Paris
I’m in Paris again, for a review (Seems a bit extreme but my team leader is French and so is my manager)
This time I have my laptop so can blog from Paris itself. The hotel doesn’t have wireless so this entry will be delayed until I find a network.
Managed to get to Heathrow early and was put on an earlier flight. Luckily it seems because all flights were delayed and I only arrived in Paris 10 minutes before I was supposed to.
Sat next to a guy who was worried that he would miss his next connection. Turns out he worked for Air France doing long haul and his next flight was to Argentina, and he had flown in from Cuba earlier today. Total flight time 35 hours. If he missed the flight, he would have to wait a whole day in a hotel in Paris. Personal, I would have welcomed the delay, so I had a chance to sleep.
As we touched down, and then touched down again and then touched down a third time, he remarked “Interesting”. He explained he was used to flying big 747’s and they are so heavy there is something wrong if they bounce. I remembered the rule about flying, “If the cabin crew look worried, you are in trouble.” Thankfully, the pilot only needed the three attempts to land.
The Utd Arsenal fight was in the French papers too. The picture I saw (under a headline I couldn’t translate[1]) was of Van Nistelrooy doing a piggy back on Viera. I wish I could have found out what the French’s take on the situation was, given that Arsenal are mostly French. Most of the English papers I saw had Keown jumping over Van Nistelrooy at the final whistle. (There was one interesting picture that had Lauren trying to strangle Phil Neville).
The whole thing is real handbags, but I can’t shake the imagine of English fans doing it to a Turkish player and England getting thrown out of the European Championships. I can also imagine, the Turkish player reacting, the Turkish fans reacting, and the Turkish police over-reacting by killing someone. In fact, Keown probably did it at the safest ground, as the prawn sandwich brigade were hardly likely to storm the pitch. Imagine it happening at Millwall.
Even my 3 year old daughter sings “Same old Arsenal, same old cheating” now. Without my prompting I should add, she has just heard it so often. I’ve tried to teach her “Ooh ahh Cantona” but she doesn’t like that.
My hated of Arsenal goes back to 1978. I remember the FA Cup final that year clearer than this years. I told my dad I wanted to support the red team as I was a United fan. Obviously, my dad explained the error of my ways and I became a West Ham fan for the day. West Ham won, but one thing stood out more than anything else. A young West Ham player (Paul Allen) was clean through on goal in the last couple of minutes. He would have been the youngest player ever to score in a Cup Final. Cynically, an Arsenal player (Willie Young) brought him down from behind and his chance was gone. He didn’t even get booked (this was before the days of the professional foul) and young Allen (related to Clive and the rest of the family no doubt) was denied his place in the record books. It felt so unfair that I’ve hated Arsenal ever since.
UPDATE: I may just buy “this DVD of the game”:http://www.ciao.co.uk/1980_FA_Cup_Final_Arsenal_v_West_Ham__Review_5341383
[1] Except for the word Arsenal