Out of the Arsenal closet

After years of being worn down by my "Gooner crazy family," I have finally given in.
Last weekend I went to my first ever Arsenal match.

It's not that I'm opposed to watching live football. I watch our son, Joss, pounding the pitch  almost every weekend. 
It's just that, since the children were tiny, Ninesh has always taken them to the family enclosure to watch his team. It's something the three of them have always done together, while I had a whole day of freedom.
 Firmly of the opinion that early indoctrination is the best way to prevent his flock from wandering and supporting the wrong team, Ninesh took them to their first match when Mia was 5 and Joss was 3.  And his plan worked because all these years later Mia and especially Joss, are die-hard Arsenal fans.  Joss, who at the moment is a teenager of very few words, can wax lyrical on the tactics used at last night's game or on the impact of Walcott being injured (again). Although Joss is now too cool to wear his Arsenal shirt, I am part of a family where every member is, inwardly if not outwardly," proud to be a Gooner." 
And the truth is, over the years, I have become a closet Arsenal fan too.
It's impossible not to be pulled into the noisy cheers and jeers that fill our living room when an Arsenal match is on TV. Ninesh, who remains cool, calm and collected when moving countries, interviewing for a new job or organising big meetings ,becomes a nervous wreck hours before an Arsenal kick-off. Over the years I have learnt to keep my distance and say as little as possible until after the game. A bad score can cause a cloud to hang over us for days, while a victory can make the most boring day a celebration.  With so much emotion crackling around me, it's hard to resist the red and white pull of Arsenal.
" You should come to a match." Ninesh started saying when Mia was 6 and Joss was 4.
" It's such an amazing atmosphere," he said when Mia was 7 and Joss was 5, " I just want you to experience it."
" Mia and Joss would love it if you came too," he said, using 8 year old  Mia and 6 year old Joss as his utlimate weapon..
And so the campaign became three pronged with Mia, Joss and Ninesh all offering me reasons why I should come  to a game.  
For over a decade I resisted, standing firm,clinging onto my day of complete freedom. 
But somewhere deep inside the closet Arsenal fan was stirring. 
" Just come out," it whispered, " one match won't hurt. Just one."
And that is how come I was there, last Sunday, sitting right at the front of the enormous Emirates stadium where the grass is so green that it's hard to believe  each blade has not been lovingly painted by the head groundsman.

Emirates Stadium, where the grass is always greener

" We hate Stoke," explained Ninesh happily, " ever since Shawcross broke Ramsey's leg."
" Oh," I said, absent-mindedly turning to look at the dads and children sitting in the rows behind us , wondering jealously what their partners were doing with their free days.
" Walcott's not playing," said Joss, looking up from his phone to share the news, " he's sick."
Mia seemed unsurprised as everyone else by this information.
" I'm so glad you're here mum," said Mia, squeezing my arm, " it's nice not to be the only girl."
But her words were drowned out by the roar of the crowd as Ozil, Arsenal's newest favourite player ran onto the pitch.       . 
" Everyone likes him," explained Ninesh. 
"Really!"  I said.  
The only thing louder than the cheers for Osil were the boos for Shawcross when he arrived on the pitch.
" Everyone," hates him, explained Ninesh.
"Really!" I said.
"And you have to boo every time he has the ball,' added Ninesh.
" What if I don't want to?" I asked.
Ninesh just looked at me and without answering turned back to the game.
And I have to admit the atmosphere was amazing, like a party where everyone arounds you shares something in common with you so you know, for this afternoon, you have 40,000 friends and you don't even have to make exhausting small talk.
Every time Arsenal nearly got a goal we had to stand up and cheer and every time Stoke nearly got a goal we had to stand up and gasp and when Arsenal did get a goal ( 3 altogether ) we had to stand up, jump up and down and shout important things like:
 " oo are ye, oo are ye!" 
And when Stoke finally scored, we had to sit down and clasp our head in our hands in despair.
And we were so near the front that when Ozil took a corner we could almost reach out and touch him  which meant that Ninesh got lots of good shots of his back.

The most popular back in Arsenal

We cheered and shouted and booed ( when we remembered ) and groaned and stood up and sat down for an hour and a half. 

But it was awe-inspiring to watch the skill, energy, passion and sheer physical endurance of both teams, although of course Arsenal was much better at all them. 

