Andy's Glasses

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

My love affair with Berlin continues apace. But my horizons have expanded massively. Because in all the trips we’ve made here since the younger daughter adopted it as her home, we’ve generally come for weekends and confined our love of ‘Berlin’ to about 3 or 4 of the central areas of the former Eastern part of the city. Or, ‘the good bit’ as I’d always thought. But today we went totally insane (by relative standards), got on a train and went to Potsdam!!! It’s miles from Mitte, kilometres from Kreuzberg, furlongs from Friedrichshain. And its lovely.

Potsdam is the capital of the state of Brandenburg. The state which has the famous ‘gate’ in (proper) Berlin, built in 1780 to mark the spot where just along the road in the Adlon hotel, Michael Jackson would later dangle his baby son over the balcony.

The Brandenburg gate is a lovely structure on top of which is a statue of some horses and other German stuff. And I think that’s a Brandenburg thing. Because on virtually every roof in Potsdam are statues. I haven’t seen so many cherubs since… well, its been a long time. Hundreds. Thousands of ugly fucking cherubs.

But when you arrive at the Palace of Frederick the Great, you have definitely reached Cherub Central. Plus thousands of other statues too. Most of which are on the roofs of every one of the almost obscenely magnificent buildings in the Palace area. Which is a massive park, filled with wonderful buildings which only an Emperor could have built. The word ‘obscene’ springs to mind. His actual palace is said to rival Versailles, which it does. And I’m not just saying that to upset the French. Even though I would if I had to.

Then you leave the park and the town itself is really cute. Not, like cloyingly, sickeningly cute, like many tourist towns, but genuinely sweet and nice and full of people eating ice cream and drinking beer. Some of whom, unlike in ‘real Berlin’, are actually speaking in German! To each other!!

Tomorrow Mel & I leave for Dresden. That’s a whole other City. I’ll let you know what I find.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

So what do you do when you’re 2 years old and someone leaves a real-life, non-plastic, metal and wood, full-size tile-cutter lying around? Answers on a postcard to:

Joey
Department of Breaking Things and General Destruction
My House
What’s Left of It
London

And so we’re off again. Buoyed by the relative ease and simplicity of our recent travels to Greece, we’re going to Berlin on Saturday. Because I haven’t seen Checkpoint Charlie for 2 years. Because I miss Hitler’s bunker. Because I need to be part of a Trabant vibe. Because Rachie lives there and we need to see her. Even though she’s coming over here next month. And we saw her when she was last here, not very long ago. But we’re allowed. She’s our daughter. And thus (according to her) we miss her. And if we don’t go now we can’t go til about April. Because Berlin gets cold. I’ve been in November and it was cold. Been in January and its very cold. And it gets wet. Which is worse than the cold because you can’t see Checkpoint Charlie so well. Though that’s mainly due to all the Far Easterners taking selfies there and buying Stalin hats. Which is a bit like a Hitler hat but with a star on the front.

Last night I finally joined the latest new game storming the capital. It’s called ‘Petrol Hunt’ and it is the best fun ever. Because even people who hardly ever use their cars still, eventually, get low on fuel. And as president of the ‘I’d rather walk than drive electric’ society of Great Britain, Northern Ireland and Slovakia, this is the situation we found ourselves in. So, with Mel’s car showing ‘57 miles’ left, I started out at about 9.45 last night (always a game best played in the dark) and drove to four petrol stations over 25 minutes covering… well, the fuel thing said ‘42 miles’ by the time I arrived home, but I don’t think that 15 miles is totally dependable. But three stations had no petrol. Shit-loads of diesel, because you have to be brave to fill up with that dark and polluting shit these days in case Greta or Extinction Rebellion or Insulate Britain happen to be around. The fourth did have gas!!!! Yippee. But had a queue of about 45 cars, only four pumps open and (we knew cos we’d asked them) was closing ‘any minute’.

There’s loads of petrol in Berlin. And we’re allowed up to 100mls EACH in our carry-on. Hmmm…

Happy Friday

A xxxx

As I’ve mentioned before, I have a thing about Barbie dolls. Not necessarily ‘that kind of thing’, I’ve never put more than one in my underwear, but I’ve played with them since my girls were little, 30 years ago, then had a major Barbie-renaissance with Lila, when we brought the collection of Barbies down from the loft. Some even had all their limbs still attached. One or two even had heads which weren’t rolling around the bottom of the box.

And its nice to see that Barbie stays at the forefront of… well, of selling things. It’s what big companies do. So they’ve brought out European Female Astronaut Barbie. In honour of Samantha Christoforetti, the first European woman astronaut. To stand as a role model. An aspiration. To try and engage young girls in science.

Unfortunately, sales of Astronaut Barbie have been outstripped by those of Digital Media Influencer Barbie. The first Barbie ever to have her mobile phone moulded permanently into her left hand. Influencer Barbie costs the usual 19.99, BUT, you can’t get her out of her box until you pay her to do so, with the credit card slot. And every time you put her back you need to pay more to get her out once more. Though you can bypass this by giving her very expensive clothes, cars or holidays instead.

The other massive, post-woke innovation is Karbie. Its a Barbie who answers to ‘Ken’. A Barbie with indiscriminate pronouns. Who wears one Barbie stiletto and one GI Joe workboot. It comes without the long locks of normal Barbie, but not the yellow carpet of Old Ken. Short hair, bit like Ronaldo’s. Breasts scaled down from the normal Barbie 38DD to a modest 36A. Comes with special ‘bulging underwear’ option.

They were going to make a Boris Barbie but the plastic requirement took it way over budget. So instead they’ve created Covid Barbie. Comes in a bed with her very own ventilator. (Coffin not included).

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx