The travels of Tim and Megan: Emirates Stadium

Fans,

There was excitement mid-week as Tim turned the big two-seven, a very special age, being 3 cubed. Megan took Tim out for dinner to a wonderful French restaurant and then baked (or bought ...whatever...) the fantastic chocolate cake pictured below. As you can see, Tim was proud as punch when he managed to blow out all the candles in one go! Thank you to everybody for their birthday messages/presents.

On Saturday, Megan took Tim shopping in the morning to find some work shirts to go with his new Arsenal cuff links that she had given him for his birthday. The shopping was a major success, as we found two shirts, plus we went to Lilywhites, a massive sports store in Piccadilly Circus, where we found all sorts of bargains. Tim added to his ever-growing collection of Arsenal shirts...

After meeting Anna for lunch, we swung past the New Zealand shop and finally found a NZ flag and then headed for Tate Modern to check out some more crazy art. Tate Modern looks like a fertiliser factory from the outside (not very modern at all), but is fast becoming one of our favourite places to visit. Tim managed to sneak a couple of photos when the staff weren't looking, to show the fans a glimpse of the unusual art...

Sunday was a special day...one out of the box...Tim could hardly sleep the night before, as we had tickets to see Arsenal v Inter Milan in a pre-season tournament at the Emirates Stadium. First though we had find a way to keep Tim from exploding before the 4:15pm kick off, so we took at trip to Chelsea (enemy territory!) to the Natural History Museum. If there is one thing we've learnt about London Museums it's not to try to do everything at once, so we decided to limit ourselves to the dinosaurs. Some pictures follow - don't be frightened fans! Contrary to what one little boy believed, they were not in fact real.

Then it was time to board the good ship Piccadilly for our trip to the Emirates - was Megan's first. Tim thinks she is hooked and will be a "Gooner" for life now. We stopped in at the massive Arsenal shop under the stadium before the game and Megan bought a really cool T-shirt.

We had really good seats, almost on halfway, really close to the action. It was not quite a full strength Arsenal side that took the field, but right from kick-off Arsenal looked in control. The newly signed right back, Bacary Sagna, looked really good, as did the 17 year old Kieran Gibbs making his debut for the Gunners. But Megan's favourite was Cesc Fabregas, a quality quality player, and still only 19, he is sure to be one of the greats (a rather disturbing review of the programme reveals we are well older than almost the entire Arsenal team, another international sporting dream dashed. Soon golf will be all that remains).

The stadium was packed with 60,000 fans and the atmosphere was electric. The much anticipated soccer crowd singing was a bit unimaginative, with "stand UP...for the Arsenal...stand UP..." getting slightly repetitive. Also, if anyone knows quite why this is accompanied with evangelistic type hand raising (as if channelling God) this would be appreciated. Trying to get Him on side perhaps? Anyway, singing was interrupted when Inter scored to take the lead, completely against the run of play, but the stadium went nuts when Arsenal equalised five minutes later and then again when Robin van Persie scored the winner with 3 minutes left in the game. The win meant Arsenal won the tournament, hopefully the first of several trophies this season!