Andy's Glasses

Taking the knee is a bit like Covid. Everyone’s bored with it but its still very valid and exceptionally serious. But there are many people opposed to it. NOT racists. Some are black people, who just feel it is inappropriate or a wasted symbolic gesture or many other reasons that they are allowed to hold dear. Some even boo the gesture. Which, personally speaking, is a bit strong, mainly because however decent, valid and ‘woke’ your reasons for booing are, you will just be seen as a racist for doing so. A football fan with really genuine, decent reasons was banned at Crystal Palace for such booing. And then later un-banned when they realised that, like taking the knee, booing is merely freedom of speech. Albeit not a very eloquent speech.

And so, back to Crystal Palace, that hot-bed of political anarchy and rebellious insurgency, yesterday. Where those sorry Eagles played Newcastle, the team so recently bolstered by massive Saudi investment, to the combined shocked morality (about 3%) and excessive jealousy (97%) of the other 19 clubs in the division. And some Palace fans flew a banner. It was ‘proper’, not just scribbled on toilet roll. It was clever and it was funny. And it was about Saudi Arabia, the state generally, and Mohammed Bin Salman specifically.

It was not in any way ‘racist’. It said nothing about Saudi people. It made no stereotype tropes, it didn’t call anyone a ‘towel head’. Mainly because the Geordie fans have taken to wearing tea-towels on their heads in a show of (bit misplaced) solidarity and support for their new board members. Which is a bit like Spurs fans calling themselves ‘the Yids’ and causes many blood-vessels to burst because you can’t really be called a ‘racist’ if you’re showing love and support for any group and so people just don’t know what to do about it.

So the poster went up, it shows MBS with a bloody scimitar. It attacks the Saudi nation for its human rights atrocities and brutality. Things which, I’m sure, were completely off most Palace fans’ radars until 10 days ago when Saudi Arabia entered the collective consciousness of all football fans. But if so, even if this is just a ‘let’s find a way to wind up a few Geordies’ kind of deal, they’re allowed. Yet for this, the police are investigating? Like, really? The Saudi police maybe, they don’t need any kind of ‘legal framework’ behind their actions, as they constantly prove. But OUR police? Those defending free speech of online numpty trollers, and other hard lefties? And this is racism?

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

Looking for new cars is much better fun than owning new cars, buying new cars, selling… errrr… not quite so new cars. It’s great. Particularly as we swim around aimlessly in the growing pool which is the ‘electric car world’. You learn as you progress. It’s a curve. And this is what we’ve learned today:

Volvo DO in fact make a fully electric car, just the one, but oddly, it is the model Mel likes. Cos its small. And chunky. Just like she… likes them to be. Test driving next weekend.

We learned that the Lexus fully electric, (again, there’s only one from Toyota’s snooty older brother), is quite cute, quite expensive and fast as fuck. I’d never driven an electric car before, other than on a Scalectrix track, and this one was faster. Due to covid regulations (bless ‘em) the salesman can’t accompany you on your drive. How we missed him. So Mel tested out the brakes and I tested out the accelerator. Which worked very very well indeed. I would describe the experience as ‘wonderful’, Mel’s chosen adjective would probably be ‘DANGEROUS!!!’

But you also get to learn about car dealerships, showrooms and staff. And generally, the more pricey the car, the nicer the showroom. So Lexus was vast, airy, clean and smelt of the coffee machine. I stole biscuits. Mel took water. Typical electric car driver. The Volvo showroom was big and posh. The Toyota one was like a workingman’s cafe but scaled up a bit. And the staff weren’t very helpful. The Mercedes place we went to last week was the worst of all for service (lack of) and attitude. As they only looked up from their computers at the fifth throat-clearing and only to give a look which was far less ‘hello, how can I help you?’ and much more ‘what the fuck do you want?’ But as their electric cars were horrible, we enjoyed walking out.

And we are going to have to look at the I3. How can you not? It’s so popular it must have something going for it. Plus its fairly small (‘we’ like that), quite cute (‘we’ love that too). And the ID3 from VW looks interesting though I’ve heard good and bad reports.

It’s a whole new world out there in ‘lectric-land. So much speed. So little noise.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

We’re going to buy an electric car. No idea which one (THEY ALL LOOK THE FARKIN SAME) but that time has arrived. Mel wants a new car and in line with the zeitgeist it would be almost unthinkable for ‘her’ to buy the new Dodge Challenger re-do with a 6.2 litre supercharged engine delivering over 800 horses to the wheels. Which, being a Dodge, will slide around like… like… like a car chase in Bullitt, be fast as fuck, louder than an AC/DC concert and cause more pollution than 17 jet aircraft. That just wouldn’t be right. But oh my it would be fun.

Saving the planet is not about ‘fun’! Its about being conscious, aware, concerned, its about spouting off in Swedish every time someone lights a candle, its about being… holier than thou or, in the case of Boris Johnson its, yet again, about meaningless sound bytes which add up in total to the square root of fuck all. But more on him later. I’m off to buy a car!!!

And here’s the issue. Every manufacturer has ‘electric cars!!!’, won’t be making petrol cars after 2025, phasing out fossils altogether, blah, blah, blah. Like Volvo. The first to announce this. Yet they don’t make a fully electric, plug in car. Only ‘hybrids’. Those illegitimate devil spawn produced when Jeremy Clarkson fathered a child with Greta Thunberg. Not because I’m so opposed to hybrids but just because you get no benefits in terms of tax savings and allowances and free road tax and no congestion charge.

The problem is you can’t use the existing car bits and just ‘make them with electric motors’. Don’t work. You can get a hybrid like that but for a full electric you have to completely redesign and rebuild from the wheels up. So options are limited.

In fact once you eliminate the hybrids and the ‘plug in hybrids’ from the equation, you’re left with the I-3, old technology and common as muck, a few Teslas which won’t be delivered until 2033, a couple of Nissans and Renaults and the Jaguar I-Pace. Which we looked at. Mel needed a ladder to get into it but it is exceptionally beautiful. And incredibly massive. Immense in fact. (Didn’t look so big in the pictures). The hunt goes on.

Boris is putting hundreds of millions into OUR POCKETS!!! to get us out of the old gas boilers in our homes and into more tree-huggy ‘heat pumps’ which do the same thing. Almost. A new gas boiler: 2 grand. A heat pump: about 15!!!! Plus more radiators required, lots of plumbing needed outside the house (or flat???) So the PM has offered grants, not full payment but ‘help’ for up to 90,000!!!!! homes to replace gas boilers with heat pumps. Wow. Unfortunately there are over 25 million boilers currently in the UK. Which leaves… errrr… well, quite a few remaining after this current ‘carbon purge’. We’ll get back to you with some more sums later.

Happy Green Wednesday

A xxxx

This is not a gloaty story. Though I reserve that right. Its my fucking story. This is not to say how wonderful Tottenham Hotspur football club is. Even though they were on Sunday. This is just… just… well, as depicted above, just a salient lesson in how football can reduce joy and optimism to sorrow and despair in just 10 minutes. You could almost feel sorry for Yassir al-Rumayyan and Amanda Staveley. Up to a point. Though their football team didn’t get a point. Even with all those billions sitting in the director’s box.

It takes time to build up a team. Even if you cheat, bribe, out-spend and piss millions away doing it, the work takes time. Sacking Steve Bruce was inevitable, which they pretty much stated, just a matter of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’. Because they need a ‘big manager’, a ‘marquee signing’, they want a ‘superstar leader of men’.

The reality being that you can’t buy players until January. And by then, on current form, Newcastle may well be entrenched very very deeply at the wrong end of the league table, where they currently sit, with 3 points and no wins from their first 8 matches. Which may make attracting the superstars and the poseurs and the Euro royals of the game, somewhat more difficult. Though I’m sure Neymar would love nothing more than a season in the Championship and coach rides up to Middlesbrough in January. And Steve Bruce may be the man they really need to ‘keep them up’. Again. As he has somewhat miraculously for the last two dismal seasons. Something the Jose Morinhos and Pep Guardiolas of this world are simply incapable of. It’s not in their skill set.

So having moved heaven and earth to buy Newcastle United, the Saudis must surely be looking at Ms Staveley and thinking ‘WTF????’ What has she done to us??? We thought we were getting Manchester United (which may possibly have been even more disappointing anyway) but we got the wrong one!!! (A bit like the Americans buying ‘London Bridge’ thinking they were getting Tower Bridge). It’s cold here! (Amanda Staveley is currently reading the details of the Jamal Khashoggi murder and avoiding solitary meetings).

And then yesterday in an emergency meeting, the Premier League voted that clubs cannot be sponsored by their owners. As in ‘Saudi Airlines’ becoming the shirt sponsor or St James’s being renamed ‘The Haj’. Because such deals opens the path for limitless spending. The only club other than Newcastle to vote against the ban was… well, see if you can guess.

Spurs won the game, by the way. Should have scored more in the second half but there ya go. Newcastle were absolutely abysmal and, other than their early, energy-driven goal, flattered my team greatly.

Happy Tuesday, Amanda

A xxxx

There is palpable relief in the entire Newcastle region. The owner of their beloved football club, the fat, obnoxious, Cockney, wide-boy (ticks every box for meanings of that phrase), has sold the club to its new owners. The Geordies hated Mike Ashley and, pretty much, everything he stood for. But mainly, they resented his constant refusal to become the bottomless pocket they really wanted in order to up the game of their football team. And they could never forgive his London-ness.

So now they have the owner they have always deserved. A local boy. If your location is Riyadh. A man with pockets so deep that were you to ever reach the bottom you’d just hit oil. A man so tough, so fearless, so in keeping with the Geordie spirit that he is virtually a convicted murder. A man never seen wearing a coat, holding an umbrella or passing out due to excess alcohol.

And that is Mohammed Bin Salman. MBS if you can’t read an Arabic acronym. Although that will from now on become part of the Newcastle school curriculum.

But those are the details. Just replace the word ‘Newcastle United’ with ‘Manchester City 12 years ago’ and that’s where we’re going. Because their team is now funded by Saudi Arabia. All of it. And if that is not ‘all the riches in the world’ its probably most of them. Think of all the money that nation has saved over the decades by refusing to issue driving licenses to women. They’ve never had to waste all that money on parliament and legislature in sorting out gay rights. Equality. It’s much cheaper to build gallows than prisons.

But you don’t need a morality test to own a Premier League club. Nor a ‘decent human being’ test either, otherwise Manchester United would be for sale. No-one questioned Roman Abramovich’s billions when he took over at Chelsea. No-one realised how the Emirates would make a laughing stock of the ‘financial fair play’ regulations at Man City.

So Spurs go to St. James’ Park this afternoon amid the celebrations and excitement of the new ownership. Fortunately for us, for the moment Newcastle are still fielding the same shit team they were when Mike Ashley left. Unfortunately for us, Son has got covid and can’t play.

I’m deeply concerned with the future. Both immediate (at 4.30) and longer term for the ‘beautiful game’. Which kind’a gets uglier with every passing day.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

There’s a wonderful documentary on Sky Arts about Roxy Music. The band. Bryan Ferry. That lot. Wonderful if you loved them, as I did, load’a shit if you didn’t. Which many didn’t. Like my brother. Hard rocker that he was, heavy metal to his very core, he poo-pooed anyone who wore anything other than black on stage. Hated ‘dress up’, unless it involved big crosses (normally upside down ones), maybe swords, a hat or two. He liked it ‘raw’. He, basically, loved Black Sabbath almost to the exclusion of all else. Whereas I had a more ‘pop’ side. Maybe because I was younger. I either liked a song or didn’t. Regardless of the pigeonhole the music slotted into. The tribe.

And then, in 1970, onto the Top of the Pops stage came Roxy Music. And they were dressed up. And they performed Virginia Plain. Which immediately grabbed me by various parts, including my testicles, and left me aghast. It was so different. The band, the song, the music. In 1970 you could actually invent a sound, a look, a paradigm, that wasn’t derivative. And Roxy were definitely ‘individual’. The song had no chorus. It didn’t move in the same way as other songs. But that’s something I learned later. It didn’t enter my consciousness at the time. And it included the immortal line: “where my Studebaker takes me, that’s where I’ll make my stand”. You just can’t fail with such a line.

As soon as the eponymous album came out, we used our weekly, whip-round budget at Mr Byrite, where I worked on Saturdays, to buy it. The album was sensational. But the cover was something else. We had to take turns on staring at it. An hour each. And even though subsequent had covers more sexual, more sexy, more semi-naked, more smutty, this one had that incredible vulnerability.

The band, as they are now, speak extensively in the rockumentary. And the first thing that strikes you is how posh, educated and eloquent these art-school poseurs were and still are. None of the toothless, drug-addled, post-rehab (until next time) grunting from these dudes. Just super-intelligent wit and observation.

The first two Roxy Music albums ‘changed my life’. I saw them in about 1972 at the Rainbow in Finsbury Park. Bryan Ferry had apparently been promoted to a 5-star general by then, but they were simply amazing on stage. I still play those two albums a lot. And now, following the documentary, I need the third one too.

Happy nostalgic Saturday

A xxxx

Have you ever wondered about slugs? Those totally revolting little creatures, snails without shells, that slither in a trail of their own slime across paths in search of your bedding plants which they fucking ruin by eating themselves sick on them. This year has been a bumper year for slugs, for some reason, God moving in mysterious ways again. And in my summer-long study, I’ve concluded one thing: slugs must taste absolutely disgusting. Even for birds whose diet includes earthworms, beetles and other yuck, they don’t eat slugs. Nothing eats slugs. Not even Heston Blumenthal.

Yet they’re soft, always fucking fat (that’s MY bedding plants!!!) and you’d think a good meal for something or other, because they are totally defenceless. They have no shell, no hooks, no poison, no guns, nothing. They can’t fly, can’t walk and are so slow they couldn’t escape from a tortoise. Animals always have defence, but not slugs. Therefore, they must taste terrible. Worse than worms (I’ll ask Joey), yukkier than ants, termites, wasps and virtually everything else in the animal kingdom. Maybe they’re just tasteless? Need a little salt. Yeah, bit of a problem that one. But if your only defence is that people really don’t want to scrape you off the bottom of their shoe, that’s evolutionarily sound.

And on to Sally Rooney. Bit of a slug herself, really. The writer of ‘Normal People’ has just banned her latest book from being published in Hebrew. Because of ‘Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians’ and for the great and worthy ‘BDS’ bullshit. Is this just another example of a left-wing moron choosing to punish ‘the people’ to make some facile statement to ‘the government’? Or something more insidious. Because La Rooney is quite happy peddling her soft-core Irish porn to the Chinese who are currently engaged in ethnically cleansing their entire Uighur population, to the Saudis who have many human rights issues (including ownership of Newcastle United) and to any and every totally unacceptable regime in the world. But not Israel.

She’s either just another ignorant Marxist (self-proclaimed in fact, but doesn’t use the ‘ignorant’ on her cv), like Corbyn, just an inherent, hereditary anti-Semite, or she’s cynically done her sums and calculated that the loss of revenue from a small country is less than the gain of all the vast number of other Jew-haters who protest Israel’s ways whilst selectively ignoring atrocities everywhere else.

Well fuck Sally Rooney. I’m not translating my blog into Irish! That’ll show her.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

So yesterday ended brilliantly, with the petrol flowing like wine, like asses milk, like golden honey, into the cars. Preceded by Miele-gate. Mel’s absolute best friend in the whole world was broken. I could be her bff, possibly her identical twin sister to whom she speaks 14 times each day. But no. Her washing machine is the thing she really loves, the one she misses when we’re away, and always her first love. Til the fucker broke last week. And although its 12 years old, it is the absolute 600AMG, V10, M-Class, Bugatti Veyron of clothes cleaners. And at the airport yesterday we learned of its fixage. It’s all better. Ready for another 10 years. Mel was in tears.

But the day was not without its stresses.

Berlin has airport issues. Or, flughof issues, as they call them over there. Because Berlin had two airports. An old shitty one really close to the centre, which everyone loved because of its proximity and forgave its shitty rustiness. The other was miles away. Or, ‘kilometres away’ as they call it in Germany. And equally horrible. But wait! Right next door to the shitty, old, far-away one, is another one which we built 10 years ago and completely forgot about. It’s never been used, like, EVER. Dust it off, close the other two and we can be a proper International City with a ‘hub’.

Its an hour away from the daughter. 45 minutes on a good day. Yesterday wasn’t a good day. We walked to the local train station (5 minutes), got on the local train which would take us just 5 stops to the big station where you get the direct, fast, super-train to the airport (20 minutes). What could possibly go wrong.

The little local train went one stop and then, amid a lot of German words and announcements I didn’t understand, all was basically ‘kaput’. A word I do understand. So there we are, somewhere we don’t know where, 4 stops short of our next destination, in fucking Germany. So God bless Uber. It came within 1 minute and whizzed us to the big station and we made it to the airport in good time.

Well, it would have been good time if the Brandenburg Flughof was worthy of its name. But it is just useless, unfriendly in that there are so few direction signs, and ridiculously under-manned. The ‘good time’ became ‘last minute panic’ as the lovely woman at security was repackaging our less-than-100-ml bottles into nicer plastic bags than they were already in. As every item from carry on has to go into its own tray. Oh nein, you can’t put your belt in with your jacket!!! That’s how 9-11 started!!! Fuck me it was agony. And just two scanner desks operating out of 6. Hair was pulled out, obscenities whispered beneath smiling faces, sweat profused.

Then, of course the flight was half hour delayed anyway, obviously.

But its sooooooo stressful. And needn’t be.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

So we ventured into the deepest, darkest, eastiest bit of East Berlin. So east that they still keep a statue of Lenin there. But they keep other things too. Like dead Jews. Because in the little town of Weissensee there is a magnificent old Jewish Cemetery. Which opened in about 1880 and was, you can imagine, something of an upmarket place for Berlin’s upper echelons of the Jewish world to find their final resting place. So you can see, if you’re going to be there for all of eternity, you’re looking for something solid, something to last, survive the elements and, of course, impress the neighbours. Well, not the neighbours themselves, obviously, but perhaps their family, when they come to visit, say a prayer, place a stone. And people of substance like to leave something to remember. Hence these immense and wonderful family crypts which are scattered all across the place. There are thousands and thousands of ‘normal’ graves too, marked with modest little headstones. Not because those dead weren’t loved sufficiently to build a 6 bedroom house around them, but because it simply wasn’t necessary for there to be anything more than a simple stone.

Yet this was Germany. And every gravestone tells a story. So some family plots just listed the members who never returned from Auschwitz, or Theresenstadt, or Bergen-Belsen. Whereas others were more profound. Where you’d have three named headstones in one combined ‘unit’, and two empty blanks.

About 40% of German Jews fled the nazi regime in the early to mid 1930s. And as the ‘inhabitants’ of Weissensee were affluent and rich, they would have been able to move out of the country. The problem was with the 60% who didn’t leave. Who either simply could not believe that the only nation they’d ever lived in for several generations, the nation they’d fought for in the Great War, the nation where they had been respected, revered, lionised, advised governments, helped the military, that such a nation would abandon them totally. Not just abandon, but persecute to their deaths. Or, they simply lacked the funds to escape. And of that 60%, about 55% never returned.

Either way, those blank spaces hit you right in your very soul.

So now we’re back. Not just back but following one phone call and a four minute drive, we drove straight into a petrol station, no queues whatsoever, and filled two cars with gasoline. I mean, WTF??? My car had 78 miles left in it, Mel’s 32. And now they’re full. Such a relief.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

When I was a kid I loved DC Comics. Superman, Batman, Flash, loved ‘em. But now they’ve become PC Comics as Superman slips out of the binary world which has constrained him, mercilessly, for 50 years. Nothing else could constrain him, not steel nor concrete nor nuffink other than Green Kryptonite. But now, Superman can finally be true to the more gender fluid superhero he’s always wanted to be. And kissed a man!! In the newest ‘episode’ of the comic, they’ve had a young Superman kissing a boy in a decidedly ‘beyond-man-hug’ kind’a way. The Man of Steel has come out of the Supercloset. Do I care? No. But I’m not Lois Lane!!! She must be devastated.

So we’re in Dresden, which is quite wonderful, quite other-worldly and quite biiiiiiiiigggg. And its pissing down. So we invested a few Euros to go see the exhibition of porcelain at the Zwinger. Oh, come on, keep up, that’s the ancient palace of the rulers of Saxony which was totally destroyed in the war, levelled to the ground, and rebuilt afterwards in exact replication of its original everything. And quite amazing. Hence, a bit ‘other worldly’. And Dresden is famous for china.

Which is why it seemed a bit odd to enter massive chambers filled with… china. From China. And remember, back in the 1600 and 1700s, China was not so famous for murders, overthrowing the world, human rights abuse and totalitarianism as it was for making lovely vases. Which have endured. After 500 years these pieces, massive, beautiful, hand-painted, are still perfect. In a city flattened just 70 years ago. Whereas your iphone is obselete after 15 months when the next version comes out. I think that says a lot.

Pride of place, for me, in light of the ‘Superman-gate’ story which came out (no pun) this morning, was this rather becoming figure from 1750. Looks like a fab hair-do. Could be a turban. (It is Persian). Looks like a dress? Could be a coat. For me the whole vibe is ‘woman’, ‘female’, ‘girly’. And then there’s the moustache. Which would sit well with the original hypothesis if the character was over 50 and Greek, but I feel she’s neither. Hence, Houston, we have a pronoun issue here, over…

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx