I have just now returned from four hours of extensive spa therapy, of exfoliants and unguents, of jasmine scented foot lotions and eau de cologne with which to bathe and massage my temples, all administered to the discreet soundtrack of Mozart's piano concertos, cascading upon my weathered sensibilities like some waterfall from a great aesthetic height, cleansing, purifying and restoring. All of this to decontaminate, to efface from my memory the privation of eight solid hours of exposure, due to an infelicitious Challenge Cup draw, to the city of Cardiff in Wales, a country which, typically of its brutish inmates, is facing in entirely the wrong direction. Do you realise Cardiff has an outlying district which goes by the name of Splott? “Come friendly bombs”, wrote the delightful Sir John Betjeman of the town of Slough. In the case of Splott, however, to unleash the doors of the bomb bay and dispatch its consignment thereupon would count as a benevolent act of urban regeneration. It was Splott-ed, so to speak, long ago. That is Splott – not so much the name of a district but a sort of existential saturated fatty stain upon the soul peculiar to the Welsh. The pores of its citizens are irrevocably clogged with Splott. Indeed, take 1927 when Cardiff and Arsenal met in the Football Association Challenge Cup Final, and Cardiff ludicrously prevailed, meaning that for the first and only time, the FA Cup went outside of civilisation. It is very probable that Arsenal's goalkeeper let slip the fatal goal because his shirt was greased with Splott as a result of contact with one or more of the Cardiff players.
“It rankles, of course, that the FA allowed this tie to go ahead and that Cardiff had the effrontery to contest it at all, since any outcome other than an emphatic victory to Arsenal would be as anomalous as it was improper.” Such was the chant I led from the upper echelons of the away stands, and, while my fellow Arsenal connoisseurs (let us not speak of “fans”) chose not to join in vocally with my simple mantra, it was plain that they were singing along internally. This is the Arsenal way.
Despite Cardiff's vulgar decision to play in what they dared to describe as a park (set aside visions of the Tuileries, this was a rectangular sty carpeted with animal faeces and greened with nasal mucus), Arsenal once again played the sort of game which, if there were a shred of justice in this world, would be the subject of a frantic bidding war at Sotheby's auction house. The pitch is Arsenal's easel and canvas, and Bendtner our paintbrush. And there were many moments in this fixture which were more remarkable than watching paint dry. Eboue was as superlative as ever. His was not so much a performance as a piece of performance art. He was not merely falling over a lot and doing fuck all else – he was, rather depicting, in the corporeal medium of mime and with Miltonian acumen, man's fallen state. As for Aaron Ramsey, in constantly passing the ball to the Cardiff players he was demonstrating not callow ineptitude but a delicious sense of Wildean irony, exquisitely honed in one so young. Our back four, meanwhile, were the stuff of which the art of Christopher Ofili is made.
However, the penal colony of Wales has often been an unhappy hunting ground for North London's favoured team, so favoured because they had the good taste to move to North London, rather than merely be conceived there, which is base. All true lovers of football mourn Arsenal's passing from the Challenge Cup competition at the coarse hands of Wrexham in 1992. This was commonly considered at the time to have been the greatest tragedy to have befallen the English game in well over a decade. And today, in attempting adventurous sallies of their own, Cardiff's players committed a grotesque gaffe that can only be compared with eleven men rushing into a gallery during a Rembrandt exhibition, tearing down the canvasses and replacing them with their own depictions of bowler hatted canines playing billiards. That they did not attend to their places, which is to say, standing on the touchlines in silent, awestruck appreciation of Arsenal's deft interplay and ruminating on their own inferiority, speaks rank volumes about their egregiousness.
This, however, was as nothing compared to that which I had to endure during the half time interval as I ventured down from my seat in search of some refreshment that did not consist of the waste products of sheep. I was mindful that, Ninian Park being in the regions, it would not keep the sort of cellars to which I am accustomed, and was duly stoical and realistic in my selection. There now follows a account of the dialogue between myself and the barkeep. I have striven for impartiality.
MYSELF: A Viognier, please, my man. In a clean glass.
WELSHMAN: (Unintelligible)
MYSELF: Viognier. You do keep it, surely?
WELSHMAN: (Unintelligible)
MYSELF (In language even an imbecile would understand): I can scarcely give credence to the idea that even a base establishment such as this would be so foully remiss as not to stock a selection of Viognier, now will you please oblige me, otherwise I shall be forced to take up the matter with your superior!
(WELSHMAN trudges away, his very gait denoting crass stupidity, then returns with a small, purple sachet, mumbles something unintelligible)
MYSELF: What – what is this? I said “Viognier”, man, not “vinegar!”, have you taken leave of your numerically limited Welsh senses?
WELSHMAN: (Unintelligible)
At this point, I was subjected to what I can only describe as unwarrantable jostling from a growing crowd behind me, many of whom, in what I can only describe as a fit of partisan obduracy, appeared to be taking the Welshman's side in the contretemps. I reported the affair to a steward who, true to form, muttered something unintelligible and in such a manner as to make me suspect that he must be compelled to drink a glass of water after each sentence for the purpose of rehydration. And so, pending my personal appeal to the Arts Minister that he overrule the FA's decision to replay the match, Arsenal will be obliged to pay host to Cardiff at the Emirates stadium. I can already hear the thunder of sheep's hooves as these facepainted heathens come riding down from the hills. I read in The Aviary, a periodical to which I subscribe, that certain parts of the world are experiencing canary shortages. It seems the height of folly, then, to send these poor birds down mining shafts as an “early warning system” for toxic emissions, thereby potentially reducing further their already dwindled numbers. Why not send down Welshmen in their stead, who know their way around the mines, and of whom, by contrast, there is currently a positive surplus? It is the only compassionate thing to do.
“It rankles, of course, that the FA allowed this tie to go ahead and that Cardiff had the effrontery to contest it at all, since any outcome other than an emphatic victory to Arsenal would be as anomalous as it was improper.” Such was the chant I led from the upper echelons of the away stands, and, while my fellow Arsenal connoisseurs (let us not speak of “fans”) chose not to join in vocally with my simple mantra, it was plain that they were singing along internally. This is the Arsenal way.
Despite Cardiff's vulgar decision to play in what they dared to describe as a park (set aside visions of the Tuileries, this was a rectangular sty carpeted with animal faeces and greened with nasal mucus), Arsenal once again played the sort of game which, if there were a shred of justice in this world, would be the subject of a frantic bidding war at Sotheby's auction house. The pitch is Arsenal's easel and canvas, and Bendtner our paintbrush. And there were many moments in this fixture which were more remarkable than watching paint dry. Eboue was as superlative as ever. His was not so much a performance as a piece of performance art. He was not merely falling over a lot and doing fuck all else – he was, rather depicting, in the corporeal medium of mime and with Miltonian acumen, man's fallen state. As for Aaron Ramsey, in constantly passing the ball to the Cardiff players he was demonstrating not callow ineptitude but a delicious sense of Wildean irony, exquisitely honed in one so young. Our back four, meanwhile, were the stuff of which the art of Christopher Ofili is made.
However, the penal colony of Wales has often been an unhappy hunting ground for North London's favoured team, so favoured because they had the good taste to move to North London, rather than merely be conceived there, which is base. All true lovers of football mourn Arsenal's passing from the Challenge Cup competition at the coarse hands of Wrexham in 1992. This was commonly considered at the time to have been the greatest tragedy to have befallen the English game in well over a decade. And today, in attempting adventurous sallies of their own, Cardiff's players committed a grotesque gaffe that can only be compared with eleven men rushing into a gallery during a Rembrandt exhibition, tearing down the canvasses and replacing them with their own depictions of bowler hatted canines playing billiards. That they did not attend to their places, which is to say, standing on the touchlines in silent, awestruck appreciation of Arsenal's deft interplay and ruminating on their own inferiority, speaks rank volumes about their egregiousness.
This, however, was as nothing compared to that which I had to endure during the half time interval as I ventured down from my seat in search of some refreshment that did not consist of the waste products of sheep. I was mindful that, Ninian Park being in the regions, it would not keep the sort of cellars to which I am accustomed, and was duly stoical and realistic in my selection. There now follows a account of the dialogue between myself and the barkeep. I have striven for impartiality.
MYSELF: A Viognier, please, my man. In a clean glass.
WELSHMAN: (Unintelligible)
MYSELF: Viognier. You do keep it, surely?
WELSHMAN: (Unintelligible)
MYSELF (In language even an imbecile would understand): I can scarcely give credence to the idea that even a base establishment such as this would be so foully remiss as not to stock a selection of Viognier, now will you please oblige me, otherwise I shall be forced to take up the matter with your superior!
(WELSHMAN trudges away, his very gait denoting crass stupidity, then returns with a small, purple sachet, mumbles something unintelligible)
MYSELF: What – what is this? I said “Viognier”, man, not “vinegar!”, have you taken leave of your numerically limited Welsh senses?
WELSHMAN: (Unintelligible)
At this point, I was subjected to what I can only describe as unwarrantable jostling from a growing crowd behind me, many of whom, in what I can only describe as a fit of partisan obduracy, appeared to be taking the Welshman's side in the contretemps. I reported the affair to a steward who, true to form, muttered something unintelligible and in such a manner as to make me suspect that he must be compelled to drink a glass of water after each sentence for the purpose of rehydration. And so, pending my personal appeal to the Arts Minister that he overrule the FA's decision to replay the match, Arsenal will be obliged to pay host to Cardiff at the Emirates stadium. I can already hear the thunder of sheep's hooves as these facepainted heathens come riding down from the hills. I read in The Aviary, a periodical to which I subscribe, that certain parts of the world are experiencing canary shortages. It seems the height of folly, then, to send these poor birds down mining shafts as an “early warning system” for toxic emissions, thereby potentially reducing further their already dwindled numbers. Why not send down Welshmen in their stead, who know their way around the mines, and of whom, by contrast, there is currently a positive surplus? It is the only compassionate thing to do.
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