My Arsenal devotion began with watching them lose in a South African cinema

I fell for Arsenal in the white‑and-black world of apartheid, where television was banned as a tool of communist propaganda and the club of my dreams was 6,000 miles away and mostly invisible to me. So it feels fitting that a surreal love story that began for a small boy in South Africa in 1969 will reach a new peak on Saturday night in eastern Europe. This 65-year-old Arsenal fan and his 25-year-old son, who is just as besotted by the Gunners, will be at the Champions League final in Budapest as we face the dazzling powerhouse of Paris Saint-Germain. It’s the final game of Arsenal’s tumultuous grind of a season and we are as exhausted as we are still euphoric . We will remember that my last game of this campaign could have been Swindon’s 2-1 home defeat by Chesterfield in League Two. I have had my share of pain with Arsenal; but it would have been a far deeper burden to have spent 57 years supporting Swindon. It could have happened because my eighth birthday party in April 1969 included a trip to the movies, where we initially watched a Pathé News bulletin featuring footage of the League Cup final between Arsenal and Swindon which had happened six weeks before. I’ve seen those two and a half minutes many times since and can understand why I was smitten. But it’s more usual for a kid to back the winning team and, that day, Third Division Swindon beat Arsenal 3-1 with Don Rogers scoring two goals in extra time. …