticket from the official Arsenal Exchange after a failed ballot.
As you may recall, the Premier League was only won on the last day of the season and Arsenal were fully in the running. I could not get even a nibble of a ticket on the official exchange even up until 10 hours before the match when we would absolutely have to be boarding a plane to get to the match in time.
To torture myself, I even kept checking even after there was no possibility of being able to get to London on time for the match. Not one ticket.
This season, we’ve applied via the ballot for every match except one….and been unsuccessful in every ballot. This leaves only the possibility of getting tickets on the official Arsenal exchange. Keeping in mind that every ticket in a stadium that holds 60k people has been sold, you’d still think someone might get sick, need to attend a wedding, have something intervene and sell their ticket. But a remarkable few end up arriving on the official exchange. When one does arrive, it gets snapped up immediately.
This creates a necessity–for those who are committed to getting to a match–of committing to keeping the exchange app open on your phone as much as possible and regularly clicking the button to see if any new tickets have arrived. 99.91% of the time, none have. 90% of the time one actually comes up, by the time you click less than a second later, it’s already gone.
For me, I have to also commit to being aware at all times what the operative cost is for airfare. If airfare is completely unreasonable, it saves a lot of clicks on the Arsenal exchange.
This brings me to the Leicester City match last Saturday. We received the rejection email from the ballot about a month ago, but I had a particular reason for trying my best to get tickets through the Arsenal exchange. We were already going to be in Europe for a trip taking place during a 4-week sabbatical offered by my company. If we’d been able to get tickets by Monday the week of the match, we would have been able to change our travel plans and go directly to London instead of flying back to Chicago from Amsterdam. But no matter how many times I clicked the button to refresh the results on the official Arsenal exchange, no tickets were available.
That is, until we were in line to board our flight from Amsterdam to Chicago on Tuesday morning. I clicked ONE MORE TIME and a ticket came up. I actually could select it and get to the payment page of the app.
I dropped out of the boarding line, pulled out my credit card and worked through all of the problems that occurred during the timed period by which the transaction needed to be complete–both because of restrictions on the Arsenal web site AND because the door to that airplane was going to close.
Given the fact that our luggage was already loaded on the plane and my husband was on the plane and our travel agent who could have helped with rescheduling flights was asleep in the US, there was no question that we HAD to fly back to the US rather than going to London. And that meant arriving in Chicago from Amsterdam on Tuesday and making air plans to travel to London on Thursday.
I was the last person boarding the plane, but I owned an official ticket to the Leicester match. I was shaking with excitement as I sat in my seat.
Once one of us had a ticket to the match and both of us had air tickets to get to London, we still had to work to get a match ticket for my husband. A great amount of clicking occurred over two days with nibbles of tickets, but no actual tickets.
As we were driving to the Chicago airport on Thursday, we finally were successful. The transaction was completed as we pulled off the highway into the exit to O’Hare. We both ended up having to buy Club tickets, but at least at market price.
Much as we hoped that a more reasonably-priced option might come up on the exchange (and then we could sell our Club tickets), we were never able to get one before the match.
WholeArsed 