Andy's Glasses

Well it happened. Arsenal lost. Doesn’t really matter to whom they lost, but lose they did. A whopping 3 nil. Ok, for the sake of ‘old Malkie’, it was his beloved Crystal Palace who saw off the pretentious side of North London football, and with some degree of aplomb. And that result leaves Spurs in 4th place for the rest of the week. We can dream.

Meanwhile, they’re fighting royal battles to create more nuclear fusion so we can tell those Russians precisely where they can shove their fucking gas pipelines in a way that will go way beyond mere eye-watering. Because fusion is the dream.

Current nuclear power is generated by fission. Which is the breaking apart of atomic particles. Like they do in nuclear bombs. And the same problem is ever-present. That your reactor may turn into a nuclear bomb. Like it did in Chernobyl. Starting nuclear fission is easy. Controlling it and stopping it is anything but. And then, at the end of it, you get tons and tons of ‘nuclear waste’. Depleted of most of its useful potency, but still horribly radio-active, here’s 200 tons of Uranium, mate, won’t be safe for 34,200 years, where shall we dump it? Malaysia any good? Indonesia? In the ocean?? Very deep landfill in Worcester?

Fusion is different. Fusion is the joining together of atoms in such a way that energy is released. It’s clean. It’s very controllable. And has no waste end product. The problem is that this type of reaction, as makes the Sun ‘work’, merging two Hydrogen atoms to form one Helium one, can only be created in conditions like the Sun. So think ‘hot’. Very hot. Pressure. Lots of it. Creating the irony of how much energy it currently takes to make atoms thousands of degrees hotter than they would like to be and under intense pressure. It would cost (at current gas prices) £43,749.22 to make sufficient fusion energy to boil one kettle. Yet its a start. And if it can be upscaled so I can drink my normal 37 cups of tea a day without taking out a mortgage. Especially as one company (in ENGLAND, yaaaay) is producing fusion by a new method. Instead of trying to create ‘conditions like on the Sun’, they’re firing pellets at fuel particles in a special way. And it seems to be working. Another £42million in research funding and I can put the kettle on again.

No-one likes cold tea.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

The good thing about never winning any trophies, ever, is that you re-align your personal goals. You adjust your aspirations. So that getting a little piece of silverware does NOT become the defining feature of the entire season. Otherwise fans of teams who never win anything would be in a state of constant depression and gloom whilst those horrible teams from North West England would alone have reason for celebration, along with a few other, minor, laundered-money-funded and terrorist-backed clubs from elsewhere.

So ‘here’ at Spurs, we’ve long since abandoned all hope of ever winning anything which anyone else might want, made of silver. Our cupboard is famously bare and don’t look like filling up any week soon. Therefore we’ve not necessarily ‘lowered our sights’ but collectively and unconsciously set ourselves new goals and targets as to what might constitute a ‘good season’; something to celebrate. And that is two-fold. One is to finish in the top 4. To gain access to the prestige, the challenge and… oh yeah, the vast amount of money, for entering the Champions’ League. And the other, less financially beneficial and of precious little value outside of North London, is to finish above Arsenal.

I’m sure that Everton would love to finish above Liverpool. If they can avoid relegation. And similarly the two Manchesters probably put great stock in relative table position, even though for both of them, if it ain’t ‘top’, it ain’t nuffink. Though Manchester United’s assumed place at the top table has been tragically diminished by City’s ability to ‘just buy results, at any cost’, since the Abu Dhabi takeover and the continued inability of any footballing authority to try and stop them.

But really, no-one cares what happens in Liverpool and Manchester. No-one in my house anyway. And yesterday a dream occurred. Spurs not only came back from being a goal down against Newcastle to absolutely demolish them, 5-1, but in doing so overtook Arsenal AND entered forth place in the League. I was driving home from Birmingham (don’t ask), listening to it on the radio, enjoying every mile of the enforced 60 mph, ‘average speed check camera’ zone, like never before.

And that will last at least until tonight when Arsenal play against old-boy Patrick Vieira’s Crystal Palace. So all I can say is:

COME ON PALACE!!!!!!

Happy Monday

A xxxx

The mailman came to work yesterday and handed me the post. It’s what they do. When they feel so inclined. And there were two letters from the City of London Corporation, Environment department!! But like that, with exclamation marks (in my mind) because they never write to me. They don’t phone me, nothing. It’s like they no longer love me. Then suddenly, boom, TWO letters arrive. I was so excited. But sadly, it wasn’t good news, nor just asking about my new shoulder. It was about rubbish. Basically, our cleaner put two bags of rubbish outside the door and Veolia, my contractors (the Corporation don’t include rubbish collection in the ‘rates’, haven’t for about 20 years, cos for the mere 35 grand a year which I pay, rubbish collection is ‘extra’) missed the bags and didn’t pick them up on their rounds. And they were still there at 10 the next morning. Which is ILLEGAL, or immoral, or naughty or bad, sinful, disgusting or… not in keeping with the environmental regulations of the Corporation of London!!! So they sent me photos of the 2 bags. From about 4 different angles, in case I thought they’d photoshopped them. Yep, my shop, my bags, time stamp 10.21am, mea culpa.

The second letter again contained not much love. More it was a ‘demand!!’ for copies of my rubbish contract. Send it within 7 days or pay a Fixed Penalty Notice of £110!! (Like Boris!!) And was filled with so much unintelligible legalese gobbledygook that I thought I had been fined and was pissed off why they’d sent me a notice to pay but no information how to pay. Which I would have done, there and then, because it would have been cheaper than getting a team of lawyers to translate the letter into English. Much cheaper. But no, it was just the ‘agreement’ which I found on my section of Veolia’s website and never knew even existed. Which I forwarded on to Mr Environment Nazi, dutifully, if not totally happily.

For the money it costs to run an entire department of jobsworth tossers, finickity fuckers and pedantic prima-donnas, never mind 16 lawyers to draught letters in such a way that no ‘normal’ human being can understand them, you could engage an entire platoon of ‘recycling operatives’ and a squadron of garbage trucks to take with them. And even then there’d be some money left to pay off all the redundancy payments for all those worthless bureaucrats who really should be unemployed for the good of mankind.

Otherwise it was a great day.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

Well it works both ways!!! That’s the way of the world. This equality thing. Glass ceilings are moving upwards, women can vote, even drive, in some countries, though generally not that well. In all countries. There’s equality in jobs, wages and opportunities. Which means that in some jobs, like, f’rinstance, female impersonator, they are miles better than most men. Ok, not all women, but most. Women can fight in the army, join the police, play rugby and become men, if they really want to.

So in return, we are no longer allowed to hold doors open, doff our caps at any gorgeous filly who breezes past or woolf whistle, even whilst actively engaged in building works. But we are allowed to buy women’s underwear, iron shirts (if we know how) and cook. We can even become strippers.

I like cooking. Have always considered myself a perfectly liberated man, a true egalitarian in that I swear loudly at both men and women shit drivers equally. (For purposes of definition, a ‘shit driver’ is someone who really believes that they mean ‘20mph’ is the actual speed they want you to drive at).

But cooking is the thing. I didn’t learn it when very young just to impress women. That came later. I learned it because I’ve always been a pig and was too impatient to wait for someone else to cook for me. Women were only liberated back then because they’d burned their bras. Which no man was unhappy about. But it was a start. So I learned to fry an egg. A skill I’ve maintained to this day. I can also boil one, scramble one, poach another and eat them all at the same time. Then I learned the most simple meal to make ever. Spag. Bol. And armed with those 2 skills: boiling an egg and producing dinner, I set off on my own into the world. And I must admit that whilst being a very competent stir-fryer, stew maker and ‘baker’ (with very large limitations), my repertoire is basically… basic. Yet inventive.

Yet I meet so many men who ‘can’t cook’. Like; nothing. One friend, if left alone in the house will eat cornflakes for dinner. I mean… I mean…

If you can strip a car engine down to nuts bolts and valves, or write an algorithm to save the world, even audit the books of a multi-national bank, I’m gonna stick my neck out and say ‘you can probably boil an egg’. They show you how on YouTube.

Happy Birthday to Lila, who is FIVE today, and get well Joey, who has chicken-pox today. That’s equality??

A xxxx

The ever wily Boris Johnson managed to start a war in Ukraine just to deflect from the inquiry into Covid abuses at Number 10. And its been a very successful ploy. 24 hours is a long time in politics so in 35 days that’s sufficient political time for glaciers to move a mile. Sadly though, for Boris, the deflection tactics proved only temporary as the Met Police yesterday issued 20 fixed penalty notices for Covid rules breaches. They gave them to the people who made those rules. Fortunately though, ‘no disciplinary action will be taken’ over the penalties. Because being a hypocritical, denying, lying tosser is not a crime in this country, whereas sitting next to someone with a glass of wine apparently is.

Putin is a keen advocate of this recent political tactic of ‘lying through your teeth’ too. He lies to everyone, including the 145 million people who live with him. ‘Ve don’t attack civilian targets’. But you blew up the Theatre in Mariupol where 300 civilians were sheltering, the one marked in great big letters CHILDREN!!!, big enough for bomber pilots to see. ‘No, not us. Must have been a different invading country which is also NOT at war with Ukraine.’And the Skripals? Novichok? Never heard of it. Those 2 KGB officers were just visiting Salisbury Cathedral, honest. Beautiful apse in there, and the pipe organ? Well, any mass-murdering torturer would give 2 weeks cabbage to hear such a magnificent instrument.

So how do you meaningfully engage in ‘peace talks’ when the talking is done with forked tongue? Yet the so-called peace talks are ongoing. In Turkey. Which is like having a conference about fiscal responsibility and financial morality at Manchester City’s ground. But then again, not many nations would host that many Russians. Just think of the cleaning bills. Teams of chemical and nuclear warfare experts in Hamzat suits for 4 weeks just to render the meeting room ‘safe’ once more. But Turkey is a ‘neutral’ country in that allows all sorts of vile dictators and terrorists to murder people within its borders, as they did with the Saudi murder of Khashoggi.

And that would appear to be the state of play in the world. All of it.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

Amazing! The Oscar ceremony took place on Sunday night, this time they held it in Plaistow, just for a change. But it was the same old ‘Hollywood glamour’ as our favourite stars put on a collective $47million worth of clothes, begged, borrowed or stolen from designers eager to show how their clothes can lamb up the toughest old mutton. Sometimes to the point of respectability, for others, the aim is more indecency. Either way, the evening is a testament to how women can best achieve empowerment by getting their tits out. Something we are all agreed upon.

The Best Movie went to Coda.

The Best Move went to Will Smith.

The Best Actor in a drama or hissy fit, also went to Will Smith.

The Best Red-Head went to Jessica Chastain, as it should do, always. (I like Jessica Chastain).

The Best Englishman in a Suit went to Kenneth Brannagh.

The Best Direction went to ‘that way’.

And the Best use of an Exceptionally Loud Voice being cruel and heartless went to Chris Rock.

Followed by the Best Slap in a movie context, Will Smith again.

Chris Rock is a tosser, we all know that. His comment about Jada Smith’s alopecia was pretty horrible, even for a ‘shock comic’. Will Smith’s response was stupid. And his justification in his speech, basically ‘a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do’ and ‘protect ma fam’ly’ and ‘be a rock (no relation) and a river (??)’ was inappropriate in excess. He should have taken Rock outside and kicked the shit out of him. But live? In front of the 386 people watching live on tv who hadn’t fallen asleep? What message does it send? Whatever happened to ‘sticks and stones can shave my head but words can never hurt me’??

The award for Best Handshake by a Russian went, unfortunately, to Roman Abramovich.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

What do you do with people who are too old to be of much use to society but too young for a direct flight to Dignitas? It’s an ever-increasing problem as the world’s population ages creating a massive burden on the young to keep health services and pension plans sufficiently functional. So what do you do?

America has a great solution. It sends such people to the White House. It waits til they get really old, still hopefully in pre-dementia, except for Ronald Regan who was several lightbulbs short when he arrived there, aged 93, and makes them ‘president’. Makes them feel useful. Appreciated. Important. But the problem of course is that they then allow them to speak.

Biden yesterday said that Putin must not be allowed to continue in power. He was at the end of a prepared, autocue speech and, fired up by his own rhetoric, started to just wing-it. And he wung it wong. Everybody in the world other than 14 Russian overlords and a few thousand peasants who’ve been misinformed and still believe it, would like to see Putin deposed. And you can say that. I can say that. Lila and Joey can say that. Because no-one’s listening to us when we do. But when you are the most powerful man in the world, albeit loosely disguised as a frail and ancient old twit, you can’t say anything you can’t back up. Thus for Biden to utter such words becomes an actual threat that America will go in and get Putin, kill Putin, arrest Putin or some such. The White House later issued the inevitable statement: “no, when President Biden said ‘lamppost’ he actually meant ‘aardvark’, obviously…” as they do when a senile old fool has just put the world on the brink of nuclear Armageddon.

But this is the third time this week that Biden has erred in such a manner. He’s fine when reading, but as soon as he goes off message, he fucks up. In fact, even when reading, I find the tough-guy act a little hard to take from someone who struggles to stay vertical without a zimmer. Too much bluster and it sounds like you’ve entered a John Wayne impersonation contest. And came 9th.

It’s reached the point where the unthinkable is becoming a distinct possibility. That the last POTUS, who we all thought was ‘the worst there could ever be’, is being out-worsted by the present incumbent. Worse than Trump. He’s almost there.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

It just doesn’t get any more exciting than this! England playing… errrrr… I think Switzerland at Wembley… tonight? Possibly tomorrow morning, maybe not. We’ve already qualified for the World Cup finals so one has to ask: who gives a fuck? Certainly not me. I’m not saying the World Cup is not without its thrills. Gareth Bale playing on Thursday night was incredible. Mainly because he was playing football rather than golf, but also because he reminded the world in general and those cynical, revolting, hurtful Madridistas specifically, just how fucking brilliant he is. And then there was Italy. Losing out on qualifying for the finals for the second consecutive World Cup! Incredible. They win the Euros and then lose to North Macedonia in their playoff match. If you can place Macedonia on an unmarked map of the world, I’ll give you 10 pounds. “In the area where Yugoslavia used to be-ish” doesn’t count. And this was just half of that country. The North.

So instead of football, you have to be more creative in your tv viewing. And I’ve found solid gold. Two bars of 24 carat. The first called The Troubadours. About the eponymous club in LA in the 60s which found an almost endless list of unknowns destined to become megastars. Gave them a platform. And at the time of the Beatles, the Stones and not much else other than thousands of wannabe ‘groups’, the Troubadour focussed on singer-songwriters. James Taylor’s first gig was there. Carol King. David Crosby. Elton fucking John. Joni Mitchell. All you needed was masses of talent and a six-string and you were headed for superstardom.

The second thing I found was about movie history, specifically, in the 60s. The time when everybody had just acquired their first tv and no longer needed the cinemas for entertainment. So the movies had to ‘up their game’ to produce something way outside of what tv could offer. And they started with West Side Story. The old one, obvs, the ‘proper one’. And then came Lawrence of Arabia, Spartacus and the Graduate. The latter of which is possibly the best movie of all time!!! Unanimously voted by me. But in Spartacus Kirk Douglas was the executive director as well as the star. The script was written by Dalton Trumbo. Who?? Yes, him. A brilliant scriptwriter who, in 1960, was among so many Hollywood writers who were blacklisted. Banned from working because at some point in their history they had joined the Communist Party, or had tea with someone who had been a member, and that was enough for ‘the McCarthy witch hunters’ to stop you working ‘in this town’. They carried on working but using other people to present their work as their own. They called them ‘Fronts’. You write a script and then someone not banned took the credit. But in Spartacus Kirk Douglas put Trumbo on the billing. Which was brave, honest and, I reckon, really cool.

So you see, there’s more to life than football. Certainly than international football.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

Jamaica wants to have a new ‘head of state’! In the most controversial snub since… for a long time, the Prime Minister told William and Kate that ‘he wanted no truck with that bejewelled old hag in Buckingham Palace’. In so many words. They want… a different head on their stamps! Possibly Usain Bolt’s, probably Bob Marley’s as it adorns every building, pavement, poster board, t-shirt and cup and saucer on the Island already. Bob Marley has been the de facto head of state since he shot the sheriff. Jamaica has been independent since 1962 but now wants to dissociate itself from the Commonwealth and dump Her Maj. And I for one am appalled with this development. Which totally broadsided Wills and Kate when they went to meet with him yesterday. Kate’s perm-grin almost slipped. Almost. Not to the ‘consoling war-torn children’ levels of unsmiliness but almost, just for a second.

And I can’t see why the Jamaicans would want to distance themselves from the Royal Family who gave them their independence 60 years ago, having deemed those savages ‘almost fit to govern themselves’, and thus were they liberated from our Empire. Where they’d lived, for hundreds of years, as slaves. Albeit freed slaves. Yet still under the yoke of the Empire and under the control of a landlady 3000 miles away. Why would you not want that? For the privilege of putting her head on your postage?

There’s really no need to despair about the cost of living: Rishi Sunak’s here. The man who invented ‘furlough’ payments for an entire nation for 18 months now brings us proof that he is our saviour. Once again. He’s cutting the fuel duty by a whopping… 5p per litre!!! Holy shit. That brings it down from its current price (when I filled up yesterday) of £8.40 per gallon to the new, super-Rishi bargain knockdown of just, merely, only… £8.15 a gallon!!!! But you see that’s per gallon. And you don’t buy just one, unless its been a really shit week. You buy lots. So filling up the car could save as much as £2.50!!!!! Even though petrol is about 30% more than it was last week anyway. And that 2.50 can be put towards your heating and electric bills. Currently set to rise by £400 per month. Or to buy more food! We all love more food. Though with an average weekly shop rising by about £25 its not really enough of a saving. So the only answer is: then fill up your car 100 times a week!!! Then you’ll be saving £250! And that will be a massive help.

Glad to be of help in these difficult times.

A xxxx

It used to be that ‘you are what you eat’. Which made me chopped liver and Cadburys chocolate. Which in turn I had difficulties conceptualising. But now, in the UK, it is more a case of ‘you are how you speak’. Because how you act can only get you so far, particularly in Britain, the rest is down to your regional accent. From which stems opportunities, slammed doors, ridicule, misunderstanding and career-deciding preconceptions.

And its all about those preconceptions. Presumptions. Assumptions made on the most fundamental of things; accent. So there are moves to include ‘regional accents and social status’ as part of the ‘diversity statements’ of large companies. Scuse me while I just take a moment to vomit. I personally would find that a touch ironic coming from a government made up of Eton-Oxbridge alumni and staffed by an entire civil service of white men with university degrees wot speak posh. Maybe that’s just my preconception.

In case you are that rarest of rare people, so rare that they can’t actually exist in the real world, who makes no automatic and instant judgments based on the very first syllable coming from someone’s lips, I need to help you. To guide you through the vast range of possibilities that arise from England’s regional accents. (Next week I’ll do Scotland and Wales and Ireland so for now they can just be included in the ‘foreign: so no need nor point in talking to them at all’ category).

Normal speech. Proper. Not plummy, not affected, just pronouncing nicely and clearly with no use of ‘at-da-enna-da-day’ or ‘yeah-no’. Basically: London. Good people, possibly intelligent, nothing to presume here.

Yorkshire accent. Thick.
Lancashire accent. Thicker.
Midlands accent. Thickest.
Geordie accent. Unintelligible.
East Anglia accent. Thick due to inbreeding.
West country accent. Same.
Cockney. Make your ears bleed. But good, hard-working, honest-to-goodness thieves, crooks, con-men and throat-slitters.
‘Estuary’. Same as cockney but for people who have trees where they live.

So now you have it, the definitive guide to pre-judging people by their accents. And I suggest you use it in all your social interactions. So you can always remain superior.

Yours loftily

A xxxx