Andy's Glasses

Not sure if one night away counts as a ‘staycation’ but we’re here. In the Cotswolds. And its brilliant. Not sure which Cotswold, precisely, it is, they all look the same, but its big and very green, if that helps. And I love the fact that these hills (and not very hilly ones at that) have a name. Their own name. Probably given to them by the slave-trader who first bought them in 1734, Sir Jeremiah Cotswold. No-one else had the cash back then. If they were hills in Australia they’d have different names. Highly descriptive but lacking any poetic or romantic component. ‘Shagged Out Hill’ is the steepest one, the most taxing to climb. ‘Call That a Fucking Hill, Hill’ is the very flat one. In America the hills would the have names of the Native American tribes slaughtered so the shopping mall could be built there.

So you drive along the M40 until everything turns green and then you’re in the Cotswolds. It is indeed very beautiful here. And very wealthy. And very very white. The ‘multicultural’ bit of England ends at the M25. Until you go ‘up north’, then it starts again.

I noticed the other day that the route to our Cotswold takes us past ‘Diddly Squat Farm’, which is the home of Jeremy Clarkson. I thought it would be rude not to go to the farm shop and take a look around. So driving down single-track country lanes for half an hour you see no-one. Nothing. No signs of human inhabitation. Then you turn a corner to Diddly Squat and the world changes abruptly. It’s amazing. Stewards guiding the cars into the massive, 300-car car park. Droves of people, all queuing for just a chance, just a possibility, just a glimpse of the great man himself. Ok, of the obnoxious, offensive dinosaur himself. It looked like the pic above.

I turned the car round and drove straight out again. And went to another farm shop which owns our hotel. Daylesford Farm. The most organic… organic and… really organic farm shop EVERRRRR. And it is remarkable. Especially the prices. Which are unbelievable. But so is the place. It is a massive area of fabulously designed spaces. Shops, restaurants, coffee stall, ice cream stands, garden centre, all totally and fabulously ‘organic’ so they almost guarantee that any fresh produce you buy will be pulp by tomorrow. But as they sell furniture, barbecues, kitchen ware and everything else you don’t need and can’t afford, who gives a shit that your tomatoes have gone soft on the 10 minute journey home?

Loving it here. Peaceful. I would say ‘quiet’ but I brought Mel with.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

I’m actually starting to feel sorry for Matt Hancock. He started the pandemic as the Secretary of State for Health, arguably, in that context, the most important person in the entire nation. Then we heard him speak for the first time and, if I’m honest, it started to go downhill pretty much from there. Yet we gave him the benefit of the doubt. Of all the Health Secretaries we had at that time, he was the best. He alone stood between us and certain death! And he only lost that particular battle 130,000 times. So how’s he doing so far?

Then came the endless string of bad decisions, I’m not saying they were his alone, but he was the ‘messenger’, the ones we shoot even though we’re not supposed to. His were the delays to locking down, to banning flights from covid-torn countries, for every reversal, u-turn and disaster. But we forgave him. Like we had any choice.

Then he was slagged off royally by Dominic Cummings, the ex-aide to the Prime Minister and the original ‘woman scorned’. Metaphorically. Who also served his revenge stone cold. Virtually all of it served on Hancock and his ‘apparently’ incompetent ways, as agreed in about 500 text messages, by Boris himself. To such an extent that even Her Fucking Majesty the Royal Fucking Queen (HFMRFQ), mentioned poor, hapless Hancock in her meeting with Boris this week.

But then came… grope-gate! In a semi-dark, empty corridor in a far-off, deserted corner of the Health Ministry, 2 dim (in so many ways) figures emerge on the security footage approaching each other. Dimly. And that’s when it happened. The offence. The tragedy. The event. Immoral. Selfish. Inconsiderate. Juvenile.

They moved within 2 metres of each other!!! Holy shit!! 2 people who work together encroaching on each other’s ‘Covid free zone’ (assuming neither actually have it… or one of them has it… whatever). And this was the ‘offence’. Okay, he is THE MAN who’d been telling us for over year, every day, to distance, obey the rules, stick with the plan. So he’s a hypocrite. Not exactly an original crime for a politician.

What happened within that 2 metre encroachment zone was almost irrelevant. Basically they sucked face. For which you just have to say “WHAT WAS SHE THINKING????” Kissing Matthew Hancock? Eeeeuuuuwwww. Then he grabs her arse, which any medically trained person knows is a virus protection action, sensible in the circumstances.

So now they’re calling for his job. Labour, because they have to and, under Kier Starmer’s razor sharp leadership, have absolutely nothing else to do. The conservatives because most of them hated Hancock to begin with and now he’s ‘brought shame’. And the Lib Dem’s and Scots (I group them together to show my contempt for both) because they are paid to moan.

Boris loves him. Absolutely no one else does. Other than possibly Gina Coladangelo.

Happy Saturday Matty, enjoy a couple of rest days. With your wife and family.

A xxxx

Or possibly, less holidays.

Boris and his team have opened up ‘loads’ more countries (Majorca, Minorca, Madeira) as holiday destinations to which the sun-starved British vacation-dodgers can now go to without having to quarantine for 17 days, requiring £3,472 of covid tests, per person, upon their return. That’s brilliant!!! (Rules and ‘traffic light’ designations may change without notice. Remember ‘Portugal’!) So if you fly off today to Iceland, (as green as they come), you’ll be fine. As long as they don’t announce, just as your flight lands in Reykjavik, that from tomorrow you’ll be stuck in a Premier Inn for a month when you get home, for just 2 grand each.

Unfortunately, as from next week, Brits will be banned from all and every European country, possibly forever, due to covid restrictions and rising numbers over here. Thus making the new, revised ‘green list’, basically a bunch a places that won’t let you in. It’s the new initiative by Angela Merkel, being discussed today by all the EU leaders, and if implemented, the blanket ban on British holidaymakers will be known as ‘the sour grapes rule: nothing to do with Brexit’. Over here it will be referred to as: Merkel and Macron and other Motherfuckers’ Malignant and Malicious Meddling. Because the tourist industries of Spain, Italy, Croatia and Portugal desperately need the collective influx of 40 million British piss-heads to bolster their coffers, even putting up with a bunch of tattooed oiks with rolled up trouser-legs, hankies on their heads and herds of screaming brats, fighting on the streets and vomiting in their EU streets, for the gains they would make.

Mel and I are going on holiday on Sunday. We’re going to… The Cotswolds. Currently on the green list, although delta-variant numbers continue to rise, with errrr… Greater Cotswold now experiencing… one case every 14 days. And we’re only going for one night. To avoid the virus. And because good hotels in Britain are eye-wateringly expensive. Though the unique thing about British hotels is that they charge the same as great hotels in India, in Japan, in South America, but they look like they were designed in 1973 and refuse to change. Why would they? When beige is timelessly chic and avocado bathrooms will never date.

At least the weather is dependable. Dependably unpredictable.

Happy holidays

A xxxx

I’ve been trying to get exited about the Euros. I really have. For 2 weeks now. I mean, its football, its on tv, what more could I want? I tell you what; more football! And that’s on too. I should be living the dream and yet… and yet… 

I watched England last night. Almost the entire game, just missing the one and only goal of the game. Which I then saw 73 times in replay to avoid FOMO. The match was underwhelmingly unimpressive. Harry Kane is still way off his own very high mark. Jack Grealish, quite impressive as he was and generally always is, makes my skin crawl. He should play for Chelsea. Where all the most hatefuls end up. But you know what you get with Grealish. Which is 28 free kicks a game. He’s the most fouled player in our league. And I can see why. If I saw him in McDonalds I’d foul him. 

The only bright light was Bukayo Saka. And he was blindingly bright. He’s 19 years old, fast as fuck and fearless. I would say ‘brilliant’ but he plays for Arsenal so I have to show some restraint. 

The odd thing is, I quite enjoy watching other teams. Probably because I’m not emotionally involved with their players. Safe to say I’ve never seen Kilian Mbappe at White Hart Lane being obnoxious, fouling my players or writhing around like a stuck pig on the ground. So he has no ‘baggage’, I can admire him with no pre-conditions. 

And watching Germany the other night against Portugal was impressive. Very impressive to the point of being almost frightening. France can be good. Which is why they won the last World Cup, I suppose. And there’s Portugal. The Ronaldo Team. The current holders of the Euro title. 

And its one of those three who England will play next. Ok, possibly Hungary but I know nothing about that team other than they’re probably another bunch of East European racist thugs. Best not to know their names. Even if you can pronounce them. 

But now Scotland are out of the tournament, I’m not sure if its worth watching at all. Because  they bring so much to the party. Unquestionably. But unfortunately they don’t bring sufficient to the football. Unlike  little, old, Luka Modric, the Croatian captain and midfield genius. Who, even at the almost ancient 35(!!!!), is just class personified. Not just that wonderfully exquisite goal but simply everything he does. Which he does without fouling, without fuss, without play-acting, without drama and without tattoos. He doesn’t even wear an Alice-band, FFS!

I’m waiting for England to ‘warm up’ to their challenge. Maybe then I’ll engage more. And get rid of the not-nice people.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

Sometimes things happen which are so sweet, so delightful, so… totally fucking stuuuuupid, that you just have to smile, snigger and appreciate that once political correctness and ‘woke’ bollocks take over, the world has to actually tilt on its own axis to keep things straight. And I imply no pronouns nor lack of them in the use of the word ‘straight’ in this strictly geometric context.

There’s an artist called Jess de Wahls. Her work is available in the Royal Academy of Arts shop. You know ‘those’ type of gift shops? 15 quid for a pencil with Picasso’s name on it, 35 for a carrier bag by Hockney. Anyway, she’s sold there for years. Even though she’s a German. But then she posted something online. About… trans-gender!!!!! The holiest of holy grails for the uber-sensitive pedantics of the PC Nazis. The subject which, as this story proves, generates no winners, ever.

Jess supported JK Rowling’s view that you can call ‘em what you like, but a girl is still a girl and a boy is still a boy. Shame on her!!! She actually said that just because they choose to identify as something other than how they were born, she doesn’t have to ‘believe’ that that is how they now are. Ooooooohhhhhh. You don’t say that out loud in Dalston, its like going into a vegan grocery to kill your pet chicken.

8 people complained that this post, from 2019, was discriminatory, not ‘inclusive’ and was horrible. And ‘is that the kind of artist you want representing your galleries???

So the Royal Academy, in a fit of… I’d have to say ‘panic’, more than any overwhelming sense of trans-sympathy or woke-ness, removed her works from their shop. For what it perceives as some form of ‘discrimination’. Best of all? They didn’t tell her. Nor ask her to explain, nor speak to her at all. She learned of it from the RA’s twitter feed. That she had been… CANCELLED!!!!

But this is the interesting bit (and by ‘interesting’ I mean ‘fucking insane’). There was a precedent set a few weeks ago when a woman was fired from her job for expressing pretty much these same views. And a tribunal judged it an unfair dismissal because they are her views, AND SHE’S ALLOWED TO FUCKING HAVE THEM. Their language may have been slightly different.

So now, the Royal Academy is at risk of, and has been threatened with, a lawsuit because the Equality and Human Rights Commission finds their actions to be discriminatory and lacking inclusivity. Because today’s discriminaTOR is tomorrow’s discriminaTEE. The RA has shown a lack of inclusivity in excluding someone accused of lacking inclusivity.

See what I mean?

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

I’ve decided to go ‘all out woke’. There’s no room for compromise in my life, no need for half measures, if I’m woke, I’m gonna be the woke-iest, right-on-iest, totally hip, groovy, bearded (its growing, needs another 3 inches), shit-kickin’ cancel-monkey ever, with more pronouns than you could even imagine, and will boycott almost everything!

And all because I ate a vegetarian meal last night. From Shoreditch. I mean, come on, you simply cannot be more woke than that. Yeah, of course I realise that being ‘woke’ is not just about diet, that there’s politics involved, lots of politics.

(However, before getting embroiled in that shit, the meal in question was a delivery job from Bubala, the hippest, trendiest, veggie-est restaurant ever. I been there and it is brilliant, and for my birthday/anniversary the daughter, to try and relieve some of her guilt, ordered us a DIY version of their meze. Which is spectacular, even when I’m sorting out the haloumi and applying the ‘black seed honey’).

So I totally approve of St Paul’s Girls School abandoning the use of the term ‘head girl’. It’s way too binary, as they said… at St Paul’s GIRL’S school. Hmmmmm. But I think that indiscriminate use of the term ‘head’ is totally wrong in any gender based context. Boys can do ‘head’ as well, just go to Piccadilly Circus with a 20 pound note and see how many offers you get. So well done to the head (oh, must work on that too) mistress there, who now needs to get to work on the school name which I personally feel is totally discriminatory, prejudicial, presumptive and lacking the pre-requisite ‘57 varieties’ required for proper, woke, inclusivity. Then I think we need to call out ‘Johnson & Johnson’ as well, for similar reasons.

Ikea know about woke. Their political statement is 13 pages long, with full instructions on how to assemble, obviously. But like all things Ikea, you’re left with one screw short, or six bolts that you should have put in on page 2. Anyway, they’ve decided to withdraw their advertising on the new GBNews channel, starring the world’s most revolting man, Andrew Neil. Because it claims to be ‘anti-woke’. The bastards!!! So Ikea, forever on message, severed ties. Yet have 2 of their branches in Saudi Arabia. Where they burn gay people, abuse women and stone furniture manufacturers to death for the fun of it.

If you’re going to be woke, or any other kind of total tosser, YOU HAVE TO DO IT PROPERLY. Like me!

Happy Sunday

Andy (him, his, ours, theirs, whatever, non-binary, genetically-challenged…)
xxxx

So here’s the problem: what allowances do we have to make for God in things like democracy? Medical advancement? Football??

Well, it’s Saturday, so we need to be profound. No point fucking about with the trivia when there’s big shit to consider.

In Iran they’re having what they loosely call ‘an election’. What the rest of the world and apparently about 70% of Iranians call ‘a joke’. Because to stand for president over there you have to be ‘approved’ by a committee of guardians. Who, basically, tell everyone who God would approve of. Because they know. So anyone who might, kind of, actually make life a little more easy, or even more bearable for that poor, long-suffering population, is immediately rejected. Or murdered. They do ‘rejection’ in a big way over there. And you end up voting for… (drum roll…) THE GEEZER WITH THE DRESS AND HAT AND BIG BEARD!!!! Hail the new president. Looks just like the old one. Sounds just like the old one. Increases the long list of “you can’t…s” to eliminate a few more freedoms and, see ya in 5 years.

Gene therapy, genetic engineering, contraception, terminations and a whole array of other massive advances are generally ‘banned by God’. It’s not a question of mere ethics, they have non-religious committees to do all that. But when the result comes, it inevitably goes against something, somewhere in the bible, Koran, Talmud, holy book of someone, and gets mired down in a moral maze. Bit like euthanasia. Everyone loves the idea of it for themselves, but God’s not happy about it, so as yet, they won’t even discuss it in parliament.

Only football bucked the trend. They never used to play on Sundays. The Sabbath, for Christians in a Christian country. And then, less to do with multi-culturalism, much more to do with Sky tv and commercial opportunity, God was voted down on that one. Well, ‘that God’ was. My God was pleased because he won’t go to football on a Saturday but could now go to see his beloved Spurs on a Sunday.

I’d just like to say in His defence, God’s not really the problem. It’s a question of who interprets what they think their God would like according to how extreme they want to take it. Once you start forcing the will of God onto people you risk ending up like Iran. Where they’re so unbelievably religious they’re prepared to kill, maim and torture in the name of a God who would send them all straight to hell for doing so.

More importantly, England couldn’t even beat Scotland last night. In fact, were lucky not to lose. I mean… I mean… Scotland. Holy shit. Different ‘holy’, obviously.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

Today I’m going to continue with my riveting new series, entitled: all the fings wot I missed and even a few wot I saw, growin’ up in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and 100s.

I should include 110s and 120s really because ‘growing up’ is a work in progress. And apparently, not one I’m particularly good at.

And they say that ‘if you remember the 70s then you weren’t really there’, so I must have been really everywhere all during about 5 decades, because I remember so little of it. And not just because of the drugs. But they helped.

I’m so old I remember a time when people actually walked along a street, like, kind’a, looking where they’re going! Rather than staring at a fucking phone and crashing head- first into a lamppost. And of course, I was around in the entire ‘pre-computer’ world.

I took a ‘computer science’ option in my 6th form, in about 1974. Probably because it got me out of some other class I didn’t want, but I did it anyway. And we spent an hour punching holes in little cards, instructing the computer in the only language it understood, called ‘binary’, (Bill Gates didn’t come up with ‘Basic’ for a few years yet, when you could actually just tell a computer in English what you wanted). This would be for an equation, like the Pythagoras one. Simple. Quick even without a calculator. But as an ‘exercise’ we punched it onto cards. Which we then took down the Stratford, about 6 miles away, where the polytechnic let us use their ‘computer’. It was a room. A big one. Filled with mechanical electronic gadgetry. And we gave them our card stacks. Returning next week once the cards had been ‘run’, reassured that the square on the hypotenuse was STILL equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides. Hooray. The wonder of computers. 3 weeks to for something that would take you 5 minutes with a pencil and paper.

When the silicon chip was invented, North East London Poly got their room back.

My brother bought a ‘computer’ in the 70s. A Sinclair ZX81. And it was the first available to normal people. You had to plug it into a tv and it didn’t do very much. But it worked.

I got myself an Amstrad (thank you, Alan Sugar) in the mid-80s and it was brilliant. Not by today’s standards but in green and white (that was all you got) it was a revolution. Then someone created a ‘mouse’ and a disc drive and the rest, like this, is history.

So in 50 years we’ve moved from a massive room in E11 to my phone. Or your watch (because I wouldn’t have such a thing on my wrist), doing 1000 times more stuff a million times faster. And they call that progress? I’m not convinced.

Happy 65 and one day older… day

A xxxx

You almost have to feel sorry for the Scots. Almost. Then you remember they’re Scottish and it becomes even harder to do so. And again, this is one of those weird things, every Scot you meet is lovely (I’ve never met Nicola Sturgeon nor Alex Salmond) but as a nation? A nation??? All that blue face paint and the spirit of William Wallace, Andy Murray, Trainspotting, Letter from America, and their collective dislike of everything south of Hadrian’s Wall? Nah. Yet you rarely find a Scot without a great sense of humour. Ok, possibly Gordon Brown. Self-deprecation is the national pastime, after ‘tossing the caber’, and their dry wit is legendary. But you’d have to have a wonderful sense of humour with a football team like theirs. A fabulous meme went up on Monday night within minutes of the final score against the Czech Republic stating that ‘Nicola Sturgeon will NOT accept that scoreline and will fight as long as it takes to get it rectified to the will of the majority of the Scottish people ’.

And on Friday they’re coming to Wembley to play England. Oh my. The match that has been building up… well, since last year when it should have been played. They’ve shown ‘the Gaza goal’ 14,653 times on tv. And even though it is a totally brilliant goal by a wonderfully brilliant SPURS PLAYER, I’m almost bored with watching it. What they should do is make more interesting, in case the match (as happens so often) doesn’t live up to expectations. They should make it a ‘winner takes all’ event. If Scotland win they can leave the United Kingdom. If England win we get Scotland and will sell it to China.

More importantly, its my birthday today. I’ve become ‘a man’! I don’t mean that in any gender fluid or reassignment way, just, I’ve ‘come of age’. But what a ridiculous age. 65. Holy shit. The card Mel found is so profoundly accurate and brilliant, I just had to ‘share’. Also, because its my birthday I am allowed to use that word without puking. But I won’t share my presents. I’m getting 3 this year, in keeping with the spirit of our world as it moves towards progress. A 1971 Dodge Charger, supercharged V8, to help with the environment. Three baby lambs to keep in the garden. For food. And a slave.

Happy birthday

A xxxx

The end of ‘lockdown’ is being delayed by four weeks to allow the “Delta Variant, first discovered in fucking India!!”, time to… errrr… well, time to slow down, ease up, get better or get superseded by the Epsilon Variant, first discovered in *******.

The thing is that if you run a theatre, sporting events, possibly weddings (they’re going to have special dispensation, apparently delta viruses are very keen on the institution of marriage and have promised to keep away from nuptial ceremonies and receptions), then that’s bad.

For pubs, limiting numbers during the entire European football
campaign is horrendous and unimaginably costly. Especially now all football fans have bonded over Christian Eriksen and would like nothing more than to sit in vast crowds watching big screens, eating together, drinking together, vomiting together, in one cohesive act of unity and an outpouring of love. Not gonna happen. Not til July the whatever, when the football’s long over.

But…

But if you’re a normal person, not engaged in such crowded working things, just a regular guy/gal, sorry: just a regular
guy/gal/LGBTQIA/hermaphrodite/thing-with-dubious-pronouns/anything-else that hasn’t yet been defined gender-wise, if you’re one of them/us,then lockdown is pretty much a thing of the past. We’re over it. I’m over it. Ok, I wear a mask, but only when I absolutely have to, for the least possible time and only if people are watching. But otherwise, life is getting pretty normal out there. As I know nobody
under 18, other than Lila and Joey, my whole world is vaccinated. So we hug, we kiss, we meet up, drink coffee together, dine together, and if more people stop by at the cafe, they no longer receive the looks of shock, horror and disgust, as they breeze over for a chat, as they would have had in February.

We’re never going to ‘beat’ coronavirus. It is now our constant and everlasting companion. The cost of a divorce from it would be excessive as it would involve killing every person, dog and bat on the entire planet. So, as they keep telling us, we have to learn to live with it. Which really, I think, is where most of us are at right now.

So Boris and Hancock and Rishi can say what they want to upset
everyone in the leisure and travel industries, my life will go on. Ihope. Long as I don’t get covid. Badly. Because I ‘learned to live with it’ about April last year, and I’m still learning.

Happy Monday

A xxxx