The Arsenal experience

This is the story of our family outing to watch last night's Arsenal football match.
Hidai and Ron are big Arsenal fans and so they try to go to as many matches as they manages, but Yon and I have never been to a real match before because - a) football watching is an expensive hobby, b) Yon isn't very into the whole football thing (unlike me of course. Not), c)taking a partially blind and very sensitive to noise child to a football arena with 65,000 people yelling all the time is not so easy. But it was part of my UK Bucket List, and as it is a big part of Ron's life, I really wanted to have a chance to go with him to a match once. So I decided to research the thing, and found Arsenal's disability scheme, which were little to no help and after some very unpleasant emails we managed to find some help through the very nice lady who runs our building's resident association and has lots of connections in Arsenal, and we managed to get 4 tickets in the front row of the family area to the match against West Ham.
Then, because this is my life, they moved the match. And instead of an early afternoon weekend match, they placed it bang on the day of Yon's hospital visit.
Ok, we thought to ourselves, after all last time the doctors said everything is static, and we are not anticipating any problems, so it should have been a short and relatively easy visit.
Then, because it is my life, the test did not go as planned, and of course they had to put the drops in, and of course they had to fit him with mew glasses, and of course we were the last to leave the hospital and everyone were exhausted.
Not the best odds for an enjoyable match.
But we went anyway, and because my hand is not in a good shape, this is going to be more of a photo post to try and answer the question - how do you take a partially sighted child to a football match?

On the way to the stadium. Look at our team spirit with the scarves! We should have also brought gloves and hats, it was that cold by the end of the match...

We arrived quite early and had time to take some pre-match excitement photos.

Yon really enjoyed the photo-op.

Look at me in my front row seat! We were seated right behind all the photographers. You wouldn't believe their cameras! It wasn't the best view of the match as my two seasoned supporters informed me, and we weren't lucky enough to have a corner in our corner, but I thought it's really exciting to sit  there, and I got to see my favourite player -  Szczęsny up close so what do I care? 

This is how close to the players we were. Not the best photo quality, but by this time I had a Yon trying to kick me while "sleeping" on half my body.

At half time, after it was 1:1, Ron agreed to be a bit happy (there were a few shaky moments when we were down 1:0 where I feared for my boys), so I took a photo of him before Arsenal loose and he will be sad again (they didn't, but you never know with them).

The stadium lights interrupted a bit, but still, Hidai is cute :)

And lastly, we asked the lovely security guy who sat with us to take a photo of all of us.

Then the second half started, and this is how Yon spent it - curled up under both of our scarves and with his hands on his ears because of the noise. Hidai and Ron said it was a lot less noisy then usual because we were in the front row, but it was too much for Yon.

And in the end he fell asleep and missed the last goal of the match.
Lesson learned - Yon and football don't mix.
But I had a great time, and got to strike off an item from my bucket list!