Andy's Glasses

Jimmy Greaves died. He was a superstar. Possibly the best striker of his day, probably the best striker ever. Drank like a fish, smoked like a chimney, had a fitness programme that included jellied eels, pie & mash and ever such a lot of sausages. Took the bus, cleaned his own boots, sang ‘my ole man said foller the van…’ every Friday night in the pub and probably beat his wife with a really wide leather belt. He was pushed and shoved, punched and kicked, thrown into the mud and trodden upon, every single week, and up he got once more.

That was in 1963. Fast forward to yesterday, just 58 years later, and you have another ‘possibly the best striker ever’ in the guise of Christiano Ronaldo. He never smoked. Wouldn’t risk the calories of drinking for fear of spoiling an ‘ab’ of which he has at least 6. He has a live-in hairdresser and a house fisherman to catch his daily food. Cooked only with vegetables. Lots of them. And only after his personal team of nutritionists have approved it. And as long as you can’t ‘die of excessive vanity’, Christiano should live long past Jimmy’s 81st and final year. He’s 34 years old and ‘still going strong’, still scoring with ridiculous regularity.

But yesterday afternoon, after scoring for Manchester United, he changed his tack and decided to win a penalty. At his age, its easier than all that hard work to score a proper goal. Why else would he have spent such a ridiculous amount of the game sitting on the floor with his arms upturned and an expectant expression on his stupid face?

His manager bemoaned the referee for ‘missing three certain penalties’!!!! I bemoaned the ref for not sending the cheating tosser off the pitch. One of the challenges was indeed clumsy, missed the ball altogether and sent the Portuguese flying. Though as replays showed, he was already in ‘pre-flight mode’ before any contact was made. Already dragging a foot and falling forwards. ‘Playing for penalties’ is not just cheating but really horrible to watch. Especially for someone with so much unquestionable skill and ability.

So a brief message to Christiano: YOU’RE NOT IN SPAIN NOW. Greavesie would never have taken a dive.

Otherwise, there’s nothing much to report on football from this weekend. I’ve decided to become a serious critic of post-Brexit European superstar behaviour as compared with legendary icons of England, before Europe was even invented. Its far less painful than being a ‘fan’. And gives one the opportunity to act in the most outrageously snobbish manner possible. Holier than fucking everythou.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

I hate to be cruel. I’m not generally an unkind person. Especially in my post-Yom-Kippur, ‘be a better person, less of a total muthafucka than last year’ glow. But I was gladdened to read of the death of Alan Steel. He was a personal finance guru and, from the sounds, an almost-all-round good guy. So why would I pleased to read his obituary??, you’d do well to ask. And so I shall tell you.

Because Alan Steel was that rarest of rare things, the one sacrificed to define an entire class of people. He was a total anti-vaxxer who died of Covid. It should have been Trump. Not so much an anti-vaxxer as just an all-round moron who chose to downplay the virus as it killed Americans in the hundreds of thousands. It should have been Bolsonaro, the imbecilic president of Brasil who was, if anything worse than Trump. Both of those men caught Covid but with minimal personal effect. Alan Steel ‘took one for the team’. Unfortunately for him, for the opposing team.

I don’t care what reasons people have against Covid vaccinations, whether its the ‘unknown’ (yeah, only about 400 million doses given this year), whether ‘it’s unnatural’, (dying is certainly natural) or whether the vaccines are made by conspiracy theorists from Jupiter, their reasons are invalid. They are stupid, reactionary obstinacy in the face of all and any logic and commons sense. And medical sense.

And much as I hate to generalise about classes of my fellow man (whatever their pronouns), anti-vaxxers are the worst kind of tossers. All of them. Because as well as the personal massive benefits and freedoms that the vaccine imparts, it is an act of altruism too. Society benefits by as many as possibly being vaccinated.

So the inevitable is happening. No-one has to have a vaccine. Its a free country. We’ll never have ‘vaccine passports’!!! They’re discriminatory. But without the jabs, football matches, concerts, travel, even possibly work, tube trains and almost every facet of life will only be easily available to those known to have antibodies.

Therefore if you know anyone who is eligible but not yet vaccinated, help them, coax them, influence them, beat them with fucking great wooden planks with nails sticking out, to get the jab. It’s you duty!!

RIP Alan Steel, you did a good thing for all the wrong reasons.

A xxxx

This week was Yom Kippur. Our ‘day of atonement’, as it is known, though not really what it means. Because that’s the English interpretation, the nearest kind’a deal, but not what its all about. In the Christian sense ‘atonement’ means beating yourself up, flagellating, somehow paying penance for sins. For Jews we only pay for sins ‘wholesale’ and thus avoid anything too onerous. So instead of ‘atoning’ what Yom Kippur really means is the day you plan how much better you’re going to be next year than you were this year. I don’t mean in the financial world, God is not an accountant. He doesn’t want to see cash-flow projections and he struggles with excel. He wants to see your fucking SOUL, and how it will become a lighter, nicer, more decent, more forgiving, less pedantic, more tolerant soul in the months to come, less victim to temptation and less involved with Chelsea football club.

But I didn’t attend synagogue in the usual way. I’m kind’a ‘done’ with all that. God abandoned me. I can pinpoint the date. February 7th 1973. When Spurs lost 5-3 to Derby in the FA Cup at the Lane. Whereas Mel, an ‘adopted’ Spurs fan by marriage, still has that belief. And so when she chooses to attend synagogue, I opt to stand outside in a stab-vest and hi-viz jacket, wired with my walkie-talkie and do ‘security’. All synagogues have security rotas and I’ve done it for years. Taking my chance with the weather rather than the restlessness and irritation that endless prayer guarantees.

So the question is: what can a dozen 50 to 60 to 70 year old men and women, mainly arthritic accountants, lop-sided lawyers, decrepit doctors, broken businessmen, what can they do if a trained Jihadist army arrives at the door, fully armed? Particularly when younger people could in fact run away much more quickly. And the answer to that, and virtually any other related question is ‘call for help’. Phone a friend. And that’s what we’re there for. To see and react, not to fight. Even though fighting would be more fun.

And security extends internationally too. In the interests of which, Australia is building a fleet of nuclear (powered, not armed) submarines to patrol… well, China. They call it other things, but its China everyone’s worried about. Yet its France that’s the issue. Because the subs should be French made and diesel powered, as per a long standing, 60 billion Euro deal they made with the Aussies. But now the order is going to America instead. Which has pleased the French so much that they’ve recalled their ambassadors to the US and Australia. The next step, should France deem this a full-blown conflict, would be for President Macron to immediately surrender. To the Americans, Australians, anyone.

The world awaits with baited breath. Which I’ll admit looks very much like a yawn.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

I actually do have a duffel coat. But that’s not why I love protests. I love them because they’re what happens in a free society, and only in a free society, when people want to make a point. And, generally, when no-one’s listening to what they’re saying. Or, even more generally, when no-one cares what they’re saying. Like anytime a Corbyn picks up a banner, its time to watch the football. If its not Jeremy marching for Hamas or to defend some holocaust denier, its his insignificant brother spouting his anti-vax bullshit or denying the pandemic as something started by capitalists (errrr… China?) to repress the workers.

Yet we have to be indulgent. Just because people like the Corbyns are thick as pig-shit, dim as dead lightbulbs and worthy of being beaten with batons daily, does NOT deny them their democratic rights which I would defend myself and personally, just after I finished the beatings.

In Afghanistan they don’t protest. Or they do so with great care. And may pay for it in the most severe way. In Russia, you are completely free to protest. As long as its in full and total support of Putin. So protests represent a freedom which we are lucky enough to enjoy.

But you have to make people take note of what you’re protesting, otherwise it is totally futile. To have sixty people march round in your own back garden will achieve nothing. That’s why extinction rebellion (they’re unworthy of capital letters) like to take their morning nap on Trafalgar Square. Or chain themselves across Oxford Circus. So that there is disruption and chaos and thus we, the unprotesting masses, get to learn of their views. Which, even for a bunch of tree-huggers-ambushed-by-hard-left-militants, like ER, are valid and relevant to us, to a degree.

But ‘Insulate Britain’ have taken it too far. They’ve clogged up the M25 numerous times this week. Either lying down in the slip roads or latterly, gluing themselves to those roads. Which firstly causes miles and miles of jammage, and secondly causes masses of extra pollution which, for a green movement, is where irony meets the absurd.

The police act too slowly in these situations. They consider the welfare of the protesters. And I would too. I’d give them 10 minutes to get the fuck off the road. Then I’d send in the bulldozers. A lot of them. Driven by people wearing headsets. So they can’t hear the screaming.

Protest all you want but fucking up the M25, the world’s most already-fucked-up road, is so inconsiderate, unfair and stupid that it elevates the protest from the moderately daft to the criminally selfish.

Happy Yom Kippur

A xxxx

I hate injections, always have. Even as a kid, when it was vaccination day at the doctors, they always made my mum bring my brother and me for the last appointment. Because my screaming would tend to upset the other kids. And I’d arrive screaming, and wouldn’t stop until a lollypop was in my mouth on the way home. Those were the days, re-usable syringes (with ‘needles’ the size of a water pipe!) and endless sugar.

I still hate injections but at the moment I take all I can get. I’m due my ‘booster’ covid and my old person’s annual flu jab. The legendary ‘one in each arm’ scenario. I wish I had more arms. Then I could have more jabs. I don’t normally suffer with ‘octopus envy’ but just think how many vaccines they could have. And I no longer scream. Not externally anyway, just on the inside.

It’s strange how we grow up and adapt. Because when I was a kid I also hated all green (or white, purple or any other colour) vegetables except peas and runner beans. Now I eat all of them, love most of them, just never bother with aubergines or courgettes. Not because they’re French words so much as slimy, tasteless and bring less than nothing to the party.

I hated books. Readin’ was fine, but only things I absolutely HAD to read. Never for pleasure. Only comics. DC comics in particular, never Marvel. I could relate totally to Superman; he was sent over from planet Krypton as a baby in a space rocket and could fly faster than a plane, pick up an entire train and stop trucks with one finger. I was born in ‘ackney, moved to Ilford when I was a baby and couldn’t do any of that shit. Quite an amazing coincidence when you think about it.

And I hated Arsenal. Some things never change.

Ok, tomorrow is Yom Kippur, the ‘day of atonement’ or, in modern parlance ‘Judgment Day!!!!’, even though its not really. It’s a day of fasting, but I’m still so full of Greece that really shouldn’t be a problem, I stocked up for several fast days/weeks over there. It’s also a day of introspection and improvement. So I have to prepare. Mentally, spiritually, emotionally, totally. It starts tonight at 7 and finishes tomorrow night at 8. During which time I shall be one with the angels. Rather than off with the fairies, as I normally spend my time.

May your spirit be as cleansed as your stomach is empty,

A xxxx

Its a little anthropocentric (scientific word, not a new sexual orientation) to assume that our ‘world’ is the only one. There are 47 million stars, each possibly with its own planetary system. You do the maffs. I can’t (be bothered). And if you do, the answer will be ‘a shitload’ of potential for life ‘elsewhere’. Though not necessarily as we know it.

And I’ve found just such a world. A world where Spurs are top of the league. Where we didn’t lose this weekend. Where football remains a happy place. And that world is called: Wimmin’s Football.

Because yesterday Spurs women beat Manchester City’s women to go top of their league. Ok, tied top with Brighton (?), Arsenal and Manchester United, but top is top, right?? And I saw a bit on the news and it looked quite a lot like… like ‘football’, but with more bits jiggling round on the pitch, and I would say ‘more ponytails’ on view, but after watching Leeds yesterday I’m not sure about that. The football itself was… well, the winning goal was scored by the defender’s arm, but shit happens even in… in real football. And I don’t like to be in any way sexist about this, especially coming on The Weekend of Emma!, but it didn’t really look like proper, top flight football. Ok, they looked a bit like Arsenal did in their first three matches, but a bit more butch and scary.

And talking about Emma, as all British people have to do, at least once a day, every day, until Wimbledon starts next June, by order of Parliament, we need to discuss ‘the future’. Which started, for her, yesterday. Because she has instantly become the most marketable individual on the planet. She’s young, gorgeous, clever, funny, charming and a TOTAL FUCKING WINNER. Yet, although she takes her tennis seriously, doesn’t take herself too seriously at all. Which is yet more endearing. So to add to her cheque on Saturday for $2.5million, marketing experts reckon that within one month she’ll have signed contracts worth another $25mil. Possibly £25mil. Doesn’t really matter. And then, we learned yesterday, she speaks fluent Mandarin. Like, beyond ordering a meal. Almost like its a language when you don’t even want noodles. But its a language spoken by most of China’s 1.6 billion people. Ok, not all are tennis fans, I give you that, but she’s not only going to be selling tennis. She’ll be selling her soul (I know I would). And selling anything that someone coughs up enough money to get her to sell. The possibilities are limitless.

Have a delightful, back to work, Monday

A xxxx

I hadn’t even arrived back home yesterday when Spurs had a player sent off. Personally, I think taking Wilfred Zaha round the throat is not merely acceptable but should be considered a good thing for the benefit of all. But the referee saw things differently and sent Tanganga off. And then Crystal Palace scored. The fact that their manager is (for the moment, in between relegations) Patrick Vieira, the ex-Arsenal captain, only increased my sense that another week in Greece would have been a far superior option to traffic jams on the M40 and conceding our first goal of the season to South London scummy upstart wide-boys and low-lifes, Crystal Palace. I needn’t have worried. By the time I was home we’d conceded our second and indeed third too. Making the whole trip worthwhile. (?)

However, I’m not a football fan any longer. I only ‘sing when we’re winning’ and as we stopped winnin, I’ve stopped singin. I’m a tennis fan. Not just a tennis fan but an Emma Raducanu fan. Possibly her biggest fan in the whole country, if not the whole world. I’m prepared to back up this seemingly vacuous statement with an intense program of stalking, obsession and unhealthy attempts at unwanted communication.

I’d like to put Emma’s victory into perspective. Unfortunately, I’m not very good at that kind of thing, often being prone to mild exaggeration verging on the hyperbolically ridiculous. But the nature of her victory in the US Open championship is like climbing Everest whilst you’re still wearing nappies. It’s like writing a best-selling book before you can speak. It’s like my 96 year-old dad sailing round the world. (He doesn’t know how to sail but I might stick him in a boat anyway, just for fun).

But really, there are no parallels in the world of sport. I won’t bore you with the superlatives and records because they’re all over everything today. And tomorrow, and in fact every day until Tim Henman comes back on court at Wimbledon again. If you missed the match then I feel sorry for you. Not because it was totally brilliant from start to finish but because you’ll have even less to add to any conversation today than you normally do. Everyone remembers exactly where they were when Emma Raducanu won the NY Open.

If you did miss it, you can get the replay on BBC radio. That’s the best catch-up. It goes like this: “forehand drive down the line-taken early on the backhand two-handed cross court met at the net but only parried awayforasuperbbackhandovertoavolleybackdownthelineforthewinner!!!!“

And its only about 2 hours long.

Happy Victory Sunday

A xxxx

I’ve mentioned how libertarian the Greeks are. How carefree and helmetless and yellow-line-free they live their lives. And I love that. Freedom to choose, laws as guidelines rather than officious pedantry.

And then I got into our Uber to the airport. And Ubers in Greece are all regular taxis, all yellow and stripey and shit. The driver was ‘playing’ on his phone, which was stuck on the dashboard in time-honoured manner. The screen showed his Uber app, but there was sound of voices, I thought, on the radio. However, driving down the road, still fiddling with the phone and cleaning his sunglasses (way too much freedom for this passenger to endure), he found what he was looking for. The tv channel showing the debate we’d been listening to. Which he then watched as he drove us towards our destination. Which we hoped was the airport rather than the ditch by the fucking roadside. I mean, really?? TV whilst driving???

But he must have felt my seething anger/fear seeping through my mask and turned it off. And safely didst we arrive at the airport.

I’m not a princess. I wish to state that plainly and clearly from the outset. If I was a Princess it would probably be the Stephanie of Monaco type, all sex and drugs and rehab and abuse of power and total bitchiness, rather than the traipsing round minefields for the good of humanity type like the saintly Diana (may the Lord rest her troubled soul). But me, princess, I don’ fink so.

But when flying became possible again, the only seats offered on most European Air Miles flights are in Business Class. BA obviously worked out that ‘the world’ has not spent an air mile in 18 months and most users have reclaimed old ones from the inevitable covid cancellations. So for European flights, for BA, its a no-brainer. The ‘business class’ seats are exactly the same as the others. Ok, they leave a gap in the middle, but they don’t have to put bedrooms with en-suites up. So it costs them very little and it means we just have to spend a few more air miles to get them. Which bothers no-one as devotees have almost countless after the year + of inactivity, and it gets a few more ‘spent’.

But I don’t mind travelling almost like a commoner, because there are benefits. Mainly fast track through the airports and the lounges. Which is fine at Heathrow because fast-track is very fast and the lounges are… ok. But in Athens, fast track doesn’t work because all those fabulously multi-lingual Greeks suddenly don’t get the words written, in Greek, and ruin my life. Then the lounge is shit. Ok, for a free coffee there’s not a lot I wouldn’t do, but then I asked where the toilets were. And was pointed… OUT THERE!!! On the main concourse, OUTSIDE the rarified atmosphere of THE LOUNGE!!!

“WHAAAAATTTTTTTT????!!!!!” I asked gently. “I have to shit with the serfs? Poo with the proles?? Make toilet with the trash??? Crap with the commoners???? Wee with the working classes????” And then I fainted. My knees buckled, the world swam and then went black. If that’s not some form of unconscious appropriation. Because that’s what Grace Kelly would have done. And any other real princess. And one so seldom has the opportunity to swoon, in real life.

And now I’m home, just in time for Spurs to lose. And Lila started ‘big school’ on Thursday. OMGeeeeee…

Not the best Saturday

A xxxx

Let me tell you about my holiday. All holidays really, because their main job is to take you away from the norm. And keep you sufficiently away from it that you enter a wonderful, stress-free unreality-land where your main concerns are an even suntan and what you’re going to eat next. And drink while you’re going there to eat it. I’ve even managed to avoid the News. I have no idea how much more shit has happened in Afghanistan since I left home last weekend. Have the Americans gone back? Have the Taliban become nice? Changed their tack? Become gay-inclusive? Woman friendly? Or at very least come to realise that ‘equality’ doesn’t mean raping men AND women. I have no idea. The news is something I obsess about at home. But deprived of my morning Times (online counts for NOTHING) and BBC news at 10 (world service is shit), I remain in a glorious news-free zone. Have our taxes risen, as messages keep telling me? Should I just stay here as a tax exile?

One bit of news I managed to glean, mainly because it can’t upset my sense of wellbeing, like the cricket did, was learning of lovely Emma Raducanu and her amazing exploits in the US Open. She’s 18, into the semi-finals and thus already half a million quid richer than when she left home three weeks ago. And she’s almost unplayably brilliant. She is now the British women’s number 1!!!! Which I realise is like being the best skier in Soweto, the most successful stud of all INCELs or the least credible of all Greek gods. But sometimes being a bright light in a dull pond, you can really, really REALLY shine, even in a bigger pond. And smile all the way through.

And I’m yet to get to grip with ordering food here. We go to a taverna, sometimes a meat one, sometimes fish and the same thing happens. I order something, Mel orders something, we order a salad and some chips to share. Yet what arrives is food sufficient for an entire wedding party. (I’d love to see what they serve at weddings here: holy shit!). But that’s not all. It is customary to give you lots of free things. In case you’re still hungry after eating enough for 10. So they bring you amazing starters, just a tray-load, ‘help yourself, whatever you want’. Then fruit comes afterwards. Lots of fruit. And a little sorbet, go on, just a waffer-thin one…

These are not expensive restaurants. The food is fantastic but cheaper than a take-away in London. Including the wine, beer or whatever.

Come to Greece. And fucking EATTTTTT!!!!!!

Very happy and quite full Thursday

A xxxx

So Apollo is walking through Brent Cross one morning, just kind’a minding his own business, although being the god of music, prophecy, poetry, medicine and the Sun, most things were his business, one way or another. And he came across Athena. Not the poster shop but like the actual, real, goddess of war. “Hey babe”, he called out across the Marks and Spencer doorway, “how’s it hanging?”

“Don’t you fucking ‘babe’ me, you proto-misogynistic anachronism” (a reference to three of their cousins, Protos, the god of foreplay, Mysogyny, the god of wife-beating and Chronos, the god of time, but whose fame came from swallowing all his own babies whole, as they were born).

“I’m here to do battle. Like all women I like to fight, disagree, complain and bemoan, but unlike the rest, I carry a fucking great sword, swear like a navvy and can hit you with my knife from 100 yards whilst running backwards”.
“There’s a new God in town and I need to kill him, eat him, have babies with him or turn him into a 5-headed snake with the legs of an elephant and the face of Nicola Sturgeon”, Athena said.

“A new God??”, Apollo inquired? “Like with a capital G???? That’s a bit controversial. We only get small gs.”

“Well, He’s not really ‘new’, in fact he’s the oldest of us all, apparently. Some dude called Moses brought him down from Mount Olympus, way back when, or some such tale. Hard to believe really. And coming from someone who was born fully adult, cleaved from her father’s head, the bar for ‘believable’ is pretty low. Anyway, I need to kill him because… well, I’m a god, its just what we do. But there’s a rumour going round that he’s omnipotent AND omniscient. So not only is probably pretty hard to kill but its like he’s bugged the entire world and the heavens and even the underworld, so His intel is awesome.”
“He started off just being God to a few Jews, then to all the Christians, once they took off, then all these Catholics and Mormons and even the Greeks and Romans. And now they even believe that one old guy could actually replace all of us! Like you could have the portfolio for wine and for victory at the same time. For the winds and mothers and for stars? How would you find the time?”

“Well, you’d get Chronos to make you some more. But why in Brent Cross?” Apollo demanded. “Is this where he lives?”

“Well, definitely somewhere in north-west London, obviously. Golders Green, Hendon… not Edgware because Hades got there first. He allegedly supports Spurs and won’t drive on Saturdays, so he can’t be any further from Tottenham than this.”

“Ok, you sort out God, I’m off to find Hermeseta, the god of artifice and sweetness, we’re going to fly into the Sun with Icarus airlines and we need to do a PCR test.”

“Yes, I will kill and murder and maim and torture!!! And then there will be peace.”

Amen.

A xxxx