You’re walking along, minding your own business, looking for an address somewhere north of Finsbury Park, and suddenly there’s this bloke on the steps leading down from his front door: white, bald, hoodie, joggers, round about 35, eyes fixed on some kind of console he’s holding before him, quite delicately, in both hands. And, guess what? The place you’re looking for is right next door.
“All right?”
“All right?”
He doesn’t look up. His front door is open and there’s a woman standing behind him on the step, attired in what might be a dressing gown. Being winter time, it’s dark, but only about seven in the evening. You knock on the door of the people you’re visiting. You know there’s going to be a wait.
“Emirates,” the bloke says, not looking up.
OK…
“You know that’s probably illegal, don’t you?” the woman. says, with mild indifference.
“Yeah, well…”
Already, you think you’ve got him pegged: Arsenal geezer, season ticket, like his dad before him and his dad before that. Tony Adams? Legend. Thierry Henry? Invincible.
From down the street comes the sound of a siren.
“I told you,” says the woman, unconcerned.
The bloke keeps staring at the thing in his hands. Still waiting, you realise what it is.
The siren is getting louder, closer. The vehicle it is attached to comes into view. It’s on the pavement. It’s made of plastic. It says “[police” on the side. It is being driven by a small boy. Ahead of it walks a man, odds on the small boy’s dad.
“Got a drone up?” inquires the dad.
“Yeah,” says the bloke, still not looking up.
“Cool,” says the dad, walking on, pursued by the wannabe Met officer.
Your host opens her front door. You steal a parting glance at the console, its little screen, the aerial images of Islington, and in a funny way this close encounter with a new kind of overgrown boy’s toy takes you back to a time when it was Highbury, not the Emirates, and it was Football League, Division One, not the Premier League. And it was John Radford. And Charlie George. And Frank McLintock. And Bertie Mee. North London changes, but, how it stays the same.
John Vane is the author of the London novel Frightgeist.