Andy's Glasses

So we were sitting in the garden on Friday night, before dinner. Drinks. Nothing posh, more: how can I get pissed most quickly and efficiently? Because of the temporary absence of Lila, Joey & co, cos they’re in Crete, it was a small affair. Just us, the younger daughter and the adopted daughter. Well, we’ve never really adopted her but she’s an Aussie and when she lived in London for a few years, she was just ‘part of the team’. Long story but she’s been Rachie’s best mate since they were 2. Anyway, she’s on holiday, so over she comes.

And there was Friday night whisky (totally different from Sunday, Tuesday or Wednesday night’s) and there was chatter and laughter and chopped liver.

When, SUDDENLY, an alarm went off! In fact, three alarms went off. Which is a bit racist; don’t the government care if Aussies catch fire!!!! And the message was profound. A ‘warning’! “DON’T START ANY FIRES NEAR THINGS THAT MAY CATCH FIRE!!!!, it essentially said. Oh. I was on my round to the Heath with a box of matches for a bonfire. Glad they told me.

I have friends in Israel. They get ‘alarms’ quite frequently. To tell them missiles are coming. Get to a shelter. INCOMING!!! Clear and present danger. That’s the purpose of ‘alarms’. Shit is happening, and it’s happening NOW! Not: oh, best not to light fires near stuff like bone-dry wood; there’s a bit of a national problem going on, in case you missed it, cos you live in a fucking news-free vacuum! Half the country’s on fire. Yet what he sent was just a ‘warning’ and our PM should just address the nation with a list of ‘things to do and things NOT TO DO!!’ Not using ‘the alarm!!!’ It’s like sending out a national alarm to see if anyone could pick him up a pint of milk on their way home. Not its purpose. And so by using the ‘A-bomb’ for a warning which everyone knows; and those who don’t know aren’t going to listen to him anyway, dilutes the impact of the alarm system. We won’t be rushing to our phones to see what the government is saying. Because it’ll be something obvious and not any kind of emergency.

I’m not hating Andy Burnham. Just so you know. I want to. I almost need to. But he does talk a modicum of good sense. Not sure about ‘Number 10 North’, because it’s just more expense when all his plans are going to require massive amounts of cash. Which I will have to pay. When I’m not even allowed to use a hose pipe.

So I wouldn’t say I like him. But not hating a PM is no faint praise.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

The A-level results came out on Thursday and, as a consequence, anyone with A-level statistics will be fine understanding the vast output of ‘data’ available in the press. If you got history/French/economics; don’t bother looking. You won’t understand.

But two ‘trends’ simply have to be mentioned and explained and understood.

Boys averaged higher in A-level grades achieved than girls. Why? Probably because they’re more clever. I mean; why else? I haven’t yet seen the data on trans kids but that would be interesting. Would trans boys perform better than trans girls? Is the aspirational gender more significant than a pair of testicles in the exam outcome?

Secondly is the ‘regional difference’. The fact that there is a massive and increasing difference in top grade achievement between the South East and the ‘north’. This will cause great upset, anxiety and probably political changes from the Prime Minister, the consummate ‘northerner’. And yet he will now have to face another undeniable fact. That ‘the south east’ is about 10% more clever than ‘the north’. It’s there, in black’n’white, on the tables. London had about 33% of kids getting an A grade. The north-east had 23%. The northwest (Burnham’s obsession) only did about 1% better.

Northerners are thicker than southerners. It is now a proven fact.

Ok, there are ‘over-riding effects’ which much be taken into consideration. For most northerners, English is not their first language. Well, it sounds like that when you hear them speak. And that must disadvantage the children during exams. Others will quote socio-economic variations between the regions. The south-east is ‘richer’. And for some reason, ‘poor people’ don’t use books, preferring to sit their children in front of the tv for 7 hours, eating crisps. No children complain about this. Yet books are available, free, in any local library. Whereas Netflix costs 8 quid a month, Disney £7.50, Sky… lots.

This would cause some to try to improve the educational standards in the North. Andy Burnham, raised on the ‘politics of envy’ and ‘lowest common denominatorism’ of long-term Labour educational policy, will probably work out ways to make Southern kids more stupid.

Basically, Southerners are massively aspirational for their children. To the point where in some cases the parents are so obsessed that they don’t allow their kids any ‘down time’ at all. But somewhere is a happy medium, where kids are encouraged and assisted with their schoolwork at home and maybe read together, and even make it all fun.

But essentially; northerners don’t just sound ‘a bit divvy’, they are so. It’s in the numbers. Results don’t lie.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

Did you see the eclipse??? Wow!!! Amazing!!!

But of course, you didn’t ‘see’ it, or you’d be at Moorfields with patches on your eyes hoping to restore your destroyed retinas. Unless you’re in the tiny minority of people who actually had ‘eclipse glasses’, accredited with the exact British Standards number! Obviously, if you’re an exploitative nob from Romania making cheapo rip-off glasses, it’s much easier to just write a number on the specs than to actually produce them properly. But I’m no cynic. And because we’re clever, we ordered our eclipse glasses in advance.

They’re arriving today. Ok, yesterday would have been slightly better, but we’re so ready for the next one. We’ll keep them in the special ‘eclipse glasses drawer’ we had installed 20 years ago, just in case. Yeah, they’ll be completely forgotten about by tomorrow. But if I’m still around in 2080; I’m ready for the next (almost) total eclipse.

Someone told me a neat trick. View it through a CD. Yup, get a cd and hold it up, seemingly opaque, but enough gets through to get a fab little ‘sun-with-a-bite-out’. Mel ‘made’ a pinhole camera, which we had to take out to dinner with us when we met some friends. (At the Hummus Bar!!! I fucking love the Hummus Bar, even without a pinhole camera.) But its usefulness at eclipse viewing was… limited.

So half way through the eclipse I went and took a shower. Cold one. We only do cold ones currently. And by the time I was dressed the front of the house was getting dark. And still, the best place to ‘view the eclipse’ was on the Sky channel who were showing it; BIG and safe. I know it’s not like sitting at Stonehenge invoking the devil or chanting ‘ohmmmm’, but it was functional.

Did it, as all the pundits on tv asserted, ‘make me feel man’s insignificance in the grand scheme of the universe’? Was it ‘totally humbling’? Did I ‘connect with the people hundreds, thousands even, of years ago, who would have watched the same thing?’.

No, not really. I’m not big on humility, as you’ll have gathered. Humiliation? That’s part of my life. But it’s an eclipse. Unlike our historical forebears, we don’t think it’s ‘the sign of the Antichrist’, nor the ‘end of the world’, we get it. It’s basic physics.

Yet… and yet… there is something truly magical about an eclipse. Oh, and it’s free. Though I bought tickets online for 50 quid each, just in case.

Happy Astronomy

A xxxx

Tomorrow is ‘our day off’. Its Lila-Joey-day but due to them being in Crete, our daughter has reluctantly agreed that our services will not be required, having made extensive inquiries with various airlines about flight availability for ‘day trips’ for ‘staff’. So we had booked, a few months ago, a trip to Wakehurst. That’s ‘the other Kew Gardens’, the much bigger one, down in Sussex. Supposed to be fab. And when we booked it, in March, going in August sounded a great idea. I love a road trip; anywhere, and trees are always… well they’re always trees.

Except when their dying from dehydration. And the rolling fields of green are now the dried out fields of brown. And 2 hours each way on the M25/M23 way past Gatwick suddenly seems not so great as we overheat in the inevitable hold-ups/ road works/ disasters.

So we’ve cancelled. We’ll go when the weather’s nicer. With the daughter’s permission, obviously. And hopefully when the trees have recovered and the grass is a bit greener once more.

How fucking weird to be cancelling a trip in England ‘because of the weather’ and not referring to horrendous rain, freezing winds, horrible wintery shit? And they were showing pictures of Kew yesterday and its tragically arid and ‘orrible. So four hours in the car with the top down suddenly doesn’t sound so good. And there’s no way I’d put the top up! Who do you think I am, FFS??? I would die of sunstroke rather than turn on the Air Conditioning. That’s who I am. An idiot.

So instead we’re going to Trent Park. Apparently you can’t fry unless you go past Hadley Wood. Trent Park House was a spy centre during the 2nd world war. Spying for our side. I’ll let you know more once I’ve been. Unless we’re sworn to secrecy, then I’ll tell you, but I’ll have to shoot you.

The House was owned by Sir Philip Sassoon. Scion of the Sassoon family who left Baghdad, made zillions in the opium trade during the 19th Century when based in Bombay (as was). By the time they came here they were in all sorts of more ‘sanitised’ interests, like shipping and finance. And were so rich that despite their druggy beginnings, they were made aristocracy upon arrival. Things were like that in ‘those days’.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

It has to first be accepted that newspaper column ‘advice’ is as changeable as the wind. (I’m working on a new metaphor for that as we don’t have wind any more, nor rain). “DRINK RED WINE EVERY DAY AND LIVE TO 120!!!”, one day, followed the next by “AVOID WINE; IT’LL KILL YOU!!!!”. The response is predictable too, to such advice. Generally, when it relates to something we like, we want confirmation. We want our intuitions to be sound. We will keep drinking red wine, based on the former, because we want to, and we’re consequently probably too pissed to even notice the latter when it appeared.

But sometimes you just have to sit up and take note when a headline grabs you. Like the one above.

As a confirmed anti-lettucer, to see words like that, in print, with the inevitable ‘rent-a-scientist’ validation, is to see true beauty. Is to start questioning if maybe there is some Devine being ‘up above’. A thought I hadn’t considered since Spurs avoided relegation, back in May.

Because this is vindication. This is justification. This is… EVERYTHING!!! I never have to eat lettuce again and I will carry this piece of newspaper around at all times so I can annoy people I find being overly saladish in restaurants. Warning them. I’ll get my old sandwich board out, which says ‘Jesus died to save you!!!’ on one side and ‘Save the Wales!!!’ (Not a typo, it was there from the Charles & Diana days), on the other. I’ll overwrite it with ‘LETTUCE KILLS!!!’ and ‘AVOID SALAD LIKE THE PLAGUE IT IS!!!’

I accept that I’ll probably get thrown out of a lot of places. Possibly beaten up by the salad marketing board, a notoriously militant bunch.

I don’t like lettuce because it brings absolutely nothing to the party. Less than nothing. It is a waste of chewing. Unnecessary wear on your teeth, which need to be kept sharp to rip the flesh from roadkill. Same for ‘rocket’, spinach, all those other ‘leaves’. They’re there for animals to eat. Not humans. We need a more balanced diet. Chicken AND steak. I love potatoes and they’re a vegetable. Not necessarily a ‘leaf’ as such, I grant you, but almost ‘salad’. Almost.

So to Dr Microbiologist, I bless you. You have given credibility to my leafaphobia. Never again will I be the recipient of smug looks over the plates of salad-eating nonces as the juice from my cheeseburger drips down my chin. No more having to explain to people at poncey dinner parties that I’ll pass on the lettuce, thank you very much, BECAUSE I FUCKING CAN’T STAND THE STUFF. I’ll have no further embarrassment walking straight past the salad bar en route to some massive slab of almost raw meat or other.

This is just the best news ever. And I bet me mate Mark agrees.

Happy Meat Eating.

A xxxx

If you said to me (and I fucking wish you WOULD!!!), ‘Andy, you can have any car you like; I’ll pay for it’, what would I choose? Well, if I wanted a truck I’d get a Bentley. They have convertibles and it simply MUST be convertible. Range Rover? I’d literally rather take the fucking bus. They look similar. Tesla? Shoot me now. A Ferrari? Lamborghini?? Naaaahhhh, too poncey. I’d rather have a McLaren than either anyway. But that’s not what I’d choose. Because I love old cars. From the days when style was everything (except for brutal levels of power, but we’ll get to that in a minute) and no-one gave a shit if having a gorgeous chrome bumper might cost 1 mile-per-gallon in lack of aerodynamics. You make it chrome. Also, no-one ever bought a car like I would want for its fuel economy.

Jeremy Clarkson summed up the issue in this week’s Sunday Times, when he said cars are either made ‘practical’ and hence dull as dishwater, or ‘for fun’ and they’e impractical, barely functional and NEVER have iPads on the dashboard.

And this was exemplified in the 50s and 60s when fuel was cheap and style was paramount. Green Party members probably shouldn’t read on. In fact, they should just fuck off, in any circumstance.

So if you bought me a 1960 Porsche Speedster convertible, I would probably love you forever. But if you bought me a 1958 Chevrolet Corvette (in red; it must be in red even though I generally hate red cars. Never said I was logical or consistent), then I would happily bear you children.

But what I really want, what I really, really want is this. Above.

The AC Cobra. Year irrelevant because they still make them. And have done, in tiny editions, with many ‘replica’ versions using original parts, since 1953. And Carroll Shelby’s original idea was to find a tiny, British car manufacturer and get them to design a beautiful body (we were good at pretty bodywork back then), with a very large space under the bonnet. For which he shipped over the biggest, most powerful, brutal, excessive, engines America could make. And America specialised in such things. Because the original, straight-6 Ford Zephyr engine was never going to win races for team Shelby. That was a 2 litre engine. Shelby tried the ‘small block’ Ford V8, which was 4.2 litres and that went faster. Oooooh. So he increased it to the 6.2 litre version and what d’ya know? That was faster still. The addition of a supercharger didn’t exactly slow it down either.

Because that’s what Americans did, ‘back then’. Just keep adding power til it bursts.

The one pictured here has a 6.3 litre Chevy engine. That should be big enough. And odd because Shelby was employed by Ford and virtually all Cobras have Ford engines. But WTF?, if the Chevy goes a bit faster, drop it in!!! Carroll Shelby would approve. Because he was building cars with absolutely no restrictions. They were built as racers but what the hell, get a tax disc and put it on the road. I’d buy it for the engine noise alone. But that styling, that beauty…
Beauty on the outside, brutal within. Bit like my wife.

So that’s what you’re gonna buy me. The car, not the wife.

Thank you very much.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

Yeah, I’ll send my cv over. Its impressive. And my PhD thesis, you’ll like that, its quite brilliant. But basically, I was born a bit odd, developed somewhere on some spectrum, but was consequently a touch ‘Rain Man’, without all the stuttering. When I was 7 I wrote The Merchant of Venice. People said I nicked it from Shakespeare, but that’s not true. I don’t plagiarise. It was all my own work. As proved by my next work I created, a brilliant thriller called The Da Vinci Code. I got a degree in Literature when I was 9. And captained the football team at uni to win the FA Cup, beating Man City in the final, 2-1. I scored the winning goal, 7 minutes into added time with an overhead scissors kick. I support a wonderful charity by running marathons. I ran 6 of them in a single day, 2 of them with a broken ankle and dislocated hip. The King gave me a special award. And I’m really good to my mum.

If this sounds in any way believable, then you must be very clever. Probably sit on the selection board at Cambridge University(!!! All bow) for bestowing professorships. Like they did to Jason Arday. Who has now been described as a ‘serial fantasist’, and kicked out. His resignation statement was written by AI, which was why it was so good.

But how could those bods at Cambridge buy into the obviously blatant crap on Jason’s cv? Did they not check it out? Do they not understand ‘due diligence’?? They’re supposed to be clever people, ‘La crème de la creme’, but act like a lump of cheddar that’s been left in the garden for 3 weeks of heatwave. (You’re not allowed to use a hose on cheese either). The guy’s thesis was plagiarised, the rest of his cv total rubbish, but transparently so to anyone with common sense. And there’s the problem. The Cambridge dudes are in no way ‘common’. So are not allowed to use common sense. Only algorithms. And Ancient Greek logic. Tossers.

But I don’t think they’re racist tossers. Not at all. Though, obviously, Jason is pulling the race card now he’s found guilty, so any legal action will have to tread very carefully. Because once you’ve pulled that card, you can’t un-pull it. A liar and a cheat is a liar and a cheat. Being black doesn’t lessen either. It just makes it all more difficult and, if I’m honest, more stupid.

On another note, I’m trying to kerb my excitement about the forthcoming football season, just 2 weeks away. Because for Spurs fans this is the ‘dangerous time’ of the year. The time when hope can explode into terribly unrealistic expectations. Because this is the time when… no ball has been kicked yet. (I don’t count ‘friendlies’). This is the fantasy football time of the season. When you put all our new players, all our existing ‘stars’ into a line up and just imagine how brilliant they might be. And we’ve bought well and we love our manager and…

No-one ever includes opposition teams in their pre-season fantasies. If only the League would let us play alone, with no opposition. I’ll speak to Infantino, when he’s finished shagging his mistress (fully paid for by UEFA as part of the ‘shagging clause’ in his contract when he was employed by them), see if we can arrange something along those lines. If there’s a few bob in it; Gianni’s yer man.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

I’ll just say it once: it’s hot. Fucking hot. Ridiculously hot. Which is not really the point. The point is that it’s been like this… foreverrrrr!!! I can’t remember what rain even looks like. Sleeping under the covers. Wearing long trousers. It’s all consigned to history. The only time I’ve used the tube lately was to get to an airport. My commuter days are strictly e-bike. And what’s more, I no longer even bother to ‘check the weather’ before leaving. Because I simply KNOW it won’t rain. And if it does… if it does… how wonderful would that feel? But it won’t. It’s never going to rain again. The world has become a dry, rainless, arid desert. All the world. We’ve fucked it up so royally that it will never recover. Farmers can’t farm. Forests can’t stop burning. And the temperature remains solidly over 30 with no chance of respite in the near (or far?) future.

Basically; you can’t please the Brits. We’re either moaning that it doesn’t stop raining or we’re moaning that it doesn’t rain enough. We went from ‘chilly for the time of year’ to ‘I can’t stop sweating’ in one day, long ago in about May (I really have no recollection of when it wasn’t like ‘this’).

I think the benefits of heatwaves slightly outweigh the costs. Mainly: it’s sunny outside. The whole day. And half the night. We can plan barbecues more than a day away. It helps me to tan. I haven’t driven with the top up for 3 months. No tennis matches have been cancelled due to ‘the weather’. (There’s no such thing as ‘too hot to play’; not in the heterosexual world). We get to eat more ice cream. Lots more.

On the flip side: we can use hoses. Well, in my guise as ‘Mr Loophole’, I’m allowed to water mine, but generally, NO! And the trees are dying. They reckon up to 75% of British trees cannot survive this sustained heat and drought. Which will then reduce the oxygen available to you humans to breathe. I’m alright, I’m a cyborg. But farming is a big thing. It’s not just something Jeremy Clarkson invented a few years ago so he could stay on the tv. No. We need farms. They provide food. But this year; not so much. Luckily it’s not all food. Just… bread. Milk. Cheese. Meat. Oh, and vegetables, I suppose.

It’s so hot here that Lila and Joey have gone to Malta. For some ‘relief’. (Have you ever been to Malta? I have. It’s the world’s furnace. But they’re having fun. And using sun screen.)

But next Wednesday the sun takes on a new role. As part of a duet with the moon for the purposes of the eclipse. And this time; there’s no cloud cover expected to ‘rain on the parade’. At about 6.15 in the evening the moon will travel across the sun and obscure most of it, before our very eyes. Though really, you’re not supposed to look at it because you’ll go blind. Though we will all look because humans, and cyborgs, are just drawn to such wonders of natural majesty. You can buy all the virtually opaque 3-d glasses things from Amazon, but when it happens, you just wanna see it for real.

So enjoy the heat, enjoy the eclipse, I’ll see you Wednesday about 8.15 in the A&E at Moorfields Eye Hospital. Or I won’t see you.

Happy Sunny Saturday

A xxxx

… a day makes. 24 little hours…

Because today, if I use a public toilet I absolutely KNOW that the great fat, threatening, shaven-headed, tattooed, knife-wielding head-case who just stomped in, is in possession of a dick. I don’t have to fear that it might be a ‘trans’ person, pretending that ‘they’ do have a nob when they don’t. And I can’t tell you what a relief that is to me. Relief in every sense.

Of course, should I choose the boroughs of Waltham Forest or Camberwell to take my leak, then I won’t be so certain. Because they’re ‘green’ boroughs. Councils led by the Green party. And the Green party mantra is: ‘NOBS DON’T MATTER!!!’ (Including the biggest nob, who is leader of their party). If you’re a drop-dead gorgeous babe wearing killer heels and a teensy mini-skirt, but you’re ‘feeling a bit manly today’, then you’re welcome in the Gents. In Waltham Forest and Camberwell only. If you try that in Hackney or Lewisham, you’ll go to jail.

Well, you would do, but you’ll have to wait until they’ve freed up some space. Bit crowded at the moment. But don’t worry, they’re going to send home a few murderers, GBH-ers and serial burglars to make room. For all the ‘non-victim hate crime’ people who’ve posted nasty things on X. And those in a possession of a penis in a Ladies public convenience. Its all about prioritising.

In the UK, we’ve closed 23 prisons in the last 15 years. Losing nearly 8,000 places. Ok, the prisons were old, decrepit, cost a lot to maintain. But they were prisons. Yet no-one thought that with the crime rate rising (always and forever, sadly, until we reach Nirvana where there’s no crime and the traffic lights are always green) we should, kind’a, think about building new ones BEFORE closing the old? Nah, I get that. Its a bit ‘outside the box’ for politicians who are too busy worrying about allowing big hairy men in Ladies changing rooms at Uniqlo.

So that’s where we are: Only women can use the Ladies, except in Waltham Forest and Camberwell, and we’re emptying the criminals back into the ‘community’ so they can commit more crime.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

I hate to bang on about Gianni Infantino but… I have to. He’s horrible. He’s vile. And if you are a football fan, you’ll understand my complete contempt of the man. And if you’re not, then go read the new Robert Galbraith novel for the next 3 minutes instead. I’m reading it and it’s fab.

In an article in today’s Times, they made the totally credible case, to the point where, with hindsight, it actually becomes blindingly obvious, that this World Cup was Infantino’s showcase of precisely what he can get away with, in terms of the commercial underpinning of the event. He’d been planning ‘the great sell-off’ for ages and used the tournament to prove how financially rewarding for all it can be, if handled correctly.

Thus the introduction of ‘hydration breaks’. Dividing the game into quarters rather than the normal halves, to create extra advertising, brining in extra revenue. The half time show (scuse me whilst I vomit) in the final lasted 27 minutes and 17 seconds, despite FIFA’s own rule that it mustn’t exceed 15 minutes. Because a ‘half time show’, even one as dire and stupid as the one they had, keeps people watching. A ‘break’, has them running to the off-license for another case of Stella (UK), or rushing to the kitchen to throw tequila and ice in the blender for another 45 minutes (plus stoppage time) of margaritas (US). A half-time show keeps people at the tv, keeping advertising revenues high. Not so good for the drinks trade.

Christiano Ronaldo was on a 3-match ban for violent conduct in a game against Ireland. Meaning he’d miss Portugal’s first 3 games. Then he went out for dinner with Infantino, Elon Musk, a couple of Kushners (there’s a stupid ‘selfie’, which has in time become quite incriminating) after which FIFA ‘suspended’ 2 of the match-bans. No reason. Ronaldo is a big ‘draw’ on tv, so they wanted him to play; just ‘leave it to Gianni’. In a similar way to overturning the red card for Folarin Balogan to allow him to play America’s next match. Which, fortunately, they lost, otherwise that would have absolutely proved the absence of any possibility of any ‘God’ and would have destroyed all the religions of the world.

But worst of all is the complete ‘lack of transparency’ (I’m being sick once more; maybe I ate something dodgy). The man who came in just to create an ‘open book’ at FIFA, does the corruptest of deals without telling anyone, and then offers a bribe of $30million to every country who votes for him and his terrible plan.

Two countries remain in full support of this evil, corrupt football-terrorist. Qatar and Morocco. The former who Infantino awarded the most undeserved World Cup ever to; and the latter who, when they host the next World Cup, won’t have to play qualifying matches, whereas Spain and Portugal, the co-hosts, do have to. And again, no reasoning, no precedents (host nations ALWAYS have automatic entry) and no explanation given.

I’ve called this story ‘the last word’ because I sincerely hope it is. That he’ll be gone by tomorrow. Or assassinated on Tuesday. I don’t care which. Yet I suspect he’ll hang on, hated and reviled, for as long as he possibly can. Increasing his own humiliation with every hour.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx