North London Forever
There are football victories, and then there are football resurrections. This was the latter. This week’s Olfactory Letter belongs to Arsenal F.C..
To the years of almost.
To the seasons that collapsed in springtime. To the mathematical possibilities and unbearable permutations. To the ache of finishing second. To the rituals of hope that supporters perform despite themselves. Football, at its most profound, is not merely about winning. It is about enduring humiliation publicly and still returning every weekend with devotion intact.
And perhaps that is why this title feels seismic.
Because this was not the triumph of a transient superteam assembled by cheque books and convenience. This felt ecclesiastical. Earned through attrition. Through ridicule. Through patience. Through memory.
And nowhere does that feeling crystallise more exquisitely than in Bukayo Saka.
Sixteen years of loyalty to one club in a sport increasingly devoid of permanence. Sixteen years of choosing Arsenal repeatedly, even when choosing Arsenal came with heartbreak attached. There is an image from 2020 that has lingered in the collective consciousness for years now. A young Saka, apologising to fans with a face carrying the unbearable burden of disappointment. Too young to be carrying the emotional architecture of a football club, yet carrying it anyway.
And now?
Now there is another image.
Saka seated with the Premier League trophy beside him like scripture fulfilled.
What an astonishing juxtaposition. What a magnificent study in human perseverance. The kind of visual poetry that transcends sport entirely. One photograph contains sorrow, contrition, youth. The other contains vindication. Glory. Arrival.
It is difficult not to feel emotional about it all.
Yesterday, I watched the final match with one of my dearest friends and her family. Our plans were magnificently improvised. Every pub in North London swollen with supporters, every reservation long gone, every corner vibrating with anticipation. So we found ourselves at a pizzeria in Highbury, eyes fixed to our phones, surrounded by fellow Arsenal supporters similarly displaced by the sheer enormity of the occasion.
And somehow, it became perfect.
The restaurant transformed into a cathedral of jubilation. Every gasp communal. Strangers embracing one another with the intimacy of old friends. The sort of temporary communion football creates so effortlessly and nowhere more beautifully than in London.
After the match, we walked toward Emirates Stadium.
What does one even call that atmosphere?
Ecstasy feels insufficient.
North London Forever reverberated through the streets with almost liturgical grandeur. Vuvuzelas pierced the evening air. Flags unfurled from windows. The entire glorious multicultural organism that is London moving as one jubilant body.
This is the London we love.
A city stitched together by accents, migration, memory, ambition and football clubs inherited like heirlooms.
And through it all, I wore Parfums de Marly ATHÉNAÏS.
How fitting that the fragrance accompanying such a day possessed both softness and regality. ATHÉNAÏS wears like triumph draped in silk. Elegant yet luminous. Feminine without fragility. The sort of perfume that lingers beautifully in the air after embraces, after laughter, after tears, after history.
I think that is what I will remember most about yesterday. Not merely the title itself, but the emotional abundance of it all.
The sound of joy echoing through Highbury.
The sight of supporters staring at one another almost incredulously, as though afraid to blink and wake from the dream.
The sacred ordinariness of watching football on phones inside a crowded pizzeria because every other venue in North London had overflowed with belief.
And Bukayo Saka, smiling beside that trophy at last.
Sometimes sport gives us something far greater than entertainment.
Sometimes it gives us redemption.