Andy's Glasses

I love a European city. All of ‘em. So Cadiz qualifies therefore I love it. They all have fabulously long and intricate histories involving invading hordes of pretty much everyone who had a boat, wars, Royalty, more wars, armadas, castles dating back thousands of years and tapas. Ok, I suppose only Spain gets the tapas and armadas, because both were invented here, in Cadiz! I made that up. No idea where tapas originated, probably in Mrs Fernandez’ kitchen in Bilbao, but this is where the Spanish Armada sailed from to fight the English (there were no British then, Nicola Sturgeon hadn’t even been born in 1532; she just looks like she was).

We left the kids, cos the hour + each way on two buses was a lot for me, let alone Joey. And we set off for Cadiz. Where we did a ‘free walking tour’, as we do in every city we’ve ever been to, all over the world. Because they’re great and better than organised ‘tours’. You pay what you like at the end, so the guides try much, much harder. I had today’s one polishing my sandals for me. And you learn lots of details. Which survive, in my mind, intact, for approximately the time it takes to think ‘I’d love an ice cream, right now’. But the key points: Cadiz has a history dating back over 3000 years. And because it’s a tiny little ‘island’ (it was, but now is attached to the mainland) rich in minerals, everyone came to get a piece. Starting with the Phoenicians, from… Phoenicia? Phoenix?, anyway, them. Followed by some Arabs, then all manner of others. Building castles and cathedrals (bloody Christians), mosques and all manner of lovely old buildings now mainly gone. King Philip 2nd got in a row with Queen Mary and all hell broke loose, so Francis Drake came over and invaded on her behalf. Lots’a shit like that. All fascinating. All keeping me longer away from ice cream. And its 35 degrees here. And windy.

Cadiz is the windiest place on earth. Other than the few places which are possibly windier. Yesterday we had a wonderful walk along a stunningly beautiful beach, but every time the wind blew, your legs get ‘quite literally’ sand-blasted. It’s horrible and painful and you’re so busy protecting your eyes, your legs feel like they suffering the torture of 1000 needles. Nice.

Anyhow, the take-away is: Cadiz is a really beautiful little city. Charming, lots of lovely little plazas, almost like it’s in Spain. And they take Euros here. Now where the fucking ice cream shop and get me back to my swimming pool. Because you now know everything about Cadiz.

Happy Wednesday,

A & L xxxx

(Lila chose today’s picture and put it on the post. Obviously more quickly and efficiently than I could ever do it).

So the plan is; you’re having a big birthday sometime soon. Very big birthday. So fucking big that for the first time in your life you’re suddenly aware of certain realities which may have been sort of ‘ignored’ on the rapidly moving conveyor belt of life which had brought you this far. Like: I’m very old. Like: I have had way more time than I have ‘left’. Like: those were the good years; it’s all uphill from now on. But heh, its ‘only’ 70, rapidly approaching, that’s the ‘new 45’ (I have unilaterally and fairly randomly decided), so each day is a blessing, and thus must be celebrated accordingly.

That’s June 16th. The ‘big day’. If I make it, obvs. No guarantees at this age. The day before is our 40th wedding anniversary. Holy shit! Don’t even ask how that one happened. No-one saw it coming. Anyway, we need to celebrate. So we’ll do what we do best; go on holiday. Otherwise you feel obliged to spend 10 grand watching people who claim to be ‘friends’ eating your food and getting pissed on your dollar, whilst you’ve spent 6 weeks fretting about flower arrangements and the music play list, only to find half your friends are pollen-anaphylactic and the other half in fucking wheelchairs.

So we’ve brought the gels and the kiddlies over to Cadiz. Why? Because MMM (me mate Mark) did it last year and said it was great. Simple. No agonising on the where/when/the transport/rooms, all sorted. Other than the ‘when’.

Because to actually be away on the 15th/16th of June would be just too ‘appropriate’, too ‘coincidental’ or ‘punctual’ and the fascists who run our country’s junior educational system wouldn’t want that, WOULD THEY???? No. So instead of putting a half term holiday which would have suited us perfectly, those bastards put it now. This week. Ok, we could have just all come without Lila and Joey. Left them in ‘care’ for the week, with social services. Or we could have just brought them anyway and faced the armed police that would have met us at Heathrow on our return. Or we could do now instead. Which, coincidentally, meant we travelled, yesterday, on Joey’s 7th birthday. Which was fun.

So here we all are. In the sun (just like those of you still in England), and by the beach, and in the very strong winds that they get round here. But I’m not complaining. Not yet, anyway. In fact I don’t need to complain. I’ve brought some professionals with me.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

I never doubted my team, not for a moment, all season. Even when they were throwing away every game in the last seconds, finishing every game with 9 men on the pitch and slagging each other off in the press as we ploughed through a new manager every 3 months. I never doubted their skill, their commitment, their passion. Which would, by sheer force of belief, result in ‘success’. (There are many measures of ‘success’).

That’s why I haven’t been nervous, even concerned, about the end of the season. It really was ‘no big deal’ for me. I was chilled. Faith in the ‘program’, blah, blah, blah. Any kind of ‘fear’ you may have taken from these pages was just your imagination, and projection of how YOU would feel if the team YOU loved had GONE TO FUCKING SHIT AND WERE DESCENDING LIKE A BROKEN FUCKING LIFT!!!!! Whereas I was simply chilled about the whole thing.

And my calmness and low heart-rate and intact fingernails was totally proven justified yesterday afternoon. Where, at the Lane, Spurs breezed past Everton in the season’s finale, calmly and without fuss, anxiety or concern. Job done, game over, nothing more to see here. No relegation, no catastrophe, we’re safe and sound.

We scored what turned out to be the only goal of the game (but you don’t that at the time!!!) just before half time. It was fantastic. White Hart Lane exploded as if a cup final had just been won. Which, in so many ways (including financial benefits) it had. And the mood lifted, the uncertainty took a strong stop towards ‘certain’ and the party began.

Then West Ham scored against Leeds. Oh. Then they scored again. And thus were unlikely to now lose or even draw. They had 3 points. So Spurs fans had to dig deep and ask themselves a serious question: would you put the house on Spurs not conceding 2 goals in 10 minutes, plus (a shitload of) stoppage time? The question was answered by the general nervousness around the Stadium, and in my lounge. Because this current team of ours has the capacity to snatch defeat from the most advantageous of positions.

Anyway, Everton didn’t score, West Ham scored a third, but who cares? We were safe and sitting pretty (17th???) whilst they are sitting in the Championship.

Yet certain journalists were unimpressed that the mood after the match was ‘celebratory’. Well, if I’m honest, they may have a point. But, basically, fuck ‘em. We had done better than win a cup; in financial terms alone, we ‘had it off’. What we’ve done is assured our clubs place at the top table. For at least another year.

The future is bright. We’ve just arrived in Cadiz, but more about that tomorrow.

Very very very happy Monday

A xxxx

So sang… Maria?, possibly Tony, maybe both, in West Side Story. Neither were Spurs fans. And therefore knew absolutely NOTHING!!! about pain, suffering and uncertainty of the future. That movie did come in 1961, however, when Spurs won the double. So maybe that song was a premonition… of TONIGHT. When we’ll learn the fate of my beloved football team. Whether they can, probably undeservedly, manage to cling on to the Premiership by the skin of their neck tattoos, or if they’ll tumble into the Championship with all the shame and suffering that we, the fans, will have to endure as a consequence. A consequence of events totally outside our sphere of influence. We remain impotent to the whims and fancies of a bunch of tossers unable to manage OUR football team, despite all those millions and millions of pounds available to them.

I’m not bitter, as the beer ad. says, no. I’m fucking furious.

So at 4pm today our agony starts. Watching Spurs, praying, whilst keeping 70% of our attention on events at the London Stadium, where West Ham play Leeds. And West Ham fans will have probably similar feelings to ours, but quite frankly, they’re a scummy bunch and in all likelihood are more concerned with the price of beer in Aldi and whether they can beat any northerners up, than the fate of their sorry club. Which endures this same agony most years. They’re hardened to ‘final day frenzy’ in a way us fans of such an ‘elite’ club (phah!!!) simply can hardly imagine.

But there are parallels everywhere. Symbolism. As Spurs play Everton. The club beloved by Andy Burnham, the ex-mayor of Manchester and quite possibly our next Prime MInister. If he wins the by-election at Makerfield. His ‘local’ area. Well if he’s a man of greater Manchester, why does he support a team from Liverpool? Probably because much of his ‘local working class lad’ persona is a sham. A skin he dons to be ‘one’a the people’. In reality he’s a middle-class, university educated posh boy from a leafy suburb in the Greater Manc. Rain belt. But that doesn’t fit his narrative. He’s northern, that’s half the battle, but his poshness must be secreted away along with Angela Rayner’s houses and Kier Starmer’s clothes sponsorship deals. He’s no better than Zack Polanski whose own personal story changes by the day, with the only consistencies being the totally undeniable; that he’s Jewish (a Jew-hating Jew, in fact) and that he’s a poof. Probably hates gays too, if he was consistent in his hypocrisy. Anyway; we need to beat Everton, for the SAKE OF THE FUTURE OF OUR COUNTRY.

So tonight. We learn our fate. We just need to draw. A win would be super, take that awful pressure off. But if West Ham should take the lead against Leeds… then panic would ensue. Thankfully our players respond well to pressure. Oh, sorry, must have been thinking about some other players.

GOD HELP US. PLEAEAEASEEEEE…

A xxxx

I’m standing outside the toilets in Debenhams, simply ‘bustin’ for a piss. I’ve been waiting here for 14 months, for the equality guidance report to be finished, so I know which toilet I can go in. None are currently marked ‘super-heroic, totally manly, testicles essential, boys-only, condoms sold here, geezers-with-nobs’ or anything vaguely alluding to what I might find inside. Then, YESSSSSSS!!!! The report is finished! Brilliant!! I can go!!! Ahh, gotta read it first; 300 pages long. Ooooohhhhhh…

So what it says is…

Basically, boys in boys toilets and changing rooms, girls in girl’s ones. Oh, thanks for that. Well worth the time and millions spending on that. Producing 300 pages? Just for a few guidelines which are fairly ‘loose’ anyway.

Actually; its BIRTH gender that tells you which toilet you MUST use. A problem for trans people. And although these are the ‘rules’, you shouldn’t actually ‘ask’. Because if I say to an ugly bird “‘ere! Are you a bloke????”, it could cause upset. As would “are you a poof???” So the rules aren’t really rules, but ‘guidelines’ for companies and institutions. Gives the HR people something else to obsess about, and the ‘inclusivity lawyers’ new basement conversions on their mansions.

Will it stop, (and it has to be stated in this way, for which I apologise), people in possession of dicks going into the ‘ladies’ toilets? To have ‘birth women’ roaming around in the ‘Gents’ is really not a problem, not for me anyway. But ‘blokes in dresses’ in women’s changing rooms is the real issue. The feminist issue. The one fought by JK Rowling in support of ‘women’ and their rights to be spared penises at moments of non-consensual visuality.

Trans people have the right to use the toilet too. Apparently you don’t stop weeing just because you’ve had your… bits removed. And they need spaces too. Yet, obviously, not quite so many spaces. Because, roughly, 49.9% of the population are men, 49.9% are women and 0.2%… aren’t. But what will they do? Wait around for the ‘recommended’ ‘gender neutral’ stalls to be built?

Or they can do what I’m about to do. Piss against your car tyres. I just can’t wait any longer.

Happy relieved Friday

A xxxx

Not only my football team are ‘on the brink’ of DESTRUCTION!!!, but this morning my beloved car presented me with this message! That car to me is like a third grandchild; a second wife (possibly first!!!). I would say a third daughter but this is the first time it’s given me any trouble so it’s not an appropriate comparison. Every time I drive my car I grin like… like… ok, like some kind of simpleton, I’ll give you that, but it makes me happy. This morning I got in, smiling, took the roof down, still smiling, then pulled away and got this message. Then I looked like the ‘shocked’ emoji with an open mouth and hands on the sides of my face. But I wasn’t yellow. Amazingly. And the car handled like a 1967 Ford Anglia. Clunky gear changes. Sluggish. Awful. Because my car uses a PDK gearbox. Oh. Well, to give it the full title: Porsche Doppelkupplungsgetriebe, is just one ‘vorgsprung Dorsche technique’ too far, for my liking. And the PDK is simply the best thing ever. Until this morning when it became the worst thing ever. I’ve booked it in. This is emotionally and, I feel, financially, very distressing. My poor babe!!!! (Gushing tears emoji).

So I wondered, as it’s Lila/Joey day and they’re at school, what the best way to relax and chill might be after such a trauma. And I decided that the best thing you can ever do to find your karma, to pull the yin back from the yang, is to phone a massive company. And in fact I decided to phone two. First British Airways and then Santander. Why? Because their on-hold music, which you’re guaranteed to hear for at least 20 minutes, MINIMUM!!, is so great. About 3 hours later and I’m ready to end it all. I will never phone either again. Ever!

And that’s where we are now. Do I feel better? Have I achieved anything? Was it worth the (massive) bother? Possibly. Next Thursday I’m going to spend three hours abusing myself with a claw hammer, see if that feels any better afterwards.

Though I’ve decided I’m going to stand in the Makerfield by-election on June 18. Why not? Everyone else is. Though not necessarily because they give a shit about Makerfield or the fine inhabitants thereof. They all have ‘agendas’. Andy Burnham; we know his. The short-cut to No.10 lies in that Wigan suburb. Nigel Farage reckons by using a local plumber (again; there’s a pattern here) as his candidate he can further humiliate Kier Starmer. And Andy Burnham. And although Burnham is (horribly, catastrophically, disastrously) Northern, ironically, it’s a future in London SW1 that he craves more than Eccles cakes and flat caps and the fucking Gallagher brothers. So I figured, me… Wigan… why not? I could patronise the local people with tales of Shoreditch, with lists of restaurants, with speed cameras in your own driveways and the magic of tube trains. I would pledge allegiance to their pot-holes (everyone’s local obsession), claim Britain to be ever-Europe-free and summon their inner Zionists.

How hard would it be?

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

You’re driving along the motorway, maybe listening to The Eagles, when two tyres simultaneously blow out, the car rolls, smashes into a wall. But miraculously… you’re OK!! You manage to climb out of the wreckage, shaken but not broken, feeling so lucky to be alive. And a dog comes by and bites you on the leg. Then it starts pouring with rain. You slip on the pavement and break your leg. When you get to hospital you learn that your mother-in-law has won a Nobel peace prize and Zack Polanski is prime minister.

As metaphors go, I’ll admit, that’s excessive. But mere words cannot describe the total disaster, the abject catastrophe, the sheer brutality of the agony caused by the series of events in last night’s footballing shit-show.

We needed just one point from last night’s match at Chelsea. One measly, fucking point. But, obviously, failed to get it. Spurs apparent tactic of sleeping for 80 minutes then suddenly waking up to reality in a total “WTF? Holy Shiiiiiitttt!!!” moment and starting to play something approaching ‘football’, failed yet again. Too little too late. We were already 2nil down. Could’a been different. If Madison’s late shot hadn’t been amazingly, fantastically (I have to admit) blocked by the Chelsea defender, then who knows. But it was blocked. Though the recent ‘late game awakening’ by Spurs does seem to coincide with Madison’s introduction to any match. I say ‘play him’! I know he’s not 100% fit but if his injury returns he has the whole summer to get over it. Or we’ll buy another one for next year.

But by the end of the match we already knew that the ‘worst case scenario’ had happened. All the way down on the south coast, in Bournemouth. Where Man City failed to win. And thus Arsenal became… (I hate to write the words…) League Champions!

On the same evening that Spurs took one foot off the ladder which MAY keep them up, Arsenal won the fucking league. There is no God, there is no hope. There is just pain.

Its all about Sunday. Just one point. Well, at least its at home. Where we never ever win games and play them just to show that magnificent stadia do NOT automatically generate magnificent football. Quite the opposite. Oddly, Everton are aware of that too.

Happy fucking Wednesday

A xxxx

(This pic is for Lulu)

Mel loves Peonies. We all have problems. But like, she REALLY loves them. And they’re only around for a short season. So the cynical, demand-driven, bastard flower-sellers make them expensive. But not so expensive that if you love them you won’t buy them anyway. You’ll just eat less in peony season. I like them too. Possibly because its such an easy way to make my wife happy (I am the BEST fucking husband ever created), but also because they are one of the greatest inventions of the gods. (Along with peanuts, bananas, eggs and locking wheel nuts). You can watch them transform. The buds ‘open’ within hours. Ok, yeah, they’re on their way to death; I get that. But what a fab journey they have. Well, we have, on their behalf.

So when Mel heard of a farm where you actually go around cutting your own peonies, it was simply a ‘must’. Especially when I learned that they don’t have these sort of farms in, like, Elephant & Castle or Islington. No. They’re miles away. In that green bit. The countryside. This particular bit was just in Cambridgeshire, on the Hertfordshire border. So far ‘up north’ you can almost smell Andy Burnham. Basically, drop the roof on the car, get on the A1 and relive every car chase you’ve ever seen, every F1 you’ve ever watched and harness your inner ‘Fast and Furious’. Mel enjoys this sort of ride. And even lets me deploy the ‘sport button!!!’, as long as I do it without her seeing.

You arrive, in the middle of fucking nowhere and there’s the farm. With a massive, 500 car car-park, almost full. Ok, lots of people go there for the super looking cafe or to visit the ‘farm shop’. Which, like all ‘farm shops’, doesn’t sell farms. Nor really do they sell much of what grows on farms. Ok, bit’a cheese, few pork pies to upset the vegans, otherwise its just overpriced kitchenware, barbecues, wooden toys and crockery.

We cut loads of peonies, some other… errrr… flowers, and it only cost 15 quid for the lot. What price happiness. And both in the literal and metaphorical senses, ‘it was all about the journey’. Great afternoon out.

Which took my mind off the football, although by the time we arrived home, West Ham were 2-nil down, which is just brilliant.

Now, ‘all we need’ is 1 point from 2 games. ‘All’ we need… shoot me now.

Happy Monday,

A xxxx

The last time a team won the Scottish football league, OTHER THAN CELTIC OR RANGERS, was in 1984. Alex Ferguson’s Aberdeen. Yesterday, in a ‘knock-out’ final match, Celtic played Herts in a (almost) winner takes all match. If they had drawn, Herts would have claimed the title. But alas and with an inevitability greater than the power of gravity, Celtic scored two late goals, won the game, won the league. Again. Which is a tragedy on so many levels. Not least of which is the number of Palestine flags flying at Celtic Park, but their almost totally Catholic fan base is closely allied to the Irish and we don’t even mention them in decent society. They used to fly IRA flags there, ‘back in the day’, even though they were banned. So we have the terrorists of Celtic and we have Rangers. And, apparently, no team from outside Glasgow is ever allowed to win. Making the Scottish League, the working definition of a ‘Mickey Mouse League’. Or, ‘Mickey Moose’ as they’d call it. Even the Spanish league allows another team to win now and again, otherwise it’s just Barcelona or Real Madrid with predictable boredom. Not Scotland. Old Firm or no firm. Its dull, its stupid and its wrong.

But, like the Spanish league, it’s all about money. The rich teams buy the best players and win the leagues. Simps. But then they get the money which comes with winning. The tv money, the European entry money, which then just increases the ‘gap’ exponentially. Leaving it, quite obviously, unclosable. There is, ‘quite literally’, no chance of other teams winning.

Our league is dominated by money too. Chelsea are a bunch of mid-table rabble for decades until Roman Abramovich decided to launder his billions in the club. Then suddenly, they are the champions of England. Buying every player they could, ruining so many careers, by getting people just so their opponents couldn’t. They out-spent everyone else and would worry about ‘financial rules’, if they actually exist in football, later. After they’ve lifted all the trophies they could. And they did.

Until Manchester City, even more ‘mid table garbage’ for half a century, get acquired by the nation of Abu Dhabi. Who have even more money than Abramovich. And ‘amazingly’ they suddenly become the best team in the world!!!! Incredible what just ‘new ownership’ can do. Especially if that ‘new ownership’ comes with a blank cheque book and teams of lawyers working to defend their monetary excesses. (115 cases pending).

