Andy's Glasses

So my hip’s still bothering me, about 8 weeks after it started, thanks for asking!!! No better, no worse. So I started playing tennis again, on the grounds that; if this is ‘the future’, then better start learning to ‘play through the pain’. Because I’m stupid. But, inspired by the Lionesses, I manned up and worked out I can tolerate the pain. Its the fear I can’t live with.

So, buoyed by last weekends fabulous almost-panic-attack up on the Spurs roof, this morning I went into an MRI scanner for the hip. And experienced once again the pure joy of heart-thumping, sweat-pouring, pale-facing entry into the world of claustrophobia. Or, ‘an MRI scanner’ as its known. I was out within 3 seconds. Then I embraced my inner lesbian, worked out that I could just, just, juuuuust see the room and re-entered hell. Calmer. LBC chat show on the head-set, and listened to Geoff Hurst (!!!!), bless his godly soul, discussing the world cup yesterday.

“Well the Lionesses can be really- BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG… (for 4 minutes)… the legacy for women’s football and for- EEK-EEK-EEK-EEK… (3 minutes)… another 57 years before- BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM…”

I don’t really give a shit about the noise. Just the confinement. And I love wearing hospital gowns because the world needs to see my arse.

Saturday night Mel & I were in Soho. And I mourned the loss of yet another fabulous part of London to boring, vanilla, corporate gentility and homogeneity. My first thought was: ‘where did all the inflatable ‘dolls’, which adorned virtually every shop window, back in the day, go?’ Did they just let them down, gently? Burst them? Put them all in a warehouse in Milton Keynes? Or fill them with helium and let them drift away?

Soho was London’s Little Italy. Full of coffee shops and little restaurants. All now gone. The coffee shops along Old Compton Street were where musicians came when they arrived in London to seek fame and fortune. And we’re talking the Beatles here. Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, the Stones, the Kinks, they all hooked up with other musicians and management in those coffee shops, before the gays came along and made the street their own. In the same restaurants and bars, but with more pink.

And on Saturday you couldn’t walk down there for hen parties from Crewe, day trippers from Hull and piss-heads from Peterboro’. Millions of them. Staggering from generic bar to generic bar, oblivious to the history of the area. Oblivious to pretty much everything by 10 o’clock.

Ahhhhh, there ya go.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

Its over. The dream. Us gels. Football. Australia. World AND Euro champions. Sarina Wiegman. Pony tails. Its not comin’ ‘ome. Whatever ‘it’ might be.

No kings or princes or PMs went to Sydney to witness our noble, valiant and courageous loss to those fucking Spanish bitches, to whom I bear no grudge. Obviously. They were better on the day. It was a game’a two halves. At da enna’da day. But we should have won. For the simple reason that our girls were good, honest Inglish gels, and theirs weren’t. Even though half of them play over here. So alas, it was not meant to be. Rishi must have known and took a leaf out of the Harry Kane book; go nowhere without a guaranteed medal.

Whereas at Spurs!!!! We beat Manchester United at our ‘new’ stadium for the first time. But we don’t care. United squandered chances and then looked shit. But we don’t care. We bossed them in midfield and scored 2 fab goals. And we barely care.

Because under the wonderful Ange we’re playing like a Spurs team again. Free-flowing, creative, fast, eager, strident, confident and flowing. Ok, there are ‘gaps’, they’re inherent in the style of play, you just have to try and fill them before the opponents do. And a better opponent might have capitalised, early on when we hadn’t properly settled. But they weren’t better. They were, pretty much, the same Man United as we had last year, with Mason Mount added for fun. Though he didn’t seem to have much fun playing against Sarr and Bissouma, with James Madison flying round being wonderful. Lovin’ our new manager. So I’ll give him at least another 3 weeks.

Man on the radio this morning complaining that women footballers should earn the same as men footballers. I mean what a tosser. It’s not about glass ceilings or equality or anything other than tv revenues. Where does this man see these 10 million pound salaries for every lioness coming from? Maybe the government should step in and pay it. There’s also a good case that if tv rights for cancer treatment were as valuable as for football, oncologists would deservedly be on those salaries too. Its not about what you do but how many people want to watch you do it.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

We’re in the final. Its amazing. My Lionesses are one step away from being world champions!!! Ok, it can be quite a big step, but you have to feel confident. Sarina Wiegman (surely a Damehood is just around the corner; what’s the situation with the Dutch?) has groomed (not like that) this squad into something special. Unlike the men’s teams, she has engendered a culture of winning. She is the star, the eleven blond pony-tails running around the pitch are just an extension of her will. They won the European Championships and now they’re poised for totally dominant greatness and re-writing history and all that other shit they all bang on about in the papers.

