By Walter Broeckx
When I write this I know that in some 24 hours time I will be in my car close to Calais. And when you read this you might well be making your plans perhaps in your car or other means of transport you use on your way to Wembley or to the Emirates. Or to the pub. Or to some friends to watch it together.
The FA cup final is quickly arriving now.
Just as last year I will make my way to London. Not to Wembley. Alas… this isn’t to be for now. Certainly not with the ridiculously low number of tickets that is going to Arsenal. 25.000… you are having a laugh.
But last year Arsenal did the big screening thing for the first time and I was there. And I fully enjoyed the occasion. Apart from 2 moments to be honest. Last year Arsenal sold around 20.000 tickets. And this time they are selling 40.000 tickets. And I and a few of my friends of Arsenal Belgium have tickets.
Slowly the cup fever is taking over. The trip, the match, the tension…. it will not be as it will be in Wembley but it will be the second best place to see the match.
And hopefully we will have something to celebrate at the end of the match. If we win we will be the most successful team in the entire FA cup history. In fact we are already the most successful team but we have to share this title with Manchester United. Oh the joy if we would win it this time.
But it is a final and they usually are very tight affairs. That’s just the way it goes most of the time. For Aston Villa and most of their players it is also the biggest match in their career possibly so they will be up for it. But in a way I feel confident that if our players are in top form and can produce a top performance we should win this match.
If so our group will be in for a long or short night around the Emirates. Long or short depending on how you look at it of course. From the sleeping point of view or from the being awake point of view.
So being as close to the action as can be in London has of course a bad side. Usually at home I can write my match report during the match and publish it immediately. This time that will be impossible. Of course if Arsenal would allow me in the press room or allow me to use one of their computers I could do it but not counting on that to be honest.
But the good thing will be that once I return home somewhere Sunday evening I will be able to write a few reports of the events that have happened to our group. And if we win we will go to the parade and you can be sure you will find some reports on that too. I will bring my camera to take pictures and make some video clips. Untold Arsenal TV. Now that is a new idea…
But if I can lay my hands on some computer I will try to publish my thoughts as soon as possible. Because that is where I want to share my feelings with the rest of you of course. Over here on Untold.
So with my working day now having come to an end I will start my pre-travel checks.
Car? Check!
Diesel? check!
Reminded my fellow travellers of the departure time? Check!
Shuttle booking? Check!
Identity card? Check!
Hotel booking? Check!
Shirt? Still to pick!
Good mood? Check!
I’m on my way guys! See some of you tomorrow in and around the Emirates.
Let’s hope it will be an historic Saturday, a night to remember and a great Sunday !
—————
I was at the screening at the emirates last year too! It was awesome 1 of the best days of my life, I think we will have no problems smashing villa all over Wembley COYG COYG!!
Walter,
You make no mention in your post of Madame, so I assume she will not be with you on this occasion. As she has never seen Arsenal lose in a FA Cup Final, I trust this will not be a bad omen.
On a more serious note, I hope she is progressing reasonably well in health. Tell her she is often in the thoughts and prayers of those who read your valued contribution to Untold.
Have a pleasant journey, Walter. BOTH ways!
Bad ‘cess, Blatter.
Enjoy your weekend Walter. I will be fortunate enough to be.at the Emirates myself tomorrow, let’s hope there is plenty to celebrate, though Villa may not make it easy.
Aaaaaarrrrgggghhhhhh !
Too excited, can’t sleep ‘
Let’s hope for another great day
Hope you have a great day 🙂 that means of course that i will too because we won. 🙂
Villa may put up a little fight, but we should be enough to win them and not even have to go to extra time, although the TV, yes the TV loves it to go to extra time and even penalties. Then they can prat on about how magnificent the FA competition is bla bla bla…..
Come on Arsenal. Get into the habit of winning. We have many more to come.
CUP FINAL DAY….
yyeeaaaahhhhh
GO GUNNERS
Usually when Walter & co are in London we normally win by at least 3 goals – please , please God , let it be so once again ! Please help him keep this streak going .It’ll mean a lot to him ! And to that Belgian lot , and to us , and especially to all the millions of AKBs the world over .
In turn I promise to be good ! And with goodwill to all and all that other stuff .
Except of course to all those ‘thems ‘ , who don’t believe in our Lord Wenger , and whose stupidity I really enjoy ‘correcting ‘ !
Of travelers –
A Chinese family of five , named Chu ,Bu ,Hu ,Tu and Fu , decided to emigrate to the US. In order to get a visa , they had to adapt their names to American standard .
Chu, became Chuck.
Bu , became Buck.
Hu , became Huck.
Tu , became Tuck.
Fu, ..decided to stay in China.
Cannot read your website because it is covered by bloody popup from a car hire firm. Please get rid of it
nuttntiddy
Same problem here. Grrrrr.
Are you using a smart phone, or a desktop to view the site?
The most recent thread, is titled … Live Blog …. Which mentions Europcar as a sponsor. I am guessing the popup you are getting, has something to do with EuropCar. Question is, is this coming from EuropCar, or somewhere else? The website seems to be getting some content from AdTech, who might possibly be the source of the popup as well.
A person can sort of help you in a clumsy way, but you need to edit a file, and where that file is, depends on what kind of OS your computer is running.
When you manually type in a URL and hit enter, or when you click on a link, you are essentially asking the destination to send you a “file” (a document). What it returns to you, can actually be a document composed of other documents (in frames) and/or programs (usually in javascript). And popups come from javascript. The popup itself is displaying yet another document. And one of the characteristics of all these documents and programs, is that they need not all come from the same place. This can lead to security concerns.
But, the URL (or link) had as a destination, something that is vaguely text. And Internet addresses are numbers. So, a “lookup” is done, to convert the text addresses into numeric addresses. There are rules as to how this is done.
Usually the first rule says, “look in the hosts file”. If the address is not in the hosts file, the next rule usually says to ask the DNS system (sort of like an automated directory assistance).
There is nothing that says you have to put accurate information in the hosts file. One of the more annoying internet sites was doubleclick.net
Every computer has some idea as to where “here” (or “this computer”) is. On Linux, “here” is 127.0.0.1 (in IPv4). Apparently on Windows, it is 0.0.0.0 (sorry, I don’t use Windows, I have to look this stuff up).
If I put an entry of
0.0.0.0 doubleclick.net
in the hosts file of a windows computer, any time a web document says to lookup content with a certain name at the Internet site doubleclick.net, it sees in the hosts file that the address is “here”, but when it looks “here” for the document in question, it can’t find anything, and so the document is replaced with an empty document.
Which if you can figure out where the popup is coming from, is how you can stop it. You put a fake entry in your hosts file, equating “here” with the text form of the address the popup is coming from uses.