And when the final whistle blew and Arsenal won 3-1, I was right there, part of the red and white wave of noise that filled the stadium. 

" We are top of the league, we are top of the league."

" Are you going to come again mum?" Joss asked as we drifted towards the tube station, 

 jostled by the crowds. " You enjoyed it didn't you?"

And the truth is, I really did, although I don't know if I will go again.  

Days off are too rare and too precious. 

But now, whenever the rest of the family go, a little part of me will always be there with them- standing up and sitting down, booing and cheering.

Because after all these years, I think I at last understand what it means to be a football fan.

 It's not just about wearing a shirt or having the most expensive players.It's not even about winning all the time, although that's nice. It's about something else, something bigger than us. 

It's about sharing a passion.

It's about having something to believe in. 

It's about fidelity (relationships may come and go but once an Arsenal fan, always an Arsenal fan).

It's about dreaming a dream that just might come true. 

It's about never giving up hope.

It's like belonging to a family that you have chosen, instead of having it forced upon you.

It's a phrase that is twee and overused but when you are a football fan, you honestly

" never walk alone."

These are hard times for lots of people. People might not have a job or money or a home - but they will always have football.

I can't help thinking that the closet Arsenal fan in me has been well and truly, forever outed.

Sweet Sixteen

Our daughter, Mia, turned 16 this week.
The celebrations flowed through the evening, her and her friends filling the house with giggling and instagram induced gasps.
And I spent the evening wondering if 16 years seems like forever or no time at all.
" It definitely feels as though she has been around for 16 years,' said Ninesh, "A bit longer actually."
And in lots of ways, he's right. As soon as your children arrive to unbalance your life, it is hard to remember a time when they weren't there crying and laughing and moaning and generally causing mayhem
As a parent your life is definitely divided into 2 parts: BC and AC- before children and after children. And however fulfilled the AC days make you feel, there are days when you just miss the freedom of the BC days.
And one of the strangest things about becoming a parent, is the effect it has on Time. 
The first few years are spent in a state of such complete exhaustion with so many sleepless nights and pre-dawn mornings that it is often hard to believe only a day and not a year,  has passed between waking up and going to bed. But now, looking back over the first 16 years of Mia's life, parts of it seem to have passed so quickly that it is hard to believe they are over.  Where did her years at primary school go?. This time next year she will be in the sixth form and won't have to wear school uniform.  But I'm sure it was only a few weeks ago I was buying her first school skirt and sweatshirt! 
All those nights I spent rocking the tiny bundle to sleep in my arms and now she has to bend down so that I can kiss her goodnight.
I am sure that time doesn't pass in regular intervals, but passes instead in intermittent spurts, like a fan that has been unevenly folded, sometimes with creases so close together that it feels you barely stop to breathe and sometimes with big, smooth gaps where life has no folds at all and memories are vague.
Once, when my brother and sister and I were on holiday with our grandma, Omi, a little boy came into our room.
" Hello," he said, " my name is Robert Lynch. I'm 4 and I was born when I was 3."
And now, all these years later, I understand exactly what he meant!

On the day she was born, Mia didn't sleep at all. 
She lay still next to me, her big, almost- black eyes, drinking in the newness of the world around her. 
And watching her, willing the world to be kind , NInesh and I realised that our lives had  just been shaken to the core. 
No more lie-ins ( or not for years!), no more responsibility-free drunken nights, only responsibility-ful ones. and no chance of ever, for the rest of our lives, putting ourselves first.
And 16 years (that sometimes seem like longer) later, was it worth it?
Of course it was.
The truth is, Mia and Joss make our lives worth living (except when they fight with me about breakfast, fight with Ninesh about chores and fight with each other about nothing). 
And it is impossible to imagine our lives without them.
It's a long time since we've missed our BC life. 
So Happy 16th Birthday Mia. 
We wrapped your presents in flowery paper and dreams.  
I hope they all come true.

Weddings, Currywurst and Headless Photos

We have just spent a weekend in Germany celebrating the wedding of 2 of our good friends.
It was the second marriage for both but watching them at the church and the wedding party afterwards ( and it truly was a party- complete with currywurst und pommels at 2 a.m.) it was impossible to believe that either of them could have been so happy with anyone else. It was one of those truly romantic stories where after many years without seeing each other, and without the help of the internet or friends reunited, two lost souls found each other again wandering through a street market in Germany.
Perhaps it was meant to be, perhaps it was just one of life's happier coincidences. But whether you are a believer in destiny or just someone who dares to dream of " happy-ever-afters," last Saturday, in front of 140 friends they made their love for each other official and celebrated in true German style!

And it made me wonder about weddings. 
Over the years we have been to lots of different weddings in lots of different countries.  Some religious, some not, some big and some small, some smart and some casual.
The average cost for a wedding in England is £22,000, in America $28,000.
That seems like an unholy amount of money for something that is simply meant to be a public declaration of ( hopefully) everlasting love between two people.
Sometimes it feels as though there is a new disease called weddingitis when, as soon as a couple get engaged, their wedding becomes the only thing that matters.
 Everything at their wedding must be better than everything at any wedding they have ever been to. The bride's dress must be more beautiful, the setting more perfect, the food more delicious.
And in the middle of all the weddingitis madness, it is easy to forget that the reason for it all is that two people have fallen in love and want to make a commitment to each other.
Perhaps I am biased.
When Ninesh and I got married we were living in America and simply flew to New York, booked an appointment at City Hall and asked one of our friends, Rich, living in New York at the time, to be our witness. 
We spent the night before in a gay bar where all the men tried to convince Ninesh that he was making the biggest mistake of his life marrying a woman. 
We woke up so late the next day that we missed our wedding slot and had to run to make it to City Hall before it closed.  

The whole ceremony took 2 minutes and when Rich took our picture on the steps of city hall with a borrowed instamatic, he forgot to include our heads!
Perhaps we just don't know what we missed out on, Ninesh and I, but just because it was private didn't stop it being important. In the end the promise we made to each other in front of Rich and a Justice of the Peace, was the same as the promise we would have made in front of friends and family.
I guess, in the end, like everything else, the way you get married is a lifestyle choice

The worrying thing about weddingitis though, is the speed at which it consumes the body and mind of all involved. Its symptons of unending wedding talk and obsessive wedding planning are untreatable. 
 And in the middle of weddingitis fever, it is easy to forget weddings always have  one long term side-effect: marriage 
But the truth is, it is never the wedding itself that I remember.
 It's not the venue or the cut of the bride's dress or the taste of the food.  
What I remember is the look in the groom's eye or the tremor in the bride's voice.  
What I remember is the laughter of friends and the sense that for just one night, we have shared in the warmth of someone else's dreams.
When the party is over and the dress packed away, all you are left with is two people who have made a life-long commitment to each other and are standing at the beginning of a journey they have promised to share. 
And however big or small the wedding, all you wish for them, is that their adventure will bring them happiness.
While a marriage is a private commitment, a promise between 2 people to stay together for better or worse, a wedding is a way of making that promise  public by sharing it with the people you care about the most.
Or then again, perhaps it's just the best excuse ever for a party and eating currywurst at 2 a.m.

Losing the fun-factor and bald-headed dads

It's too early to be up on a Sunday morning.  
I don't have a baby that has woken me up.
I'm not just coming back from an all night party- ( Mia and Joss always look slightly horrified that I could ever have been that young ! )
I haven't even been for an early morning run.
NO, I'm up this early on a should-be lazy Sunday morning because I have to go to work later and there's stuff I need to get ready.
So far I've cooked an enormous saucepanful of bright red spaghetti

 And made about a ton of blue play dough.

Not really hard, demanding or time-consuming jobs!
Mostly, when I tell people what I do, they look at me incredulously and say, 
"what, you mean you get paid to just, like, play with children and, you know, chat to their parents. Wow, I wish I had your job."
And in lots of ways it's true.
Except that years of playing with children take their toll.
And nothing is more exhausting than having fun all the time!
And I'm sitting here, listening to the rain pattering on the roof, watching the blanket of grey cloud moving slowly across the " was blue," sky, wondering what part of today's "Fun Day in the park," will be the most fun.
The getting intermittently soaked to the skin, the setting up and clearing away, the constantly reminding parents that we are not there to play with their children for them but to provide activities so that they can play with them. "
But it never really works.
" Oh," they say, " our kids love getting messy.  So glad that you do it, so we don't have to."
And I will be sitting there, on a Sunday afternoon playing with other people's children thinking about how my own children are at home without me..  
And even though they are teenagers and no longer like messy play ( however red the spaghetti ) I know that they still like it when I'm home. 
Who else can they shout at when they haven't done their homework or demand help from when they  can't find their make-up or hair gel. 
And the truth is, sad as it sounds, staying at home with Ninesh and the kids is my idea of fun these days.
Perhaps it's because I know the kids will soon be searching for their fun on further far from our living room.  
Perhaps it's because I spend so many weekends and evenings working that what I used to call relaxing, I now call fun.
Or perhaps it's just that I'm getting too old for the  real-deal, jumping in feet-first, truly infectious fun-factor.  
Give me an afternoon with a good book and a long walk on the beach any day.
I'm thinking about asking our tortoise  if he would consider a life-swap.

The other day my friend's 4 year old daughter was having an argument with her dad upstairs in her bedroom. After a little bit of shouting and grumpiness on both sides, she turned to him, sighed and said:
" It's ok dad, you can go downstairs now.  And take your bald head with you!"

Holding onto the dream

50 years after his death, it is still hard not to be moved by Martin Luther King's  " I have a dream," speech.
I listened to it on the radio this week, different parts of it read by different people.

Famous human rights activists,  famous politicians, nobel prize winners, poets,  popstars.
They came from all over the world, the readers, chosen because each of them has played a part in trying to make King's dream come true.
 But the voice that moved me the most was that of a mum: Doreen Lawrence, mother of Stephen Lawrence, murdered 20 years ago in South East London 
He was 18 years old, waiting for a bus, killed in a racist attack.

Stephen Lawrence

Since then his mum's voice has become familiar as a campaigner for justice and equality.
But in the end, she is a mum, who has lost her son because of the colour of his skin in a world that was meant to be colour-blind.
50 years on we are still struggling with Martin Luther King's dream.
50 years on every day, people are killed or injured because of their race or their religion or their gender.
50 years on- all over the world, ethnic groups battle to gain power and authority over each other.
50 years on if you are from an ethnic minority, you are still less likely to succeed and more likely to live in poverty or be in prison.
50 years on one man's dream has not been enough to change human nature.

It is not that nothing has changed.  
We have come a long, long way from segregation and apartheid.
Walking through the streets of London or New York, melting pots of culture and ethnic diversity.
Hopeful, that what matters now is not the colour of your skin nor your religious beliefs.
but that what matters now is who you are and what you bring to the world.
And it's ok that everyone looks different and speaks different languages and wears different clothes.
It's ok that everyone believes different things and dreams different dreams and hopes different hopes.
What's not ok is to believe that you are right and everyone else is wrong or that the colour of your skin makes you more important than or superior to someone with a different coloured skin.
" I'm worried that my 4 year old daughter is racist ," one of my friends said to me the other day." She always points at people with different coloured skin and says,"look they have brown skin," or" look, their skin is black."
" It's just a description," I say, comfortingly, "she's telling you what she sees. Just like she will tell you that a  flower is purple or a bus is red."
For a while my friend is silent.
" It's not just that," she says at last, " sometimes she says -they have black skin and that makes them ugly. Or they have brown skin, they don't come from our country. She's only 4. Where can she have heard that? Do you think racism can be innate? Do you think children can be born racist?"
 I  laugh and shake my head.
" I don't believe children can be born with  pre-conditioned prejudice," I say. "Their entrance into a cold, un-umbiblical chorded world must be shocking enough, without having to take on a whole new value system as they exit the uterus.  Prejudice is definitely something we  learn."
" But who has taught it to her?" sighs my friend, tears stinging her eyes " you know it isn't us."
"I know it isn't," I say, hugging her.
But inside my heart is sinking.
I don't believe that racism is innate, but I do believe it can be heard and learnt so early in our lives from friends or family or peers that, without knowing how, it becomes an integral part of what we believe.
And that is why, 50 years on, Martin Luther King's words still drift unanchored and unfulfilled through our imperfect world.
Because for his dream to come true it must be shared by everyone, everywhere, all the time.
Dreams do not come true while we sleep but only through what we do while we are awake. 
Doreen Lawrence showed us that when she turned her tears of loss into words of passion Nelson Mandela showed us that when he turned years of imprisonment into the end of apartheid.
Malala Yousafzai showed us that when she turned a bullet in the head into a fight for equality.

Malala Yousafzai

And I know I'm not as brave as they are.
And I know that what I do will never make the difference they have.
But I will always, always , always have a dream.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23855375