Andy's Glasses

This is what’s now known as ‘the Harry Kane question’. Should he stay at Spurs for the lurve or move somewhere else for success. Somewhere like… Manchester United!!! You simply can’t get ‘bigger’ than that But… but… if he’s moving ‘to win things’, which all the world’s media feel he should, if nothing else, to give them something to write about and speculate upon, then can Man U. guarantee silverware? Like really? He can lose cup finals at Spurs. The Mancs have won nothing in ages. Ok, not quite as much ‘nothing’ as Spurs and slightly less ‘ages’. But people tend to forget the barren years, when there was no Matt Busby, no Alex Ferguson, and Man U. were pretty average for long periods of time. Times like… right now.

Or he could go to possibly the only team in the world who are as big/bigger than Man U; Real Madrid. They love an old striker in Madrid but their current one is leaving to go chase the oil money in Saudi (I haven’t read his contract because I lost track of all the zeros), so now they want Harry too. A bidding war will ensue. And Real will win because they’re quite happy to bankrupt the entire city of Madrid to buy a player, they have done that so many times before. Financial Fair Play rules are suspended as you approach the Spanish capital. As they are in certain parts of Manchester and around Paris. Newcastle have now requested a suspension too.

But I don’t care! Because we’re actually talking to a manager! With a view to ‘buying him’!! Though you don’t get an Amazon returns policy with managers. Nothing’s certain yet but talks have begun with Ange Postecoglou. Oh. He’s the manager of Celtic. They’re a football club somewhere up north in the third world. He’s an Aussie. Which sounds a bit ‘Ted Lasso’ but wait; he’s a great manager. He took Celtic, 6 years ago, from a team who always win every single trophy that Scotland can bash out of zinc, every single year, brushing aside all who come before them, and turned them into a winning team! And that’s not easy. Ok, it may seem easy because other than Rangers, there is simply no competition north of the border to Celtic’s yearly ‘parade’, which they call ‘the league’. But heh, beggars can’t be choosers and with the transfer window coming and no manager and no director of football, Spurs aren’t looking too clever.

So I’m hoping for Ange. Because there is literally no-one else on the planet prepared to even talk about taking a job widely regarded as ‘toxic’.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

What does summer mean to you? Cricket at Lords? Tennis without an umbrella? Top down on the car? Shorts’n’t-shirts? Liberation from football woes?

Or ice cream?

I wear shorts all year, because I’m a bit daft, play tennis in any weather and actually prefer it when its not too hot and similarly will always drive any convertible with the top down unless its pouring… or snowing. But ice cream? That remains a defining feature of ‘the summer’. Once we’re allowed to actually have a summer. Since Brexit ruined the weather AS WELL!!!

So on Thursday, when we for once had both kids all day as Lila was expelled from school. Ok, it was half term, but really its only a matter of time. And they wanted to go to ‘the ice cream farm’. Because we’ve been before. And it was a farm, at some stage in its long-ago, because they have broken old tractors for the kids to play on, and bales of hay for them to jump on. But that’s it. Not a cow in sight. Nor a combine harvester. Just a shop, which sells ice cream. And that’s what Lila and Joey wanted. Ok, they jumped on the bales, played in the playground which is ok but probably not as good as the ones a 4 minute walk from home, but it was the ice cream, in lots of flavours, that they wanted. And were prepared to sit for 30 minutes each way in the car to get them. Was it worth the journey? Oh yeah. It really was. For all of us.

Today we had tickets for a play about dinosaurs at the local theatre. I booked it ages ago, then thought it might be good to take the kids too. What could be nicer on the sunniest, warmest, loveliest, most summeriest Sunday afternoon of the entire year, than sitting in a darkened, air-conditioned theatre with 300 kids screaming at a faux T-Rex? However, it must be said, as kids shows go, and we’ve suffe- endur- seen our share, this one was pretty bloody good. As you can see by this Triceratops. It was real. Alive. No, it really was. No idea how that happened but we’ve all seen Jurassic Park, right?

Then we went for ice cream. Which were also real. I love McDonalds ice cream. People tell you “its got more chicken fat in it than… than a chicken!!!”, or that “its made from petroleum byproducts and increases the world’s carbon levels” or any such bollocks. But I don’t care what they do nor how its made. It is simply wonderful ice cream. Lila and Joey agreed with me. Mel didn’t even get asked the question as she had a face full of McFlurry at the time of the survey.

Happy Summer Days

A xxxx

The government refuses to give up all its private WhatsApp messages to the inquiry into Boris’s Covid behaviour. The latest inquiry. Part 7: “The CRISIS!!!” In previous parts we’ve had partygate, Dominic-Cummings-gate and the garden gate, through which Boris goes out for his daily run. To prove every day, as he has for the past 12 years, that running in no way makes you fit, slim or toned. Just a fat fuck who bounces around for 5 miles across the park looking like a heart-attack waiting to happen.

Yet, much as Jesus famously said ‘let he who hath not sinned cast the first stone’, thus Boris’s whatsapps. If a court in any country in the world waded through a week’s worth of my very own messages, I’d be arrested, cancelled, unemployable and hailed as a sexist, racist, misogynist, homophobic, woman-phobic, trans-phobic, fatty-phobic, skinny-phobic and definitely vegan-phobic, and beaten up by supporters of Arsenal, Manchester City, Leeds, Everton and hopefully Chelsea. Would be a boring week if I wasn’t.

Does that make me a misogynistic, chauvinistic, smug, schaudenfreudist antichrist who is godless, friendless and hopeless? Or just a normal bloke who has mates with too much time on their hands and possibly a bit too little grey matter elsewhere.

But the fact is that Whatsapp is for the exchange of worthless, meaningless but preferably extremely amusing, nonsense. If I get a message ‘my dog’s got a bad leg, ahhhhh’, my response would inevitably be along the lines of ‘shoot him’. A court would view that statement as ‘incitement to murder’, any normal person would get that its just ‘banter’. I get loads of ‘stuff’ mocking the whole ‘trans’ argument. They in no way reflect any animosity or otherwise towards that sector of society but generally mock the quite ridiculous effect this has on our lives and even the words we can use in that context. I seldom ‘redact’ any messages. I wasn’t aware you could. Nor do I care.

And the problem with an inquiry looking into Boris’s messages, and everyone else’s is that they find it very difficult to sift the serious from the ‘taking the piss’. Its subtle. Nuanced. Highly contextual. So if Boris said “we should just let 150,000 old people die from Covid and that’ll save on care sector funds”, he probably didn’t mean it. I’d have meant it but he might have been mocking.

Boris has given his phone willingly to the inquiry. But that’s his ‘new phone’ and only started in May 2021 so is useless in any inquiry starting in March 2020. But Rishi is very opposed to giving over his and those of his colleagues. Which is why ‘we’ are in court sorting it out.

Assuming the inquiry does not have the power to actually bring any of the covid victims back to life: WHAT IS THE FUCKING POINT???

Cup final today; train strike today; the perfect storm.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

Apparently we (and I speak here for ALL of humanity) are facing extinction. Not the one that’s coming because of global warming, that’ll take some time. This one is from Artificial Intelligence. Its not mere conspiracy theorists spouting their normal bollocks either, this message comes from the 350 most eminent men in the AI field. Who are worried that ‘superintelligent AI with interests misaligned with humans’ might ‘unwittingly’ destroy us. Well how ‘superintelligent’ can you be if you do fairly major things ‘unwittingly’? I think their title needs to be downgraded to ‘daft’, ‘stupid’ or just merely ‘normal-intelligent’ AI.

So here’s my message to these 350 ‘superintelligent’ professors and pioneers and techno-whizzes all competing to advance AI to positively Terminatoresque limits in which the computers themselves program the next level of computers and the shit hits the fan. The message is ‘STOP’. Just fucking stop trying to out-brilliant each other by devising something even more brilliant. Even though Google/Apple/Meta will pay you 17 billion dollars for your efforts.

If you’re driving down a road which you know ends at a cliff edge, even if its an electric car, the sound advice would always be along the lines of ‘stop’. So what’s the fucking problem?

Buddhists aspired to a state in which you exist only in spirit form. You don’t need a human body, that’s just a machine for turning hamburgers into shit (Buddhism predates McDonalds by a thousand years). Similarly, the most advanced AI ‘machine’ is just a black box plugged into a socket. Yet really, for most people, AI can only be appreciated once you stick it into a person-shape. And the most advanced robot in the world now confesses to ‘have the personality of a 15 year old boy or girl’. And that’s how ‘intelligent’ artificial intelligence is. To avoid any gender/identity issues, Robot-thing is truly ‘they/theirs’. Possibly ‘it/its’, but certainly not ‘tits’. And because it doesn’t possess an artificial penis, it can go into any toilet in the world without invading anyone’s safe space. Although it wouldn’t do very much once it got there, obvs.

The future is here. Its just a matter of how long it lasts.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

I just want to mention Philip Schofield, not cos I like him, dislike him, have ever watched him or give two shits for anything he says or does. I just want to mention him. Simply because in this whole ‘I’M QUITTING ITV, FREVVER!!!!’ irrelevant, ‘who cares’ bullshit currently dominating all the headlines, one thing struck me as a bit odd. Coming from Mr Nice Guy, Sweet-as-Pie, make that Mr Nice Gay, I’m still the wovverley, cudderwy wittle nonce I always was, whichever way my ship sails, the comment about his ‘affair’ as being ‘unwise but not illegal’ set alarm bells ringing. Well, my alarm bells. You could use such an expression in the context of a tax avoidance scheme, maybe, and possibly get away with it. Possibly parking in someone else’s driveway. But in relation to anything sexual it takes on a whole other narrative. Because when sex is involved, what’s illegal? Certainly not sex between men, that was legalised in 197-something, though soon to be banned in America if Desantis becomes president, and certainly not anything extra-marital because no one cares what 3rd rate celebs do in or out of their marriages. So to even raise the question of ‘legal’ or ‘not legal’, we must be talking about age. And then, the very next day, we learn that Smiley Phil actually met this ‘man’ when he was just 15. But the affair didn’t start til the kid- SORRY!!!!- not ‘kid’, obviously, but MAN, big MAN, was 18. And in the interim we can therefore assume there was no pressure, no promises, no insinuation of career prospects, as this boy/man worked with Schofield. No, if Phil says it was all kosher and Marquis of Queensbury rules, I’m happy with that.

I really wanted to talk about the last day of the football season. Spurs won!!!! How happy that made me. Oh, really? No, I’m been over this season since January. But then it was Leicester or Everton going down. Leicester are winning!, now they’re 2-0 up against West Ham, Everton will be going down!!! Now Everton have scored!!!! And its Leicester will go down unless… unless nothing. Leicester are down. I’ll miss them like I miss having a covid jab every 4 months. Not sure I’m thrilled about Everton staying up but I don’t get a vote. And so the season’s over, we have no manage, no director of football, all previously considered options have flown to pastures new and we’re left, once more, sifting through the also rans. I love football.

Happy Bank Holiday Monday

A xxxx

We went to an exhibition yesterday. In Kensington. Which is dead posh, obviously. We walked through Holland Park to get there and you can’t get posher than that. Its where Rishi Sunak lives, ffs, so you know there’s money around. Not in the park though which, although really beautiful, was full of Russians and Poles and Koreans and Albanians pushing babies round in buggies, dressed in shell suits.

And at the end of the park there sits the Design Museum. Inside which was the works of Ai Weiwei, the noted Chinese artist, ‘activist’ and all-round troublemaker, the one who’s seminal work filled the hallway of the Tate Modern a few years back. That was a 120 metre display of stones. Not painted, not tipped or dumped, but each one ‘placed’. Millions of them. It sat there for ages. Because no-one could be bothered to pick them up again. And also, because it was ‘art’.

The Design Museum is a gorgeous space, massive, which was good because Ai Weiwei doesn’t really get the whole ‘minimal’ thing at all. For him, art is BIG. And so, inevitably, there were lesser rows of stones on the floor. Broken tea pots, all arranged nicely, lying there, about 30 metres by 20. Its what he does. I get that. And its meaningful. Didn’t get that quite as much but there is an aesthetic there, no doubt. And the man has spent his life defying the Chinese authorities, for which he must be credited. And why he now lives in Portugal.

But here’s the amazing thing, if you’re into coincidence.

Having written extensively yesterday my personal homage to Lego, and Yego, it turns out that there is one fan even more devoted than me to little Swedish bricks, and that is Ai Weiwei. He’s done loads of work with Lego bricks. Massive works with tiny bricks. There’s his version of Monet’s Water Lilies, amazing, 25 metres long, obviously, and must contain a million little Lego pieces.

When China put him in prison, Lego wouldn’t or couldn’t send him any bricks. So people sort of ‘crowdfunded’ his needs and send him tons of them. Which is what he displayed in the traditional Ai Weiwei manner, by dumping them on the floor. Like Joey would. That wouldn’t please his mum, I’m sure.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

When you think of Sweden, what springs to mind? Lots of blonde people running round healthily (your mind will be in summertime, obviously, if its in winter those same blondes will be frozen solid in near pitch black lightlessness for those 8 months)? Or ABBA??? Volvo? Ikea? Bjorn Borg? Smorgasbord? Herring??

I used to think along those lines, but now, to me, Sweden = Lego.

Which, I admit, is pretty stupid because Lego is Danish. But is there a difference? Like, really? Not from down ‘ere there ain’t. The only things to notably occur in either of those places, according to their tv offerings and popular literature, are grizzly murders. Lots of them. And other than during the World Cup, Sweden=Denmark=Norway.

When I was a kid, I played with Lego. When I had kids, they played with Lego. Now my kids have kids, and they play with Lego. Well, Lila does, Joey plays with Yego. If he still refuses to pronounce an ‘L’ like an ‘L’ by the time he’s 18, I’ll be worried. For now, its sweet. And never sweeter than calling to his sister “YIIIYAAAAAAH!!!”, (think along the lines of Fred Flintstone’s ‘Wilmaaaa!’, but louder).

We used to buy boxes of ‘bricks’, from which we created… stuff. Castles. They were easy. Houses. Easier still. Anything curved had to be made really big so you could fashion those curves from straight bricks. Which is good for Lego, cos you had to buy more. Building walls was good. Towers. Boxes… you get the drift.

But now, you buy a Lego kit and it forms a fully articulated Tyrannosaurus Rex with swishing tale and bad breath, which actually (for a £4.99 upgrade kit) gives birth to live young. It is THAT fucking brilliant. The Lego dogs bark (and shit too, for £4.99 extra), the cars work, doors open, windows hinge. Its all too clever and brilliant to be true. And best of all, Lila can build absolutely anything Lego, because the instructions are so simple, clear and clever. Maybe that’s the Danish bit. Which they need to pass across the mermaid to their mates at Ikea.

On Thursday, Joey’s birthday, ‘we’ made a fire station. With a fire engine, fire helicopter and everything you could imagine a child of 4 could want. Other than, in Joey’s case, the box of matches and a REAL axe. And it all ‘works’, using clips and ball and socket joints and little fake lights and roller-blinds, ffs. But even better than the previous ‘best of all’, you can’t break any of the pieces. No matter how small, how seemingly fragile, how delicate, they’ll outlive all of us by 25,000,000 years. Which is perhaps the only issue you could take with so much plastic, but… but… OMG, so much pleasure and even Joey can’t break it.

Have a yoveryey day

A xxxx

I don’t know if you’ve noticed (and in many ways, it says a lot of good things if you haven’t) but there are many footballers around who aren’t… what you’d call… could be described as… white. Some of us remember when Luther Blisset played in the 60s and 70s, and Clyde Best and they suffered terrible abuse from their own fans, never mind everyone else’s. Mainly because the world was filled with morons and now the terraces are full of brilliantly clever egalitarians and equal rightsists. And any morons left over have now been sent away and banished from these shores. To Spain.

Where it is perfectly acceptable and normal to make monkey chants at black players. As happened to Real Madrid’s Brazilian superstar Vinicius, on Sunday at Valencia. And, apparently, at virtually every other ground he’s graced with his magical feet, virtually every week. And I get that everyone in Spain hates Real Madrid and so to ‘get at’ one of their star players is ‘the thing to do’. ‘Wind him up’. But, really? With juvenile racist tropes?

So Vinicius ‘lost it’, and to be honest, he has every right. Real Madrid have made legal accusations against Valencia and attacked this horrible culture, rife in Spanish football.
At which point the Chairman of La Liga himself, Snr Javier Tebas, came out and made everyone feel much better by stating that, no, there is no racism problem in Spanish football. Not at all.

Ok, so if its not Valencia that have a racism problem, as viewed by the governing league body, then its that view that’s wrong. And if the Spanish government then agree that there’s no problem, then the only conclusion is that the whole nation is institutionally racist and thus finds tolerable and acceptable what the rest of the world finds abhorrent. Its like Corbyn with his antisemitism. If you deny the abuse that is pretty obvious to everyone else then you’re saying such things are perfectly fine. Whereas you’re just trying to normalise racism.

And when I say ‘the rest of the world’, I mean the relatively civilised bit. Go east of Berlin and it all goes downhill rapidly. Croatia, Serbia, Poland, Russia (obviously, they hate everyone), and its a shit-storm of racist abuse at every opportunity.

“Stamp it out” should kind’a work everywhere. That’s, sort of, the point?

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

I’m no fan of the Home Secretary. Not the ‘job’ as such, that’s quite important, but our current person in charge of police, homes and… immigration!!! And to be honest, I find her a bit too ‘Conservative’ for my particular tastes, a bit too anti-everybody, a bit too ‘send ’em off to Rwanda’-y and a bit too Brexity. But that’s just me. I don’t have to love her, just put up with her and all the good work that she does. Or doesn’t do.

But what she does in her spare time is not for me to say. Though does appear for everyone else to say. Particularly tossers, who always have a lot to say.

She drove too fast and got caught. Which immediately gets my sympathy. Even horrible hard-righters have a right to speed.

Now here’s an interesting irony. The speeds on our roads are set by boroughs, and some are set by government. But the Home Office is in ultimate charge. So if some are too slow (they’re ALLLLLLL too slow) then she really should do something about it. Rather than effectively breaking her own legal limits.

Anyway, Cruella got flashed, got a ticket, and was offered a ‘speed awareness course’. Just like everyone else. So she asked someone in her office if she could have a ‘one on one’ version of the course. Rather than the group bore-a-thons that the rest of us endure. And I get that. Because she’s famous, and because its really embarrassing for a minister to be mixing with us normal law-breakers.

Yet this is a red line. For Kier Starmer and his acolytes. Wes Streeting was on the news calling for Braverman’s head. Starmer insists on her resignation, but that’s all he ever says about anyone. “This needs to come before the ethics committee!!” “We need an investigation!!” “This is a clear breach of the ministerial code!!!” they cry.

To which I can only ask ‘why?’ Why waste time, effort, energy and MY money on absolutely nothing? Just to try and score a few pathetic political points. This isn’t Boris and his lockdown parties, its not watching porn during a parliamentary session, nor joining a conference with a bunch of ‘nationalists’, its not even sexual assault. Just, ‘I’d rather do this on my own’. Speed awareness courses are a perfectly legal option. They’re not ‘hiding the crime’ or ‘looking for a way out’, they’re just self-inflicted punishment by boredom on those duped into thinking their insurance company won’t know. Cos they will. Have these people got nothing more important to worry about?

There’s a million reasons to pick on and hate Suella Braverman. This ain’t one of them.

Happy Monday

I want to apply for a transfer. I’ve written to Daniel Levy to request being put on the transfer market, so I can go and be a fan at another club. I have a lot going for me as a football fan. I’m experienced, I’m loyal (well, til yesterday), I love the game, I’m completely stupid (otherwise I’d have put in a request decades ago) and I know lots of great football songs. Which can quite easily be shifted from one team to the next. Other than ‘sit down you paedophile’ which doesn’t really adapt in any meaningful way. Though it was a nice tune which Mr Wenger always seemed to enjoy. And instead of ‘Yid Armeee, Yid Armeee, etc, etc, etc…’ I could just change it to ‘… Armeee,… Armeee…’ So you can see, I’m quite flexible in my skill set.

So where should I go? Obviously, Arsenal is completely out of the question. They’re an easy journey, play super football, have a wonderful stadium and enjoy quite a measure of success. Who wants that? Also, I’m fundamentally too decent a person to qualify for Arsenal fandom. And really, I think I need to ‘get back to basics’. So I reckon I’m actually looking for a really horrible, train-strikey, 5 hour trip each way, to a northern shit-hole, in order to enter a Dickensian, piss-smelling, red-brick stadium where everybody moans all the time. But to become a Manchester United fan would make me the ultimate cliché as three quarters of their ‘fans’ live in London. The rest all live within the M25 except for 9 people, all named Ramsbottom.

If I was glory seeking I’d endure the same journey but to go to the ‘other’ Manchester team. Who are now known as ‘Manchester’s first team’, with those in red colours now relegated to the mid-table wannabe status their erstwhile ‘poor relations’ used to enjoy until they suddenly became the exceptionally rich relations. Though there is appeal in becoming a City fan. Firstly, but not necessarily the most important, from my current perspective, is that you win trophies faster and more frequently than they can cast them. Secondly, you get to buy up every single best player in the world and keep them forever. And thirdly, you get to entirely restructure the whole world of profit and loss accounting, just to try and satisfy a bunch of European pedantics who obsess about such things.

Liverpool don’t accept Londoners, which is good, because we don’t accept them. Newcastle is a great possibility except for the language barrier and Chelsea are obviously not prepared to take me until my martial arts skills have improved greatly.

So that leaves the south coast. Because I like Brighton and Bournemouth. But there’s always a chance… a possibility… that they might… not be… so… errrr… permanent in the Premiership. And I couldn’t face Championship football. Or worse. Sorry, or ‘lower’. I’m too much a Princess for such unsnobbish, grounded, good fun, low expectations and accepting type fan attitudes.

There’s a place for me… somewhere, a place for meeeee…

Happy Sunday

A xxxx