Andy's Glasses

Christian Eriksen is a footballer. He’s 29, obviously fit, totally wonderful at football (doh) and played for Spurs. He was the ‘odd one’ bought when we squandered the rest of the 100 million Euros we received for selling Gareth Bale. He was the ‘cheapy’. But proved, by miles and miles, to be the best, the most talented, the most enduring of an otherwise pretty ragged bunch of bad buys. He left us a year ago to play for Inter Milan.

And yesterday, whilst playing as captain of Denmark in Copenhagen, his heart stopped on the field. He collapsed. Basically, he ‘died’. But by the quick action of the emergency protocols used at all matches, they managed to bring him back to life. Thank God. And for that, we must thank Spurs. Because as God is a Spurs supporter and all Spurs supporters love Christian Eriksen, even after he left.

One of the first ‘tweets’ that went out was from Fabrice Muamba, who wrote “Please God”. Because it happened to him. He was 23 years old and playing for Bolton, at Spurs, when he suffered a massive heart attack. Fortunately it was at Spurs.

Because in 2012 at ‘old’ White Hart Lane, there were 34,000 people there. Of whom, at least 20,000 would be Jews. And of every 20,000 Jews, anywhere in the world, there will ALWAYS be 5,000 lawyers, 5,000 accountants and 5,000 doctors. It’s the 11th commandment. As it is written. Amen. So of those doctors, there are a full array of specialties covered. And one of the cardiologists (there were 87 present at senior registrar level or above, that day), one rushed onto the pitch to give CPR, which, by the time the ambulances arrived, had basically saved Fabrice’s life as his heart stopped for 78 minutes.

Muamba returned to Spurs a few years ago, no longer a player, but just for a visit. And received the biggest standing ovation ever. Just for being alive in the place where he so nearly died. I cried. He cried. Everyone fucking cried.

And that, those instances of absolute nightmare horror, is when football truly becomes ‘the beautiful game’ it so rarely is the rest of the time. It’s when the fans forget their stupid, tribal loyalties and banner waving and racist obscenities and stupid thuggishness and they become just ‘people’. Who care about other people, regardless of race, colour, nationality or football club affiliation. In those horrible tragic moments there are only good, positive, loving thoughts for someone suffering as they hope and pray they never have to suffer themselves. It is an outpouring of empathy.

As there was yesterday, beautifully demonstrated by the players and fans of Denmark and Finland (they are two different countries, even though they all look and sound the same).

Get well Christian and hopefully grace the game once more with your absolute class and elegance. Our thoughts are with you.

A xxxx

It’s my birthday soon. Very soon. I’m not fishing for presents. There again…

And I will be… 65 years old! So I’d just like to say: FUCK! ME! How could that even happen? My old dad, at 96, probably feels the same, but a lot more so. How do we ‘suddenly’ change from 23 to 65, in an ‘instant’? It defies belief. It defies science. And yet remains true, nonetheless. I’m so fucking old that I remember:

Spurs winning the league! 1961 it happened. Ok, not so much ‘remember’ as ‘was alive when…’ Because at 5 I’m not sure the news was as important to me as eating mud.

I ‘remember’ the Bay of Pigs incident, 1962 when world war 3 almost started in Cuba because neither the Russians nor the Americans wanted to ‘shit on their own doorsteps’ when, to stretch that metaphor to excess, the nuclear ‘stink’ would last for about 75 years afterwards.

Everyone remembers exactly where they were when John F Kennedy was assassinated in Texas in 1963. Except me. I have no clue. Probably in school. Possibly on the naughty step. Not saying its true, just a distinct possibility.

I do remember the Beatles arriving on the scene. Probably because I have an older brother and liked to copy what he did. But in a really annoying way. Then the Rolling Stones came along and ‘we’ didn’t like them quite as much. But loved the Kinks, the Who, and pretty much all the bands and none of the ‘crooners’ who still populated a lot of the charts back then. Which meant I was perfectly placed for the ‘birth of music’, which didn’t exist before the Beatles and died with Kurt Kobain later on.

I watched the 1966 World Cup Final on Harvey and Bradley Porrett’s little black’n’white tv. I screamed. It remains, to this day, the only football match my football-loathing brother has ever watched. I’ve seen a few more.

When Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, I was there. I remember it because we had special dispensation to get up in the middle of the night to watch it. Then Armstrong had the walk taken away for ‘substance abuse’. Oh, sorry, that was the other Armstrong, Lance.

Monty Python arrived in 1969 by which time my memory was working perfectly fine, thank you very much, as it did for the next 40 years before it… what? Yeah, whatever.

1970 provided the best World Cup ever, won by (for me) the best team ever to play the play the game; that Brazil squad. Who also, by no coincidence really, scored the best goal ever scored, in the final. The sheer nonchalance of Pele’s pass for Carlos Alberto to slam home defines everything wonderful about the entire universe and man’s place in it. (Who said ‘hyperbole was dead’?)

I remember being introduced (along with the rest of the nation) to Lady Diana who was to marry Prince Charles. And much later, I was in Paris when Diana died, about 10 miles away. I didn’t kill her, just for the record.

I remember Winston Churchill’s funeral (boring), Maggie Thatcher’s reign of terror, the Vietnam War, the 6-day war, the Yom Kippur war and shit loads of other wars. I even remember some peace, but we don’t name those.

Holy shit, I’m old.

Happy history

A xxxx

Jo Biden has arrived on these shores. His first major challenge was the steps of Air Force One. Didn’t look too convincing if I’m honest, being a bit steep and… stair-like, for a man with 80 years of hip strain and knee issues behind him, but he made it onto English soil with just a little help from his carer, Mrs Biden. Just in time to issue a diplomatic ‘caution’ to Boris over Brexit and Northern Ireland. Like a yellow card for ambassadorial types. The sort of thing you normally do when you’re really pissed off with an ‘enemy’ type nation. Not your country-BFF. Yet many think this move was just to give some sort of advantage whilst negotiating our ‘trade deal’ with America. And as we want absolutely NOTHING to stand in the way of our unlimited access to chlorinated chickens, this could be a good tactic by Biden.

Could be, but wasn’t. Because the ‘land of the brave’ is only brave when not under threat. Or when they’re sending in thousands of troops where they’re not wanted. When troubles abound the yanks are normally the first ones to lock the gates and ban travel.

There’s a long history of East Coast democrats with affiliation to Ireland. The Kennedys were ‘Irish’ and many subsequent politicos make the claim too. Which gave them their unique ‘unalienable right to interfere’. Like during the ‘real’ ‘troubles’ in Northern Ireland when Noraid were fundraisers for the IRA, helping to keep them in bullets and ensure that we Brits, on the ‘front line’ knew that the bombs blowing up West End pubs and Brent Cross flyover, were made with the best explosives US dollars from Boston could buy.

But a trade deal? We could give them access to the European markets, except we no longer have that to offer. So they can have all the Vauxhall cars they want and in return we have to increase our purchase of guns. Every house in England must have 3, except the people who want 33. They also want to stipulate that ‘there will be no more good music played in the UK, only Country and Western’. Then we’ll need to change our policing methods to a more US style. And run the entire NHS on a private model. So that the people the police shoot in the back can’t get into hospitals for treatment without a valid credit card.

Joe Biden needs to understand that no nation is more intent on peace in Northern Ireland that Britain. Boris is old enough to remember the ‘good ole days’, he needs no threats from octogenarian Yanks to remind him of the fragility of the Province.

Welcome to England, Mr President

A xxxx

So Covid came. And then… (pause for dramatic effect), it MUTATED!!! Into a ‘variant’. Which is pretty much ‘same shit different day’ but its called a variant because its slightly modified whilst being fundamentally the same. Viruses evolve. Very quickly. They do the evolutionary equivalent of ‘monkeys to men’ in about 9 days. (He says with such definitive authority that no-one will doubt the scientific research involved in such a statement which I made up whilst peeling my banana.) So a new ‘strain’ is more contagious or, as the virus calls it, ‘more successful’. Thus becomes ‘dominant’. Then we give it a name.

Which is easy-peasy. Just name it after the place where ya found it. Oh, that was in Kent? Fine, its the ‘Kent Variant’. That’s official. What! Another one??? In South Africa, and another in Brazil?? Ok, we’ll go to the official government Department of Naming Viruses, its on Whitehall, number 33, and get the Secretary of State for Virus Nomenclature to produce suitable titles. And they came up with the rather catchy ‘B.1.351’ and P.1’. You can see why they get paid so well. Yet despite all that work and effort in producing names, the people not yet infected by these strains, and the press, insisted on calling them ‘the South African variant’ and ‘the Brazilian variant’. The ministry was not happy.

So when the Indian variant came along, obviously the last thing they were prepared to call it was ‘the Indian variant’, that would be completely unsatisfactory. It’s positively prejudicial. Against India. And against variants. Unacceptable. And might possibly result in the closure of our Department. So they changed tack.

Lest anyone should consider holding Indians in any way responsible for the spread of their variant, we are going to give all variants Greek letters and append them accordingly. Thus, shall the viral variant, formerly referred to as ‘the Indian variant’, being the 4th in its class, shall be called… (errrr… beta… no, alpha’s first… what the fuck comes next… ask a Greek… oh gamma… and then… DELTA!!! Got it) The Delta Variant!!!

So now, on the news, they speak frequently of this ‘thing’. Always thus: ‘The Delta Variant, which originated in India’. Every single time.

Well done, Department for Virus Naming, a bloody good week’s work. You can all take the next 14 days off on full pay and go to Portugal. Or Delhi. Which we’re now calling Delta.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

I just don’t do ‘shopping’. If you doubt that, just go look in my wardrobe. I don’t mind food shopping. But clothes? CLOTHES???? I can’t even do it online. How the fuck are you supposed to buy shoes online? How can that work? But I needed new jeans. And realised that no-one was going to bring a clothes rack to my house, so I had to… go shopping!!

For men (in particular, but not exclusively) of a certain generation, jeans ARE Levis. There’s just no other. They were my first, my last, my everything. In denim. I’ve even visited the place where it all began. Nimes. In France. Near Montpellier in the Languedoc. Because that material was named ‘of Nimes’, or de-nim, as those bloody foreigners would say because they just don’t bother pronouncing -es at the end of words. Because they’re lazy. Anyway, me, Levis, the love affair.

When I was 12, having nagged my mum for possibly 3 years, every single waking hour, (I’m guessing here but probably not far from reality), she took me to Ilford, that fashion hub of the Western Hemisphere, and bought me a pair of ‘shrink-to-fit’ Levi jeans. Just for the record, in 1968 there were no other jeans around. I took them home, put them on and sat in a bath of warm water for half an hour. In my jeans. It’s what you did. Proved they were real. At the end of 30 minutes the bath water is dark blue. As were my legs, the towel, the bathroom floor, hall carpet, sofa…

But they were ‘primed’ and ready. When dry, obvs. And I loved them for years. Then forgot about them until Nick Kamen wore a pair to do his laundry and I fished them out again. Ok, they were long gone but I re-entered the Levi world and have stayed there ever since.

The ‘original’ Levis are called ‘501’s. No-one knows that code. It’s a secret. Just me and Levi Strauss have the secret. But then, with the surge of popularity following that advert, they brought out 532s and 786s and 943s and all manner of styles, quite alien to the ‘old’ purists for whom Levis just ARE 501s.

But last week in the Levi shop in Brent Cross (God fucking help me!!! I HATE Brent Cross!!!) they had 501-ladies, they had 501-taper leg, 501-extra bollocks room, a whole manner of the things. Because ‘501’ is so core to their history, they decided to use it with add-ons. Rather than just, kind’a, use some extra, different numbers. Maybe they ran out of numbers.

The girls who served me was clueless. Beautiful (hence forgiven) but fucking clueless. Her father wasn’t born yet when I was in my bath with my shrink-to-fits. But she sprayed the changing room with anti-virals really nicely for me.

I have Levis that are over 20 years old. Which are so shredded that they then morph into… cut downs! And you wear them for another 20 years. I have a drawer full. So I look at buying Levis as an investment. Mainly as an investment in not having to go to Brent Cross until I’m 85.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

Oh wow, congratulations and mazzletovs all round, Harry and Meg produced another sproglette. An almost royal one. Not sure about its exact status in the ‘line’ but I’m guessing: low. Just below the Duke of Kent’s butler but still higher than The Emperor of All of Rutland. And in deference to all that is lovely and memorable and super they’re naming the little girl Ghislaine. Obviously, being some kind of quasi/pseudo-royal, one name is never enough, you need at least six Kings or 8 Queen’s names in there too. Or names that resonate with the parents. So the baby’s full name is: Ghislaine Adolph Yentl Kunta-Kinte Jeffrey Epstein Glen Hoddle Rosenberg-Markle-Windsor. She’s going to be a cheer-leader and speak funny. So I wish her and the family well. Not sure where that particular ‘family’ begins or ends any longer, so I’ll leave it vague.

And I can’t tell you just how excited I am about the up-coming European Championships. So I won’t. I’ll just leave the ‘excitement’ column blank for the moment. Though I am excited about the WAGS this time round. Because I was reading just yesterday that ‘this lot are different’! Oh yes, no more ‘groupie’ types hanging round the changing rooms desperate to get pregnant by anyone earning north of £100k a week. No more peroxided bimbos with more paint on their faces than Rembrandt used on a canvas. This time they’re ‘clever’. Intelligent. Edjukayted!!! One of them (no idea which, as ever, they all look exactly the same) has a degree in clothes. Another a masters in ‘Soap Operas and other shit on the telly’, whilst a third actually has a PhD in make up and dildos from the University of the Middlesbrough Bypass. Oh yes, WAGS have come a long way from… errrrr… last time round.

Have you seen Mare of Easttown? It’s a tv series. Everyone’s raving about it. To such an extent that I almost read a ‘spoiler’ in yesterday’s Times but managed to avert my gaze just in time, screwing up the entire newspaper and burning it. Because I thought the whole point of this entire ‘on demand’ viewing was that you don’t all watch it together. That some people (no names) are slower on the uptake. Need telling 17 times just how brilliant Kate Winslet is (and she really is) and how ‘dark’ it is and how utterly, totally wonderful it is. And they’re only half way through. So don’t spoil it for them. Wait til I’ve seen the last one (there’s only 7 episodes) and then I’ll spoil it properly.

This photo was taken yesterday on the occasion of my lovely 96 year-old dad leaving his care home for the first time since August. Other than a few hospital visits. But they don’t count because there weren’t 4 generations all there to celebrate like we had in our garden.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

What’s your absolute favourite film of all time? The Godfather? Nah, too Italian. The Italian Job? Nah, I only wanted you to blow the bloody doors off. Shawshank Redemption? Nah, too… oh, its Stephen King, I don’t like him. Gone with the Wind? Nah, too slushy. Annie Hall? W**dy All*n??? Are you JOKING!!!! The Sound of Music? Just fuck off.

For the purposes of today mine is The Blues Brothers. It quite literally ticks every box. It’s stupid, daft and verging on insane. It’s hilarious, outrageous, obscene, blasphemous and they crash more cars than in 75 other ‘car chase’ movies combined. They certainly crashed more than the Sound of Music. But the sound of their music was ‘even better’ than Julie (fucking) Andrews telling us that the hills were alive. Though both movies had Nazis but in Blues Brothers they were Illinois Nazis.

And of all those films listed, only BB had John Belushi. Possibly my favourite comic of all time, possibly just one of 10 total masters of the genre. Yet Belushi, along with fellow contendee (and dead person), Robin Williams stand out even in that exalted company because as well as being unique and amazing, used masses of ‘performance enhancers’ and other ‘substances’ and were pretty much off their faces their entire careers. Which for a surgeon may be problematic, but for a comedian?

So when my girls were… probably about 8 and 5, their ‘down time’, post homework, after all activities, was to watch a ‘video’ (remember them? Big in the 90s). And they watched Mary Poppins, endlessly. I came home from work every day to find Julie (fucking) Andrews in my lounge. And I got so bored that I introduced to my gels a new film. A funny film. A great film. The Blues Brothers. When my saintly mother first sat with them and the swearing started, she was rather appalled. But the price of having John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd in my lounge was worth paying. They were kids! They’ll get over it.

So when this photo arrived yesterday, apropos of nothing, just the kids in the car, it all came flooding back. And in fact there’s quite of lot of the John Belushi in Joey. Unfortunately most of the ‘bad’ bits, but unlike big John, Joey might one day grow out of them.

We’re on a mission from God.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

Portugal has been ‘closed’ again. Was open, or ‘green’, as we now call it, everyone booked flights and holidays and then… it went ‘Amber’. You can still go but when you return home they put you in prison in Folkestone with seven thousand asylum seekers from Syria and Afghanistan for a month. (Some of these details may not be completely accurate).

Yet Portugal was the venue for last weekend’s European Champions’ League final. Played between Chelsea, who unfortunately won, and Manchester City, who fortunately lost. Two English teams, you may note. Originally scheduled to play the final in its originally selected destination of Turkey. But Turkey was a ‘red’ country so they had to move it. So let’s think. Where shall we move this final… the two finalists are both from England… we don’t want people traveling the world unnecessarily… Wembley Stadium is free that (and every other) night… so what’s the most sensible thing to do…

Play it in Porto! Of course. It’s so obvious.

From my understanding (never a great starting point) they wanted to play it at Wembley. But England was not prepared to accept the thousands of UEFA and FIFA hoy-polloi without the usual checks and quarantines and shit, and Portugal weren’t so fussy. Probably why they’re rates are now rising.

In a typical year at such a massive event, there’d be, say, 60,000  spectators. Of which, the two competing teams are allocated about 10k each for their fans and the other 40,000 are for UEFA, for clubs to give to dignitaries, sponsors, lawyers, agents, all the usual band of over-paid, free-loading bottom-feeders who collectively curse the modern game of football. And because these (un)worthies come from many different countries, all at different levels of covid risk, England said ‘non’ and Portugal said ‘why not?’ And letting in 20 thousand actual supporters from India-by-proxy central, what’d’ya expect??? So Portugal became amber and thousands of tourists (including one daughter) get screwed. 

I’m only playing football in my garden and holidaying in Southend-on-Sea. 

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

This will surprise you: I’m not really into cosmetics. I know, its a shock. People look at me and assume that I must have skin regime that takes hours a day, that I spend endless time preening and primping and probably using Botox and fillers and all manner of heinous shit. But I don’t. This face represents the finest of natural beauty to the extent that people say I don’t look a day over 87. I use 3 ‘products’. Shower gel, face moisturiser so my forehead doesn’t itch (Marks and Spencer actually make the very best one), and talcum powder.

When people ask me ‘what was the worst thing about the first (proper) lockdown, there is only one answer. Cleaning the bathroom. That was my ‘duty’ as we divided the home care and labour. In fact we have two bathrooms, but don’t let that affect my membership of the Champagne Socialists (aka: the Hampstead Hypocrites). One was easy to clean. With my sprays and scrubbers and stuff. The other, “My” bathroom, was, in essence, a fucking nightmare. Because that’s the one in which I deploy the talcum powder.

I don’t just use it. I don’t just ‘rub a bit on’, I fucking drown in the stuff. I hurl it around and run through the clouds, in gay abandon (if you even think it, I’LL CANCEL YOU!!!), sling it on, under, between and into every nook and cranny this perfect body has. Because using a towel is boring. And talcum powder smells lovely and feels wonderful. If Mel is dressed in black she has to go and stand in the garden when I get out of the shower and give it an hour to settle.

Thus ‘cleaning the bathroom’ is, in essence, reclaiming talc from every horizontal surface in the room. Heaps of it. Piles. It’s like fourteen heavy rockers have been partying in there all night. White powder everywhere. I load it into sacks and recycle… ok, it gets dusted, swept, vacuumed, whatevered. 

And today I learn that Johnson & Johnson have been sued for $2billion because my absolute favourite of their products can give me ovarian cancer. Yup, according to the litigants in the state of Missouri, it is filled with Asbestos. And probably (for the purposes of my pending law-suit), ricin, botchelism, powdered uranium and covid dust. I mean, really? Asbestos? Like they couldn’t find anything better to put in? 

Powdery Wednesday

A xxxx

I’m having a serious deja-vu moment with my football team. I get that Harry Kane is going to leave, I understand his reasons and have sympathy with his decision, totally. Disloyal FUCKER!! And thus, as ever, we must ‘move on’, we must ‘think of the future’. So after wondering if we in fact have one, with no manager and the best player in the country about to jump ship, I get exited by the prospect of the ‘new start’. Because Spurs is a bit broken and needs to be re-built. We’re not ready to be liquidated but we’re having some major restructuring work. And Harry’s departure should leave us £150million to the good, which should go some ways to build our future. My deju-vu re-boot.

A bit like when Gareth Bale, at that time, the world’s best Welshman, left Spurs for Madrid, inflated our coffers by 100million Euros (like pounds but a bit less value and a lot less welcome) in 2011. And we all thought: brilliant: re-build. And the management went out and pissed away all the money on a bunch of tossers, jobsworths, journeymen, losers, wankers, cretins… and Christian Eriksen. Who was the cheapest of them all  and by several light years the best. So that didn’t really help much. And with Harry Redknapp in charge at the time, you never knew who was a really prospective player to buy and whose agent would produce the biggest bung. No accusations but Harry was… Harry. And the result was a touch less than the expectations led us to believe.

Now we need a manager first. A man who can manage temperamental players, who knows about football, about men, about men playing football and football playing men. Someone like… Pochettino. Well, how about… how about Pochettino???? You can’t get any closer than that, can you. And then he can spend the Kane money on his choices. Neymar will follow him to Spurs. Probably Mbappe too. Probably for dirt cheap wages. 

So that’s it then, Spurs 21-22, under Mauricio Pochettino, with Neymar, Mbappe, Gareth Bale and probably Messi. If you think this an overly optimistic assessment, start laughing now. 

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx