From the heartbreak of my Spanish club, Real Mallorca, getting relegated, I went to the euphoria of my English club, Arsenal, winning the Premier League. So my two sons and I decided to go to London to watch them play and then attend the trophy parade on the Sunday.
We had intended to go to Budapest for the final, but the cost of flights and hotels was off the scale. Something needs to be done about airlines and hotels profiteering whenever a major event comes to a certain city. How can a hotel that normally charges €100 for a room suddenly charge €1,000 for the exact same room on the night of the event? Remember, that’s a two-star hotel charging five-star prices, yet you’re still getting a two-star hotel room. You can guarantee that the same room will be back to €100 the following day. It’s wrong and should not be allowed to happen.
Anyway, we ended up in London and were in desperate search of a pub that hadn’t sold tickets the week before. There were hundreds of people on the streets all looking to do the same thing. We eventually found one called The George, just off Holloway Road.
The atmosphere was great: lots of banter, songs being sung, and plenty of drink being drunk! At £8.00 a pint, I’m sure the landlord was very happy.
I’m sure you know by now how the game went. Arsenal scored early on and PSG equalised in the second half from a penalty. In the end, penalties were the only way they could separate the two teams. They’re still searching for the ball from Gabriel’s penalty, which left PSG winning 4-3.
We went back to the hotel quietly, but knowing we still had the Premier League trophy parade on Sunday to look forward to.
We arrived at Finsbury Park on Sunday morning at around 11am and straight away you could see it was very busy. We decided to stay in that area rather than walk somewhere else. The crowd was around 30 people deep at the front at that point and getting deeper by the minute.
We then had approximately four hours to wait before the team bus was due to arrive. I don’t recommend hanging around for that amount of time with absolutely nothing to do. When the bus did arrive, it was a fleeting 20 seconds and most of it was lost beneath the red smoke filling the air from hundreds of flares being held aloft. Whoever’s clever idea that was hadn’t really thought it through properly.
And that was that — parade over.
It was 3.30pm and we then had to make our way back to Gatwick for a flight due to leave at 9.00pm. Fairly routine, you’d think: the Tube and then the Gatwick Express from Victoria. But we hadn’t banked on the sheer disorganisation of Transport for London, the Metropolitan Police and, I’ll throw him in there too, the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan.
We went to Finsbury Park Tube station, which was shut, with no announcements telling anyone what was actually happening. So I said, “Let’s walk to Arsenal station.” We got there and that was shut too. Onward we shuffled to Highbury & Islington station. There was a pattern developing here — closed.
A policewoman sent us to Angel station, which she assured us was definitely open… it was closed.
By this time I was looking at my watch thinking, “Are we going to make this flight?” Next stop on our magical mystery Tube tour was King’s Cross St Pancras. You’ve guessed it… CLOSED!
Eventually, due to crowd pressure, they opened the gates. We hot-footed it — which wasn’t a saying by the way — to Victoria and caught the train to Gatwick. We arrived at Gatwick at 7.30pm.
So a journey that would normally have taken just over an hour actually took four hours.
When we got airside, we were greeted by the departure screen delightfully informing us that we were delayed by an hour and a half. When we were eventually called to the gate, we arrived to find the other 21 people waiting in the queue. Yes, there were only 24 of us!
The plane then mysteriously developed a technical fault, which led me to believe we were spending the night at Gatwick. An €18 drinks voucher was given to us at midnight, which was gratefully received, but we had nowhere to spend it because everything had already shut.
At 02.00am we finally took off, with all of us having about six rows each to stretch out on. We arrived just as the alarms on my phone were telling me to wake up for my morning breakfast show on Wave Mallorca Radio!
Definitely a weekend to remember, and I’ll leave you with the words of Louis Dunford:
North London forever
Whatever the weather
These streets are our own
And my heart will leave you never
My blood will forever
Run through the stone!
Dad Taxi Mallorca 