Andy's Glasses

Its so nice to have house guests. You get mired in your empty-nest, calm, relaxed lifestyle, watching whatever tv you want, when you want, you eat at regular times, the house is kept neat as a pin, you go out ‘on a whim’, come back when you like. Ahhhhh, its a boring-as-fuck existence. All that freedom; tedious. But most enjoyably tedious.

And then you get house guests. And it all changes. You have to plan around ‘them’. You have to check diary arrangements with ‘them’. You have to clean up after ‘them’. Though you do get to ‘enjoy their company’, as they would tell you. You have to put your dressing gown on. No more ‘naked tea-making’.

Lila and Joey are staying. Their poor, stressed-out parents simply can’t take any more, so they’ve gone for rehab. Convalescence. Leaving ‘the cause of the problem’ with us. Just a few days, they’re in Sicily. Lying in the sun. Sipping cocktails. Relaxed. To the point of therapeutic. No rushing back from work to do a school run. No ‘homework’. No prolonged, hyperactive, house-trashing bedtimes. Just 2 chilled out dudes who’s only concern is ‘what book to read next’, or ‘is 9.35 too early in the morning for my third margarita of the day?’ Leaving US, with the ‘house guests’.

These are the things these ‘house guests’ will never be heard saying:

Can I help you with that?
…only if its not too much trouble…
I’m going to bed now; goodnight.
No thanks, I’ve already eaten.
I’m sugar-intolerant
Leave us alone, we need to study
Let me tidy that up
After you…

Though it must be said, for the 10 minutes in the morning when 2 warm little people climb into our bed, just charging their batteries before the mania begins and the high-energy chaos starts, its ALMOST worth all the destruction that will inevitably follow. And it is fun. Exhausting, but fun.

Happy surrogate parenting day

A xxxx

Much as I’ve never given too much credit to Donald J Trump, I’m kind’a in awe of what he has achieved. Something no-one else in the world, quite literally, could have done. It is a really beautiful thing, the most beautiful thing in the world. And he made it the most magnificent day in the history of the world.

Sorry, I find myself breaking into Trump-speak frequently today. Because today the hostages finally came home. A final end to that most horrible of unimaginable ordeals. Unfortunately, for many, the ‘end’ came before today and their bodies will be following the living survivors soon, I hope. So their heartbroken and devastated families can at least mourn properly. And its down to Trump. Who bullied everyone into agreeing with his ‘deal’. Not the complete set of proposals stretching to 763 pages (including footnotes) which every other world leader may have put together over 9 months, then sent for a further year for ‘ratification’, but just a very Trumpian ‘outline’ of moving forward. Sketchy. Short on details. In fact, no details.

Which is why every worthless, virtue-signalling, be-suited, clueless hanger-on to Trump’s shirt-tails, like Macron, certainly like Starmer, is now in Sharm-el-Shek to try and sort out some details along with all the leaders of the Arab world too. Its a big gig. And they all have something really profoundly in common. They all fucking hate Hamas. Though not sure about including Macron and Starmer in that. They’re too busy shoring up domestic issues and revolts to actually think beyond their own localised appeasement agendas. Like ‘recognising the Palestinian state’, which all now consider was both a hindrance and a delay in the ceasefire talks.

But Hamas are there. ‘At the table’. Will they volunteer to disarm and disband? I’ll leave that hanging whilst mentioning more about Trump. Who is childish, intellectually ‘light’ (you can’t say ‘retarded’ any more, so I won’t), and always big on headlines, little on structure. But some things he just gets. As he implored everyone to re-build a Gaza without hate and killing. Teach kids important things, not how to kill both others and themselves. Build prosperity and industry, not death and destruction. Build towards a lasting peace.

And you can’t criticise that.

Happy ‘got them home’ day, a truly happy day.

A xxxx

So the ceasefire’s, like, well installed. No-one’s died for over 24 hours in Gaza. Not from bombing anyway. Apparently lots have been killed there either by Hamas or by mafiaesque gangs roaming the streets, but the IDF? Zero. And you know it must be really quiet out there if Hamas have not claimed at least “25 children” being murdered on any given night. So it’s all hopeful. The hostages will return and then the ‘Board of Peace’ will step in and run the country for a bit, re-building (ok, a ‘big bit’ then) and keeping the peace until such a time as the Palestinian people can take over and govern themselves. Free from Hamas, obviously, everyone’s agreed on that part.

Oh, except for Hamas. Who have managed to find 7,000 of their finest to act as police on the streets. Yes, 7,000. All armed to the teeth, obviously. Which goes to show just how vast Hamas was before the war. When at least 30,000 have been killed. All disguised as ‘women and babies’, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

Donald Trump has sent in 200 American troops to help ‘hold the line’ which is the Israel self-imposed line of retreat. I wonder at what point these new policemen will be told by Trump to ‘lay down their arms’ and… errrr… and disband!!!

But that really needs to happen before the Board of Peace pitches up, unless they intend to run Gaza remotely. Like, from Bromley. Otherwise all those who believe, trust and have been listening to Hamas for the last 2 years may have a nasty surprise when their ‘Imperial’ group of foreign stuffed shirts sets up shop in Raffah. Hamas are insisting that Gaza must be run by Palestinians. Who have proved adept at self-government historically. Ok, they haven’t. Never. Not even once. Without infighting, outfighting, factionalising and resorting to violence. Hamas and Fateh have never seen things the same, never agreed on the power structure and even when Arafat was there, the nearest they’ve had to ‘stability’ since 1948, there was chaos. And he was the last leader to refuse a ‘2-state solution’ when offered to him. Then Hamas ‘won the election’ in 2005 to gain control of Gaza and promptly put an end to further elections.

In 2006 Israel withdrew from Gaza. As Gaza, in the election, had backed a terrorist organisation sworn to Israel’s destruction. In doing so this cut The Strip off from Israeli jobs and hospitals and universities that they’d enjoyed previously. But how can you keep a border open with a people who want you destroyed?

Since then Hamas have taken more international aid than any other country and spent it on arms and tunnels. So, just in case you’ve missed this: HAMAS DON’T GIVE A SHIT FOR PALESTINIAN PEOPLE OTHER THAN TO FURTHER THEIR OWN JIHADI AIMS.

I’d love for the ‘peace’ to endure. But reading the radically alternative interpretations of Trump’s very very ‘loose’ 20-point plan, if we’re still in peace on Wednesday we’ll be doing well.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

So you go to a doctor, listen to what he says (or even ‘what SHE says’!!), have scans, take bloods, prod around a bit, wait for results, which say: yeah, you’ve got a problem with your hips. Not sure what it is, but probably…

And they tell you to stop playing tennis for 6 months. A year. Forever!!!

So me and Spurs Paul have adopted a more ‘pragmatic’ approach to orthopaedic medicine. Something along the lines of reciprocal co-diagnosis, using only ‘holistic’ and ‘homeopathic’ (its not an ‘LGBT-etc type thing, honest) methodologies, we’ve created our own ‘cure’.

We played tennis 2 weeks ago, possessing, between us, just one fully functional hip. It was not a beautiful game. Lacked the normal ‘stylish elegance’ (yeah; right) associated with players of such a high calibre. After an unprecedented hiatus of 8 weeks!!

But in playing, against, possibly, some of vague and wooly advice given to us collectively by doctors, physios, bone-cutters and assorted nursing sundries, our 3 errant hips have been much better than they were before. But, like, no problem at all!!

So we played this morning with our usual ‘gay abandon’ (see: LGBT- above), despite any direction or implication by any so-called ‘medical professionals’ not to do so, and we played just fine. None of the trepidation of last time, no holding back, no ‘protecting’ dodgy joints, just tennis, pure and simple, as it should be. By two people, as purely simple as you can be without getting a grant for a carer, who feel that your general well-being is just as important as some specific, old-age type joint issues and their injury prevention.

Doubtless I’ll get a bollocking on Tuesday when I see my orthopod for scan results (hip joint 4, bursitis 3; heart(s)1, knees 2…) or on Saturday when my physio returns from his hols, but I don’t care. We don’t care. We’re that ‘ard; and, possibly, twice as stupid.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

Open the champagne, send up the rockets… NO!!!, not those ‘rockets’, the fireworks, FFS, and say a prayer of thanks. The war is over. There’s peace in the Middle East. Donald Trump should be awarded not just the Nobel prize for peace but for physics too, and literature, any others they have begging. And how appropriate would it be that the reward for ending the destruction and demolition be given with money earned from dynamite? Nobel’s legacy to the world; money and the power for unlimited explosions.

The ‘Peace Plan’ has been signed. In Egypt, this very morning. Phew. Its over. What could possibly go wrong…

The answer, of course, is ‘everything’. The 2 sides in the agreement are… short on trust for each other. But with help from the Egyptians and Qataris on one side and Donald Trump on the other, there is every possibility of the peace lasting 37 hours. Possible even more!!!

The hostage exchange I’m hoping beyond hope will happen before it all goes tits up. Because that’s the most important thing. 48 Israelis, half of them now dead, in return for a few thousand… Well, the very nature of how to describe them depends on your first bias. Calling them ‘prisoners’ is fairly neutral. Netenyahu calls them ‘terrorists’. Many call them ‘detainees’. Which is to dignify them and create an aura of unfairness over their being held in the first place. Like they got a parking ticket and were imprisoned because they were Arabs. Whereas the reality is that these ‘detainees’ are people who have murdered, maimed and sought to inflict grievous harm on Israeli citizens. Some of them the Israelis won’t release. They’re Hamas hierarchy and have so much blood on their hands that to release them would be foolish.

Hamas disarming is another… sticking point? They must, according to the plan, but they won’t, on principle or for any reason on earth. Saving ‘innocent Palestinians’ really has never been on their agenda.

And there’s the Israeli hard-liners. Netenyahu’s political ‘allies’ who have been the cause of massive unrest in Israel since long before the October 7 massacre. They won’t sign off on the peace agreement. So it’ll still get signed, by Bibi, but it won’t have the full backing of government. Because the likes of Smotrich and Ben Gvir are extremists who should never have a say in matters of peace because it’s not on their agenda.

There’s a big deal being made about the Israeli strike in Qatar. That it was a ‘turning point’ because it upset Trump to the extent that he has forced Netenyahu’s hand after acting without the President’s blessing and attacking the nation who’d just given the Trumpster a $400million airplane. I can’t buy that. It’s simply impossible that Israel could have flown fighter jets over America’s largest air base in the Middle East without them knowing and thus consenting. In which case, I say ‘good for Trump’. He ‘plays’ everyone.

Let’s just hope that the peace lasts long enough for people to realise that getting rid of Hamas is simply essential for any continuation of that peace.

Happy Thursday… so far.

A xxxx

So what’s happening in the world of UK politics? Its sooooo exciting. Because nothing is happening. We’re sort of ‘in limbo’, just waiting for the current government to go, preferably before the chancellor’s next budget because it will make me poorer. No idea what she’s going to do (I don’t think she has much idea either) but it will hurt. Because she’s still banging on about ‘black holes’, but not in a ‘physics’ kind’a way. Its getting bigger, by the day, started by the rotten Tory government, and HIDDEN!!!, because the incoming government used the TGWU instead of KPMG to calculate the nation’s finances. Then she increased taxes to virtually guarantee that the ‘economic growth’ she can’t stop talking about, hasn’t happened and is unlikely to happen under this bunch of leaders. So nasty Rachel is personally coming to MY house to demand I pay the 30 billion quid; that being the approximate, average, almost mythical, size of that ‘hole’. Fair enough.

I can’t wait for them to go.

But who to replace them with?

The Tories are currently engaged in Conference, in Manchester. Apparently with a ‘do not disturb’ sign on the door because attendances have been awful. When Mel Stride made his fabulous shadow-chancellory speech on Monday, there were 17 people there. Including his mum and his dog. As he spoke about ‘scrapping business rates’. Wow! That would be fantastic for us City rates-payers burdened with that massively punitive ‘tax’. And I’m sure the Corporation of London would survive just fine with… errrr… like… no income whatsoever. But a great plan, nonetheless, and one I heartily approve of. His ‘leader’ speaks today. Even though 47% of the population (I may have used a degree of flexibility with that) don’t know her name. So ‘Whassername’ Badenoch will address Conference and tell us all her plans for…

It doesn’t matter. The election is sadly a long way off and the Tories now have only one party member in the entire nation under the age of 54. His name is Rupert Hedgehog-Hayes and he lives Worcestershire. With his mummy and daddy, even though he’s 42 years old and only slightly ‘learning impaired’.

The Liberal Democrats may or may not still be a political party but no-one knows for sure, nor gives a damn. I think their best course of action would be to cut Ed Davey’s bungee cord next time he’s up Big Ben, or Mount Snowdon, with his canoe.

Which leaves Reform UK. The problem? The solution???

All the major parties are running scared of Reform. We were blessed with Brexit because David Cameron was running scared of Nigel Farage last time he headed up a party. And now we’re in ‘Brexit-re-do’, part 2: The Immigrants!!! Nigel Farage, for what anyone says to the contrary, wants to ‘re-whiten’ Britain. He’s very clever and, obviously, like Jeremy Corbyn, like Tommy Robinson, like Robert Jenrick, like Adolph Hitler, claims to have ‘no prejudice at all’. So he plants the images. Shows the pictures of boat-people arriving. And, let’s face it, no-one likes a group of complete unknowns arriving uninvited to our shores. Are they rapists? Terrorists?? Do they have ‘cultural issues’, possibly about women? OUR women?? Farage is the ultimate populist. He can ‘push buttons’ like no-one before. But could we really trust him with running the country?? I’m not sure I could.

So, all things considered, as a glorious and proud nation: we’re fucked.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

Protesting has become the UK’s main industry. All other work ceases at the opportunity to get your keffiyeh and take to the streets waving your Palestinian flag, to sing a few songs which sound nice, at an ISIS convention, but are in fact calls for a (proper) genocide. So to ‘stop the babies dying’, it’s perfectly fine to call for the death of all Jews. Yeah, I get that. Totally on board. That’s not ‘antisemitism’, it’s to ‘stop the genocide’ (the other genocide, the metaphorical one).

And today, October 7th, the 2nd anniversary of the Hamas massacre, not one of those people described above will give but one thought to the 48 people still held hostage in the tunnels of Gaza after 2 fucking year. Half of whom are dead. But in fact that’s probably not true. The protesters are thinking of those hostages, because by taking to the streets today, a Tuesday, it makes a statement. That they’re prepared to take action on a working day specifically for the upset it will cause for all people who sympathise with the captives. There is no actual thoughts for the kids murdered and kidnapped at a rock festival. No consideration that women were raped, burned alive, babies shot, whole families annihilated among the 1250 deaths and 500 taken captive. They are no longer ‘the issue’. Not that these good, moral, caring, considerate souls left their Hampshire knitting circles and their Surrey book-clubs to go out on October the 8th that year to have perhaps a vigil? A march of compassion? An understanding of the suffering endured after such a horrendous massacre. No, on that day they left it to their ‘brothers’, who rode up and down the Edgware Road and the Finchley Road waving Hamas flags and celebrating the slaughter of innocents.

The Prime Minister himself(!!!) has asked people NOT to protest today, but to show some compassion, sympathy, decency. He said to protest would be ‘un-British’. Whatever the fuck that means. In all honesty, Kier Starmer trying to stop today’s protest almost had me reaching for my keffiyeh.

I saw a video yesterday. One of several I’ve seen in which someone is cutting down the rows of yellow ribbons put up to support the hostages. They’re not there to show support for bombings or the IDF. Nor arms sales or invasions of the West Bank. The yellow ribbon is about the hostages. And this heartless or moronic bitch was cutting them down. Probably not even aware of their significance other than ‘its something to do with Israel’. I’m not sure what that says, but it ain’t good.

For God’s sake, free the hostages. What’s left of them.

A xxxx

Having a ‘rant’ is good for the soul. Just don’t let anyone else hear. Not anyone who might be offended. I ‘rant’ often. Then I read it through (sometimes) and check that what I’ve written will only deeply offend those I want to deeply offend. But writing such things gives you the wonderful, face-saving, ‘power of the edit!’ You can delete whole passages and its as if they were never there.

Gary Neville can’t edit his gob. Ok, there’s a good argument that as his ‘rant’ was on video, he could have watched it through and taken out the offensive bits, the ‘racist’ (we’ll get to that) bits and the downright stupid bits. But that’s basically the entire thing. And Gary is really not the sort of person who doesn’t think that the whole world eagerly awaits and digests every wonderful word that comes from his superlative brain and out of his horrible Mancunian gob. If he’s thought it; THE WORLD NEEDS TO KNOW IT!!!

Its an arrogance. Born out of being lucky enough to be a slightly-above-average right back in a team festooned with superstars. Giving him a status as a footballer he didn’t really deserve. And wealth he could never have dreamed of. But Gary is much brighter than your average football player. And is a really good pundit of the game.

However; underneath it all he’s just a gobby northerner with a chip on his shoulder, from always living in the shadow cast by best mate AND team-mate, David Beckham.

So Gary started his rant, talking nicely about the terrible murders in the Synagogue near where he lives. (Its all ‘up north’, how far can it be?) But within seconds he segued into Union Jacks and cross of St George flags. Being hi-jacked by ‘middle-aged white men’. The bit that’s ‘racist’. Its not racist at all. How can it be? Gary Neville IS a middle-aged white man, ffs. What it is is stupid stereotyping, not entirely off the mark, it must be said, but one of those truisms that ‘mustn’t be said’.

He blamed the rise of ‘the right wing’, the rise of ‘the left wing’ (to which he is strongly attached) and, pretty much, the rise of ‘everyone in the middle’.

The bits he got almost right are that the flying flags are offensive to some. Mainly due to previous association with neo-Nazis. So a week after the Labour conference ‘reclaimed the flag’, en masse, in the most cringe-worthy moment in UK political history, Gary has decided that his party failed to do so and anyone flying a flag is a right-wing, Farage supporting, racist Brexiteer. He calls out the divisiveness in our society, which eventually led to the murders in the synagogue.

And to a degree, that is correct. He just got the particular ‘divisions’ in the wrong place. Flag flyers didn’t attack Heaton Road. That was due to other ‘divisions’ in our society, creating ‘open season on Jews’. Divisions caused or enabled by our hapless government, our prejudiced press and the increasing tolerance of the police in dealing with messages of hate and genocidal intent at protests.

So Gary Neville will soon be an ‘ex-pundit’ on Sky, one feels. The uproar from Sky subscribers, many of whom are probably middle-aged white men, will render him unemployable in his current role. Oddly, it took the BBC about 3 years of vile outbursts from Gary Lineker to get rid of him.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

I went out for dinner last night. I’m an omnivore. I can even do ‘vegetarian’, if I have to. And if it’s at Bubala, I don’t even complain. But it wasn’t about me. We were going out with me mate Mark. And he’s a different kettle of lettuce leaves altogether. Mark eats meat. Ok, he also eats… beef… errrrr… lamb… Ah!, chicken. That’s not meat. Sometimes even fish!!! Definitely not meat. When he went on a cruise round the Far East he sent me a photo. Ah, I thought, this will be Angkor Wat, the fabulous old temple in Cambodia. It wasn’t. It was a steak. Massive one. On the ship. When he sailed round Patagonia, I received no pics of icebergs, just meat. There’s no point getting off the ship for wonders of geology or fabulous historical artefacts when there’s so much meat to eat.

So we went to a local Turkish last night. Where we ordered a trough of meat. All fabulously charred from its short but meaningful life on an ocakbasi. It came with a gorgeous salad, which I ate. Other than half a piece of shredded red cabbage which was 4 of Mark’s ‘5 a day’. We had some chips, which was the 5th. And rice. But that doesn’t count. Chilli sauce, by my reckoning, made that 6!!! A bumper day for vegetables and vitamins. Oh, the meat was ok too. And we finished it. In case there was any doubt.

No doubts in the football yesterday. Spurs went to Elland Road and beat Leeds for their first home defeat in over a year. Welcome to the Premiership, Leeds. It was as convincing as all Spurs wins. Meaning: we won. Thank God. Arsenal also won, taking them top of the league as Liverpool lost their third match in a row. The first time that’s happened since 1853. Well, it feels like it. But in worse news, it was Chelsea who beat them. And no-one wants that. Manchester United won, which is terrible for the bookies as no-one ever expects them to win. And City beat Brentford who created a whole bus depot to try and ‘keep them out’, but no-one told them that Erling Haaland eats buses for breakfast.

Spurs are third. Just ‘where we want to be’. Because Liverpool are obviously a spent force now and Arsenal are on the verge of a total collapse. Why? Because I believe in the power of good over evil and in justice. Yin and yang. Astrology. Any fucking thing that works.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

Why do we read books? Ok, or ebooks, for those literalists who can’t possibly be so unprecise as to equate the two. We read, same as watching a movie, to ‘take us away’. From reality. From ‘life’. From all the shit rushing round our minds. We detach. We take a time out and visit Slow Horses land. Or we take a trip to Wuthering Heights (if we really fucking have to). Or we temporarily place ourselves at the mercy of Stephen King’s imaginary dark world. And with reading, probably more than movies, definitely more than watching stuff on tv, you are completely absorbed. There’s no ‘room’ for stray thoughts of the outside world disturbing the… story. So because ‘the outside world’ is getting a bit obsessive at the moment, I FUCKING NEED AN ESCAPE!

I just finished ‘The last chair lift’ by John Irving. He’s my favourite author in the world. Along with Stephen King and Mick Herron, obviously. But unlike those two, his offerings to the literary world are way less frequent. Way, way less. You get about one every five years. But Oh. My. God. Are they worth waiting for. His books never relate in any way to each other, but they do have constant themes. Mainly, people who are a bit ‘odd’. Not in any grotesque way, just ‘a bit not normal’. He likes to write about small people. (He is not a big man). His characters often wrestle at school/college. (He wrestled at school/college). There’s lots of seduction of underage people by adults. Normally of boys but not in his latest. (I make no judgments). And as his books have progressed through the years, a degree of… non-hetero-ism has entered his fiction. (I can only wonder). Taken all the way to non-binaries in his latest. But the characters are rich. You ‘know’ them. And they’re wonderful. I read ‘the world according to Garp’ in about 1982. That was my first Irving. Its brilliant. Unusual. Then Hotel New Hampshire. Cider House Rules (like ‘Garp’, made into a fantastic movie). A Prayer for Owen Meany (one of his weirdest and best characters). And then everything else. Up to ‘chair lift’, in which all the weirdness of all his previous characters and storylines are distilled into a never-ending spiral of perfectly logical strangeness in the world he creates. I loved it. But I’m an ‘Irving-y’. Like a Swift-y, but for the literary classes. (In my other ‘class’, I’m a Swifty too, by the way, and love her dearly).

And now I’m reading a fab book by John Sandford. Who? Exactly. I’d never heard of him until a few weeks ago in the Sunday Times, they asked authors who they read. And Mick Herron (all kneel) said he loved John Sandford. I immediately bought 3. And they’re good. Great, in fact.

So go read a book. Because after a truly diabolical week, it’s the only way to escape the grim realities we need to consider.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx