great-expectations asked: I remember a few years ago you were wondering what football team to support and someone suggested Arsenal - How did that go? did you go to any games?
I totally failed! My theory that football was boring was, alas, borne out by the fact that I continued to find it boring. Maybe my friend Judo was right when he said that I couldn’t just pick a football team to support (I picked West Ham) because that was like just picking a religion. No matter how hard I tried to find it interesting, I never did, and after a couple of months I gave up. But you know what? That’s cool. I am very interested in writing and I am sure that many football fans aren’t. I don’t think either of our interests are better; they’re just different.
By coincidence, however, I lived very close to the Emirates stadium, where Arsenal plays, for three months this year. So close that on game days and nights there was a hamburger stand directly across from my front door. It was always nice to know that I could get a fresh, greasy, stadium hamburger if I wanted one (I never did eat one, but I loved that it was an option).
Anyway, this was a good opportunity to learn some other things about football. In particular, I learned that certain groups of fans from opposing sides actually make APPOINTMENTS with each other to have fights after games. Perhaps this is something that everyone else knows, but I did not.
One Saturday afternoon my boyfriend and I were leaving the flat around the time the game got out and I commented on how I never saw non-Arsenal fans leaving the game. ‘That’s because they have to leave during a different exit, to prevent fights,’ he said. ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘That’s nice.’ ‘They arrange to meet elsewhere to have fights, though,’ he said. ‘Really?’ I said. I was sceptical.
And five minutes later, walking down a quiet residential street in Highbury, we nearly walked into the middle of one and had to run away.
What an education!
