Andy's Glasses

We returned from the Golan. Fabulous up there but we missed the beach. The odd thing is; we don’t even like the beach. All that fucking sand everywhere, its awful. Hot, sticky, windy places, crowded like here in Netanya, terrible. But much as we protest our dislike of being on beaches, we just love walking on them. This morning we walked about 3 miles, there and back. Though where ‘there’ was, I have no idea. Just a rock. Near a hard place. So we turned and went back. We like pools really. Mel can do her lengths, I can do my length… width if I’m not quite up to it, and its all clean and nice and you don’t end up with sand on your testicles. But walking on beaches is simply magical. Especially this beach. Completely devoid of stones, shells and seaweed, the sand is soft silk and testicle-repellant. And with the sea over your toes, it goes on forever and is half a mile wide.

And we stay with my very old mate and his fabulous wife. We can’t stand them, but its free here so you can’t be that fussy. And the WiFi’s good, gotta give ‘em that. And its free. Everything’s free here.

Unlike my ‘data roaming’ on the way up to the Golan, where the m*thuf*ckers charged me 25 quid for using Waze for about 3 hours. Therefore I just spent half an hour having a ‘chat’ (one of those annoying little typing box ‘chats’) with a nice man with a completely unpronounceable name at Id-Mobile. Took about 3 minutes (after the inevitable 20 minutes of ‘security’ clearance worthy of MI6 and other assorted bollocks, to get £20 back off the thieving bastards. Because you know if you send an SMS message it will cost you £1.50. You know calls will bankrupt you within 3.6 minutes. But you don’t know ‘data’. Its so opaque and mysterious that “£1.50 per megabyte” is simply meaningless. To me anyway. Do they measure how many megabytes Waze is sending me as it mis-directs me up the toll roads??? Or does someone else with a different unpronounceable name just say… “hmmm, Andy’s on Waze, charge the fucker 25 quid! That’ll show him”?

Anyway, we’re coming home tomorrow. So its time to go back to the beach. Even though we don’t like it at all. We’re doing it for YOU!

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

The thing about the Golan Heights is given away a bit by the name. They’re high. And, hilly. Ok, mountainous, but they don’t tell you that til you get there. So we picked a Golan Height and went there. Turned off the road onto a track. Bumped along very precariously for a couple of kilometres because they don’t have any miles here. Got out and started walking along a marked trail. But it wasn’t a path. It was rocks. Big ones, going up very steeply then down even more steeply. Taking us to a stream. Which was beautiful. We followed that (more rock climbing) then went up to view a waterfall. At which point we should have turned back. But we didn’t. We went on. And on. And on. Because climbing up and down rocks in 36 degrees (they don’t have Farenheits here either) is actually quite fun. Strenuous fun but fun. And after about an hour of intense sweating, we saw ‘a sign’ (Lord!) which said: ‘car park- that way’, towards more rocks. We felt immense relief. Until we saw the path. Upwards, unbelievably steep and about 300 metres (yards, same fucking thing) long. It was the hardest, hottest, sweatiest hike I’ve ever done. And the sense of achievement as we made it to the car park was just…

Just ruined by the fact that it was in fact the wrong car park. It had cars in it, but not ours. Which was about a kilometre away back along the track.

We did so many steps and burned (literally) so many calories that it almost made up for last night’s dinner entirely and possibly some of breakfast too.

I have been reading the Times most days here. But its dull. What I’ve learned is: Donald Trump is dangerous fuck-wit, which is not really news at all, and that Boris is still, has always been and will always be, a total tosser. There ends the news.

Happy Hiking Saturday

A xxxx

So we left the fat, lazy, over-eating, ice-cream-laden world of Tel Aviv’s most gorgeous seaside resort and headed north. By Northeast. And now we’re in the Golan Heights. Its spectacularly beautiful, but we know that, we’ve been here before. We’re about 2 miles from Syria but we’ve never been there before. And as its all bad news there, we’re not going now. Also, if we take the Israeli rental car into such places, it will spontaneously explode. Because there are very strict rules when they hand over the keys.

What happened last time we came to this kibbutz was: I looked up on the map where to go, wrote down the names and numbers of all the roads, got in the car and drove here.

But I’m soooooo beyond that. Who even knows what a ‘map’ is any longer? This time I used… Waze. Which I use a lot. And I first used here in Israel, when it first started before it became totally ‘everywhere in the world’ and then sold to Google. And I have absolute faith in Waze. Whatever it says, I go.

And I would go north up the coast road; the ‘2’ road. But because of some local roadworks, Waze took me further east. Ah, we’ll take the ‘20’, another road I know. But no, we went past that and onto… the ‘6’!!! Firstly, that’s a toll road, and they’re always an issue in rental cars because about 4 months after traveling on one you get a bill for ‘toll charge, $2.25, admin fee: $49.50’. But that wasn’t our main concern. We were worried that the 6 road lies fairly east. And may possibly even be in the West Bank. And the West Bank is, from a Hertz/Budget/Avis point of view, worse than going to Syria. They fine you just for being there. And being an electronic toll road, they would know.

I didn’t know if I was in the West Bank or not. I didn’t have a map. So I turned off and headed back to the 2 road. Which took about 30 added minutes and could have affected our strict timetable for over-eating.

So I still adhere to the ‘In Waze we trust’ maxim which is tattooed on my chest.

And it was my birthday. A very lovely one. Driving worries aside.

A xxxx

Every day (so it seems) the Times ‘T2’ section offers health advice, normally, and to be honest, quite insultingly, aimed at the over-40s, over-50, over-60s or pre-dead. What’s even worse is that although I’ve skipped over those pages and filed them under the ‘health bollocks’ section, Mel reads them. Out loud. To me. Even if I’m not listening. And they always say pretty much the same thing. Exercise more. Eat less. Oh, that’s big fucking news, I’ll write that down right now so I never forget. But then they get specific. Over 60 you need to be working with weights. Why? You’re supposed to avoid lifting heavy things when you’re old, ain’t’cha? No, its good for bone density, so you have to do resistance training. Fine by me, I’m so resistant to training I’m way ahead of the curve. Do yoga! Fuck off. I don’t want to. I do tai chi and that’s basically yoga with violence. The way we do it anyway. You need ‘cardio’, yep, I play my tennis. I ride my bike. Just, not very far. 5 minutes each way to the station playing chicken with a bunch of school-run mums in Teslas, and back. 6 minutes if I get stuck behind the refuse collectors on a Wednesday and take evasive action by making new friends on the pavement.

This week is different. Holiday routine. Out at 8 to walk along the beach for half an hour. Back to the pool to swim our lengths. In ‘her’ case. Hundreds of them. I stick to widths and by 12 I’m bored. Though yesterday I zoomed in on my tai chi session on my balcony and that was splendid and bodily-nourishing and I kicked a lot of things. Mainly the glass doors and the table and chairs, cos its not the biggest balcony. So all that lot, coupled with my tennis, twice a week, and quite frankly, I’ll live as long as I’ll live. If doing 32 squats every day (where do they find such precise numbers for a population of such diverse body-shapes and abilities?) will give me an extra 3 days more incapacitated dribbling onto the floor of a care home, then that’ll be my loss, my regret.

Meanwhile, I haven’t reviewed a book in ages, so I must just make a mention of something quite extra-ordinary. The Traitor and the Spy by Ben MacIntyre. Its a completely true story of Cold War espionage written by a fantastic journalist. If it was fiction I’d have put it down as being ‘ridiculous’ and beyond credibility. But its true. Validated. And as such is just the brilliant story of an amazing man.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

As I stepped off the plane in Tel Aviv, I felt a ‘little tickle’ in my throat. The sort of ‘just a little tickle, nothing’ which, just 3 years ago would have had me barricading myself in the spare room for at least 10 days, taking my meals from Mel at the door dressed in full Hazmat. But now; just a tickle. Which has developed over the last 3 days into a full-blown… man-something. Not sure what. Hasn’t stopped me sunbathing or swimming. Certainly hasn’t stopped me eating. But at night it bothers me. All fucking night. And you know the rule: anything that bothers me is going to bother Mel. We ‘share’. That’s love.

And that’s all so much sympathy cravings, attention seeking, I get that. We’re all a bit Munschausen at times. But this morning my voice started to ‘go’. Just words weren’t coming out fully. “Pass me the schmaltz herring, darling” at breakfast became “-ass -a tz—errin—ling”. Ok, I probably didn’t need another bit of herring anyway but this is cause for great and grave concern. The very thought that I might be saying things of massive importance, of global significance, of profound scientific innovation or political creativity, and it could get lost in some pre-laryngitial mish-mash is of deep concern to all mankind. For the duration of this ailment I shall be recording every word uttered on my phone. Just in case. The complete, uncut recordings
will be available on Spotify from tomorrow under ‘The Lord has Spoken’. Even if he was only asking for another toilet roll.

And here’s a thought. ‘We’ can now choose to ‘identify’ as whatever gender, sex, hybrid, monster or thing we so choose. The arguments against are all along the same lines, vis a vis; you were ‘born’ as one definitive ‘thing’, biologically and now you choose to change it. And yet society is being forced to accept, for the sake of not wishing to offend a very few but very noisy minority, you are allowed to change how you are described.

So, despite being 67 on Friday, I IDENTIFY as a man of 42. And if you disagree, if you prove empirically that this is wrong/stupid, if you even challenge my assertion, I will fucking cancel you, murder your children, rape your pets and MAKE YOUR LIFE HELL!!!

So on Friday, we’ll be singing “42 today, 42 today, ee ai addiyo, 42 today.”

Happy Tuesday, unless it identifies as Wednesday

A xxxx

The beach road in Hertzliya is half a cliff up from the beach. So 10 years ago they put in a super lift to take the unfit, the aged, infirm, those with buggies and bikes, and the downright fucking lazy, down to beach level. But they also put a stairway in, which the superfit, like us, and those who always use stairs out of sheer guilt over what we’ve eaten, or for justification of what we’re about to eat, always take. But over here they don’t just take the stairs to the bottom. They then turn around and go back up. Then turn around and go down again. And again, and again. There’s so many people using the precisely 100 steps (we’ve counted them) in rinse-and-repeat mode that there’s precious room for those just, kind’a ‘going to the beach’. In fact, using the stairs just to, kind of, ‘get up or down’, is positively frowned upon by those who lack their own step machine. This is like 50 Stairmasters broke down and fitted together in ever upward configuration. Or, errr, downward, if you… like, er, turn round.

You can have a ‘full English’ breakfast, particularly in England, oddly, though pretty much everywhere else. Except a kosher hotel in Hertzliya. And, partial as I am to the breakfast which kills you with regular consumption, I also have a lot of time for an ‘Israeli breakfast’. For those who’ve never been to Israel, its just lunch, served early. But a fabulous lunch using that famous ‘Mediterranean style’ of food which, if consumed regularly, will make you live forever. Ever seen a dead Mediterranean? No, me neither. There ya go then.

Mel heads for the yoghurt, nuts, fruit and cereals. I don’t. I head for the lunch counter. Salads, tuna mayo, smoked mackerel, pickled herrings, amazing breads, hummus, chillies, cheeses, eggs, obviously, and all manner of wonderful things not normally found at breakfast tables elsewhere. But because its ‘Mediterranean’, there virtually no calories whatsoever. So few that you can take the lift down to the beach afterwards without guilt. Unless you then get an iced coffee. That’ll cost you 12 ups and downs at least.

Happy days (they’re all the same here)

A xxxx

Well, the day that ended with Manchester City winning the most coveted thing in proper (ie European) football; the ‘treble’, started not quite as well when 5am passed and the taxi coming to whisk us to Heathrow hadn’t shown up. They normally arrive ten minutes early and you either hear them outside or get the phone call from the driver just as you get out of the shower. Not this time. By 5.05 I’d called the office twice and left messages. By 5.08 the Uber contingency plan turned up and whisked us away. They called me at about 5.15 to apologise. I in turn was going to apologise for leaving such abusive profane messages but thought, ‘no, bollocks, fuck ‘em’, instead. Great flight, bumpy landing, all smooth and slick, got the rental car, whizzed up to Hertzliya in record time because on Saturdays only half the fucking lunatic Mad-Max impersonators who constitute the driving population here, are on the road. The rest are praying. Thanking God. Thank God.

We went for a walk, ate ice creams, enjoying the fact that however fast you eat, the sun can melt them quicker over here and it gets messy. Strolled along the beach, then the fatigue started to set in. So we showered, changed and went back to a beach bar for a bite. This beach bar, in fact. Because they do ‘beach bar’ here so fabulously. Even better than in London. We got into bed by 10.30 here, which was 8.30 ‘match time’. Fab. Mel was so exited she stuck on her Lone Ranger mask and fell asleep. I magnanimously turned off the commentary. Which was in Italian anyway. And… I made it to half time and then, gone.

The fact is, the match was one you’d describe as ‘technically wonderful’. Which is a footballing euphemism for ‘boring as fuck’. It had its moments, but Kevin de Bruyne going off injured was tragic. He’s been playing for months with a torn hamstring. How good is he going to be when fully fit then?

However, (apparently) they won the match. Rodri hit the winner. My fave City player. Elegant, majestic, gifted yet ‘ard as nails. And they got the monkey off their back by finally winning the Champions League and yet… left another primate, kind’a hanging there a bit longer. Because this final, however technical, was nothing like Man United’s one in 1999. When they scored two goals in the last 4 minutes of the game to win.

In fact, this ‘treble’ has had a feeling of complete inevitability since Arsenal withdrew from the league competition. When Man United won nothing was guaranteed. They had a fantastic team of guys who were playing beyond any levels they’d played before. City’s team were all bought because they live permanently ‘at that level’. But maybe that’s just the thoughts of old man missing the simplicity and honesty of the game in the past.

And yet it was so inevitable that the City owner, Sheikh Mansoor, actually turned up. The second time, in thirteen fucking years, that he has bothered to watch them live. Even though you can always get cheap flights from Abu Dhabi on EasyJet to Manchester if you want to, and it would only cost him an extra 22 quid for ‘speedy boarding’.

Ok, I really must go. I have work to do. Lying in the sun, paddling in the sea and eating wonderful food.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

I first went to Israel in July, 1976. The ‘kibbutz experience’ was by miles the cheapest way to ‘travel’, ‘stay away from home f’ra bit’ and ‘holiday’. Even though you work 6 days a week, so its not, like, Club Med, and the rooms are less ‘The Savoy’ and more ‘Stalag 14’, but that’s all part of the ‘sperience, innit’. And when you’re just 20, you barely notice things like discomfort, hard labour and cockroaches. Me and me mate, Steve, stayed a couple of months. It was simply brilliant. Independence, a world filled with young, fit and open-minded people, and at every bus stop you passed there was Gal Gadot in a khaki mini-skirt with a rifle slung over her shoulder. Possibly two of them.

We arrived 2 days after the ‘Raid on Entebbe’, when Israeli commandos flew to Uganda to rescue a hi-jacked flight, did a lot of shooting, were more heroic than Bruce Willis ever dreamed of, saved all the people and brought them safe. The only loss was Jonathan Netanyahu, the leader of the commandos and big brother to Binyamin who was also there. Two guys from our kibbutz ‘came home’ too, the day after we arrived. Having been whisked away silently, 5 nights previously. They said nothing, made no comment, asked for no praise. Cooler than Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher. But taller.

And then it happened. My mate Paul, a Californian with whom I collected eggs every morning from about 10,000 chickens who really didn’t want to give up their eggs, called for me in the afternoon. Work starts at 6-ish so you’re done by 2. We hitched a ride across the fields on a tractor, and from the road took the bus into the bustling metropolis which Kyriat Gat really wasn’t. It was just a really small desert town. Paul didn’t tell me why we’d gone there. And it was actually the bus terminal we sought. Because there was the path to heaven. Though this comes in many guises, as the holy all know. This particular route was via a pitta bread stuffed with felafel, hummus, chilli and other magic which I’d never experienced before.

If that little ‘take-away’ experience made me actually question the very fabric of my atheism, then our next trip, all the way into Beersheba for shawarma, sent me into the welcoming arms of the devil herself (you really think a man could ever be that evil??) forevermore. Because heaven is what drips down your arms. In the promised land.

Which is why I’ve just arrived back in Tel Aviv. Where spirituality comes wrapped in flat-bread and drips.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

We love a Sheikh, us football fans. Can’t get enough. Man City have got one, and you can’t get more successful than them. Newcastle have got one and look how brilliantly they’ve improved since his arrival! And now Man United might get their own. I never knew there were so many Sheikhs in the world.

Obviously, you don’t want a poor one. And why would you? When so many apparently have more gold than Midas. (The legendary king, not the exhaust pipe centres).

Man City’s is from Abu Dhabi. In fact, its probably safe to say that Sheikh Mansoor IS Abu Dhabi. Newcastle’s is from Saudi Arabia but only ‘represents the state’ when it absolutely suits him to and he can gain an advantage from that status. Otherwise he remains ‘completely independent from it’. For tax purposes.

And the man bidding for Manchester United is from Qatar. His family is worth 275 billion. Don’t know if that’s pounds or dollars but does it make any difference? Its the zeroes that count. And I must confess to not personally knowing Sheikh Jassim, I’m sure he’s a lovely man. And perhaps, unlike the others so titled, he may be honourable, honest and totally transparent in his financial dealings within the football world.

He’s promised, in what is claimed as his ‘5th and final bid to buy United’, to settle their debt. And because the club has been (mis-)managed for the last 18 years by the horrendous Glazer family, that debt is now so close to a billion quid that any change would barely buy you a superyacht. But that is the Glazer’s business model. Buy a sports team with money borrowed by the team, rake off ‘profits’ every year then sell the club for an immense profit without settling the initial debt, which remains with the club. How that is legal I really don’t understand, but its what they do.

Sheikhs don’t do that. They don’t need to. The word ‘debt’ does not exist in Sheikh-language.

Spurs didn’t get a Sheikh, we got an Aussie. And West Ham won a European cup last night, once again showing that fans don’t have to be in any way ‘nice’ or even ‘decent’ to enjoy footballing success.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

This is the answer to my dreams! And of course, it took Apple to realise precisely what I didn’t need, what I’ve never needed, never wanted, and yet make me see the rest of my life in new and different terms, dependent on their design team. Because now, I’ll be liberated from walking down the street staring at my phone. I’ll get my left arm back. And, in time, my neck will straighten up properly after all those years of ‘head down’ gazing. I can walk upright in Oxford Street!! So no more bumps and bruises from walking into Lithuanian shoppers, Swedish half-termers, French study groups and Bosnian pick-pockets (no right minded English person EVER goes down Oxford Street) as I amble along with eyes on my phone and headphones on, hitting lampposts, traffic wardens and other tossers staring at their phones who aren’t looking where they’re going either. The headphones protect me from Electric Vehicles which make no noise, so they told me in the Bose shop.

Anyway: that’s all done with!!! I’m going VR, possibly permanently, and I don’t know when I’ll be back in ‘your world’, because frankly, my new one will be much better. Because these goggles may look to you’re totally fucking moronic if you’re not on a piste, but that’s because of your ignorance. They’re not just about playing stupid games, leaping around the lounge as if being attacked by a swarm of killer zombie bees, these goggles are YOUR LIFE!!! Emails come up, all selected by just looking at the correct, heads-up, icon. It tracks your eye movements. Ok, bit of a problem if you’re driving round Hyde Park Corner, but other drivers will understand that something superior is happening in your vehicle. You’re changing lanes because your daughter just sent you a picture of her brunch. You reply to emails with your voice. Keyboards are sooooo 2023, dahling. And its going to be the absolute next best thing.

This also solves the ‘AI problem’ because we’ll all become robots and you won’t be able to tell the difference, other than the humans will be wearing goggles which make them look like robots and the real robots won’t. They’re fully integrated. And we shall ‘interface’ with them. But with all heads upright!

The future’s bright, its… whatever you want it to look like, for 2 hours til the batteries run out.

A xxxx