There are many different types of people in the world. Saturday evening I met both extremes. My experiences with the Welsh, either directly or indirectly, have not been positive on the whole. Sadly, my trip to Cardiff this weekend did little to restore any faith I may have had.

The day began well, up and away in time, on the train and in Cardiff well in time for a pre-match beverage. I was full of butterflies at the prospect of the game and skipped through the pouring rain from the station to the stadium. I have been to the Millenium Stadium before, but you forget what a great structure it is and I was most impressed with our seats behind the goal. The game progressed as expected, us being useless against Utd, but for once our luck holding out. The referee seemed to change sides at half time and the atmosphere was electric.

I will resist the temptation to provide a ball by ball account of the game, you can read that here. But I will say that as Paddy put that final penalty in - there were tears. I know it is sad, but emotion got the better of me as what felt like 68,000 Arsenal supporters picked me up and hugged me in delight.

So we watched the celebrations with singing, cheering and a feel good feeling I have not experienced in quite some time. Joe and I head off to a local public house to join his friends in their celebrations. Boris Becker who sits behind us at Highbury was there and I discovered he is as much irritated by Irritating Bloke as the rest of us. Anyway, we head off for food and then having realised I had missed my train connection home, to the hotel where Joe and his friends were staying. This is where it all went a bit wrong.

Having allowed me to change, store my things in the room and spend vast amounts of money in the bar. The hotel receptionist decided to stop us on the stairs as we headed off to bed. Apparently as I was not a 'resident' they had decided I was not going to be allowed to kip down in the hotel. In fact I wasn�t even going to be permitted to gather my things from the room. Now we'd had a happy but quiet evening in their nightclub. Not rowdy, no harm to anyone. So this I do not understand.

The receptionist and his security monkey threw me out onto the street. Now think about this for a moment. A woman, alone, with nowhere to stay, in a city hundreds of miles from home, being sent out onto the street at 2.30 in the morning. It was also raining heavily. Why on earth would anyone do that? Why, when we had caused no harm or upset to anyone, why would you do that? They claimed it was 'fire insurance' reasons as they physically pushed me without my things onto the street and firmly closed the door behind me. I was stunned. I stood outside whilst my things were gathered in total disbelief.

Cardiff was heaving with drunken locals starting fights with each other and crawling with police and all I could think to do was head towards the station to wait for opening time in the morning. It takes a fair bit to scare me these days, but to be honest, I was pretty well terrified. I phoned what was my first angel of the evening in panic and thankfully rather than be cross with me for calling in tears at nigh on 3am, he was a good boy and looked after me :) thanks. Then I headed off to try to find the station.

When I finally found it, I could think of nothing to do but sit and wait outside. There were lots of people around and some rather unpleasant locals and I settled somewhat apprehensively on the cold ground. That was when my second angel arrived.

The station door, which had previously been locked up, opened and I was called inside. I was lead through the station whilst the locals shouted abuse at the station manager, settled down in the warm, with a heater and assurances of my safety and left to sleep in the station office. This was the quietest, most unassuming man I have ever met. He just did what he did. He didn't want thanks and didn't see he had done something special for me. Obviously sleep evaded me, and at 5am he came back in and took me to the bus stop for the first bus to Newport. He left me in the care of a policeman who was catching the bus with a note that said it was his fault I had missed my train and so to make my ticket valid for my journey home. I really don�t know what might have happened had it not been for him. He was an angel. The policeman said there had been lots of trouble in the area the previous night, locals, not football supporters I hasten to add. I would have been out there in the middle of it all.

My biggest regret of the evening was that I didn�t get his name. I have sent a thank-you to the station, I hope he gets it.

So I headed on my way home, cold and tired. To a warm hug and a coffee, before showering, taking an invigorating walk along the beach and then a very fine barbecue and DVD in the evening. I don�t think I have ever been so pleased to be warm, safe and home.