So today, a special flight is being arranged to take King Charles out to Sydney. And Camilla. Prince William, the head of the Football Association of the whole of England is hitching a ride and Rishi Sunak will be going along too. Tony Blair. Robbie Williams. A few Spice Girls. Geoff Hurst. Harry Kane. Prue Leith. All going out there for this historic and amazing outpouring of national pride.

Oh. The flight’s been cancelled. No-one’s going. No-one cares. Rishi’s busy. Prince Wills has a busy diary, everyone else… doin’ stuff, can’t go, sorry, maybe next time.

Yeah, next time A NATIONAL TEAM IS IN A WORLD CUP FINAL!!!

I think this is really shitty. No-one’s going to be there. Oh, sorry, the ‘culture secretary’ will attend ‘on behalf of His Majesty’s (poxy) government’. And if you can name her without googling there’s a prize draw for the actual bra worn by your favourite player in the final!!!

I haven’t yet watched a whole match, I have to confess. In fact I haven’t watched very much of any match, England or otherwise. I hate myself for that, there’s no denying it. But if it was ‘the boys’, every Tom, Dick and Suella would be grabbing freebie tickets as voluntary ‘ambassadors’ for our nation, jumping on Sarina’s gravy train, riding on a blond pony tail and having a few days on Bondi beach whilst I’m there, thank you very much. Its not about ‘the distance’, and I’ve done that trip 3 times and that’s more than enough for any lifetime. Its not about anything other than a bunch of total fucking hypocrites telling us how ‘its all about the legacy, the advancement of the women’s game, etc, etc’, and then not being arsed enough to make the trip, cos its only a bunch’a gels, innit?

Shame on them all.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

… and God laughs, as the saying goes. But Rishi Sunak is no mere mortal! He’s a Superman! Even though he looks more like The Atom. Because according to Rishi: “its all going to plan!”, as wages take their steepest rise for 22 years. Not mine, must be yours.

But what was that ‘plan’ exactly? The one which is working so well and to which the nation’s economy is almost powerless in its wake? Was it to arrange record levels of inflation and fuel charges, add in massively increased cost of goods and services to the point where half the nation was on the verge of bankruptcy and homelessness, thus forcing employers into ‘inflation matching’ wage rises? In which case ‘the plan’ is indeed working. And for that we must all feel much, much better. As long, of course, you don’t have a mortgage, eat any butter, cheese, eggs or fruit, drive a car in London or ever intend to heat the house again. Then you’re fucked.

It feels like the country is being run by spin doctors. Who, it would appear, are the only doctors who don’t come with 6-month waiting lists.

Its much easier to write the problems in a different way than to actually resolve them. Same as the ‘waiting lists’.

Meanwhile, life for us Lionesses just got one million times better than ever before. We beat the (fucking) Aussies, poor, saddened Wallabesses or Kangaresses or Brucesses, in the semi-final of the actual (Gels) World Fucking Cuppppp!!!! The first time an England football team has made it to a final since the days when you needed 11 penises to get there. I AM LIVING A DREAM! Albeit a slightly frilly, lacy, flouncey-yet-quite-butch version of that dream. England did reach the rugby world cup final, AND it was in Sydney, AANNDD it was against the Aussies, and we bloody won that, but it was only the boys.

This is so exiting I may actually watch it! COME ON ENGLAND!!!

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

Rishi Sunak is clever. He’s stuck with NHS waiting lists which, quite frankly, he could do without. They almost sit there as a constant reminder of how unworking/unworkable, the NHS machine really is. Over 7 million people are waiting for something or other. Which represents 14% of our nation. One in 7 people requires medical care to some degree. Which is almost impossible to believe except probably half are just waiting for a sick note to be ‘signed off’ from work for a nice rest.

