Andy's Glasses

Well it had to happen sometime, I s’pose. The bloody car arrived. The ‘lectric one. Having ordered it in November 2021, it just became one of ‘those things’. Santa Clause coming at Xmas, Spurs winning a trophy, new car arriving. And then, out of nowhere!!!! (Ok, we had monthly apologies telling us of components troubles, assembly difficulties, delays in transportation, shipping disasters, delivery postponements, Brexit bollocks…) it just… CAME!!! Oh. What do I do with it? Are the batteries included? Do I need a 200-mile extension cable to play out when I go up the motorway? Will it drive like ‘normal’? Will it be more ‘milk float’ than ‘racer’, what will… how do you… why is that light red… WTF???

And yet. Its just a car. You get in, you press ‘start’ and you drive it. End of. The rest is just so much ‘glitz’. You need a steering wheel, check; you need to know how many miles before it dies, check, you need a ‘celerator and brake, check. Off ya go then, what‘s the fuss?

They do drive differently. If you (dare) put your foot down, electric cars just fucking fly. And the power is ‘instant’. There’s nothing mechanical, nothing pumping, nothing ‘injecting’, just power. And shit-loads of it. That’s scary thing number one. Number two is that the car brakes for you. Take your foot off the accelerator and it feels like you’re braking, when you’re not. Its a ‘retardation’ thing which sucks up the power wasted on slowing and pours it back into the batteries. They all do it. But it feels different. For 10 minutes, then it feels perfectly normal and I know that next time I drive a petrol car I’m gonna run into the back of the car in front. Not that I EVER would again be a polluting, environment-destroying, polar-bear killing, carbon emitter!!

But to just ‘drive’ a car like this is like buying a state-of-the-art i-book to use as a calculator. You download the manufacturers app (everyone and everything has a fucking app, essential, innit) you can check the charge, where it is, all sorts of useless shit, BUT; you can get it to defrost itself before you go out there. And if it happens to be plugged in, that will cost you ‘nothing’ in miles. Just in electricity, but that don’t count.

The car has two tiny little black ceramic ‘tiles’ on the steering wheel. They are the mouses (yeah, I know, but ‘mice’?) for two of the screens. And I thought of Mel and I thought… naaaaaaah. Not gonna happen.

Its so clever it has hundreds of computers in it and I only worry that it may ‘go rogue’ on me, like the robots in Terminator. I want to go to Waitrose but ‘it’ wants to go to Middlesboro’. Or ‘home’ somewhere in Ursa Minor? Like WTF?

So we have much to learn. Very much. You can even talk to it. I asked for some toast yesterday, with marmalade and chips. Ok, it has limits. I just have no idea what they are.

Happy driving

A xxxx

Gary’s coming back!!! He’s possibly forgiven? Probably restrained? Warned? Instructed?? Reprimanded? Who knows? What goes on at the Beeb, stays at the Beeb. But everyone’s favourite footballing smooth-bastard is returning to Match of the Day on Saturday night, with his full team of strikers (Shearer and Wrightey), plus a few midfielders (Danny Murphy, Jermaine Jenas), and the odd defender (Ashley Williams, Martin Keown) to ensure the flow of drivel continues as always. Before ‘the lost weekend’. And Lineker will undoubtedly make comment about his enforced purdah. And it will be smug (I won!!) and it will make you cringe.

Gary drew his own close on the issue yesterday, after his liberation, with a(nother fucking) tweet. Saying ‘however bad this weekend was, its nothing like being forced from your home in fear of death and getting on a little boat… blah, blah, blah’. So full of righteous indignation and compassion and empathy for the dispossessed that I read it and instantly vomited into the waste paper bin at work.

Gary ‘feels for you’. From his 5 million pound house. Or possibly whilst traveling only ever in the back of a big, black SUV. Never a rubber dinghy.

But heh, we need rich people to show feeling and sympathy and ‘show us the way’ to understanding and helpfulness. Surely, though, we need that understanding to come in an informed and balanced manner, rather than an off-the-shelf, hard-left sound-byte of stunning simplicity which completely fails to address any of the real complexity of the situation.

The ‘Germany in the 30s’ comment was tragically ill-conceived. Corbyn would have loved it, Ken Livingstone applauded it. But we are talking about controlling who enters our country illegally. Germany in the 30s was about evicting, eliminating, murdering people who were completely legal citizens, in many cases quite upstanding, who’d lived there for generations, fought for ‘their nation’ in the Great War and were an integral part of society. Big fucking difference, Gary.

We all want compassion and to offer protection to the unfortunate. Yet really don’t want the drug-dealers, rapists and free-loaders who tend to accompany them. It ain’t easy, but something must be done. With or without Gary’s permission.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

It all started with my shoulder. My new one ‘arrived’ and so the younger daughter came with it, like a package deal. I came home from hospital and she flew in from Berlin to ‘care’ for the ‘invalid’, who was cut and stapled back together and drugged up to his eyeballs and slinged and in all sorts of trouble, pain and discomfort. Except it didn’t really work like that. In fact it all worked very well. And I wasn’t in pain and discomfort. I did a sling but only for ‘protection’ so soon dumped that, other than when out.

So me and my carer took to visiting ‘things and places’. Mainly ‘things and places’ where they serve coffee. And…

Its the ‘and’ which makes the whole trip worthwhile. Bakery ‘stuff’. Calories. Sugar. Carbs.

On our first visit, we went to visit the dead in Highgate Cemetery. They were all fine, other than poor Alexander Litvinenko who is still so radioactive he had to be buried in a lead coffin about 30 feet underground so we don’t all end up ‘nuked’ when go to mourn him. And we breezed down the hill and found a Gail’s. For coffee. And…

I’ve always been an almond croissant kind’a dude. I love them. Some too sweet (I can forgive), sometimes too dry (harder to forgive) and often just… hmmmm. But on that day, as that daughter don’t like almond (like: really???) I broke my cinnamon roll virginity. And quite frankly, it changed my life. I’ve tried quite a few but in all honesty that first one was like the first hit of heroin, you never get to ‘that place’ again. Unless I went back to Gail’s, then I got there for just a stupid amount of money for such a little thing. And then someone said: ‘go to Ole & Steen; they’re the best’. I had tried them before. Danish people. Except on the Strand where they are quite rude, rather unhelpful, more, sort-of, generic forriner people. From whom I’ve walked out in disgust before.

But I found myself there again this morning, and I could ‘smell the cinnamon’, even though I was on the other side of the road breathing in diesel fumes. It called me. So I succumbed. Went to see ‘the Danes’. Was served by morose and miserable Serbian babe who ‘gave’ me a cinnamon roll, relieved me of… well, it didn’t matter because they only take cards, so effectively ‘its free’ (at the point of sale; sort out your differences with Amex).

And its good. Really good. But if I’m honest, it ain’t as good as Gail’s.

Let me know if you know of any that I don’t, which are SPECTACULAR!!!! Prepared to spend up to £1.25.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

Gary Lineker is ruining my life!!!

Match of the Day last night was 14 minutes of… well, of football! No commentaries, no debate after each match as to whether this ones elbow was offside when that one passed the ball, or whether the goalie was unsighted due to having a strikers fingers in his eyes, no analysis of whether midfield diamonds work with wing-backs and a lone striker called Charlie. All the important stuff. Missing. No-one there to talk about it. Watching football without commentary? How do we know that Son passed to Kane, FFS, with no-one there to tell us??? I mean, its almost like being at the game! And no-one wants that.

So, devoid of the commentary (meaningless, inane, worthless) and the punditry (same again but worse and with Gary Lineker’s ‘invaluable’ barbs and quips), it was just… football. Just the good bits, just the goals, the great saves, it was just… brilliant. Best Match of the Day ever! In which we could enjoy Spurs beating Forest without Ian Wright telling us how Harry Kane MUST leave Spurs, for the good of mankind. We watched Liverpool suffer defeat to Bournemouth with no-one questioning ‘how long Klopp can last’. And for those inclined to ‘fast forward’ though to the good bits, there were far fewer bad bits to ignore.

But its not just my life that has been ‘ruined’ by that man. It is now affecting the whole of society. The front pages of all the Sunday papers feature a man who talks about football for a living. A fucking amazing and disproportionate living, it may be said, which WE, the taxpayers, fund. The Times was full of the main issues concerning the impartiality of the BBC, whether Lineker should be bound by such constraint, how it may all pan out. Whereas for the Mail, Gary has crossed the rubicon. He questioned not just A government, but A CONSERVATIVE government. The punishment for which is ‘death by tabloid’.

And Spurs go marching on. With or without him.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

Its amazing. One little flurry on twitter and Gary Lineker has started a veritable shit-storm of hate (right wingers), support (left wingers), vitreol, (home secretaries), venom (home secretaries) and those eager to ‘moron-match’ his original message (more home secretaries). And this is a problem now on sooooooooooo many levels.

There’s freedom of speech, content of speech, BBC impartiality, the contractual obligations of ‘freelancers’ and whether they are perceived as being ‘BBC’ just because they’re on match of the day every week and there’s issues of smugness and these are, in this context, unique to Mr Lineker.

Gary supported the right of refugees to arrive here in boatloads and resents the government for trying to stop such occurrences. Well, as long as Lineker can be proved to be ‘human’ then he has a right here to ‘free speech’. As to the question of whether he ‘represents’ the BBC by every inane and misplaced tweet, personally I don’t think he does. I read his stuff and think ‘Gary Lineker is a smug tosser’ and NOT ‘the BBC are smug tossers’. So case proven. Furthermore, he is not a news reader. He presents the football. And thus invokes the ‘presumption of imbecility’ which such a profession fosters. In much the same way that Gary Neville does NOT represent Sky TV when airing his similar brand of smug, ill-informed pseudo-millionaire-leftism, just because that’s where he lives.

The other issue was comparing Britain 2023 with ‘1930s Germany!!!!’

The 1930s was a big decade in Germany. Possibly stretching about 75 years in ‘real time’. So, obviously, if Gaz was referring to the worst genocide in all of history, he’s in the wrong decade and miles off the mark. Whereas if he referred to Hitler’s earlier keenness to encourage ‘Jews and other undesirables and race diluters’ to leave the Fatherland free for blue-eyed blonde Aryans to roam free and procreate into THE MASTER RACE!!!!, then that’s also different.

Suella Braverman’s immediate leap to defend ‘the holocaust’ was at least misplaced too, using a nuclear response and politicising that tragedy for her own purposes.

Lineker’s a tosser, we all know that. And now he’s been… suspended. Which becomes really important. Football is much too important to be affected by the whims of politicians. How can I watch my program without Alan Shearer? He’s stood down in protest. Along with Ian Wright and all the others making a stand for… whatever this is really all about (see above).

I may boycott MOTD too!!! But only if Spurs lose (HEAVEN FORBID!!!!) because I never watch it when they lose. But this time it would be a different way of not watching it.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

What we gonna do about refugees? Illegals?? Boat-people who risk their lives to arrive in Dover but really would much prefer to be in Kensington? Who have taken a dice with death to get away from… well, that’s a good question.

But its ok, Suella Braverman and little Rishi have come up with a 3 point plan: send ‘em back, ship ‘em out, fly ‘em to Rwanda. In no particular order. They’re ‘toughing up’ on illegal migrants. You can’t just sail up here and jump the housing list! Get instant care on the NHS!!! Put your dirty little boat-children in our schools!!! What do think this is?? A nice country!! No, our Prime Minister and Home Secretary are here to greet you with a great big, flower-laden, chocolate boxed FUCK RIGHT OFFFFF!!!! As well they should. Rishi and Suella share the true nationalist view of what ‘British’ looks like! How it can trace its ancestry back to King Arthur. George II. Prince Andrew, at very least. Just like they do. Oh. Well, its not about ‘them’, the obvious descendants of recent immigrants to these shores, this is about NOW! Keeping our island safe from the new batch of unworthies queuing up to get in.

My maternal grandparents immigrated from Poland (hmmm… EU passport…). They arrived penniless, with loads of kids (price of condoms was prohibitive in 1900), because they wanted ‘a better life’. Firstly one without pogroms, and then to work hard and do better than they ever could in the ‘mother country’. So this is my dilemma. How can I ever want to close our borders to the persecuted, the threatened and even those just in search of a better life for their children?

Gary Linneker said almost the same thing. Well, almost. He tweeted that England was becoming like Germany in the 1930s. And he said that because, fundamentally, he’s a fucking idiot. And also because he seems to forget that he’s a fucking footballer, and nothing more. I know he played for Spurs and so I love him like a son/father/cretin, but I can complain about my children/parents/cretins, can’t I??? Maybe he should put some of that money that the BBC (ie: ME!!!) throw at him and open his own refugee centre for Albanian drug dealers and Afghani jihadis in his garden? Its big enough.

I would hate to be part of a nation whose doors are closed to those who really need help. I want to welcome people. Just not the convicted rapists, murderers and Whatsappers. We have enough of them in the police force. These new ‘proposals’ will never get through the Supreme Court.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

I went to Watford the other night. Because I just ‘neeeeded’ culture and Watford’s the obvious place to find it. Innit? Well it was on Saturday night for a new production of… Merchant of Venice!

So they shipped Shylock over from Venice to… Cable Street, London E1. And during the move he left 17th Century Italy for 20th Century East End slum. And in the transition, Mr Shylock became Mrs Shylock. You can do that with Shakespeare. You can ‘contemporise it’, you can ‘gender reassign it’, you can do, pretty much, what’cha fucking want. It’s a play, it’s a fiction, it therefore has no absolute reality other than how any particular director chooses to interpret it. (According to The Matrix- blessed be it- nothing has an absolute reality anyway, but that’s another conversation). The only thing you can’t do is change the words. Translate them from ‘Shakespeare’ to ‘English’. If you do that its called West Side Story. Not a bad thing, arguably a very very good thing, but no longer entitled to the Shakespeare label.

And thus did actress Tracey-Anne Oberman move the ancient money-lender to Whitechapel in 1936. Why there and then? Because that was the inflammatory scene of the absolute pinnacle of British antisemitism, when ‘blackshirts’ under Oswald Moseley chose to march in full, pretty-much Nazi regalia, through the streets of London’s foremost Jewish ghetto. The police not only allowed this to happen, but decided, collectively, to stand back and make no intervention when the inevitable riots ensued. The blackshirts were blocked from their march as tram-drivers ‘parked’ their trams to obstruct, then hoardes of dockers arrived to stop them as well as thousands of local Jews intent on disrupting Sir Oswald. And rather successfully as the Nazi scum eventually were forced away. The event representing the end of official British anti-semitism right there and then. As many European countries, like Spain, Italy, Austria were embracing their Hitler-vibe, Moseley lost so much face at Cable Street that the blackshirts never gained the political traction they had appeared to be gaining before.

So that’s where ‘we’ set Merchant of Venice. And it was ok. Wasn’t brilliant but it was ok. Tracey-Anne herself played Shylock and quite well. Dressed in the ‘Jewish gaberdine’ of a 1930s Brit rather than a 1650s Eye-tie. Just not quite sure the merger of the two periods worked sufficiently well to do anything worthwhile.

Happy tuesday

A xxxx

Having failed miserably to unravel the financial situation at Manchester City, trying to work out which of ‘Abu Dhabi Investments’, ‘the investment company of Abu Dhabi’, Dhabi Abu Investments Inc.’ and ‘nothing to do with Abu Dhabi investments for the purposes of football accounting, plc’, are anything to do with each other, we now have an interesting situation at Newcastle. Where new owner, Yasir al-Rumayyan and his ‘PIF’ (Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund) have made an official and legally-binding declaration of total independence from the State of Saudi Arabia. Fair enough.

Yet in an American court, during the case about the LIV golfing tournament, that overly moneyed and obscenely extravagant Saudi event which has torn golf in two, it was declared that ‘Rumayyan and PIF are representatives of the Saudi government’. Because that way they don’t have to give evidence.

The legal term for this apparent duplicity is ‘slippery motherfuckas’. More often referred to as ‘can’t trust ‘em as far as you can fucking throw ‘em’.

Because if you can’t be honest in front of lawyers and judges, because it may become prejudicial to your intended money-laundering operations, then its a bad omen for the Premiere League, UEFA and FIFA who are the most stupid, gullible and corrupt organisations around.

This all looks good too for the Qatari bid for Manchester United. Another nation of impeccable moral standards and financial transparency. As long as those morals can be bought and the transparency hidden behind a curtain.

And I’m not saying that these problems are in any way uniquely associated with countries with human rights issues, where the inclusivity policy is conditional upon total compliance to a set of fucked up rules, where discrimination is state-sanctioned and where women are beaten daily as a matter of protocol and ‘good practice’. Not saying that at all.

I would talk about actual, like real football, like, played on a pitch and winners and (FUCKING!!!!) losers an’ stuff but, quite frankly, I don’t feel like it. I’m not feeling that particular vibe currently. No idea why. No idea why my alcohol consumption has quadrupled in the last 4 days either. Surely these can’t be connected???

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

Mel always comments when, in a cabinet ‘reshuffle’, the minister for ‘diversity’ becomes the minister for education. But he/she knows NOTHING about that!!!, my wife cries. Then a week later he/she is the chancellor. Or minister for obesity and motor cars. And its true, they know precisely fuck all about their new specialist subject. And yet are mandated to make incredibly important decisions affecting the entire nation. Of course, that presumes that in their old role they actually ‘mastered’ that subject completely, which they didn’t. They don’t have to. The permanent civil servants know all and the minister is there to take their advice and act upon it. Even though they’re really completely unqualified to do so.

And thus we ended up, in the most pandemic of pandemics, saddled with Matt Hancock as Minister for Health. ‘He’s not a doctor!!!!’, shouted Mel at the tv. And he’s not. He’s a plonker. It was like having Joey as the Minister for Organisation. Or the Grand Imperial Wizard of the KKK given the Equalities portfolio. But Hancock was in the job and we just hoped he would do nothing more than listen to the actual doctors and civil servants and do their bidding.

He fucked up. Personally, professionally, ministerially. They all did. The whole government. Led by the fuck-up’s fuck-up, Boris Johnson.

Matt Hancock resigned after he mis-read the ‘2-metre’ distancing rule and was filmed in a clinch with his ‘assistant’, adhering to old line ‘if I was any closer I’d be inside you’. Poor Matt, who actually wrote that rule, said ‘I thought it was 2 MILLImetres!!! Sorry.’

So he published a book. About the pandemic. Which no-one read. No-one cared. No-one bought. But obviously a dim-wit like him couldn’t write it alone, he can barely read, so he teamed up with a ‘professional’ writer. And chose… Isabel Oakeshott. Someone to trust with all his secrets. And a good choice by Matt. Because Oakeshott had already proved her trustworthiness a decade earlier by publishing details in the Telegraph which eventually led to then Labour minister Chris Huhne, and his wife, Vicky Price, both ending up in jail.

And Matt ‘gave’ to Oakeshott his entire back catalogue of WhatsApp messages. Literally thousands of them. And being a disloyal, headline-seeking, journo-whore with no sense of betrayal or right-and-wrong, she published them in the Telegraph.

So let’s just take a look at the ‘average’ WhatsApper. Who is me.

If you looked at my messages on that vehicle, you would think me a misogynist, sexist, racist sociopath with homicidal tendencies, no concept of morality, decency or fairness, and possibly a Chelsea fan.

And I resent and deny ever being a Chelsea fan.

But WhatsApp is for bullshit. That’s why God invented it. It is NOT for anything serious or worthwhile, beyond ‘be there in 5’. Its for the sending of amusing stuff of a highly encrypted, sexist, racist, sociopathic nature. Ask any policeman. Yet within that context, it automatically becomes ironic in nature. Life is nuanced. Judgmental literalism misses that point entirely.

We already KNOW that Matt Hancock is a tosser and a liability. We don’t need to troll through his WhatsApp bollocks to prove it. When we should be working out how to get Isabel Oakeshott into the pillories so we can stone her to death for playing god and deciding what is ‘in the public interest’ when really its just ‘in the financial interests of the Daily Telegraph’.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

So yesterday, in a quiet moment at work, I was in discussion with ‘the film buff’ and the talk meandered round to Dustin Hoffman, as these things do. From my (rare) theatre visit to see him as Shylock in about nineteen eighty-something; the Merchant of Brooklyn. Accent didn’t really work. Little old Venetian Jew sounding like a Goodfella. Da qualidy of moiceee… Geraldine James as Portia was so brilliant it didn’t matter. And then to Midnight Cowboy, Marathon Man and, of course, Rain Man. Tom Cruise’s undoubtable finest moment. When he changed from ‘grinning slimeball’ to ‘slimeball with a heart’. And a movie of such spectacularness it remains an all-time fave. Haven’t watched it in years.

After various activities last night, we finally watched the news, late (yes, its on ‘series record’ so I NEVER miss it). When it ended I shut down the recording and the tv went straight to Rain Man! I mean: whattttt??? Whatever channel that had been on before (I think BBC2) was showing Rain Man. LIVE.

We all know how creepy it is when you google something on your work computer and an hour later you open your personal phone and there’s seven ads for that same thing. But this was another league. We don’t have an Alexa at work, but I do at home, so the only explanation is that when I got home, Alexa read my mind, beamed it back to Beijing, along with the conversation we were having in the kitchen about whether Waitrose salted pistachio nuts are as good as the ones from the health food store, and Beijing then told the BBC due to an exchange of information arrangement they have, and ka-boom, Rain Man’s on tv that night. With a guaranteed audience of 1, for at least 10 minutes, until he goes to bed. I fully expected Sky tv to be on my doorstep this morning offering me Rain Man on pay-per-view, plus a Dustin Hoffman t-shirt, Tom Cruise (ugly) mug and other assorted ‘essentials’, for just an additional £2.99 per month!!! for the next 7 years.

There is no such thing as ‘coincidence’. Why would there be when ‘conspiracy’ is so much more fun.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx