Andy's Glasses

That’s a metaphor. False dawn. You know what it means. If not, you should. And yet today, as I wake to blue skies and sunshine, I’m living the metaphor. Because mornings like this shout at me to: GET THE E-BIKE OUT!!! As it’s been laying dormant, hibernating for the winter. Well, for the wet. I don’t mind cold. Got lights for the dark. But wet? On a bike? It’s the 8th level of hell and misery. So when the morning is clear and bright, on that bike is where I really want to be. And I may not be a fully qualified meteorologist, but I fucking live here. And simply ‘know’, without even looking at the app (yes, I am still JUST capable of having a thought without validating it on an app), that it’ll be pissing down on the way home from work. It always is. So I shall wait a while. Maybe give it a polish. Charge up the battery (it ‘dies’ in the winter) and prepare it. Not even sure how you do that; I just ride it. Bring on the dry.

Kier Starmer has had to make another ‘u-turn’. According to The Times, the 14th of his short tenure. So far. It’s only Wednesday. And half of these ‘reversals’ of intention have been due to legal issues. Yet our PM was a big-shot lawyer. What I want to know is: how big? And why wasn’t he shot? This latest u-turn was his intention to ‘delay’ a bunch of local elections so that… well, the official reason was because of restructuring local government systems, but the reality is that with Labour incredibly unpopular and low in the polls, they thought they could avoid the disaster of getting hammered in local elections by waiting for a ‘rise in popularity’. As if. So Farage, the logical beneficiary of Labour’s demise, started legal actions. And won. Against the government. Led by a lawyer. Whose delay tactics proposal were illegal. Ok, Starmer was a criminal lawyer, but there’s a few other legal types knocking around in Downing Street, FFS. How big a moron do you have to be?

Similarly, the High Court judgment on Friday about the proscription of Palestine Action, was another example of poor legal understanding. By Yvette Cooper, when she was Home Secretary. Because although no-one, including Palestine Action themselves, deny that they embark on terrorist activities, like trespass, breaking and entering, wilful destruction and hitting policewomen in the back with sledge hammers, those crimes are punishable under normal criminal law. The criteria required for proscription go beyond. And although PA do go beyond to this level, the government addressed it wrongly. Because they lack lawyers? Or because they are fuckwits? I don’t know. What I do know is that people carrying banners saying ‘I oppose genocide; I support P.A.’ are beyond moronic. Might as well carry a sign saying: ‘I eat baked beans; keep your hands off the Chagos Islands’. Or better still: ‘I oppose genocide; I support an organisation which supports genocide’. Tossers. So now the government have to take it ‘to appeal’ to proscribe this vile group of terrorists. And the more stupid, grey-haired grannies, vicars and book-clubbers from Orpington they arrest, the better.

I post this picture just to show you all how trendy I am. They say ‘if you keep something long enough it comes back into fashion’. I bought my first Levi 501s when I was about 10. Well, my mum bought them for me. And I duly had to sit in a bath with them, which is what you did. Half hour in a bath wearing your ‘shrink to fit’ Levis. That was almost 60 years ago, and I’m still wearing them. Not the same pair, alas, but I have several of my (massive) 501 collection which are truly ‘vintage’. Torn to shreds from wear, tear and Joey. Who likes nothing more than to find a little tear and make it a very big tear. So now I’m in fashion. Maybe its time to move to Wranglers.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

It is now 7 days before the Spurs Arsenal match. Next Sunday afternoon. I’m going to try to be busy elsewhere. To avoid the nail-biting, sweating, swearing, suicidal, tea-spilling, table-thumping, head-banging, wife-beating (as if) anxiety that match produces. I haven’t been to a live derby game in about 10 years. And cringe my way through the televised ones from behind the sofa. Even when we’re playing well (I’m old; have a long memory) it fills me with dread.

We’re not, currently, playing well. We’re not even playing poorly. Or badly. Or terribly. We’re just shit.

But wait! We have a new manager! That’s good! Isn’t it?

Igor Tudor has been brought in as ‘interim’ manager until the end of the season, when we’ll install a new ‘proper’ manager. The irony being that at Spurs, ‘interim’ managers often last longer than ‘proper’ ones. It is what it is. Igor has 3 months to ‘get us out of trouble’. With ‘trouble’ here meaning relegation. Which is currently, an uncomfortably close consideration.

The manager is ‘dead’, long live the manager.

This one has had 11 jobs in 10 years. So is perfect for Spurs general managerial ethos. But what he virtually always does is raise a team quite highly, but only for a little while. Which means, quite honestly, that he’s the perfect man for the job.

Or would be if he had any idea of our Premiership. Which alas he does not. He’s a Croatian. He’ll have to go places to overtake Luka Modric as ‘my favourite Croatian ever’, but getting my love could be a motivating force for him. He’s managed all over the place, France, Turkey, Greece, Croatia and Italy. Mickey Mouse leagues, the lot of ’em. Bunch’a lazy, strolling, Oscar-winning divers, divas and tossers. Which is why Spurs can be the forth best team in all of the European elite, ahead of Barcelona, PSG and Real Madrid, whilst languishing in 16th place in the English Premier league, miles behind giants of the game like Leeds, Crystal Palace and Brentford. Quite frankly, our league is faster, harder and way better than all the others. Adapting to it, either for players or managers is never easy. But heh, if Igor can get us past Arsenal with some self-respect, I’ll willingly bear children for him.

Interesting that in Scotland (the most ‘mickey mouse’ league of them all) Hearts were miles ahead of Celtic and Rangers at the top of their table. Now its just 2 points ahead. The last time a non-Glasgow team won the league was Alex Ferguson’s Aberdeen in 1984. So really, for the sake of giving the entire nation a small modicum of footballing respect (possibly very small), COME ON HEART OF MIDLOTHIAN!!!

Happy Monday

A xxxx

It’s going back. The Electric Vehicle. Next month is the third anniversary of our lease agreement and those fuckers are taking it back! Some anniversary present that is. Congrats. Three years. Give it back or we send the bailiffs. And we’ll miss it. Because in some ways, it’s the most fantastic vehicle ever created. Smooth, silent, fast-as-fuck and refined. Bit like me. Other than the silent. The refined. The fast. I’ve always been quite ‘smooth’. But in other ways it has been a nightmare. EVs are like puppies; fabulous fun but you wouldn’t want them straying too far from home. Because you might need to… charge them!!! In a public space!!!

The EV ‘experiment’ is not going well. The government here try to convince everyone to buy them. Whilst doing fuck all about the massive infrastructure required to maintain them to a realistic standard. Yet car manufacturers are punished, severely, if they don’t sell the proportion of EVs (to petrol and hybrids) which Ed Miliband and his troup of fuckwit tree-huggers has kind’a randomly decided that they should sell. The ‘fines’ are in the millions of pounds. Yet really, they should be fining us for not buying them, not the manufacturers who have dutifully spent their billions in production costs and manufacturing cars which people don’t want to buy.

In America the ‘experiment’ is a total failure. Ok, there’s not exactly pressure from the government to either worry about climate issues, nor reduce petrol consumption. But the ‘big 3’ of Ford, General Motors and Chrysler (now part of Stellanis), have all now decided to abandon the ‘project’. They have all incurred losses in the 20 to 30 BILLION dollars region, making the electric dream machines which Daisy Duke wouldn’t be seen dead in. Ford even made the F.150, America’s best selling ‘truck’ for 49 fucking years, as an EV option. No-one wanted it. And you can’t use the very valid argument that ‘Americans can’t make decent cars’, because millions of indecent cars are sold to good old boys every year. Just not electric ones. The problem is obviously the distances involved ‘over there’, where to just go shopping, you have to leave your wife, sister and mother, with the 14 children you’ve fathered with all three, in your shack in the Alabama wilderness and drive 120 miles to the nearest ‘town’. Where there won’t be an EV charger until 2043.

So we had our car ‘tarted up’. This involved people with hammers and fillers and paint-sprayers. And now we’re scared to use it. In case some nonce puts his tool box on the bonnet while he’s opening his van, or some drunk rams the car with HER Waitrose trolley. Cos if the car’s not perfect there’ll be a price to pay. Not a nice one.

Therefore, we’ve pre-empted and bought… THE NEW CAR!!! And its sweet, its a hybrid, its white (as if there was any question), it has pre-entry climate control (the number one criterion) and if we scratch it or bash it, we don’t have to worry about the fucking lease company. We’re going to get them to get it now. Safer that way.

The electric dream is over. For now.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

That’s the first time I’ve ever written those lyrics down from Kate Bush’s classic, 100-year-old song. And therefore it’s the first time I’ve realised that ‘winedy’ and ‘windy’ are spelt the same way. How clever she was. Anyway, we’re once again celebrating Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte’s classic novel, the finest one she ever wrote. Ok, the only one she ever wrote. A book filled with passion, with love, with Yorkshire, with rain, moors, wind and… zzzzzzzzz…

It was my ‘o-level’ book for English Literature (which I managed to fail, alas) and I avoided actually reading it, in any meaningful way. As in, reading it. I started. A hundred and ninety-three times I started it and with my adolescent sense of commitment and duty, gave up on page 4 every time. I was 16 years old. The book had no reference to dragster cars, motor-cycles, semi-naked women or football. Even someone getting shot might have given me the staying power for another 6 pages, at least, but no. It was woeful. Didn’t make me laugh even once. There was an old film of it around since 1939, with Lawrence Olivier and Merle Oberon, which would have helped. So I clicked on ‘Netflix’ and it said: ‘come back in about 45 years’. We didn’t even have video players back then. I could have bought a script and acted it out, I suppose, with my dad as Heathcliffe and me as Cathy, but the script would have looked a lot like the book so that wouldn’t do it.

Later on came the Kate Bush song. Possibly one of the most annoying songs of my lifetime, but I watched Top of the Pops praying for an appearance, because I was in love with her. She was just gorgeous. And then she started moving. As if a ‘modern dance’ teacher had told her ‘express yourself as a salmon swimming upstream to spawn; whilst watching the 1967 FA Cup Final. Just… let it flooooooowww…’

And now we’re back once more, with the latest movie version of my least favourite (but oddly, one of Mel’s absolute fave) book. The new movie has received very mixed reviews. Its smutty. And it has Margot Robbie. Two things which would, together, normally have me queuing in Leicester Square overnight for tickets. But… it’s Wuthering Heights.

During my o-level ‘study’ of the book, I may have avoided reading it, but obviously, we ‘analysed’ various sections of it, for essays and discussion and such like. So I did read bits of it. And I must admit that at times the book had elevated itself, in passages, all the way up to ‘just dull’.

Whereas work is never dull. Yesterday, a guy I’ve known for many years brought his ‘new girlfriend’ for some specs and stuff. Oh, that’s nice. Peter is a loud and funny American who’s dear old wife died about a year ago after a long episode with dementia, poor thing. Peter is 82. And in walked the girlfriend. My jaw dropped. Stunningly beautiful 37 year-old Iranian woman. Bright, clever, funny and just fabulous. Oh, did I mention, Peter is rather… solvent. He’s minted.

Send me an essay of 500 words discussing the moral issues involved, the appropriateness and, more importantly, where you can buy your own one.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

Life ‘down the Lane’ is never dull. The football is; that’s fucking dire. But life is sparkling. The kebab shops have never had it so good. As yet one more manager bites the dust. 8 months; plenty of time to turn round the fortunes of any football club. Didn’t do it; he’s gone; and the next one, step this way, please…

Into the eternally rotating turn-style leading in, and out, of the management suite at the Lane. I suppose it could be worse. We could be Nottingham Forest. Who today sacked their manager for repeatedly and blatantly failing to turn Forest into Manchester City. Even into Chelsea would have been acceptable, but no, they’re still Nottingham Forest, so he has to go. After about 3 months. So that Forest can get their fourth manager this season. But where do you go, to try and avoid relegation, if you sack Sean Dyche, the man you turn to to avoid relegation? Time to call Sam Allardyce.

Though in my heart of hearts, I sincerely hope that Forest go down. Or, even more preferable, West Ham. Because if both those teams manage to avoid joining the almost inevitable Wolves and Burnley in their relegation, then Spurs will possibly be the one to make up the numbers. And nobody wants that. Ok, I don’t want that. Lots of people probably do want that, but not people I could ever love.

So where do Spurs go? Who do we want as our new manager? More importantly, what manager in his right fucking mind would ever want to manage Spurs? Who prove to be ‘manager-proof’ in their consistency of uselessness. And of injuriness. Five managers in five years have all come, with the inevitable ‘false dawns’ which new management always produce, and then fail miserably. To either produce a consistency of form or, more importantly, to keep the players fit.

We currently have about 12 of our superstars in various stages of horribly prolonged and protracted recuperation. The training ground resembles a care home as half of our 200-grand-a-week stars hobble round on crutches, walking frames and wheelchairs. But this shouldn’t happen. Football clubs invest millions and millions every year on the finest medical advice from orthopaedic dudes, musculoskeletal experts, physical therapists, training gurus and a whole bunch of other seemingly worthless blood-suckers who seem collectively unable to keep a 24 year old in peak physical fitness from pulling muscles, straining ligaments or ripping hamstrings. Something’s gone wrong.

And we had a new manager. With a ‘proven record’ (he brought Brentford up from leagues beneath and, more difficultly, kept them in the top flight for 4 years, all with some degree of style). We even replaced our club chairman, in case that was the issue. Yet the malaise didn’t just continue but in fact deepened. They changed the cleaners at the stadium. Got some new chefs, even the old car-washer was sent back to the refugee centre and replaced with… someone else.

It must be the fans’ fault. So we’re all sacked. Season tickets will no longer work, refunds to be applied for. We’re getting some new fans in. Proper ones. From Arsenal. Chelsea. Millwall. Halifax. See if that makes any difference. As we plunge managerless towards the Arsenal fixture in 10 days time.

God help us. Someone should.

Happy, moany Thursday

A xxxx

We don’t choose our brothers. They’re just, kind’a ‘there’. And if you’re really unlucky, you lose one, like I did, to the curse of cancer, and if you’re even more unlucky, you get (the former) Prince Andrew as yours. Like the King did. Who yesterday stated that he’d be happy to assist the police in any investigation into his sleazy, nasty, arrogant, shitty, waste-of-space, free-loading brother. (His words may have been different). So now ‘the nation’ is calling for the King to make a proper ‘statement’ about Andrew. Oh, that’s a good idea.

What can he say? And what is the point?

In an ideal world we would look to the royals for ‘moral guidance’, but the fact is, royals have never exactly been exemplars of morality. Charles great uncle ran off with a nazi-supporting American divorcee. His great great grandad, Edward VII, spent his days, and most of his nights, with Lily Langtree, rather than his queen. There were very strong rumours about Queen Victoria with John Brown, or ‘Billy Connolly’ as he is now known. Causing us to rethink the whole ‘Victorian values’ metaphor. And let’s not forget that Charlie himself was shagging Camilla when she was married to his best mate. And continued his ‘relationship’ all the time he was married to Diana. Awwww, but ‘that was true love’. Which doesn’t make it in any way correct, from a moral standpoint, just a bit more sick-making in retrospect.

So what’s the King gonna say? Because basically he either knows nothing about Andrew’s antics with Epstein and the extent of it. Or he did know and did nothing about it. Which in all likelihood, he’ll deny. He may be King, but that doesn’t make him automatically stupid. If Charles was having a clandestine affair with Peter Mandelson that would make much better newspaper coverage. But still, probably, not much insight into his brother’s world.

Kier Starmer sacked Morgan McSweeney, his chief of staff, over the ‘Mandelson Affair’, which is related to, but not exclusively attached to: ‘the Epstein Affair’. And Starmer, rather than taking any blame on himself for basically carrying Mandy, lovingly and tenderly, into his role as ambassador, has thrown McSweeney under the bus of public cleansing. Morgan did it. Leave me alone.

Now, more interestingly, Ghislaine Maxwell has said that she will tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about the whole matter… IF, President Trump offers her ‘clemency’ (her word). A deal (his word; the only one he can spell), and what; early release? New wallpaper in her cell? But as she is possibly the only person in the whole world who could actually name names, point fingers and dish the dirt, if they want to find out what actually happened. And with whom. Then Ghislaine’s yer man. If you get what I mean.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

I’m the luckiest man in the world.

I’m not a football fan. Because nothing could be worse. Ok, one thing: I could be a Spurs fan!! And every day, as I wake in the morning, and pray to the Lord for my eyes, my ears and, in particular, my penis, I add another prayer that I was not cursed with supporting Tottenham Hotspur.

Because if I had been given that horrendous cross to bear through life, I’d have been devastated yesterday when our hero, our captain, our ‘best centre back in the world’ turned back into the super-high-octane Argentinian thug which always simmers below the surface, was shown a red card after just 30 minutes of our game at Old Trafford. The match was balanced, Spurs were playing well. United were playing well too, so it was a worthy spectacle. And then… one mis-timed tackle, one near physical assault by ‘Cutie’ and off he went.

At which point, 10 Tottenham heads dropped. 10 pairs of socks lowered. Our form this season has been some way from ‘stellar’. Which is like saying ‘Croydon is some way from Alpha Centuri’. And then players know or feel or just innately understand that to give up a man advantage is suicidal. About 3 minutes later United scored.

And if I was a Spurs fan, I would deeply love Christian Romero. He plays with heart, soul, passion and too often, extreme violence. His passion gives way to a driven type of mindless excess. He should not be the team captain. The person responsible for keeping shit together. For motivation. For leading from the front. Not from the fucking changing room. His first job is to stay on the pitch. And hopefully (but rarely as it turns out) avoid yellow cards which will compromise his play.

He has so many yellow and red cards he’s almost ready to start playing bridge with them. Fuck knows, he has the time now he has a 4 match suspension.

Leaving Spurs, (which thankfully, I’m not remotely concerned about) within spitting distance of the relegation zone.

West Ham are on a roll. Looking like they’re about to rise out of the swamp at the bottom. Three more points takes them level with currently hopeless Nottingham Forest. Who, in turn, are three points behind Spurs. And Leeds and Crystal Palace. It’s simply not a great place to be.

So I’m soooooo thankful for my parents NOT making me a Spurs fan. That would be awful.

However… just for today, as a Sunday Special, I wouldn’t mind being a Man City fan, following their quite incredible victory at Liverpool. A goal down at 83 minutes and it looked hopeless. Then they scored. And as normal time ran out, they got a penalty; duly dispatched by Erling the Magnificent.

Then came a goal of such incredible uniqueness, of such remarkable, chaotic nuttiness, that it would be anyone’s goal of any season. It is quite beyond description; go to YouTube and watch all of its insanity. And it was so good…

That VAR cancelled it. No goal. Sorry. Too exiting, too wonderful, to ridiculous, too many people enjoying it; No Goal.

Every football fan in the world wanted that goal to be part of our collective history. So bizarre and so brilliant. But heartless, soulless, gutless VA-fuckin-R has no heart, soul or guts. Just ‘the letter of the law’. And that, my friends, is precisely what it totally wrong about VAR and why it must be stopped from ruining the game…

That I don’t apparently care about.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

The rugby Six Nations starts this week. Brilliant, I love a rugby international. I can even tolerate the women’s rugby internationals, if I have to. All those thighs bouncing around in the mud; its like a return to the 1970s values, without all the moustaches. Ok, with less moustaches. And, of course, English women’s rugby is the best. They win everything. Which the women footballers do to, but the football is… errrr… is… is somewhat different from my normal expectations of the game.

But the point is: the rugby started last night.

Since when is international rugby played on a Thursday night? Friday night I can forgive. But Thursday night? Its just wrong. Don’t they know I’m at tai chi? Learning how to live forever, and hurt as many people as I can whilst I’m doing so. I can’t just not go because some horribly commercialised tv station has sold its soul to buy the rights and ‘the suits’ have found that the demographic exemplars of rugby followers like to seek their future shopping inspiration on a Thursday night. I don’t know if it happened but they were planning on showing commercials DURING the match!!! Like, they’re preparing for a scrum, let’s relegate that to a corner and fill the rest of the screen with dog-food. Tampons. Mitsubishi cars. Samsung phones. And diet-Coke. Don’t they know that some of us real aficionados need to see the scrum preparations. We need to make sure that every one of the forwards (and the scum-half) has readjusted their jock straps. Pulled out their wedgies. Scratched their bollocks. Its an important part of the game.

So yes, I greatly appreciate it when the rugby is on ‘normal channels’, up to and including Sky, for the purposes of this debate, and hate it when France vs England is on TNT or Disney Plus or Al Jazeera Sudan, because I may have those particular media vehicles but use them so seldom I’ve forgotten how to get on. But putting adverts on during a match is simply immoral. There must be laws, surely?

Ok, it was only France vs Ireland, so no-one really cares about missing that, its not like I’d pass tai chi to see such an inconsequential game. (Games only become ‘consequential’ when England are playing).

So let’s have no more of this ‘midweek madness’. Rugby is for the weekends. And I think ITV should be prosecuted for Contempt of Scrimmage.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

In Oliver Twist, Mrs Bumble coins the phrase ‘the law is an ass’. (In the upcoming production of that very play, by our local ‘Razz’ youth group, the role of Mrs Bumble will be played by none other than MY LILA!!!!) So the law is an ass. And yesterday that Dickensian motto was given new life for the post-millennial imbeciles in charge of our laws.

Because you kind’a think that those in charge of the judiciary are clever enough to recognise a ‘crime’ from a ‘nothing to see here’. But in this instance there was a lot to see. And, for once, probably because it was Israeli cctv, it was ultra HD quality. As we watched 6… operatives?… agents?… well, let’s just call them ‘assholes’, possibly ‘tossers’ because to give them their proper title involves a word I shy away from because women hate it. And we watched as they drove a van into and through a door to a factory. They then ran onto the factory floor, at night, so all was empty and locked up, armed with sledge hammers. I should note that they did look rather splendid in their matching red boiler suits and I’ll let you know who supplied their footwear as soon as it’s made public.

Once inside, they just smashed everything they could with their sledge hammers and crow bars. And once the security officers, and soon after the police, arrived, these Palestine Actioners just set about them with their sledge hammers and crowbars. Violently. As if there’s any other way to smash a hammer into a woman’s back.

I’m assuming that the jurors were privy to the same video we saw on the news. And trust me, whatever your political views, which should be completely irrelevant within the context of a criminal case of law, there was precious little you could call ‘ambiguous’ or ‘blurred’ or ‘uncertain’. Yet after 36 hours of deliberation, these ‘12 good men and true’, decided these 6 vicious vandals were innocent. The ‘12 good men and true’ thing no longer means they have to be men. And it would appear in this case that ‘true’ and ‘good’ are no longer requirements either. So maybe it’s time to turn that phrase to ‘12 useless, blind morons of unstated gender preference and not very true’.

Would they have been so blind to destruction, violence and assault if the factory didn’t belong to an Israeli company? Would black have remained black and white remained white if it was a Gloucestershire factory making cheese?

But the act would have been the same. Though sledgehammers might not be as useful on wheels of cheese. Bit messy.

So the jury, collectively, decided that an Israeli company is NOT offered the same protection under the law as any other. It decided that populist radical politics allowed them to make a moral judgment which flies in the face of the law. It set a precedent for the acceptance of vandalism and violence ‘if the context allows’. It has created open-season for these and other ‘urban terrorists’ to terrorise and destroy with impunity.

This is no longer my country. I know Peter Mandelson is hogging all the news at the moment, but this is…

This is a fucking crime.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

I’ve always liked Peter Mandelson. He was always the cleverest man in
the room. Whether that was a room in 10 Downing Street with Tony Blair
or Gordon Brown or in a pub full of poofs in Old Compton Street.
Always clever, dry, funny and… clever.

So clever, it transpires, that back in the noughties he managed to cop
a load’a dosh off of Jeffrey Epstein. Allegations of 75,000, 55,000
and another 10 grand for Mandy’s husband to do an osteopathy course.
Probably why Mandelson always stands so straight. Not much else
straight about him. So it transpires. None of this money found its way
onto the MP’s register of gifts/donations/bribes as they’re supposed
to. And at the time Mandy was the Minister for Business. In which role
he lobbied government for lots of Epstein-favourable projects. And
passed the paedo lots of ‘information’, including confidential emails
from the Prime Minister and very ‘market sensitive’ stuff about
national debt payments and immense cash injections. If you gave me
that information, I could probably, given enough time, work out how to
make a few million quid before the news got out. Someone with the
resources and understanding of finances of Epstein, could make
billions.

And yet, with all that going on, there was one crime far more serious.

Not just wearing white Y-fronts, but being filmed wearing them. What
self-respecting gay man would ever allow such an act of fashion
suicide? Even straight men generally stop wearing Y-fronts when their
mums stop buying underwear for them. And it appears from several
photos that Mandy not only wore such horrible pants but spent most of
the day walking round in such a state of tragically uncool undress.

So now, another title falls to the sword of a dead sleazebag. First
Andrew became un-Princed and now Mandelson is banished from the House
of Lords and its only a matter of time before he is officially
un-Lorded.

Like Kier Starmer, (even though I don’t ‘like’ him), I initially felt
that all the ‘guilt by association’ with Epstein was a bit unfair, so
we all gave Lord Peter the benefit of the doubt and we made him
Ambassador to Trump. Because it is possible, but let’s face it, quite
unlikely, that Mandy didn’t know what sexual deviations Epstein was up
to. He’d probably needed to be blind and deaf, but let’s say its
possible.

But then he ‘got into bed’ with Epstein in a very different way. In a
way that is way more ‘treason’ than it is banter. And he got paid. A
lot of money. For selling secrets.

Mel and I had a ‘date night’, yesterday. We had adjoining appointments
with the same consultant Neurosurgeon. That’s true love. Then over to
Pita in Golders Green for dinner. Which is fantastic. Fabulous ‘street
food’ for which cutlery is not required. You just make all the mess
you like.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx