Gutted.
Bottled it.
Useless.
Complacent.
Schoolboy errors.
Thrown it away.
Incompetance.
How could it happen?!
These were all words and phrases which went through my head on Saturday afternoon. Although I would much rather pretend events didn’t happen like they did that fateful day, I feel I must recount them. Quite simply I was sad, depressed, frustrated and heart broken.
For I had failed my driving test.
It had been going so well too. My practice before hand had gone swimmingly well, I even managed 2 of the 3 manoeuveres first time! I was cool, I was calm, I was confident. And as the minutes ticked by on the test itself and I went from strength to strengh I knew it was in the bag. After all I was driving so well? I couldn’t possibly throw it away! But then it all went wrong. The examiner pulled me up on the left hand side of the road and asked me to drive past the next corner, park up and then reverse around it. No problem I thought, I did this in one go on my practice and my turn in the road and been textbook so Im bound to be okay! But what I didnt realise was that my front left tire was pointed towards the curb and as I moved forward it rolled over it for a split second. Oh no!! I had blown it! Touching the curb has to be an immediately failure! But it had been for a split second at 1 MPH so surely it wouldn’t count against me?! (I later found out that this indeed was the case as only a ‘Minor’ had been recorded against me). All this ran through my head as I prepared to back round the corner. Would I get the job done??
Well sadly no I wouldn’t. The car started to veer out into the middle of the road and I could see immeninet failure approaching. I knew I had to dig down deep into all my driving skills to salvage this manouvere. Frantically I started spinning the wheel, clockwise, then anti clockwise, then clockwise again and so on and so forth while I carefully checked the left interior mirror. I had done it! Against all odds I had pulled it off! Except for one tiny cruicial detail. I hadn’t. For while my driving was superb I had completely neglected the observation part of the manouvere, not in fact looking out my back window once. I had left the examiner with no choice but to fail me. I had come so far, looked so good but at the last I had stumbled and frankly fallen flat on my face.
So like I say I was gutted. Depsondent. Heck even somewhat traumatised. But then it hit me in the car on the way home. It wasn’t over, I could take the test again. There will be other days, days where I keep my nerve, or days I don’t get asked to do that manoeuvere again. I knew I could drive and really that is all that matters. Even if it took me a hundred tests, one day I would get that elusive license. At the end of the day the quality of my driving is just too good for me not to pass eventually. Ok it had not happened today, even though it probably should have but this was a minor setback……….. and anyway Arsenal had beaten Bolton so it wasn’t all a bad day!! Of course then I got home and found out we had blown the game and the title was very much in Man U’s hands. Now I won’t bore you by typing out the opening paragraph again but all those words and phrases went through my head again. How in the hell did they throw it away? Why did they do this to me?! This was OUR title!! We had won it months ago!! IT WAS IN THE GOD DAM BAG!! Now it was Man U’s for the taking!! ARSENAL FC AS WE KNOW IT IS OVER!!!!!!!!!!
Well thats not technically true is it. Much like my driving test things were going so well for so long but now it seems as if Arsenal’s season will go the same way…… failure. Ok much like how I only just failed, an FA Cup win would soften the blow somewhat but either way unless we bring that league title home then this season is a failure. An entertaining failure yes. Plenty of high spots to reflect on yes. Just how I look back and wallow in my own crappulence about my text book turn in the road, Arsenal fans can look to wins at Elland Road, PSV and Old Trafford and think by god our team was great. And just like how there will be other tests for me there will be other seasons for Arsenal. Just like the 6-1 defeat at Old Trafford and the 2001 FA Cup final stung Arsenal into a desire not to bottle the big occaision in the following season, then letting this league slip away should help us not do the same next year. I know if I have to do another reverse around a corner I will be checking my back mirror prefusely, so I can only assume Arsenal will not fritter away points so wastefully next year too. And if we do then so what? We will be back eventually. That I am sure off, theres just too much underlying quality at the club for us not too. And if by some cruel twist of fate this is the start of us going into decline then at least we can look back at the Wenger years and say we came, we played great football and we came within a whisker of conquering all.
But most importantly we said to the rest of the Premier League, “The name is Arsenal. Remember it”.
And didn’t they just!
My name is Alastair Wood and this has been Hot Stuff!