Sometimes ideal worlds implode. It happens often enough to a football fan that you might have thought it would become banal. Not so. Recurrent bad dream, part n, occurred on Saturday. And it had all started so well; at half time the 2 goal lead was scant reward for forty-five minutes of total dominance. Unfortunately, with it came complacency, and with complacency came barely believable reversal. And afterwards we had to endure a journey home sardined into a train along with thousands of fellow gloomy gooners. Barely enough room to blink away the tears.
The rest of the weekend kept to the ideal plan. Flights both ways landed early, the outbound one early enough for me to catch a train that was due to depart simultaneously with the plane's arrival. I thus made it to Cambridge by 10pm, enabling me to surprise Professor Margarita and H in a cosy dinner for two. A bumper breakfast the next morning preceded the nightmare, then dinner afterwards started the recovery period. Delicious fare at Cocum, in the convivial company of J&J.
Sunday morning I awoke with a faint glimmer of hope that it had all been a bad dream. Alas no, but the weekend continued to get better. Canonier conferères J&C had recovered sufficiently from the previous day to come out for a yomp through the fields and along the river, and then the builder-chef treated us to home-made bean soup and bread for lunch before kindly chauffeuring me to the airport.
I returned to Lyon to find la bienheureuse introducing the bump to 'Arry Pottère part 5, and to find that les gones had had a better weekend than les gooners. A 3-1 win at Lens puts them in 8th, a mere two points off the top. Ligue 1 is even tighter than the Premier League.
