It's fifteen years to the day they locked me up and fifteen years to the day that ball from Nayim sailed over the head of David Seaman in the last seconds of extra-time injury time to win the Cup Winners Cup for Real Zaragoza and the catalyst for a million Nayim songs, Arsenal fans would have to endure for years from Tottenham fans - about five years actually until Arsene Wenger arrived and set things right again.It was my own May day and Christ in sandals would I need help. My Dad told me not to go. They hate us son, you'll get arrested. I'll be fine I said. But I found out they did and I would. I was naive, but that's what you're like when you're a young whipper snapper ain't it? One has to be given the freedom to make ones own mistakes, even if it actually costs one ones freedom.
I wasn't in jail for long to be fair to me and them. They were decent enough once they'd given us a bit of a shoeing in the van and a female officer had laughed at my little cock at the station (it was 2am, it was cold). After about 16 hours I recall they even gave me a nice sammich. Ah the bread in Paris, so soft.
I don't recall much about the rest of time, I do remember playing two aside with three other Arsenal fans in our cell with a football made of rolled up socks. I expect I lost that game too. Other memories are hazy, probably for the best. I do recall standing amongst a group of gendarmerie naked and I was being very very tough indeed and informed all of them how lucky they were I was hand cuffed or I'd jolly well be giving them all a bunch of fives.
I think it was at that point the female officer was brought in to laugh at 'Mr Kanish.' Cold bitch, she'll never fully understand that it's personality that counts. In fairness, I assumed they couldn't speak English and my threats might just be misinterpreted as a football song.
Of course, as unpleasant as that experience was, to this day I'm not certain whether I'd have preferred to stay there a few more hours than actually see the match considering how it would turn out.
We arrived at the stadium about half-time. No tickets of course so we asked a nice Parisian lad at one of the entrances if he'd mind if we just went in please and to our surprise he said oui! Just, it would cost a few francs cause his sister needed an eye operation or something. No worries though. Things were looking up! We even saw Jonny Hartson score. God bless that Welsh genius.
We'll win now we thought. It'll go to penalties and Dave Seaman will see us through to victory as he had done in the previous encounter with Sampdoria. Dave Seaman is the best we thought, no way will he ever let anyone down in a big game, not Dave - that Paul Gascoigne goal a few years ago was just a freak, there's very little chance that would be just one of a string of blunders that would plague his entire career we argued.
However wrong it's possible for one person to be on a trip, I reached maximum wrongage. I attained perfect wronging over those few days in judgement and decision making. Starting with going to Paris in the first place, the drinking with a couple of gay Frenchmen who owned a bar and were not in fact offering us money for food, eating runny horrible eggs after watching a poor chap from Sweden get stabbed in his stomach, the wheelie bin race which would ultimately see us arrested after bin number 3 piloted by me ploughed into a Renault 5 and finally deciding to go to the match instead of just going home.It's fun knowing me. Alan and Paul have nothing to worry about this coming week. We ought to give cocktails at Paris a miss mind.