Andy's Glasses

Mel has a lot of baths. So I get to watch what I want. For 30, 40, even 50 minutes an evening, depending on what book she’s reading, where she is in that book and how hot the water was when she went in. It’s a formula.
Time= (temp-3/4 x 60)/Stephen King x page number/379-x. Simple.

Being a person of undisclosed gender affiliation but in possession of a penis, a beard and a collection of guns (only metaphorically), that means I watch football or music. If some clever person produced ‘Watford versus Stoke: The Musical!’, they’d be onto a winner in my house. But in the absence of that, I tend to ‘flick’ between a lesser match with peripheral interest, Brentford vs Bournemouth, maybe, and my new fave channel, 70s Rock Now.

They played Walk on the Wild side, by Lou Reed. I love that track. From his unbelievably brilliant ‘Transformer’ album, which I possess in every format its ever been made in and await the day when it can be permanently implanted in my personal chip. Along with Ziggy Stardust, Are You Experienced and Stop Making Sense. Possibly Bella Donna because the idea of 1979 Stevie Nicks permanently in my brain appeals greatly.

Would they make that song today? It’s about transvestites. Specifically, ladyboys on the game. “But she never lost her head; even when she was giving head”, did the BBC really play that line when the song was riding high in the charts? And yet the song is music first, then content. And it is a wonder on the ear. As it always was. How ‘woke’ was Lou Reed, who referred to all the characters in his song as ‘she’? In 1972.

Next up, just after Chelsea conceded their 3rd goal against Manchester City, came Spanish Stroll. A song which I hadn’t heard for positively decades. Probably because Mink Deville were a bit ‘one-hit-wonder-ish’. But if you’re gonna have just one hit, make it that one. It’s strange in format, unusual in output and generally just different. Individual. Imaginative. And brilliant.

This afternoon I shall force myself not to check out what rock’s a’playing whilst watching Spurs playing Arsenal. The match I absolutely hate to watch. The most uncomfortable viewing since Prince Andrew went into hiding. Joey’s coming to watch it with me. Always a welcome distraction. As you hear the crashes in another room.

Agitating Sunday

A xxxx

So now the question has shifted, the blame put elsewhere, triggered by Laura Kuensberg asking Rishi Sunak if he saw a private doctor. He dithered. She asked again. He obfuscated. She repeated. He talked about Ukraine. She said the question in a slightly different way, he answered with all the directness of a taxi-driver trying to hike up a fair. The Labour Party instantly leapt upon poor little Rishi in a very obvious, narrow-minded, Labour Party way.

Private medicine is ‘THE PROBLEM’. Using such a thing is blasphemy in the court of the god that is the NHS. If you use private medical care you whisper it and should be ashamed because you’re taking doctors away from The NHS!

Which is all bollocks because what you’re actually doing is not taking a place in an NHS queue. Leaving it for someone else. Consultants don’t work 97-hour weeks. Not for the NHS anyway.

So they split their work. They do their required sessions for the NHS, for which they earn about 100k a year. And then they do private work. And they do that… for MONEY!!! To supplement their NHS salary.

SUPPLEMENT!!!! Cry the likes of Wes Streeting, THEY’RE ALREADY EARNING 4 TIMES THE NATIONAL AVERAGE!!!!!!

But here’s the thing. To become a consultant takes years. At least 10. Years of exceptionally hard work and study, exceedingly low wages and masses of stress. If there was no way to supplement their ‘decent’ consultant wage by engaging in lucrative private work; why the fuck would they bother becoming doctors? When a lawyer can earn a million quid a year? Ok, there’s the ‘call’, the ‘vocation’, the ‘need to help others’, but you can even justify accountancy on those terms. Loosely speaking, obviously.

If we only had the NHS and private medicine was banned, other than the fact that it would simply collapse like a black hole, doctors would have to be paid significantly more otherwise no-one would ever choose to become one when they could instead turn their intellect to banking and live the high life. Then who would do the medical research?

We are blessed to have a 2-tier health system. I get that its unfair for those who can’t afford BUPA, but for those who can, like Rishi, using it can only benefit the NHS. And when it eventually and finally does get re-built, it will undoubtedly use outside ‘resources’ to share the load. Otherwise it will be in an ever-growing crisis until the day it just stops altogether.

Unfortunately THE NHS has been elevated to such a god-like status that any talk of change or alternatives is immediately met with outcry and declarations of war. By Wes Streeting. And Laura Kuensberg.

Happy fucking raining Saturday

A xxxx

If I’d have know that global warming was this bad, I’d have turned off my central heating boiler years ago. Got me a new wife, cos Mel would have left due to the cold, or thrown me out, due to the cold. I’d have driven petrol cars less, burned less coal, taken less flights, breathed out less and… emitted less carbon. Cos let’s face it; none of us were really that bothered about ‘the hottest year since records began’, nor the ‘longest dry spell since Harry Potter dehydrated Snape’, nor even a few freak hurricanes happening so far away they barely disturbed a single leaf outside my front door. What happens on the telly stays on the telly. I’ve barely noticed 2/3rds of tropical rainforest flora and fauna becoming extinct due to habitat changes because that doesn’t affect the price of fuel in north London.

But its seemingly been pissing down with rain constantly since the dry spell ended. We slipped from drought to flood without me noticing. One minute it was just lovely and the next tennis matches started getting cancelled. And that’s when I take note and start to question. “WHY is it fucking raining so fucking much???”, is the obvious first question. Followed by “What??? More fucking rain???” Didn’t say they were deep questions, nor thought-provoking, just obvious and rather profane. But this weather can only be attributed to ‘global warming’. In the same way people dying is attributed to ‘the NHS crisis’ and satellite-carrying rockets launched from Cornwall failing at deploying said cargo because of technical hitches.

Shit happens. Then we look for someone to blame. Personally I blame this current ‘wet spell’ (more rain in January that we usually get in 4 years, and its only the 13th) on Harry and Meghan. It’s obvious really. They’ve upset the gods. Who, for some reason, are taking it out on us. (Just a note on these gods: when Prince Andrew was abusing little girls no tennis was cancelled due to rain!!)

There’s also the ultimate irony of life on Earth. How is it that half of Sudan hasn’t had rain for 3 years and everyone’s starving when we have way more than enough to go round three times? You’d think, in these times when I can pay my gas bill whilst walking in the park, or have a geezer on a motorbike bring me the pizza of my choice, to my door, without having to speak to anyone, that someone would have worked out the water thing. Invent a barrel. Or a pipe. Because I hereby leave all ‘my’ rain to Sudan, Somalia and anyone else who wants it.

Happy dry Friday (so far)

A xxxx

Its just about da maffs. Simple. Goes like this.

Your family fucking hates you, despises your wife, has no interest in your children, was glad to see the back of you and has washed its hands of any future involvement.

So the question.

Do you take 170 million quid or not?

Whether you do or you don’t take the money, all the above still applies. Ok, not quite as badly, but pretty much the same. But you’ll be poorer. And still hated, if you don’t take it. Or you can grab all you can get just for putting into words what you’ve been alluding to and hinting at all along?

Its a no-brainer. Take the cash. Bentleys and butlers don’t come cheap and its what you’ve always had and still feel entitled to. You can always get a new family, can’t you? Maybe Meghan’s? Oh, forgot, she hates her dad, as well as Harry’s. There’s always mum. Better than Camilla. ANYTHING is better than Camilla. Or you can buy a family. On e-bay. Probably about 250k. Adopt them from Ukraine maybe.

Harry apparently netted about 90 million for the book and 80 mil for interviews and the Netflix series. And people actually think that’s bad! Its basic good business sense. The small step from ‘black sheep of the family’ to ‘international pariah and hate figure’ comes with a purse worthy of the biggest fight Vegas has ever staged.

I don’t blame H & M at all. They’re looking after number 1. He’s still the coolest ex-Royal ever and she’s the best looking princess since Margot Robbie played Elizabeth 1st in Mary, Queen of Scots (only the bits before they covered her face in boils and shit). So why is everyone making such a fuss? Because he admits to taking drugs? I’m aware that drugs are only ever ‘tried’ by other people’s children, NOT MINE, but when 92% of all under 18s have sampled every class A, B and C product available, it sort of becomes like porn, which only ‘other people watch’. Furthermore, in the ‘alternative section’ (T2) of today’s Times, they’re advocating the use of very ‘trippy’ substances to cure all manner of mental health conditions. And that’s THE TIMES!!! So it must be true.

Basically, leave them alone! They’re only trying to get their family loving each other. Just… in a bit of a funny way.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

I actually don’t remember precisely where I was when President Kennedy was assassinated. 1963… probably in school, at age 7 I was too young to be in the snooker hall or smoking behind the bike sheds, so I’m guessin’, school. But I do remember precisely where I was when Gareth Bale scored a hat-trick against Inter Milan at the San Siro. Firstly because, after being 4-nil down at half time to the Italians, eventually losing only 4-3 felt like the most victorious, energising, screaming, hysterical loss ever. We won the second half. In fact, He won the second half. And at the time, he was our left back.

If he ever played better than in that match it was definitely in the return leg at White Hart Lane. He didn’t score but he created everything we did to beat Inter 3-1. He fucking terrorised them from start to finish. At his totally unplayable best.

Unfortunately, (for Spurs), those two matches hi-lighted our Gareth as ‘the one to watch’ and over the next couple of years the BIG boys of Europe queued up to sign the Welsh wonderboy.

Unfortunately (for Gareth) he went to Real Madrid as the world’s most expensive player. Because however brilliant he was, and he was, playing as Christiano Ronaldo’s side-kick was never going to be his best move. They like their superstars to act like superstars. Rampant Ronaldo, Beefy Benzema and… Golfing Gareth. Who preferred to lead a quiet life off the pitch, not in keeping with his teammates high life excesses which the arrogant Madridistas love. They never found a place for Gareth like we did at Spurs.

So he returned for a late-career loan season so we could show him what love means in north London. Otherwise there was always Wales to get love. Where he is a true God. Up there with Gareth Edwards, Phil Bennet, Ryan Giggs and Katherine Zeta-Jones. (There are no other famous Welsh people).

And now he’s retired from the game. The game which lost him for about 4 of the last 5 years after Zidane decided that paying someone 500 grand a week doesn’t mean you have to play them in the team. Zizu’s loss.

From Cardiff to London and occasionally in Madrid, he lit up our world. And now he’ll retire, play more golf and live as quietly and low-key as his massive fortune allows.

He was a true superstar.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

We need to sort out the ‘national ‘elf’. It’s in a ‘crisis’. People are dying. Unfortunately, not enough people to make the system function in any way which may be perceived as ‘efficient’, normal, cost-effective or probably even ‘viable’. We’d need to kill off approximately 20 million of the population to even make a start on that.

Why 20 mil? Because that would take us back to almost the population of 1948 when someone had the fucking brilliant but impossible idea of ‘providing free health care for an entire nation!’ So Nye Bevan invented the NHS. Like Frankenstein before him, he had no idea of the ‘monster’ that in reality he’d been responsible for.

In 1948 you bought a syringe for life. 2 needles, one as a spare, and that was it. You wore a white jacket. Forever. No matter how much blood was splattered on it, washed it once a week. Or two. So high set up costs, low ongoing ones. Nowadays there’s 276 industries just providing disposable stuff for hospitals. Gloves, masks, gowns, overalls, coveralls, hats, shoe-covers, ear muffs, nostril plugs, knee-warmers… But half of it isn’t fit for purpose, the other half is made by bra makers to enrich themselves.

Same with drugs. In 1948 you had aspirin or if it was really bad, penicillin, the newly discovered wonder-drug. Available at 7s 11d from a geezer who made them in his garage. Next to his Model T Ford which he was re-boring. If those meds didn’t cure you, you died. Nowadays drug provision to the NHS is a get-rich scheme for third rate Pharma companies manufacturing medicines which have passed their original licences.

And although they invented cancer in… long time ago, probably, they didn’t call it that, they called it death. Cancer was really ‘invented’ when they worked out what it was, where it was, and how to get rid of it. But that didn’t come cheap.

Best of all though is that with NHS supervision, we can all live forever. No more ‘3 score and ten’, that’s the new ‘three baker’s dozens plus 4’. But that means not just that we have nearly 30% more people than in 1948 but we have a much higher percentage of old people. Who get ill more often. And require help. And care.

Therefore, to make the NHS ‘sustainable’ and take it out of ‘crisis’ we need a complete restructuring, to align it to the needs of not just the current time, but to the projected needs of the future. And to do that you need clever people. So that eliminates the government. And the fuckwit opposition who just want to throw more money at it. Which, as we all know, don’t work.

We need to either do that or leave it in the hands of Sid James and Barbara Windsor in Carry on Doctor. Or just have a compulsory ‘end of life’ limit for everyone, say… 77… 85… 46 (NOOOOOOO!!!)

Happy, healthy Monday

A xxxx

So yesterday morning found me and younger daughter in Primrose Hill. The smuggest of all of smug North London. The ponciest of the poncy, the twee-est of the twee, where you won’t find a high street name among the shops, you won’t find an oik (apart from a few Gallaghers, and they’re rich oiks) and its way too posh for Starbucks. I would say ‘it’s charming’ but that’s only what they’d like to hear. So after our inevitable coffee and muffin (honey, cinnamon and banana, if you care, rather yummy, we shared both it and the guilt and it only cost £26.97 with macchiato frotho oat-almond-vegan-2-shot-extra-skimmed-flat-lattes) we strolled over to Camden. 5 minutes away but a different world. Out with the ‘Kensington Casual’ look of Primmy Hill and over to the gothic grunge/punk drug-addict look of Chalk Farm. Where, once you’ve stepped over a few tramps and drunks, you find…

Amazon Fresh.

The supermarket. And we went in!!! It’s been there a while but I’d never gone in before. Like, through the door and… inside. Where there’s a barrier. Access is only by app or by getting your account up on your phone, then it says ‘Hello Rachel’ (probably unless you have a different name) and opens up the door to a new world.

Which, if I’m honest, is pretty much like the old world. In all but one very interesting difference. There’s no ‘check out’ facility. No tills, no ‘do-it-yourself’ machines, no scanning of what you take as you go along, no nuffink. Just… stuff to buy. But how do you buy it? And that is the ‘billion dollar question’. Not my billion dollars but Jeff Bezos’s, obviously. Once you’ve ‘checked in’ you just cruise round, grab what you want and walk out with it. Need a bag? Paper ones are free, others cost a quid. Or just stuff everything in your pockets, they don’t care. Just walk away; you’re done.

They’ve managed to take all the pleasure out of shoplifting in one store.

Because 5 minutes later they email you an invoice. Bastards. But interestingly the goods they sell are very very reasonable. Less than Waitrose, overall, I reckon, but I’m neither the world’s best nor careful shopper, it has to be noted. A fresh-baked almond croissant for 95p????? Amazing.

But I can’t work out how they do it. So I’ll say ‘algorithms’. Modern day explanation for anything inexplicable. Magic.

Worth checking out. Great pun.

Happy Sunday. I hate rain.

A xxxx

I used to fight with my brother about three times a day. He pushed me to the ground. We didn’t have a dog so I couldn’t break his water bowl with my back. And I was never girly enough to wear a necklace so he couldn’t break it. But he would have. Instead he shut my finger in the door trying to keep me out of his room and I had to go to hospital to have the fingernail removed!! (The Queen didn’t get involved nor pass judgement… as usual!)

All fascinating stuff. And all falling into the “WHO GIVES A FLYING FUCK????” category. Yet I too was a younger brother and my elder sibling thus ‘the heir’. To… errrr… well, not much really, but I still felt persecuted, scorned upon, second-classed and… lots of other things which us ‘spares’ have to endure. Though I’ve never killed even one man, when not at the wheel of a car, let alone 25!!! But ‘it was just a game of chess’. Fortunately I was never much good at chess either.

The similarities between me and Harry stop there. Other than the drugs. But everyone tried those in the 70s, it was part of life. Degenerate life, but life nonetheless. Otherwise, I was never ginger haired, failed to have sex with an old woman on a football field and didn’t marry an American. I married a Canadian, in fact, but that’s not relevant here. Why’s it always about HER????

The moral of the story is: never trust a fucking Spaniard.

The book, about me and Harry, is out next Tuesday but ‘due to an error’, it was released last Wednesday in Spain. Ooops. Question: how do you sell 300,000 copies of a book ‘in error’? Oh, muchas apologias, they juss’a fell on’a shelves. Tosseros!

I don’t speak Spanish. But I do speak English, quite well at times. Much better than a Quebekee speaks French, at least. But even that won’t make me read that stupid book. Nothing on earth will make me read that book. I know H feels aggrieved but its enough. Netflix, interviews, now this. All in an effort to ‘make his family come together again’. Yeah, how’s that working so far, Harry?

Happy Saturday

The Spare
xxxx

I like to tell you EVERYTHING. I have no secrets, no shame, no common sense. Almost no filters. I NEED you to know about every illness, every surgical procedure, every thought, idea, love, hate, desire, what I eat, drink, the drugs I take to keep me alive, the ones I take to make it worth living, I want you, my biggest fan, to know EVERYTHING!!!

Not just because I’m stupid but also because that way I can always blame you for not helping when it all goes wrong.

And then I forgot the most important thing which happened to me during the Mexico experience. The whole experience, which I ‘shared’, from take off to landing 9 days later, because I’m that kind’a guy. And yet I forgot…

Top Gun: Maverick!

I’ve already done the movies on the plane, both ways, even the ones I half-slept through (most of them). And yet forgot that one. How could I? The one we’ve all waited 40 years for!

Possibly because it really is almost infinitely forgettable. Possibly because it is, unsurprisingly, the original film re-made with grown-ups, and way more concealer and make-up taking much more care with lighting Tom Cruise’s face to keep the Dorian Gray version off screen where possible.

I had to watch it. Not just because I was stuck in a little hole for 9 hours with a screen 21 inches from my face and a complete inability to move, but also because I simply love Top Gun (no subtitle), the first. It had everything. Starting with Kelly McGillis and ending with the Porsche speedster she drove. Nothing else was important. Ok, they shot a few Russian planes out of the sky, sang ‘you’ve lost that lovin’ feelin’’, had hi-jinks and shaved their chest hair, but it was Kelly’s film. I may have been impressionable when it came out. I think Tom Cruise may have been in it to; who can remember?

Actually I’m being cruel. This film was totally different. Except for the shooting Russians out of the sky, shaved chests and laddish hi-jinks. It even had Val Kilmer in it!!! The Ice Man!!! Looked like he’s been on ice for a decade or so. But (no spoilers) as he dies of cancer in the movie, (ok, some spoilers) perhaps it was just ‘brilliant acting’.

But the worst thing about the film really was that it didn’t have a 25 year-old Kelly McGillis in it. I can’t forgive that.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

Football happened. And we won. Incredible how happy that makes me. Because this was a victory for Spurs, thus for me, for Antonio Conte, our money-chasing super-manager who threatens to leave every time we lose, for Harry Kane, because he’s special in a very special way, for Sonny because he’s wonderful, for all the people in the world and for GOD HERSELF (oooh, that’s controversial) in whose name Spurs play!

In what many have described as ‘the greatest victory since Spurs last won’, my boys ran rampant in the second half after choosing to rest in the first. A tactic which proved astute as Palace’s failure to capitalise on their dominant spell left it wide open for a Spurs team who’ve scored 73% of their goals this year in the second periods of their matches.

All we have to do now is repeat that in our next two league matches against Arsenal and Manchester City. How hard can that be?

I may have complained a little, ‘last year’, about the World Cup. Qatar. Human rights, the slaughter of the workers, the persecution of the gays, blah, blah, blah… and having the tournament in the winter!!! Never has such a thing ever been considered. Nor been required, in ‘normal countries’, where camels don’t live. But if I’d have known the consequences, I’d have been the biggest advocate and ambassador for that lovely Gulf state. Because it means we’re now playing catch-up. All the matches missed during the 6-week gap. Resulting in football, on tv, every night. I’m campaigning for the next tournament to be in Dubai.

And a word about the Pope wot died. Not the current one (white haired old foreign geezer in a dress), but the previous one (white haired old foreign geezer in a dress). How is the world going to mourn properly if you die at the same time as Pele? He’s taken all the world’s compassion, sympathy and obituary-space. I don’t even know if the old Pope ever played football, let alone who he might have played for, but he can’t compete with Pele.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx