Andy's Glasses

I really love connectivity. I love the way things go round and you end up where they started. Its the seven degrees of Kevin Bacon. Its finding that a guy your friend met is the friend of another guy who was your best mate in 1973. And thus, the tale of Maiwenn.

Who?

Oh, Maiwenn, the French bird wot wrote, directed and stars in the new movie, Jeanne du Barry. Starring… Johnny Depp!!! OMG!!! Have we forgiven him yet? For… for… well, have we? Anyway, he’s in her film. She does have a surname but no-one uses it. No-one can pronounce her first name but its all she needs. Like Beyoncé, like Keanu, like Pele, like Lila, they only need one name. But its her appearance which is really amazing.

This picture was Maiwenn in 1997. She was blue. And had dangly things. And a fucking great head. And she sang a fantastic operatic pop song in The 5th Element movie. One of the 17 films in my all-time top 5. No idea why I like it because it is very silly. But Bruce Willis was… Bruce Willis, always amazing value. It had the oh-so-beautiful, naive and yet exceptionally dangerous Mila Jovovich, speaking gobbledygook, oh-so-beautifully. And it had Maiwenn.

Who was married, at the time, to the director, Luc Besson. Another reason I loved the movie, because Luc was pure class. His ‘Leon’ was a true classic. About a 12 year old Natalie Portman having her parents shot dead and falling into the care of a hit-man. The relationship between this beautiful child and Jean Reno’s weirdo hitman who was in love with a rubber-plant, was tantalisingly blurred at the edges.

And yet, Luc Besson was in a relationship with Maiwenn when she was 15. She had his child when she was 16. So in retrospect, Leon possibly had some kind of autobiographical resonance for Luc. I make no judgments. And the French lack certain ‘boundaries’ that more civilised people adhere to.

Maiwenn is no longer married to Luc, and is no longer blue. Maybe that’s why the marriage failed, when she changed colour. I don’t know. But she’s gorgeous in a highly toothsome way which doesn’t always look great in other nationalities, but is fab in French.

So that’s it. The director of a movie starring a ‘persona non grata’ for 3 years, was once a light blue opera singer in a film directed by her slightly perverted husband’s fabulous movie 26 years before, which I’ve loved ever since. And that makes me happy.

Never said I was ‘normal’.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

I’m lovin’ every minute of Brexit. I feel… free! From Europe. I feel… pleasantly isolated, on my little island with the borders closed FOREVER. I feel… wonderfully liberated from all those stupid, pesky Euro-laws which have made our lives miserable for decades. I feel… wonderful. God bless Boris Johnson and his team, and Nigel Farage especially, for finally delivering what we all wanted. And needed.

Needed?

Yes, needed. Because you see Britain is perfectly self-sufficient in everything. And we’re brilliant at banking and finance. Insurance. And, apparently, money-laundering but that goes hand-in-hand with the rest of it, I s’pose. But we make so much money from these core businesses that we don’t need anyone or anything else.

Ok, we need a bit of food, but that’s fine as long as its not Brie, Camembert or Champagne. We can make our own pizzas but pretty soon we won’t be allowed to call them ‘pizzas’ due to Euro-regulations. Hummus is fine because it comes from further afield.

It would be nice to manufacture something really, but its not that important to us as a nation, especially if you live within the M25 where absolutely nothing is made, except money. So we can fund the rest of the country who are all out-of-work due to factory closures. When all the car manufacturers pulled the plug here and took their plants over to Europe where its easy to get the parts in without any fuss. Because since Brexit we’ve become the world leaders in ‘fuss’. Everything arriving from Europe needs certification, duty, vat, forms, palaver and endless bollocks. Those bastards, just because we chose to voluntarily leave the biggest free trading block in the world. We showed ‘em!

Elon Musk went to France yesterday for the meeting of the world’s 2 most obnoxious people. And he agreed with Macron to a massive new plant, in France, obviously, to make batteries for Teslas. The ones he makes at this brand new factory in Berlin.

Musk is not coming to Britain on his little Euro-tour because he’s on a private jet, obviously, and the irony of the man leading the ‘green motoring revolution’ spewing another 14 tons of carbon into the atmosphere is a bit rum. Especially as he has no need to come here. No business to conduct. Too difficult to deal with Britain.

Well at least we’ve stopped all those bloody migrants. Oh, we haven’t. Cruella is sorting that out now. We’ve stopped the European ones at least, removed their free access to our nations riches. So if you’re free for the next three months, there’s 47,329 vacancies for harvesting on farms otherwise another year’s crop will just rot.

We got Brexit DONE! And we’re all the better for it.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

I’m conflicted. And it makes me feel… uncomfortable. Conflict does that.

You see, the problem is football. Its always football. And at this time of the season, the deals get done, the projects finalised, the outcomes realised. There’s nowhere to hide when you’re heading for relegation and can’t score a goal. Like Leicester last night against (sometimes-)mighty Liverpool. And we all have a, sort of ‘mini-soft-spot’ for the Foxes because they won the league 7 years ago against all imaginable odds. And then degenerated into something less wholesome. Something a bit more Jamie Vardy. A bit more Gary Lineker. So if they should take the plunge, you can’t help but think that may take at least a smidge of smugness off Linker’s face. Jamie Vardy’s face is simply a lost cause.

But my main area of conflict is at the top. As Arsenal virtually conceded any chance of winning the league by losing to Brighton my initial, instinctive and unconscious reaction was one of joy and happiness. That doesn’t make me a good person, I appreciate that, it just makes me a Spurs fan. Which is not always a logical, considered, even decent place to be. But there ya go. Because when I do consider, I realise that I’m apparently happy for Manchester City to win the league. Again. And firstly that’s a bit boring and secondly I’m in the unholy position of cheering for the devil. For the immoral, unscrupulous and corrupt. A team who appal me with their flaunting of at least 105 rules (according the ongoing case against them). Who twist and turn and conceal and obfuscate at every financial mis-dealing.

Hence my conflict. The thought of Arsenal winning the league fills me with dread. The thought of Man City winning fills me with disgust.

Dread… disgust… dread… disgust…

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

I am a European.
I was a European. Now I’m a narrow-minded, small-worlded, Island-mentality-ed, isolationist INLISHMAN.

There was good and bad with Brexit. In fact, there was bad and worse with Brexit. The only good bit was that we could get rid of some of their ridiculous laws which led to a packet of peanuts showing the statement ‘MAY CONTAIN NUTS’. Which is nuts, unless you’re a Euro-bureaucrat, in which case its making the world safe. They never considered the nut-allergists who can’t read, did they???

Anyway, none of that has happened yet. The 4,762 (no idea really, but its a lot) laws we wish to dispose of are still sitting there awaiting the immense task of being written out of law and replaced with good, British laws. So a packet of peanuts will say ‘DOES CONTAIN NUTS’. So what part, exactly, of GET BREXIT DONE, has actually been done?

And why are we still in the Eurovision Song Contest? Why the fuck was Australia EVER in it? But they’re in it by choice. I want out so I don’t have to suffer the humiliation of my beautiful, walled in, foreigners-out nation coming second from bottom. To a bunch of gender ambiguous, hip-hop, electro-rapping out-of-work EUROPEANS! Among whom, I no longer number.

Turkey wants to become part of the EU. They saw an empty slot with ‘UK’ rubbed out and they want in. Well, only if Erdegan’s opponent wins, obviously. If the incumbent president is victorious he’ll just continue to erode as many democratic rights from his people as he can, then he’ll do a Xi Jinping and pronounce himself President for Life and possibly declare war on Europe. But the problem there today is that the reports of the incoming ‘results’ are all different, all contradictory and, basically, can’t be trusted. I wouldn’t say Erdegan is ‘corrupt’, never, but he is. Totally. The Turks will abandon their nation. And if they try to come here they’ll end up in Senegal. So that’ll be the place for kebabs. I’m booking my flights now.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

So whilst you were lazing around, reading the papers, relaxing in front of a hot tv screen, putting the kids through the car-wash, sitting in a beer-garden, strolling round some village or generally being a lazy fucking bastard!!!, some of us were busy. But like, busy. (Note: for the purposes of this message, neither ‘gloating’, nor ‘wallowing in Arsenal’s displeasure and frustration’, counts as ‘work’. It is pure pleasure.)

Because one of Mel’s staff had the bare-faced cheek and outrageous audacity to take a holiday, I was seconded to go and help. Even though I insult people and generally cause way more bother than I’m worth, there was no-one else to ask. And because of that, I had to play tennis at 9 instead of my usual 10. The sacrifices I make…

Tennis was great, it barely rained at all. Then home, shower, change, and to work. Which was, as always on a Sunday morning, busy.

But then I left at 12.45 because I went to a stone-setting. Its the Jewish version of a ‘memorial’. About 9 months after burial, its time to accept that they ain’t gonna rise up, (as did happen to one Jewish guy a couple thousand years ago), so its ok to put half a ton of granite on top. And whilst you’re doing it, you might as well say a few prayers. Which we duly did. And its comforting for the bereaved and a nice kind of ‘closure’. Even though it was in Bushey. Though it was unusually sunny and lovely, which always adds.

I came all the way back to London from Hertfordshire, (20 minutes), only to go to the Affordable Art Fair, for which we’d acquired tickets many months ago. And the art was… affordable. If you can blow 5 grand on a dog made of scrap metal, or a collage which Joey would be proud of, then its very ‘affordable’. But its on Hampstead Heath. Which is lovely. And on a sunny day, what could be nicer. Ok, getting there without getting really lost on the Heath might be a bit nicer, but that’s the nature of trees. They all look the fucking same. We didn’t get quite so lost getting home. Just… let’s just say, if I had a step-counter I’d have hit any target 6 times.

Home for the last 10 minutes of the Arsenal game which, due to, as mentioned above, my refusal to claim any enjoyment from, ended about 10 minutes later.

Happy Sunday,

A xxxx

Tonight sees the ‘final’ of the Eurovision Song Contest. What anyone older than 7 calls simply ‘The Eurovision Song Contest’. I can never recall semi-finals before. Nor quarter finals or rounds of… about 95 probably. The Contest has now been extended to a week-long extravaganza of screaming, singing really awful songs, better dancing, dressing up in silly costumes and impersonations of Agnetha when she sung ‘Waterloo’. Which never hit the spot because there is no one in Liverpool with such a great voice or fabulous bum. I’m just adorning the lounge with the flags of all the entrant’s countries and getting my wig ready for dressing up as that geezer last year who won but was not allowed victory because Ukraine was, and still is, at war with Russia. Can’t remember his name because we’ll never see or hear from him again. Which is why Eurovision is so good for so many people; because its so bad. Third-rate artists performing production-line manufactured Euro-crap, way beneath my superior and cultured tastes (Black Sabbath?), so I’ve never really watched it.

But Russia is still invading Ukraine, in case you hadn’t noticed. The people still living in Ukraine have definitely noticed. Which is why Liverpool is hosting the contest. Because its the city which most resembles the Donbas after 15 months of Russian assault.

So we’ve banned the Russians from entering. Doubtless a tragic loss to music. But in doing so the Eurovision People have made a political statement. They’ve abandoned neutrality. Ok, on the side of the good guys, but they’ve made them the good guys by not banning Ukraine too. Quite rightly.

Yet when President Zelensky asked to address the contest by video link they said a big ‘non!!’ Or ‘nein!!’, possibly ‘niet!!’ or whatever Eurovisioners say to state a negative. And I have to say I agree. I love little Zelensky, he reminds me of a toy soldier I had when I was 9. But his speech would be about the war. “Great song, now send me more tanks”. And it is inappropriate. Because that is a serious matter and the Eurovision isn’t. Its total bollocks.

Rishi Sunak disagreed with the Euros and said Zelensky should speak. Ok, another worthless opinion from our PM which everyone will ignore. Then Kier Starmer said he actually agreed with Rishi, rather than saying ‘the Prime Minister must go!’, like he normally does.

And that’s when I realised that I really really agreed with the decision. Because whatever Starmer says is wrong, stupid and useless. That’s it. Dilemma over.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

Do you remember ‘in the old days’, when a car ‘went wrong’, it was because the top hose had split and you had water all over the driveway. Or your fan-belt broke and you had to wrap your wife’s tights round the engine to get home. But then cars got better. Stronger, less prone to breakdown, and much safer. And that safety used to be measured by the width of the bumpers, the strength of the chassis, the crash resistance of the sub-frame.

Not any more. I just received an email telling me that our new car’s data protection has been updated. I’ll stop wearing the crash helmet then. You just take it to the garage, where a guy called ‘Jim’, wearing overalls, a roll-up stuck in the corner of his lip, greasy spanner in his hand, will sort it out. Ok, that was a joke, which you know because Mel would NEVER let anyone dirty even approach the new car. But I feel safer knowing my data’s protected.

The immigration debate is hotting up. And has descended into a battle between Cruella de Braverman, possibly the most xenophobic of all immigrant-descendants ever to adhere to the ‘we’re here, you lot can all just fuck off’ paradigm of far-rightness made famous by Enoch Powell. And Justin Welby, the most recent incumbent of the Canterbury Archbishopship, who regularly crosses the line between ‘highest paid bible-basher’ and ‘moral conscience of Westminster’. And it is a royal battle. Without any royals involved. They’ve had more than their allotted ‘5 minutes of fame’ lately.

We all know the arguments. Its horrible to not be welcoming to the horribly dispossessed and defeated. That we would close our doors to Sudanese or Ukrainians fleeing war, or to French people fleeing Macron, or to Afghanis fleeing from the Taliban, is an abhorrent thought. Yet we need to ‘sift’ those from the less asylum-seeking and more pick-pocketing, free-loading rabble of mere ‘chancers’. All of whom, the worthy and the less so, arrive on the same boats. Run by the dreaded ‘people carriers’, who all sides of the debate rightly hate.

So here’s the tricky bit; you can only apply for asylum here if you’re already here. But you’re not allowed to come here without it and will be herded with the ‘Albanians’ (now entered into Braverman’s lexicon as a generic term for all the world’s ne’er’do’wells) to foreign lands for years and years whilst our work-from-home civil servants spend the next decade calculating which side of the ‘righteous/Albanian’ divide you sit.

Its ‘ard.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

Yesterday’s football matches were just brilliant. For several reasons.

1. None of them involved Spurs.
2. I had no ‘skin in the game’.
3. Spurs weren’t playing.
4. All the teams were doomed anyway.
5. Was interesting on a deeply philosophical and scientific level.
6. Couldn’t have given a toss who won, lost or drew.

The three matches played were of massive importance in the relegation struggle. Shame Chelsea weren’t involved but that’s something else to look forward to next season. And unusual for bottom of the table teams, two of them actually won.

Everton’s was the most unlikely. Made way more so by the actual scoreline. You generally don’t get to wallow 2nd from bottom by scoring 5 goals. Away from home. Against one of the ‘wonder’ teams of the season. But they did against Brighton. More goals than they’ve managed in their last 18 games (possibly slight exaggeration but not much). May have saved Everton from the drop.

Fulham weren’t in danger of relegation, having pre-emptively put up their season ticket prices for next year by about 120%. But they thrashed Leicester. Not quite as comfortably as it initially looked like they would but 5-3 was fair. WAG-husband Jamie Vardy missed a penalty. That was worth next years inflated ticket price on its own.

And then the battle of the no-hopers against the little-bit-of-hopers went in favour of the latter who now have even more hope as they top the pile-of-the-precarious. Forest only have 33 points after their win but that may probably be enough as points are generally hard to come by at that end of the table. Other than yesterday, when there were points and goals everywhere. Southampton are gone.

Leeds didn’t play yesterday so did their customary losing on Saturday against Manchester City. I mean; how hard would it have been to beat City and moved up??

Tonight City play Real Madrid. Its a battle of which team can defend best against the two best players in the world at the moment; Vinicius and Haaland. Ooooh, that’s a lovely prospect indeed.

Football’s just so much more fun when you don’t really give a shit.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

We live in the leafy suburbs of North-west London. Nothing ever happens here. Its sleepy. Genteel. Peaceful. ‘Excitement’ round our way is when your ‘Ring’ doorbell drops off the WiFi. ‘Living on the edge’ is what we call driving round in a dirty car. And by ‘dirty’, that means either covered in muck, or powered by oil derivatives.

But that doesn’t mean we don’t know how to PARTYYYYYY!!!!

Oh yes, every time there’s a coronation, or a jubilee, we close off our tiny little street, block off the ends with cones, set up half a dozen trestle tables and, the defining item for any true party; we get a bouncy castle!!! The rule is simple: no bouncy castle, it ain’t no party. There are NO exceptions. You can get the sound system from Berghain, have Paul McCartney and Bruce Springsteen to share the DJing, line up the trestle tables with cocaine (rather than red, white and blue cup cakes), open 17 bottles of premium vodka and 14 canisters of laughing gas and then have a surprise performance by Jay-Z. But if there was no bouncy castle, it wouldn’t be a party.

The funny thing is; we have zero bouncy castle aged kids on our street. We have teens, we have grown ups and we have 2 tiny babies. I was obviously going to import a couple of ringers, but even before Lila and Joey arrived, ‘word got round’. Kids from adjacent streets, fucking free-loading on MY bouncy castle!!! I went out with my baseball bat but was told such things were acceptable for a street party. It was a wild afternoon.

Then later we had… The Concert!!! The Coronation one. Windsor Castle (not bouncy). And it was great. Lionel Richie was there, sounded the same but looked like he’s borrowed someone else’s face for the evening. But then ‘the stars of the show’: (what’s left of) Take That!!! (after Robbie Williams left). Well, you can’t get star-ier than three-quarters of shit, manufactured, tv-show boy-band, can you!!!! They were brilliant! Gary Barlow sounded… of something, Mark Owen… hmmm… other bloke… ok, so they have no power to any of their vocals whatsoever, but they’re really… errrr… good at… they… Ok, then I get why that was ‘their first performance for 4 years!!!!’

Welcome to the Carolean Era. WTF???

A xxxx

Ok, so tennis was rained off. Man plans, God laughs. Though I thought He’d be too busy with Charles’ coronation, like everyone else, to bother about keeping me wet. So I had absolutely no choice but to watch the ‘event’. It was on BBC1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. And there isn’t even a ‘5’. It was on Channel 4, ITV, Sky (19 of their channels) and even channel 5 showed it, but performed by second-rate actors from dodgy soap operas. I went on to Netflix instead, but they were only showing episodes of ‘The Crown’ and ‘Game of Thrones’, though later they have ‘Queen’s Gambit’. Sky Musical was showing ‘The King and I’ and ‘Dave’ was showing a repeat of the last coronation, Elizabeth’s. On all other channels was ‘Songs of Praise’.

Westminster Abbey is the star. However many ridiculous costumes are being worn by the assembled cast of dignitaries, that building is just ‘something else’. Which I was fine with until Jesus came in. Not even wearing the uniform of the 5th Welsh Fusiliers, NOR, the 27th Lancashire Artilleries. But Justin Webly told me He was there and that’s good enough for me. So we better sing a few songs for him. Then God arrived and that seemed to cause yet more delays to the business of sticking a big heavy crown on an old man’s head. Hymns, readings, all sorts of religious bollocks, the sole purpose of which is to check out the frocks everyone’s wearing.

Charles had to choose which uniform to wear. He opted for his naval Admiral’s one, rather than army General or Air Force Top Gun. Joey would have gone as Batman. But Charles never did ‘active service’. Harry and William did which is why Wills gets to dress up like a chocolate soldier and Harry, the most soldierly of them all, has to wear a suit. Because he married a woman of mixed race. And he gets to sit in the 3rd row, where no-one can hear him slagging off The Queen. Whilst Wills is right up there with the swords, orbs, sceptres and the amazing collection of Royal Paraphernalia which serves no purpose ever, in any situation, nor has done, for 800 years. But it looks nice on the telly.

I find it a bit difficult to reconcile the deeply religious Jesusness and spirituality with everyone dressed in full military regalia carrying swords, knives and guns. Ok, not guns, but they would do given half a chance. But that’s just me. Maybe there’s going to be a sacrifice. For the new King and Queen.

But before that: more hymns!! Loads more. Because you can never have enough.

This is the best day ever. I’ll never forget it. And if I do, they’ll be showing it on Dave for the next 22 years.

Happy Coronation Day

A xxxx