Rishi promised to ‘reduce waiting lists’. Yet after the pandemic, when all ‘non-essential’ procedures ceased for a long period, came ‘the strikes’, during which ‘non-essentials’ got fucked over once again. And many of these ‘non-essentials’ have things like cancer, which, unfortunately, over time, tend to become very very ‘essential’.

As the obvious (if a bit mindless and unsustainable) solution is to pump another 17 trillion quid into more units, more scanners, more doctors, nurses and more everything, Rishi instead has decided to tackle the waiting list problem a different, slightly ‘non-medical’ way. He’s restructuring the lists themselves. Its a bit like printing money to pay off national debts. Just shift the emphasis elsewhere. Particularly with an election coming up and ‘reducing waiting lists!!!’ is one of Rishi’s keystones. So, for cancer patients, he’s creating three new lists, from which, basically one third can safely be removed. Bringing the numbers down, the statistics look better and his claims appear a little more realistic. Brilliant.

Obviously the sick people are still sick people and if you have cancer you’re still not going to be seen for 3 months, but it looks better. Which must be good, right?

The NHS don’t cover Saudi Arabia. Where Steven Gerrard manages a football team containing all of Europe’s old veterans. So Jordan Henderson made his debut last night for the team to which Neymar is flying to right now, and they’re all earning billions. But that debut was played, at night, in 35 degrees and about 90% humidity. Just what ‘old men’, already struggling with fitness, really need to help their ageing bones. Apparently Saudi hospitals are great. For anyone earning more than 200 grand a week.

Happy, healthy Tuesday

A xxxx

That’s Spurs club motto: to dare is to do. Hence the ‘Dare Skywalk’ they offer to stadium tourists. At least half of whom look so much like Son its uncanny. And as they all wear replica shirts, I spent half the day wondering how our new club captain could be walking round the Tottenham Stadium at the precise moment he was on the pitch at Brentford.

If you’d asked me, before 1.47 pm yesterday, if I had any issue with heights, I’d have laughed in your face, pushed my chest out and taken another swig on my can of lager. I always remember when people said “oh, I can’t go skiing, I’m afraid of heights” to which I’d reply that you may be 3 kilometres above sea level but… most of the time… your skis are on the ground; there is no ‘height’. Ok, some of the rest of the time you’re dangling 100 metres above certain death by virtue of a tiny, thin steel wire holding up a great big metal seat with two people on it and you’re thinking about the whole ‘physics’ thing.

And then you go on the Dare Skywalk. And its an attraction for sightseers and admirers of the stadium. So all the ‘dare’ bit is just marketing bollocks to make a totally innocent and easy walk along the roof a bit more ‘sexy’, so they can charge more for it. But then you have to change your shoes!!! I don’t think its just a sales play but you can only walk on the roof of the stadium in Nike footwear. But its ‘special’, black trainers, with super sticky, climb-up-walls, Spiderman type footwear. Then you get the harness, the clamps, all manner of paraphernalia, and they remove all hard objects from you, like phones, coins, daggers, guns and step-ladders, in case they should fall and kill someone underneath.

Then you walk up. And up. And up. And they hook you onto a handrail and you go up more. Then more. Until… you’re walking on the glass roof bit. Wow! Awwww, look’a dat viewwww!!!! Lundun!!! Innit!!! All good. They even give you your phones back for 5 minutes to appreciate it properly with a selfie. To validate it. Then they hook another clamp on you, basically, chaining you to the rail, and you walk round the cockerel. On a little ledge (seems little) 43 metres above the pitch so you can look down at the grass and… and…

And feel almost violently ill with the fear of falling, jumping, plummeting or… Its actually not a conscious thing. Its visceral and it just happens. Well, it did to me. I stood there, both arms wrapped around the cockerel, crying for my mummy, staring anywhere but down at the pitch, wanting to be… anywhere. Even sitting on a seat in the Emirates would have felt good at that point, that’s how bad it was.

But I survived. Phew. Cos I’m a MAN! Even though I probably didn’t look or feel quite so ‘manly’ up there with the cockerel.

And now it seems funny.

Happy daring Monday

A xxxx

He’s gone.
Harry.
Harry Kane.
Played for Spurs.
Captained Spurs.
Captains England!!!
Yet moved to Germany on Friday. F’rever. To play for Bayern Munich. Arrived there Friday afternoon, by Saturday afternoon he was playing for Munchen and losing to Leipzig in some Teutonic version of the ‘charity shield’ they have over there. And today makes it 2 days and he STILL hasn’t won a winners’ medal! I thought they’d just give him half a dozen for merely walking out of White Hart Lane. But no, apparently even Harry is going to have to earn them. And good luck to him.

But what does it say about our club? Our ‘big club’ in whom top stars have such confidence that they have to leave before they might win something? That we can advance so far and then… just fall back down again. It has tragically become part of our culture. But maybe, just maybe, it might all just change!!! New manager, new players, new striker being courted… and a new season.

So how did we do without Harry? Honestly? I have no idea. I was ‘busy’. And missed the match on tv. Because I’d booked, without checking the fixtures, obviously, to visit the ‘Spurs Experience’ tour, at the ground. And the ‘Dare Skywalk’!

The Spurs Experience is amazing. They take you up, giving you wonderful things on the way, money, cars, houses, holidays, fur coats, unlimited tattoos, great food, wild women, Lego… and then, just when you’re reaching the top and about to have a one-to-one with God him/her-self!!!… they drop you 30 feet back to the floor to bump your head, sprain your ankle and they steal your phone.

But in fact it was NOT the metaphorical experience which all fans live every year, it was the real thing! With changing rooms and access to normally inaccessible parts of the ground and the NFL bits and all the ‘secrets’ which only the 362,228 people who’ve taken the tour know. Though it was also a bit ‘unreal’ because its not a match day so you park outside the ground!!!

Then we went for a walk on the roof of the stadium. Its only 43 metres above the ground, so no idea why they clamp you with harnesses and all manner of climbing shit. Not like you’re going to jump off is it? Its too early in the season for that.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

I’ve always wanted to be that person who says: ‘when you get to my age…’ because I’ve always found that really annoying, stupid and pathetic, all characteristics I strive for in my life. So now I’ve reached sufficient yearage that I could invoke such a phrase in earnest, I can’t do it. Its like admitting you’re the wrong side of ‘young’, that you’er much nearer to death than birth, it implies you might have learned something, which means they’ll prove you wrong.

Because that’s what happens. You get old thinking you’re absorbing all this wonderful knowledge and learning the secrets of longevity, and then you read the paper and the goalposts have shifted again, so if you don’t wise up, you’ll be dead within a week!

I’d always thought that 10,000 steps a day was a good goal. A realistic aim. A worthy and accessible target. For health, fitness, longevity, blah, blah, blah. So at the end of every walk, I look at my watch, like all us fitness mavens do, and see that in fact its ten past three. Or quarter to nine. Because my watch doesn’t count steps. So I look at my phone and see that I have 14 messages from Amazon about a parcel I never ordered. Again, I’ve never installed a step-counter on my phone either. Because I just don’t fucking care. I walk, generally, until I stop. Worried that if I reach my ten thousandth step whilst crossing a road, I’d have to stop there for the rest of the day, and it could be dangerous.

But now I’m fine. It has been decided, I’m sure really, really scientifically, that you only need ‘2337 steps a day’ to live forever. Any more is just wasted. Or sets you back. Affects you badly.

And the good thing about this latest info-flash is that it completely highlights the fact that ALL this information is total bollocks and should be completely ignored. Here’s another newsflash: walking is nice, its fairly healthy in that (unless you take a few mars bars with you) its generally time spent not eating. Or drinking (never leave home without a fully charged hip flask). But its not ‘exercise’ in any meaningful way. Its just much better than sitting down. If you want exercise, play tennis. Apparently there are other things you can do but quite frankly they just don’t count. Like steps. I tried counting them ‘analogue’. But by the end of the road I’d forgotten if I was up to 174 or 274, so I had to go back home and start again.

Happy walking

A xxxx

We’ve found a new drug. Not, like, for Saturday nights with a line of coke and three shots of Jägermeister, but a medical drug. Oh, one’a’them. Well, not so much ‘found’ it, as slightly ‘re-purposed’ it. Possibly, just adjusted the claims made about it. Its a diabetes drug. And causes weight loss. But now, in higher doses, it can ‘massively reduce heart attacks AND strokes!!!’ Wow! That’s good, they’re big killers. As in: ‘they kill big people’, as well as ‘killing lots of people’. But the query (in my overly cynical and statistic-a-phobic mind) is whether this drug is ‘curing’ the risk of those two killer illnesses, or whether it just reduces the person’s weight to the extent where the risk of heart attack and stroke are severely reduced as they are for most thin people? Though really, either way, its a win. We end up with a nation of thinner people, having less heart attacks and strokes; a win-win.

Unless you’re paying the bill.

The drug in its diabetes/weight loss concentration costs £74 per month for each patient. Probably be a bit more for the higher dosage. And they reckon its only 12 million people who’ll really benefit by this. Which… add on a lot of zeroes… multiply by 13… divide by the square root of your waste measurement, comes to just shy of a billion quid. Every month. So that’s just, say 10 billion pounds a year so the NHS won’t have to treat heart attack and stroke victims who are overweight, thus keeping the beds free for the healthy old people who can’t leave hospital because there’s nowhere in the care system to put them.

What we need to do is get some more barges. Big ones. With rooms bigger than that one in Dorset has, cos these people are much bigger than refugees, and fill them with overweight people and starve them. No booze. No fat, sugars or carbs and no way off. That way, instead of 10 bil a year, its the initial outlay on a few barges and enough lettuce and broccoli for 12 million people. Simple.

It all comes down to money. If the NHS had Nigel Farage’s promsied “365 million pounds EVERY DAY!!!!”, for Brexit, we might be nicer. But even though I actually imagined the head of EU finance personally writing us a cheque every single day, it, kind’a, never happened. So there’s a shortfall. And as everyone in England is violently opposed to making any kind of contribution, however ‘nominal’ towards healthcare, I suppose we’ll just have add this 10 billion to the total. And just keep doing that until Kier Starmer dies or the cost of the NHS is actually greater than our GDP. I suppose we can always borrow.

Happy, healthy Wednesday

A xxxx

I wish to discuss Donald Trump. I hope you haven’t just eaten because I’m fully aware of the effect even thinking about that man can have on a full stomach. Though really, this isn’t about the most vile politician in America, this is more about Americans. And the eternal question: WHY ARE THEY SO UNBELIEVABLY FUCKING STUPID????

With every indictment the combed-over heap of lard gets, his ratings go up in the polls. And ok, this is the ‘Republican only’ polls because its for the right to stand as their candidate. And I appreciate that Republicans are traditionally at the conservative, gun-lovin’, anti-abortion, pro-slavery, super-Christian and hence fairly dim end of the political spectrum, but really? The man gets accused of corruption and its ‘politicisation!!’ Yeah, maybe so, but he’s still corrupt. He gets caught with ‘documents’ in his home which he shouldn’t have. But not, like, three sheets of A4 in a little blue folder, we’re talking hundreds and hundreds of highly sensitive, top secret files, just sitting in his bathroom and bedroom, piled high. What for? Is the first question I’d ask. Why would he even want them? Especially as he knows its against the law. Even for the (then) president. Then comes the whole ‘the election was rigged!!!!’ protest, when he refused to give up the White House. Like a spoilt child who won’t leave the top of the castle after a defeat in a game of soldiers. Yet this is the biggest of all Trump’s current problems because he accused the American election system of cheating/lying/incompetence. He still has the problem about starting the Capitol riot, or at least, failing to stop the Capitol riot, but it doesn’t matter.

Over 25% of Americans would still vote for him if he was in jail. The year is 2023, we’re post-Harvey Weinstein, post #metoo and yet half of all republicans would select someone who condones and even proposes sexual assault. And I’d love to think that those 50 of Americans must therefore be the men, but its just not true.

I also get that voting for a political party is the definition of ‘partisan’, but some things are surely more important than long-term loyalty to a vague, political system. And all these ‘Christians’, invoking ‘the will of the Lord’ at every opportunity can sit comfortably with a man who advocates “just grab ’em by the pussy” as a method of introduction. These poor souls are ok to believe that the Democrats are using these events to try to dethrone America’s King of the Right. Because the events are all real and true. The Democrats are supposed to illustrate what a vile piece of shit Mr Ex-Prez is. But some people are just beyond learning. And we call those people: Americans.

God Help America.

A xxxx