Andy's Glasses

We went to Beijing, we (that’s the ‘team UK’ we), put up with their zero-covid bollocks, we turned blind eyes to their human rights abuses, we forgot about their international hacking, Alexa-Huawei nonsense and we CONQUERED! Yep, it took just two rather intense weeks to show the world that here in the UK we bow to no nation when it comes to falling over on ice and snow. In the tradition of Eddie the Eagle, we showed levels of inability to stand up never previously dreamed of. Even the bobsleighs rolled over on that horrible, fake, Chinese ice. But then came the Curling. Ahhhhh, that’s a proper sport. Bowls on Ice. That is so amazingly skilful and precise that no other nation can play it. In fact, if you’re not a Scottish road sweeper, don’t even bother to start.

I must confess that I watched virtually nothing of this latest Winter Olympics. I find it rather unwatchable. Ok, 15 year-old Russian drug cheats capture one’s imagination for 5 minutes and her attempt to out-fall-over the Brits was some kind of poetic justice, otherwise, it left me cold. There is a pun there. Hardly worth mentioning. But then came the Curling. And it’s not just that we’re pretty good at it, not even that we have a fairly robust history in the sport. It’s just about Eve Muirhead. And that stare. The intense concentration as she lines up her… ball? Stone? Thing, before release. Those steely blue eyes fixed at you like looking down the barrel of a gun. Its the most wonderful stare since Queen’s Gambit, when she steepled her hands under her chin and stared. I’m into staring. I never even realised. I think its because you can delude yourself into believing she’s staring at YOU! Cos that’s what it feels like. Intense. Now I think I need my medication.

Who said ‘football fans never get rewarded?’ Oh, it was me. Well I take it back. This morning I went for my coffee and the ‘boys from Barcelona’ who love football, love Harry Kane and most of all, take great pleasure in laughing at my sad and sorry football team every sodding weekend, refused payment for my daily caffeine fix, in honour not of ‘the result’ but more, the nature of that result. Even though Pep is ‘one of their own’. Decent people. Would never happen in a Chelsea cafe.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

This morning I have no interest in Russia. Not a thought for Ukraine, no interest in covid, never the merest consideration of Boris Johnson, Prince Andrew or the price of gas. Because, after losing our last 3 Premier League matches, causing sorrow, resignation, depression, despondency and the questioning whether life has any meaning whatsoever, we went to Manchester City.

And here’s the funny thing. We were discussing the match yesterday morning in a summit meeting (me and Spurs Paul at the net on the tennis court) and I actually said: “we could beat them. Even though we’ve been total shit of late, its different when we play proper ‘big clubs’ and also, for some reason, we seem to be Man City’s bogey team”.

So the match started at the Etihad and three minutes later Spurs are 1 nil up. What? Is that a typo?? No, City 0, Spurs 1. A goal of true wonder. Nothing more wonderful than the fantastic pass from the middle of the park by Harry Kane to Sonny on the wing. It was a pass of brilliance, of vision, and it was executed beautifully. Still plenty to do but Sonny did half of it and then Kulusevski finished it like the new and foreign signing he is. And we were ahead. Which only makes them angry.

We almost made it to half time, even though City had 98% possession (so it felt). They scored. A cheap goal. (For purposes of definition: a ‘cheap goal’ is any scored against Spurs). So it was 1-all at half time. Which is respectable.

Amazingly we scored again. On the break, as you have to against ‘them’, this time Harry scored, set up by Sonny. And then we only had to survive for half an hour. How hard can it be?

As it happened, not that hard. Because although City’s possession went up to 99.6% for that time, the only goal was scored by Harry, and promptly disallowed by VAR. We were hanging on as injury time started. Until we gave away a penalty. Oh dear. Fucking tragic. All that work and it’ll end 2-2. Mahrez duly scored his pen and there were just a few minutes to ‘hold on’. But then a funny thing happened. A weird thing. Something that, at the Etihad, never happens. Spurs scored again. Harry, again. Who, never mind the 2 goals (should’a been 3), had been by several miles the best player on the pitch.

I screamed at my tv. Harry screamed back at me. Then Antonio Conte did. Then we were all screaming, shouting, jumping, as the final whistle blew.

It was a brilliant game, all the more so for being so unexpected. A brilliant result, all the more so because it went our way. And Harry, who City didn’t buy last summer because he wasn’t worth 150 mil. He’s now worth 250.

Very happy Sunday

A xxxx

Next Saturday at 07.00 hours, I shall be reporting to my hospital for my shoulder surgery. I don’t want sympathy, pity, sorrow or people going ‘ahhhhh, poor thing’. I just want money. In large notes, non-sequential serial numbers, in piles, heaps and bundles. You can keep your fucking grapes.

That’s if they allow visitors. I’m not sure how the ‘Covid changes’ coming in on Monday will affect the afflicted. Which is serious because I need to ensure that the guy delivering my pizza will be able to gain entry. Otherwise it might get cold if they have to drag a nurse out of the operating theatre to bring it to me. “Stella, can you put your finger on this severed artery for me, I gotta take Andy his double pepperoni with chilli”.

So I haven’t booked my tennis court next Saturday. Should be fine for Sunday though.

Ok, I appreciate it might take a little while. I can accept that. It’s not being able to put my own socks on which bothers me more. Never mind shirts? T-shirts?? Making tea? Opening whisky bottles? Holding someone down while you punch them? Juggling knives?? How’s all that going to work? Opening my flies to take a pee? I wear Levis. With button fly. How can I hold my phone to my ear whilst driving??? All with one hand??? Life promises to be interesting for a few weeks. I wouldn’t want to be Mel.

Meanwhile, we saw off Eunice! She came yesterday, we said: ‘bring it on, if yer ‘are enough’ and she did. Caused destruction, a few deaths, we lost a few roofs, couple of garden sheds and numerous trees. Most of which seemed to fall onto cars. So when Storm Freddie or Fergus or Francis comes, leave the car at home.

But heh, at least it had the decency to leave in time for tennis today. Before the rain started (just, like, rain, not worthy of being named). And tonight its the start of the Spurs renaissance. We’re on the up. No question. Starts today, 5.30. At the Etihad… hmmm…

Happy Op-7 day

A xxxx

Well now I know for certain that Prince Andrew is innocent of all charges. Because rather than drag that poor woman (though not ‘poor’ for much longer) through a messy autopsy of her early life, subjecting her to a legal character assassination, instead he’s decided to ‘make it all go away’. But for her benefit. Virginia Du Pres. Du-freit, Dufffreys… her. And that sacrifice, unselfishly distributing over 10 million pounds of his mother’s immense fortune, means that Virginia is liberated from the trauma. In Saudi Arabia, their legal systems allows for people to buy their way out of, in many cases, murder. And apparently that works in America too now. And, so it would seem, England. I know, there’s a difference between ‘civil’ and ‘criminal’ law, but not evidently, that big a difference.

So well done Prince Andrew. Now he can get on with his life once more, contributing to the nation’s… whatever, serving the people by… errrrr… wearing lots of medals and just being an all-round good guy, once again. Oh, he can’t do that, he’s persona non grata in the Royal households. Well he can do charity work. That’d be nice. And he wants to. He wants to help ‘victims of abuse’. But not just people that he’s personally abused, but others too. And I’m sure he is the man perfectly placed to be of immense benefit in that sector.

There are those, probably anti-royals who haven’t had a crush on the hunkiest of Princes since Koo Stark days, who think that Andrew just ‘buckled’ under the potential shame and humiliation that a court case would inevitably bring. Most unfair. There are others who think that its somewhat odd giving all that money to someone who he apparently ‘has no recollection of meeting’. To them I say just that there are some people in this world whose very status and family history leaves them totally and absolutely free from any possible untruths or doubt, let alone immoral behaviour!! To be a Royal means something. To me, definitely to Prince Andrew. Possibly to Henry VIIIth, probably Edward VIIth. Though I won’t mention Edward VIIIth.

Happy Royal Support day

A xxxx

The Olympic Federation of Universal Consolidated Kommunities (O’FUCK) has a zero tolerance policy on performance enhancing and recreational drug use by athletes. To which end we have random drug testing. And any athlete shown to test positive for banned substances will be suspended from all competition with immediate effect. Should more than 2 members of the same team both test positive, the club or nation which they represent will be completely suspended with immediate effect. Following which there will be an inquiry. Should this lead to indication beyond reasonable doubt of any kind of ‘culture’ of drug programs for athletes, or any institutionalised doping, that institution will be banned for a minimum of 5 years.

Except Russia.

Obviously.

After finding proof that every single Russian athlete, both summer and winter, were pumped full of absolutely anything which could make them a little bit faster, bigger, higher, lower, brighter and/or stronger, it was found that there were government departments for the administration of dope. There was a Commissioner for Steroid Abuse. The sports clubs were run by Big Pharma. No athlete was allowed to compete until he/she had maxed out on amphetamines. Any athletes who died in the cause of ‘self improvement’ were given posthumous gold medals. And were cremated before anyone could perform an autopsy. Sometimes on the track.

So Russia was banned from Olympic sport. As they should have been.

Until the next Olympics. When a new team called ‘(nothing to do with) RUSSIA’ emerged from… somewhere east of Europe. Their representatives spoke Russian, acted Russian and answered to Vladimir Putin. But they were nothing at all to do with Russia, as we know it. No, they were from the ‘Russian Olympic Committee’. See? Not Russia at all. Russia are being punished so obviously this lot must be something else.

Then a not Russian athlete tested positive for a banned substance. But they let her ice dance in Beijing. Because you would if… errrr… well, you just would. Then they decided to allow the gold medal she won stand. Because the positive result was to be… ignored? Reversed? (Like unscrewing a pregnant woman). And now she’s been cleared by a new committee so she can win more golds for the ROC. Well, its not like she’s doing it for those cheating drug-pushing, ‘roided-up’ Ruskis, is it?

I’m glad they’re taking a firm stance in this very serious matter.

WTF???

Andy xxxx

The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Dame Cressida Dick, has resigned from her post. One minute ‘she was staying’ and 10 minutes later she was gone. Because of our Mayor of all London, Sadiq Kahn. Who basically said that she was unfit to lead. Which, coming from the world’s worst ever possible Mayor, is pretty rich. The man who struggles to put sentences together. The man who has achieved nothing in his entire tenure. The many who stated that ‘new leadership was needed, right at the top’. As opposed to leadership from the bottom. New cleaners and filing clerks. No, at the top.

Cressida’s first police operation as Commissioner resulted in the shooting to death of totally innocent Jean Charles de Menezes. She didn’t pull the trigger, but I have to agree, as ‘new starts to jobs’ go, not the best. Lots of other shit happened ‘on her watch’ too. Most notably, the rape and murder of Sarah Everard by one of her own. And then the brutality of the officers policing a peaceful, majority-women vigil held. Not great.

Yet the ‘thing’ that Little Shit Sadiq is most upset about is the ‘culture of racism, sexism and misogyny’ which abounds in the Met. And that is Cressida’s fault. According to Mr Mayor. To which I would unreservedly disagree. Mainly because Dame Cress is a gel. And gels simply don’t do the same kind of ‘banter’ on Whatsapp groups. Gels have limits in such matters. Lines which shouldn’t even be approached. Boys lack such definition and discipline. And its pretty much the crossing of lines which is where the fun starts. How far can you push? How incorrect can you be? If I insult three quarters of the world’s population, does it matter if the joke is funny enough? Its Jimmy Carr all over again.

And the police… officers who cause all the problem are the men. I would state that this is because they are men. And they’re not very educated and police all like drinking and fighting, just like the people they arrest on Friday nights. And if you examined the content of the Whatsapp groups of of those arrested and those arresting, they’d be the same.

I don’t think changing the Police Commissioner could or would have any effect on this. You need to change the entire fabric of our society, or make racist and sexist jokes and memes far less funny, to achieve that end.

Sadiq was just showing the capital how important he is, how powerful he is, how awfully PC he is, how big he is.

The football season has been temporarily suspended. In my mind, at least.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

When Christian Eriksen steps out onto the pitch to play for Brentford against Crystal Palace this afternoon, he will get a standing ovation. Every ground he visits over the next few months he will be received as the returning hero and given respect, honour and, most uncommonly from opposing fans, love. And all because he’s alive.

You may have noticed that most footballers are alive. Or certainly appear so, other than half the Tottenham team on Wednesday night, obviously. So why don’t we always celebrate the very aliveness of all players?

Because we take it for granted. It is, after all, pretty much a given. You have to be of the living to even think about being alive.

But Christian Eriksen died. In the match for Denmark against Finland last June. On the pitch. For several minutes. More minutes that you’d really want to be dead for. And at that time, the world stopped. The entire ground, filled in a European Championship match, went silent. The fans just stopped. Obviously the pundits jabbered on because silence is not great tv for the 100 million viewers across the globe.

But at that moment there was no-one aware of the situation who was not praying, rooting, sending love, energy, thoughts, karma, chi, vibes, fucking everything within their power, into Christian Eriksen. It’s automatic. And is so much bigger than petty rivalries, even bigger than stupid nationalism (it was a Euro game), because death even trumps tattoos.

And during that horrible period, until he amazingly regained consciousness on the pitch, we invested so much into him, that he became ‘ours’. There is a little piece of every single football-interested person permanently imbedded in Christian Eriksen. Like there was with Fabrice Muamba, but on a lesser stage.

So there is a special place for such people in our hearts. More importantly, there’s a little piece of all of us, plus some equally important techno-medical wizardry, inside their hearts.

Welcome back, Christian, its great to see you back.

A xxxx

Good Morning people of Great Britain. I am your Prime Minister, Boris Johnson. Middle name ‘Disaster’. And I speak to you today with good news. In fact, great news. News so profound, fabulous and wonderful that you’ll love me forever (I can live without that, if I’m honest, which I try never to be) and vote for me in future (which I need desperately).

I’d like to announce that I have beaten this pesky Coronavirus which has plagued all our lives for the last 2 years. I have vanquished it. Personally. Defeated it like Perseus slaying the Gorgon. And thus have delivered you, the good people of Great Britain, into the Promised Land, like Moses. Churchill comparisons simply lack the potency for my achievements.

Not wishing to overstate my importance in all this, but I did it all, and virtually alone. Despite the distraction of all those scientists, statisticians and medical modellers. And although it may have looked, at times, as if I knew far less than ‘nothing’, that my understanding of the pandemic was ‘a mile short of fuck all’, and that my own deportment during it could be seen, by some, as being somewhat less than perfect, I have brought you out of it. With a combination of MY amazing vaccine programme, subsidised lockdowns, rule changes every 37 minutes, disrupting lives, ruining holiday plans and upsetting brides-never-to-be and total headless chicken reactionary panic, I have brought us out the other side.

As of the 21st of this month, we will all be free!!! From constraints, from ‘Covid measures’, from worrying about this horrible disease.

And that, again, as in all of the good things, is MY decision. You, my people, crave normality. A return to work, to the office, to schools, to have the delayed operations in hospitals, holidays. And I, Boris Johnson, will give you precisely that.

Because I don’t really care what the doctors say, which is: ‘you’re fucking mad, Boris!’, and I don’t care what the statisticians say, which is: ‘well you’ve lost 160,000 voters so far, Boris, what’s a few more thousands?’ And I don’t care what people who actually understand such things say.

I only care about you! And need to give you a lot of love before the police inquiry into my appalling behaviour becomes public. I want you to know that its all for YOU. Even though it looks very much like it was all for me. And if I told a few porky pies, it was just… it was… because… well, what difference, that’s all in the past now.

We’re looking forward. To hope! To a full life once more. To a future! At least for some of you.

From your hero,

Boris
xxxx

Well whilst we’re getting all pc and woke about awards ceremonies, I wish to challenge the offensive, prejudicial and highly inflammatory nature of the ‘Brits’ themselves. It’s all very well deciding to ‘remove gender based titles’ for awards, no longer having ‘best male’ and ‘best female’ categories, but the very name ‘Brit’ is a massive problem for many people of a highly sensitive, gender-dysfunctional, chromasomally-confused but predominantly Jewish, disposition. The word Brit means, in Hebrew, ‘circumcision’. Without being too old-school about this, it is something normally done to those with penises. Should an 8-day old baby have transgender issues and ‘identify’ as a male, whilst not in possession of a penis, the rabbis say that performing this ritual might be problematical. Ideologically. So to name your awards after a procedure dating back to Abraham (thus avoiding copyright issues) stands to offend or upset anyone… who might be upset by this kind of thing. The anti-Jimmy-Carr-lobby. Half the Labour Party. And possibly those at Brit Central who decided to leave out gender based awards. And the award for best singer of non-presumptive genitalia distinguishing gender-neutrality goes to… Adele. They all go to Adele.

Back in the realms of ‘proper music’, they keep re-showing the Fleetwood Mac documentary called ‘Don’t stop’. So therefore I have to keep re-watching it. For numerous reasons. Most of them being ‘Stevie Nicks’. But not ONLY for her. It goes back to the beginning. To the John Mayall Blues Band where it all began. With Peter Green. And it moved to LA where the merest remnants of the band were guitaristless and directionless until a very random and chance encounter with Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. Which produced the band we pretty much knew as Fleetwood Mac and produced the Rumours album which, according to Rolling Stone, is the 7th best album of all time. But life was not without its traumas. And marital problems plagued the band, fallouts over music, drugs, material, the ‘direction to follow’, everything. Yet they endured. And Stevie. In a top-hat, belting out Rhiannon… Oh. My. God.

Happy music

A xxxx

Jimmy Carr is in trouble. Big trouble. He stands on the trial in the Supreme Court of Social Media for… telling a joke. Holy Shitttt!!! He told a joke!!! Bastard. You just can’t do that in 2022, its simply not allowed. Even if its funny. Which it probably is to some degree, hence the word ‘joke’ rather than ‘socio-political position held deeply and sincerely in which others are held in contempt’. Jimmy Carr, a man I’ve never felt too fondly about, made a joke about the Holocaust. He’s not the first. And the Holocaust is fine for jokes, some would say ideal, as humour always dilutes horror. And many jokes about that subject are fine and dandy. The general rule is, if its a joke about the Germans at the Holocaust, its fine. Anyone else… beware! Here’s Jimmy’s joke: everyone talks about 6 million Jews dying in the holocaust. But they also murdered thousands of gypsies, so there were positives.

I don’t like to analyse jokes too deeply, they’re either funny or they’re not. That one, unless you’re a Gypsy, is funny. But gypsies are now something of a ‘persecuted minority’ and thus enjoy the status of being protected and supported by the twittering hypersensitive liberati who start every day as ‘deeply offended’ and move up from there. To show their support for the gypsies, every champagne socialist smashed their fridge and left it in their driveway in solidarity. Hampstead resembled a breakers yard.

But this is no joke. They want to ‘cancel’ Jimmy Carr. Who is actually a very very funny man. Who likes to act ‘creepy’ and does it to great effect. Others are supporting him. Mainly comedians, probably concerned about their own fate.

It all comes down to whether there should be limits to what is ‘fair game’ for comedians. And if I’m honest, for me, what is ‘fair game’ is ‘absolutely everything’. I’ve never liked rules, hate censorship, despise the socially acceptable. And if I find a joke or a sketch or a comment ‘offensive’ then I reckon its ‘my problem’ because to some people eating babies is just fine. And then I just wait for one that doesn’t offend me. Because humour is inviolable and if some of it doesn’t appeal then we have the right to not laugh. We have the right to cringe, walk out the room, turn off the tv, throw the book away. But not ‘cancel’.

I am greatly offended by what you joke about but would defend with my life your right to make that joke. Ok, maybe with your life, mine’s too valuable.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx