34th Birthday / '24-25 United Away (1-1)

Birthdays are difficult – being the center of attention, feeling the pressure to host, to acquiesce, to find the commonality between various viewpoints, the different definitions of a “good time.”

But with friends making plans spontaneously, I cannot admit it is my birthday, I can’t show that I need love, I cannot ask for it, because I’m afraid of being denied. “Please come for my birthday dinner” is a more difficult request to make than “there’s a relaxed dinner happening. I’m going, are you?”

Amidst the begrudging self-awareness, the gentle surrender to these loving hugs, there is the small matter of The Arsenal’s away trip to a floundering Man United.

I’m hoping for a win, but it feels somehow inevitable that we will flounder, that even this Frankenstein-ian United team will prove to be an unsolvable puzzle.

They lead, through the villainous Bruno Fernandes, and I fear that this painful malaise, the feeling of being not quite good enough, will prevail.

But we do not lose, our dignity preserved by Declan Rice, and I can savour the professionalism of it, the status quo, the old hierarchies preserved, a gentleman’s agreement.

It would have been too straightforward, too happy, too happy, to beat United away on my 34th birthday.