Andy's Glasses

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

Everything has levels. That’s rather profound. Equally, meaninglessly generalised and without context, worthless. So we’ll think of some contexts.

Firstly, Spurs. Yesterday. West Ham. 3-1. That was a next level. I’m just not sure if it was a next level up for us, or one down for them. Don’t really care either way, in that context. The good guys won, the scum of the earth were vanquished and hung their sorry little heads as they plodded back home to the East End and a step nearer to their rightful place in the relegation zone. Just one little step but the journey of a thousand miles starts with one step. Or, at least, one taxi ride to the airport.

Then came Boris. He has many levels. All of them more stupid than the previous one. On Saturday he equated Ukraine’s struggle with Russia to Brexit. Huh? This statement maintained Boris’s position as the cleverest stupid fuckwit in the world. His point was that both Ukraine’s plight and the fight for Brexit were about ‘freedom’. And the ‘vast number of British people who wanted that’. Yet our esteemed PM obviously forgot that Brexit was voted in by 51% to 49%. So for every quasi-racist, isolationist Europhobe intent on sealing up our borders, there was 98% of a person on the other side, willing us to be part of something bigger, better, more internationalist. But Boris being Boris, he’s prepared to throw us 49% under the bus to score some stupid point by ridiculous analogy. Apparently, je suis Putin. Tosser.

Then, cometh the hour, cometh the man. Or cometh the missile, perhaps. Russia, despite reducing half of a previously pretty country to rubble, aren’t doing very well. They can’t get their tanks and soldiers past their enemy. And the longer the war continues the more chance of normal Russian people actually finding out what’s going on and killing him. As they should and possibly would if they had any proper information. So Vlad, who, by his standards, has been rather ‘restrained’, given the vast wealth of military power in his possession, deployed a Kinzhal missile on a military base. The Kinzhal travels at 10 times the speed of sound. 7.6 thousand kilometres per hour. Making it quite hard to aim at with your slingshot to try and knock it out of the sky. It wasn’t carrying a nuke warhead, just a ‘normal’ one. It is the cleverest missile in the world, as well as the fastest and only Russia have them. (Though you can get one in a dodgy pub in Stockwell if you ask for ‘Kenny’.) They cost 4.5 million quid each and do 20 times that in damage. At which point you just have to ask: WTF???

So we’ve done levels.

Happy Monday for Spurs fans and… that’s it really.

A xxxx

Hi, my name’s Andy.

Hi Andy.

I haven’t worn a white t-shirt for 3 weeks now! 21 days, ‘clean’.

Yaaay, whooop, whaaaaa, all that pseudo-American celebratory bollocks.

But today, as you can see, I fell off the wagon.

Oooooohhhhhh.

The thing is, I pretty much live in white t-shirts. I wear one for tennis, I wear one for Tai Chi, I wear one under every working shirt in winter, spring and autumn and I just wear them all weekend. If I have to do ‘black tie’, I put that tie on a white t-shirt. Almost. I have, quite literally, hundreds of them. Some are pristine (for best), some have lost that glacier whiteness we love (for sports), some are a bit grey (gardening) and some are just a mess of spilled coffee and yeuch. These become our household dusters and car cleaning cloths. Then when they’re beyond even that, we eat them. Nothing is ever wasted in white t-shirt-land.

But my new shoulder was a bit beyond the rotation, gyration and stretch-ation required to don my favourite item of clothing. I had to use ‘shirt-shirts’. Proper ones. Which are easy to attach to the body and no contortion is required. Which is fine. But it didn’t ‘look like me’.

So this morning, after my bath (amazing what you have time for when you take sport out of the equation for a while) I thought… I thought… hmmmm… why don’t I just… and I did, and the rest is HISTORY!!!

And I just knew you’d be as thrilled as I am. I can be a scruff once more!

So although doing sport is off the agenda temporarily, watching it ain’t. And this weekend provides a virtual feast for the eyes. Spurs are playing hateful West Ham tomorrow. In my mind West Ham are Putin’s Russia and Spurs are Ukraine. Arsenal play today so likewise, whoever they’re playing (Aston Villa but its really of no consequence), Arsenal are China. Possibly North Korea.

There’s rugby. England play France tonight and the only glory my country can achieve is in preventing the French from winning the Grand Slam. We can be spoilers. (France don’t need a metaphorical hate-nation attached, they are one). And then tomorrow the new Formula One season starts. Not that I’m that engaged with it, but after the last race of last season ending so dramatically, I have to keep half an eye on a sport I barely consider a sport. I’m that desperate.

Have a lovely weekend. Whatever you wear.

A xxxx

What happened to all the leg-warmers? I don’t mean ‘why aren’t they available?’, that’s fairly obvious. They were about as useful as a wind-deflector on the boot of your Vauxhall Viva. I mean where did all the old ones go? There were millions of pairs knocking round the world, always within 3 metres of a Jane Fonda Workout video. So what happened to them? Were they recycled into… other things? Were they ceremonially burned along with all those hair bands? Or did they go to Oxfam? So they could be sent to warm the legs of starving children in Ethiopia, where its 45 degrees most of the year? And one single leg-warmer donated by a great big yenta from Golders Green could warm an entire family for a year. I simply don’t know…

But leg warmers were around at the time of the ‘fitness video’. A large and lumpy plastic cassette filled with tape which pushed into a machine attached to the tv and which basically evolved into Joe Wicks. It was just a primitive method of ‘getting fit’ by leaping around and sweating. But whereas now, due to ‘elf-n-safety’ there is a duty of care and consideration for the perspiring masses, back then the motto was ‘no pain, no gain’. You lunge til heart attack, you squat til something rips, you push up until you fucking DIE! Anything less committed and they confiscated your leg-warmers. Which brought shame upon your whole family.

I have my own motto: ‘No pain’. The end. Why torture yourself? Why put yourself through misery and suffering for an illusion? For a ‘dream’ that you might end up with a body like La Fonda, who got hers from the collective attention of LA’s finest surgeons and two million dollars.

And these thoughts arose because yesterday I went to the physiotherapist. The direct descendents of those Spanish Inquisitors who wore masks and held pliers heated in a fire, used a ‘rack’ and who made waterboarding seem like a carnival ride. But you get a new shoulder, you need ‘physio’. Because the new shoulder doesn’t know what to do. So to become a fully-fledged cyborg, I need physio. And with the mindset of a man facing the gates of hell, that’s how I entered the session. Ready for pain, for suffering, for agony, all for the cause. But it didn’t happen. We both adhered to my ‘no pain’ imperative. And she was gentle. Tender, even. I was ready for a walk through Mariupol and I got a stroll in the hanging gardens of Babylon. All I have to do is shrug. I’m Jewish. I was born shrugging. Few other gently, gently movements, and more shrugging.

I can handle that. Things may change.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

So here’s what they said: if you’re over 60, there is No Benefit in walking more than 6000 steps on your daily/weekly/monthly walk. 5000 is not quite enough, but 10,000 is worthless. Ok, maybe they didn’t use the word ‘worthless’, but reading between the lines, as I spend most of my time doing, that’s what they meant. And how do they arrive at this? Because in a test, albeit a massive test, 50,000 people, were followed over years. So presumably, that then becomes 100,000 people, if you count the ‘followers’? And they found that once you’re over 60, there is no difference in likelihood of dying, whether you do 6000 or 12000 steps. Whereas there was a big difference between 3,000 and 6,000. The 3,000-ers were dropping like flies and the 6000-pounders were climbing over their corpses as they strutted the extra yardage. But only up to 6000. Then they stopped and called an Uber to take them home. Anything beyond is a wasted step.

Surely there are other benefits of walking that bit further? Strength, stamina, muscle tone, lots of good things. No idea why they implied that anything beyond their ‘optimum’ is just a waste of good living time. I realise that ‘not dying’ is quite high on most people’s ‘goal for the day’ but just because something’s not making you live longer doesn’t mean its bad for you. The study was done in America so was probably dependant on how far it was to the nearest Burger King.

And football was all rather disappointing this weekend. Spurs lost to Ronaldo, Arsenal won, bloody Leeds won! And Watford!! But most disappointing of all was that Putin’s team won as well. Chelsea managed to win the battle of the morally dubious derby against the Saudi Misogynistic Homophobes of Newcastle. Who are currently occupying the high ground, FFS.

Abramovich has apparently identified wife number 4, a stunning Russian babe, big surprise, 25 years old. Note to the Times: WHO GIVES A SHIT??? We may care about his ownership of Chelsea. We certainly care that he is Putin lackey who refused to condemn the ‘war’. We care that he’s been money-laundering his riches over here for years. But its really not relevant who he wants as his next obsession. In fact that almost dilutes all the truly bad things as it becomes just another bit of petty gossip to ‘throw into the mix’.

His reign at Chelsea may come with a bigger bang than his arrival as the team currently has no accessible funds to pay salaries. Nor will be allowed to earn any in the near future. Insolvency? Loss of points? Relegation?? Humiliation? Just desserts?? It’s good to see something good coming out of this awful war.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

Ok, this blog thing, this is how it works. How its always worked. My burning need to ‘share’. My internal imperative to inform you of the ways of the world because otherwise, quite frankly, you’d have no idea. Not a clue. Or you’d get it wrong. Like usual. So as an act of altruism, of education, and of pity, I try to keep you informed of very important things. And it works like this.

I wake up, drink tea and read the paper. The Times and only the Times. And during the course of that enlightenment, some things will interest me, some will appal me, a few might even astound me. But one thing will make me smile. Not because its inherently amusing, but because its inherently stupid. Contradictory. Nonsensical. This often appears in the ‘self help’ type pages. Anything to do with ‘new, improved gender options for your children’ is always going to start the day well. As will food ‘revelations’, particularly about green food. How much broccoli do we ‘really’ need in our lives? Equality matters are very important to me and, like ‘diversity’, produce a riches of amusement. Football, politics, anything. I just need something that ‘flicks a switch’, makes me smile, smirk or angry. Ok, most things make me angry. And that when you need to know about it. And it is pretty unfailing.

Until covid. Which produced very odd symptoms in me. No snotty nose, no cough, no temperature, loss of appetite (NEVER) or taste and smell. No wheezing and the only heavy breathing I did was on the phone to those who paid me £1.30 a minute. I was ‘symptom free’. Except I wasn’t. There were two rather profound symptoms.

The first was exhaustion. Just total, absolute and devastating. Most of the day I was tired. If I sat down, I slept. Like the dead.

The second was even more profound. Nothing I read, saw or did amused me. Nor stimulated me. To ‘share’. My mind had ‘gone into neutral’ and wasn’t coming out. It was like being you. A horrible thought. Nothing amused, stimulated or excited. And that was truly horrible. Fortunately, just before Kiev/Kyiv gets invaded, I appear, so far (I appreciate its still quite early) to have recovered some sense of the ridiculous.

And realised as someone sent me yesterday, that having spent 2 years studying for my PhD in infectious diseases, I now have to abandon that to become the world’s expert on military strategy geo-political warfare. And after 2 weeks I’ve reached my decision. We need to stop Putin. Now. Don’t care what it costs. Idle threats and sanctions (which will really ‘bite’ by Christmas!!) are doing nothing. It’s getting worse in a very predictable, Russian offensive way. And the bullly-boy is winning because everyone believes his threats. If ‘we’ do nothing, it’ll be Poland next. Or Finland. Estonia. And we’ll still be standing aside working out where to buy our gas and wondering when the absence of Big Macs will cause a revolution in Russia. It’s time for big talking tossers like Biden and Boris to actually ‘man up’ and offer real help to Ukraine and end the ever-increasing atrocities happening there. How many fucking hospitals have to get blown up before they realise that nothing else will stop that horrible man.

Otherwise, have a very happy Saturday

A xxxx