Arsenal 3-0 Charlton: match 1, 2006

For my first ever Arsenal match I was hungover. Not in that quaint way that the word “hangover” suggests but epic-sick-probably-still-drunk hungover.

The night before had been St. Patrick’s Day in London. I know that for Americans that might conjure up images of epic parties but it was the exact opposite of anything I’d ever experienced in America. There were no giant tents full of people swilling green beer yelling “kiss me I’m Irish”, almost no one wore green, and I didn’t even see very many silly giant black and white hats, except on the tourists.

I’m so not-American and so not-Irish* that I didn’t even know it was St. Patrick’s Day. The pub closest to the hotel was a little place right off Picadilly Circus so I went there to smoke cigarettes and drink beer. My first clue that it was SPD? A small banner hung above the bar.

The first revelers I saw were Americans and they were.. shirtless and loud. They came in to this pub, noticed that it wasn’t full of Americans, nor revelers in green and quickly split.

The next set were French, very French. Three men and a woman with sad eyes. I wish I could say anything else about her but she didn’t speak English or at least she pretended not to because I was obviously trying to chat her up.

They all wore Big Guiness hats.

We drank a lot of beer. They stuck to clean lagers – all half pints – and I drank the real ales. After an hour or so, they left and two very British guys joined me at my table.

When I say “very British” I mean: they were both shaved head, both wore very basic clothes, and both liked to explain the customs of the land to me at every turn. The first custom? How to buy a round. They got the first round, I got the second round and so on. They drank Jack and Coke. I joined them. I don’t remember anything about them, at all: their names, the team they support, their jobs, nothing, but that they liked Jack and Coke.

After a while, they suggested that we walk over to a nightclub. They looked at my feet to make sure I was wearing real shoes “can’t wear trainers” they explained helpfully and off we went.

That’s when the night went a bit dumb. We went from a pub where drinks were relatively decent price to a nightclub where Jack and Cokes cost £10. At this point I’m drunk and I don’t remember much. I remember trying to talk to a woman. I remember taking this photo:

And I remember laughing at these dudes passed out in this expensive nightclub:

That’s a funny think about being drunk: you get to lord superiority over the guys who have sensibly passed out. I started to feel myself get ready to pass out and pretended to go to “the loo” and slipped out into the cold London night. The only thing I remember about walking back to the hotel was that I really wish there had been GPS on my phone in 2006, because I got lost about 10 times.

That was St. Patrick’s Day, London 2006: three French people, two Brits, and a nightclub that cost me about $50 for two shots of whiskey.

The next day, I was sick and jetlagged. I got up at 4am and I tried drinking the tea from my continental breakfast but it did nothing. So I lay around in bed for hours waiting for Starbucks to open. Yes, they did have Starbucks in London in 2006 and also yes, it didn’t open until 0800. That’s a crime in America, a coffee shop that doesn’t open until 0800.

I don’t remember what I did for the next few hours, except for one thing: I went to Lonsdale and got a pair of cheap knit gloves. I think I also went to a drug store and got some aspirin and lip balm. It was a bright, sunny, spring day in London, but the temp must have been below 0 and the wind was so cold it felt like I had stuck my lips in a cheese grater. Added to the hangover, the cold, bright day was the worst possible combination.

I got to the stadium as early as possible. I went to the club shop and bought a knit cap, blue with the new logo, and one of the 2006 Highbury commemorative shirts. I got Bergkamp 10 on the back. I lost the hat a few years ago but I still have the shirt.

After doing the Museum tour, I went to my gate. They had just opened the doors and I was one of just a few people inside. I was finally starting to feel hungry so I went to the concession stand and ordered a pie and a coke. I believe the pie they gave me was something like a Swanson Hungry Man microwave pie: it was gross and salty. But worse than the pie was the soda: no ice. I guess I didn’t need ice because it was so cold out but I’ve never had a pop with no ice. It was sickly sweet and I couldn’t even get half of it down.

I threw the pop away and decided to find my seat.

I can’t remember which seat I had but they were basically midfield, lower tier. I do remember climbing the steps to the arena. There was a groove worn into the steps, where millions of people had walked before me. And as I went over the hump of the last stair, the stadium opened before me: chalk white, rusty red, and the most immaculate green carpet I have ever seen.

It was almost an hour before kickoff. I took a selfie. This was in the era before cell-phone cameras, if you wanted to be a selfie-wanker you needed to hold the camera away from you, point, and hope it turned out.

I read the program, I stood around. I double checked that I was in the right seat. I took a picture of the clock end. I waited.

The crowd slowly filled in. The players eventually made their way out. We all cheered and clapped.

Fans started singing but I don’t remember the songs. I’d only watched Arsenal on TV up to that point and rarely ever heard a song sung in the matches I’d watched. I definitely didn’t know any of the words that they were singing. So I just sat in my seat, until I learned the lyrics and then I sang along but I still can’t remember the songs I sang that day. Blame drink partly, blame me being a bit overwhelmed by the whole thing.

I’m sure the men sitting next to me knew that I was a tourist. I’m sure the seat that I used was one which was often used by tourists. And besides, my accent surely gave it away. I remember being very self-conscious of my accent.

I wonder if the guys around me went to the few online forums of the day and decried me and my silence – “fookin toorists ruining the atmos”. Or maybe they went to their local pub after and complained to each other that the new stadium would be “full a (insert word) like ‘im.”

I also don’t remember much about the game. Again, I was awed by everything. I have ADD at the best of times but when I’m in sensory overload I tend to just focus on a few things. I remember the cold, the contrasting colors of red and green on the white background, the guy next to me praising Fabregas “he’s been magnificent today, well beyond his years”, Hleb scoring, and feeling both dreadfully out of place and also like I found a home – a place I really wanted to be.

Pires scored, Hleb scored, Adebayor scored. Arsenal won 3-0 and I stood around in the stadium after, my feet aching from the cold, but resolute to stay as long as possible.

I even took a walk around the stadium after the match. And took the photo that everyone takes of the Art Deco East Stand:

I took the tube back to the hotel, secured the season ticket I’d used to get into the match, and went out for more drinking.

I spent the next few days doing all of the tourist things that my friend Curtis told me to do: National Portrait Gallery, British Museum, pub crawls, Tower of London and Henry the VIII’s codpiece (aka the crown jewels).

When I flew back home, I felt connected to Arsenal in a way that I hadn’t before. I felt like I didn’t want to leave but since I had to, I knew that I wanted to get back. When I got back, I started interacting with other fans online and some I found to be more receptive than others. Arseblog was a great place to talk to fellow Gooners but le Grove’s readers and writers consistently mocked me for being an American Arsenal supporter.

This adventure and the problems I found talking to some British Arsenal supporters were the impetus behind my blogging. When I was over there, I would find an internet cafe** and post my stories on MySpace***. My friends loved my posts and encouraged me to write more. That support from my friends plus the words of my Grandfather, telling me that ideas were meaningless unless you make them real, helped me decide to write (publicly) every day.

It took two years before I wrote my first post. And now 12 years later, here we are. Still going strong.

Qq

*Many Americans claim to be Irish but come on, we are Americans. I don’t care where your great grandparents come from, mine are Belgian and English but you don’t see me joining any World War I reenactor’s groups so I can LARP my family heritage. Hey, that’s not bad.. St. Patrick’s Day in America is to Ireland as LARPing is to the middle ages.

**They used to have places where people would pay to use a computer and the internet.

***This was also a real thing. It was like Facebook.