Manchester United weren’t so lucky. They acquired ‘billionaire owners’ who managed to suck money out of the club instead of pumping it in. Which, although quite amusing at the time, was really quite appalling. Now Jim Ratcliffe is at the helm and he’s way more stable than the Glazers and is not only a Manchester United fan but unlike the previous owners, understands the offside rule.

So we are dominated by forrin money in our football league. Arsenal are owned by a rich American, Liverpool too. They run their business models more carefully than the others but still; more money; better results.

And those teams dominate our league. Well, your league, my league might be a different one next year.

And then… Leicester happened. In 2015 Leicester City broke the ‘monopoly’ of the super-rich clubs and won the title here. With no money, a second hand team coach, darned socks. But they won it. So it can be done. It just doesn’t happen very often. And it NEVER happens in Scotland.

COME ON NEWCASTLE!!!!!

(Then it would be a very-)

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

You know me. I love a protest. A march. A rally. Get any three people together and I’ll pitch up with some relevant banners, flags or placards and lead the march, make a speech, jeer and boo, whatever. It’s a compulsion. Marchamania. I’m a protestaphile.

But I’m not marching today. No. When possibly the 2 biggest marches of the year are planned, simultaneously, across non-contacting paths in central London.

We have Tommy Robinson’s ‘Unite the Kingdom’ march. That’s a euphemism. ‘Unite the Kingdom’, in this context means ‘get the Pakis out’. It’s what right wing marches have been about since the National Front back in the 1970s. ‘Britain for the British’, emphatically does NOT include any 3rd generation Brits with brown skin. To be ‘British’ you have to trace your lineage back to the Normans, the Saxons, maybe the Celts. Proper ‘Brits’. Filthy people with rotten teeth, living in caves and eating mud. BRI-TISHSHSHSH PEOPLE! The ones who evolved into skinheads, Mods, and eventually, Reform voters. And the hatred of ‘brown skinned people’ (because they’re so easily identified), has been refined to a literal Islamophobia, as opposed to how the word is normally banded about, like the word ‘genocide’. Often and wrongly and out of any context. But here, on a Tommy R. march, they fucking hate Muslims. All of them. Ok, specifically the minority who arrive on boats and rape women, the Pakistani grooming gangs (who must never be mentioned in any police station or court of law) and the Islamist extremists. Tommy is currently an Israel fan. Because it suits his anti-Muslim position to support a nation attacking lots of Muslims and suffering from extremist Muslim attacks. Although it must be remembered, HARD RIGHT GROUPS MAY TOLERATE JEWS TEMPORARILY BUT THEY ARE NO TRUE FRIENDS OF THE CHOSEN PEOPLE. (What, precisely, we’re ‘chosen’ for is under revision, but generally, historically, its not for good things).

The other march is a Nakba day pro-Palestinian rally. ‘Nakba’ is ‘tragedy’ and this day is the anniversary of Israel’s independence, in 1948. When Arabs ‘were chased out of the promised land’. Which is odd as millions still live there quite happily and with complete inclusion and a level of freedom they would never enjoy in Gaza. However, the assembled band of morons who were marching against Israel the day after 7th October, rather than offering any sympathy for the 1200 people murdered, the women who were raped and the 500 hostages kidnapped, long before Israel started its attacks, have no real knowledge of Israel, or Gaza, or the history of the region. They just jumped on a left-wing bandwagon and chose to make Israel, the victim, into some kind of perpetrator. And that’s where they’ve remained. Spurred on by the Green Party and its head poof, the one who lies all the time, the anti-Israel narrative has been extended to anti-Zionism and as most Jews are some degree of ‘zionist’, they include all Jews in their blaming as part of ‘the problem’, which most of these marchers have no idea about. They just fly the flag, shout for a ‘Free Palestine’, which doesn’t exist, and adopt battle cries which, unbeknown to them, call for the death of Jews.

So you know the expression: ‘why is it always about me???’ Well that’s today’s marches. All about me. Not in a good way. Which is why I’m staying at home. Cutting some more trees down because they drop blossom on my lovely clean car, FFS! And going to see Lila ‘star’ in ‘Oliver’ with her drama group. They’ll just have to march without me.

Oh, and fuck the lot of ‘em. Both groups intent on division and unrest. I only do peaceful, huggy, kibbitzing type marches.

Happy Marching Day

A xxxx