London: Saturday at Leyton

You can’t go to England and not catch a football match. Since my trip was during a Fifa break there were no matches in the Premier League or Championship. Which was just as well, since they’d probably be too expensive for me anyway. So instead I searched through the fixtures to find a match in League One. Turned out there was a match just a few stops further out on the tube, at Leyton, where Leyton Orient was receiving Oldham Athletics.

I used buses to Leyton since it is in zone 3 on the tube, and my Oyster card was only charged for travel within zone 2. A short trip and a failed bus later, I was at Leyton station, and walking to the arena at Brisbane Road. I had checked the stands the night before, and decided to get tickets on the south stand. This turned out to be a good choice, since it seemed the most entusiastic home supporters also uses this stand. According to the website, the northern part of the east stand should have housed the home supporters, but there were not much sound coming from that end.

The southern end of the east stand however had lots of Oldham supporters cramped together. And it was clearly the away supporters were the more enthusiastic side this day. Particularly when Oldham took the lead after 34 minutes. 0-1 at half time, and the weather was cold and rainy. In the second half the O’s came back though. A penalty equalizer in the 60. minute got the crowd warming a bit, and when Demetriou put the 2-1 goal with 6 minutes left all was good.

After the match I went for the public transports again, trying to find my way to Kilburn where I was to meet up with Alison and some of her friends. Because the tube station was packed and a bus was going back to Stratford already, I decided to catch that bus. Do note that not all buses labelled “Stratford” and similar actually go by the bus terminal by the same name. Second failed bus catch of the day. This didn’t delay me that much though, and after getting back on the tube, I was in Kilburn 45 minutes before rendesvouz time. 45 minutes well spent with a pint.

After having a quite nice curry, we went to The good ship to see the Grave Architects. The venue was kinda weird, with the band playing in a sunken pit in the middle, where you basically had to stand in the stairs around to see anything. Not all that unlike another place I know after all. The bands playing here were a lot better than the ones at Hoxton a few days earlier and The Grave Architects in particular was actually quite good.