Andy's Glasses

Did you know that there are people out there whose job is to monitor patterns of swearing? I mean WTF? How is that a job? It’s like being paid to count how many times the word ‘the’ comes up in 22,647 conversations. Who fucking cares? Yet of course, that’s rhetorical. Everyone cares about our language to some degree or other. Whether its wincing when a BBC newsreader repeatedly drops their Hs or when one hears one too many glottal stops in the sentence ‘I gotta getta new battery for my little kettle’, and you know the speaker must be a footballer, we like our language. And some of us like swearing.

So here’s the new league table.

‘Bloody’, the reigning UK champion at the last count, 20 years ago, has slumped. Michael Caine (no relation to Harry) brought it to new heights in the Italian Job with his ‘blow the bloody doors off!!’ but its now plummeted. At its peak it was used 650 times out of every million words, now down to a mere 120. Overtaken by… no fucking surprise, ‘the F-word’. Used 550 times per million words. As a simple comparison, my own personal best was after getting through to Barclays Bank after 3 hours of delays, 97 forgotten passwords, 14 key-pad ‘menus’ and eventually only being answered by an educationally challenged non-English speaker. I reached the phenomenal 995 f-words in each 1000 words.

Woman swear less than men. But significantly so. 50% less. Except in my house. Where the air is constantly blue. Until Lila and Joey come around then there’s a temporary amnesty. And if I’m honest, there’s nothing more wonderful than a posh-spoken woman being profane. From the mouths of dodgy Dagenham slappers it lacks class, as do most things. But to hear some Kensington yummy-mummy effin’ and blindin’ because she broke one of her Jimmy Choo heels getting into her Range Rover outside Harvey Nicks is the stuff of fantasy.

Why should Dominic Raab disrupt his holiday in Crete just because a few misplaced Brits are having problems in Afghanistan? He was probably just out of the pool, taking his first sip of an ice cold bottle of Mythos when his mobile rang, the word ‘Boris!’ displaying on the screen. And the kids are crying and his wife’s calling and… and… hit ‘green’?, or ‘red’…

Not like he’s got a job with any responsibility or anything. Fuck it, he thinks, knowing he must wait at least 2000 words before thinking it again, and finishes his beer at leisure. What harm could it do?

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

It must have been around 1970 or 71 when BBC2, and only BBC2 started transmitting in colour. Which was partly a shame because BBC2 only ran from about 6 o’clock in the evening until about 11.30, when they switched to a photo of a little girl accompanied by a high pitched whistle. Which was good viewing back then for about half an hour, then even the most insomniacal went to bed. And partly it wasn’t a shame because no-one had TVs that could receive in colour anyway. But a few did. So every afternoon at about 3 o’clock they showed what they called ‘trade test films’ just so you could watch something in colour. But not just any something, it had to be something really awful. A ten minute, throw-away (which most should have been) snippet of nothingness. But coloured nothingness.

I was at home a lot. ‘Revising’ for some exams or other. And every day at just before 3 I’d hear the roar of a pretty much unsilenced exhaust disturbing the neighbours as my brother’s mate Barry arrived. He was 3 years older than me so was probably ‘revising’ (euphemism in 1970 for ‘day off’) for something else. But we shared a lot of common interests and became good friends. We went to music together. We got drunk together and loved driving round at ridiculously high speed together (he had an insane sports car, I lacked the age for a license). And we watched trade test films together.

There were only about 10 of them so they just recycled them. And you never knew which would come up. Thus every day we sat in eager anticipation, hoping with all our hearts that today would be… CATTLECARTERS!!!

The truly worst film ever made, ever, anywhere, anytime, any-any-anything. A film so bad, so stupid, so simply awful that it became an obsession. It was hilariously un-funny. Set in Australia it featured a lorry. Not just any lorry but one designed to travel thousands of miles across that barren wasteland (I refer of course to all of Australia here, not just the Outback) with cattle. Think the biggest truck imaginable and then tow two more behind it of the same size. And fill them with cattle, just for fun.

They managed to find two Aussies who were such caricatures that they needed no training or acting skills. They didn’t need to ‘become the part’ like method actors, they were the parts to begin with. Add in a really really cheesy theme song by Frank Ifield and what you had was the ultimate movie for teenage layabouts to roll around the floor in hysterics to.

And I found it. Cattlecarters. You can watch it. You should watch it. To celebrate its enduring awfulness into future generations.

Happy Viewing

A xxx

Jake Davison went on a shooting spree last week, in Plymouth. Killed four people, injured a bunch of others, then shot himself. We call that a ‘mass killing’, the Americans call it ‘a bad day at the office’. Though we don’t have the advantage of being able to just go out and buy a submachine gun or a nuclear bomb like you can in Kansas. “Would you like some grenades with that, Sir? They’re on special, buy four get two free!!!” Not like that here. We’re tightly controlled, gun-wise, regulated, lots of checks, references, investigations of worthiness.

And after all that, they decided that it was ok to return the license and rifle to Jake. A depressive, OCD weirdo with a history of assault, violence, anger issues and a major gun obsession since he was 8 years old. And a recent social media decline from moderately ‘special’ to nihilistic depths of depressive insanity. All available for even the police to view. But they didn’t.

But we can’t blame Jake for this atrocity. Because he was an ‘incel’ and therefore has been dealt a bum hand and is a victim.

Incels, or Involuntary Celebates is a kind of club for those who, in previous generations, would describe themselves as, ‘not getting any’. But being a kind of support group, it has to have an ideology, a philosophy, a mission statement.

So those simply ‘not getting any’ feel themselves duty-bound, or genital-bound, to try harder, do better, meet more people, ingratiate themselves to worthy potential partners, befriend, chat-up, beg, anything to try and get laid. There are rumours that you can even buy sex. Almost like a commodity. Who’d’a known?

Incels are not responsible for their celibacy, hence the ‘in-‘ bit. It has been forced upon them by women who… who basically have standards and won’t just jump into bed, or onto the back of a pick-up truck, with any gun-toting quasi-rapist who believes its his right to put his penis wherever it wants to go. Incels’ problem is that women have choices. They also despise those men who have girlfriends, or fuck-buddies, or whatever, because its taking opportunities from them. So they turn their situation into one of passive acceptance and look for others to blame.

I’m aware that there are many people of fragile mental condition and undoubtedly Jake was one. But validating your depression by joining a ‘support group’ like incel sadly compounds the problem, aggravates it and provides the usual social media forums for sociopaths to encourage each other into violence.

What a sick world. Thank God for football.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

Manchester City are the reigning champions of the Premier League. And we beat them. So why don’t they just award us the title now and be done with? Seems fair to me. Avoid all that ‘personal space’ problem that matches bring. 64,000 people screaming their lungs out simultaneously shouldn’t present any problems, should it?

Yesterday was somewhat predictable in that Manchester United won, rather convincingly against Leeds. Then Chelsea won comfortably and Liverpool beat other ‘new kids’, Norwich, in the evening with relative ease.

So that was 3 of the 4 ‘BIG’ teams off to flying starts. And Manchester City were the 4th. Though in reality, the first. As they won it last year.

And they came to Spurs in all their swagger, arrogance and, metaphorically, dripping with gold. As you do when you completely ignore the financial regulations that no-one ever imposes. So on their substitutes bench sat £350million worth of players. And on the pitch strode the swaggeriest, the drippiest, the horriblest of all; new kid Jack Grealish. The nation’s first 100 million pound man. He bought himself a new Alice band to celebrate.

Quite frankly, if I was Sheikh Mansoor I’d have wondered where about 92 million of that money had gone. That’s not to say that Spurs had it easy, oh no. Even if things are easy, or should be easy, Spurs will always find a way to increase the difficulty significantly. So the first 20 minutes were pretty hairy. Scary. And, in Grealish’s case, lairy.

But then Spurs eased themselves back in contention. With a combination of hard work, gritty determination and some truly appalling finishing by City. How they need Harry Kane…

And they need him now! Because all the talk and bullshit and uncertainty kills teams and ruins seasons. We’ve been there, done that and have numerous t-shirts, with ‘Bale’ on the back, with ‘Berbatov’, with ‘Modric’, we have enough.

Spurs became good. Almost dominant. Though not in terms of possession. No-one can out-possess a Pep Guardiola team. They can out-score them though and by a meagre single, solitary but wonderful goal, Spurs did just that. Son, so often the killer of Mancunian dreams, played assassin once more.

It took me 40 minutes to realise Dele Alli was playing. Such was the importance of his contribution. And Lucas Maura was simply magnificent for 90 minutes. Other than that, a brilliant job done. We beat the best. How difficult can the rest of the rabble possibly be?

Very very happy Sunday evening

A xxxx

Further to these preposterous allegations made against me in the New York courts, I would like to finally make a statement. Clear the air. Answer the critics. And other anti-royal bastards. I thought I’d already made my position very very clear on this entire matter in the Emily Maitlis interview. In which I stated, categorically and unambiguously, that I have no recollection of any of the times, dates, people, places or sundry items mentioned in the allegations. The only bits I can recall with any degree of certainty are the bits where I did absolutely nothing wrong, illegal, immoral or against the Highway Code. So to recap: whatever was said to occur, I either wasn’t there or don’t remember a thing if I was. That should cover most of it. I have a staff of people to organise my whereabout at any particular time. Though it is true, they don’t follow me into a bedroom. Nor a school playground. The photographs of Virginia Roberts with me are possibly genuine but I can’t remember those situations specifically, if at all. I simply can’t recall every time an underage girl was on my lap, that would be impossible.

People say I displayed ‘poor judgment’ in my loyalty to Jeffrey Epstein. Which may be the case. But just because he had already been found guilty of statutory rape doesn’t automatically make him a bad person. Though the fifteen subsequent charges for abusing, molesting, trafficking and raping, basically, children, may indeed have made him appear a little ‘bad’. But he was such a nice person. Decent. Other than when he was being indecent. Which allegedly did take up a lot of his time. So I maintained my friendship with him. Even child abusers need friends.

I hope that clears all this up and they will drop all charges from their fishing expedition of a civil court case. Otherwise Mummy will get very cross.

The new football season started last night. I know they’ve been playing lower league matches for at least a week but no-one cares about that. The Premiership started, its game on. And the game was on. At Brentford. Who, in their first top flight match in 74 years, were given a nice soft start to what will doubtless offer more ‘reality’ as the weeks progress. Nothing too challenging. The League decided to give them a team famous for being weak, misdirected, lightweight but pass the ball a lot so the home team could rest a bit between attacks, whilst watching the footballing equivalent of masturbation. It worked perfectly, Brentford won comfortably, claimed their 3 points (possibly the only 3 they’ll get til January) and Arsenal plunge to the bottom of the table. The perfect start to the season and Spurs haven’t kicked a ball yet.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

It’s finally happened. Lionel Messi, not just the world’s best footballer (sorry, Christiano, but he really is) but possibly the best footballer EVERRRRRR, has left his home forever. Leo was ‘born’ in Barcelona. Ok, not actually delivered into this world there but we really don’t care about the messy bits. He went there when a baby and now he’s really old, 34, they’ve kicked him out. Mercilessly. And he’s gone to the orphanage known as Paris St Germain. Like Oliver Twist before him, the ‘poor’ dude will have to survive on his own, at massive personal cost as his wages are cut severely. So severely that his weekly wage is now only about 40 times what the average worker earns in a year. It is positively heart-breaking. Ok, Oliver Twist didn’t generally use private jets much and probably didn’t stay at £17,000 a night hotels, but the parallels are otherwise staggering. Dickens must have been a Barca fan.

Barcelona have to divest themselves of their favourite child because they can no longer afford him. Which, in the world of football, is a wonderful breath of fresh sanity in a foggy soup of stale and corrupt madness. Spain actually imposes a ‘salary cap’ on teams. So even though the great Barcelona have debts of about half a billion (Euros, but pounds, dollars, all pretty much the same at that level), their player wage bill is currently 110% of the team’s total turnover. If it was anything but football they’d have put ‘bankrupt’ stickers all over Nou Camp and shut the doors forever. But this is football, so basic economics doesn’t work properly in that context. It’s like needing special physics at the sub-atomic level because gravity and mechanics just fail.

But Spain are at least making a fucking effort to stop the rot. And Messi at Barca, for about 2 million a WEEK, was deemed to much. Even cutting it in half was still problematic. So he’s gone to France. Where the footballing authorities are as toothless, testicle-free and ludicrous as they are here. And at PSG they have no limits to anything financial. As long as there’s money in the state of Qatar, Paris St Germain are doing fine. You can think of them as Manchester City in French. With both governed only by UEFA’s ‘financial fair play’ rules. Which has been shown time and again, are totally worthless.

Bienvenue a Paris, Leo

A xxxx

When did the world become so pedantic? So obsessive? So horribly, stupidly, ridiculously petty? And nothing provokes emotions more than food. So some idiotic blogger (they’re all fuckin’ eejuts, the lotto’v ‘em) or podcaster decided that ‘enough is enough!!!’, we’re no longer going to be allowed to use the word… ‘curry’.

But… but… but… curry’s food! Curry’s wonderful!!! Curry’s the best thing since sliced chapatti!!! Yes, but the word is… CULTURAL APPROPRIATION!!! What? How? When?

According to some babe in California, there is no such thing as curry. It’s a western, white construct designed to reduce the entire culinary output of a massive and diverse nation into a simple bowl of slop with chilli in it. Just for the record, I love that bowl of slop with a passion. But curry? That word??? Yet hang on, the word was introduced in the 1950s and 60s by South Asian immigrants who opened restaurants here. They GAVE us that word. It was a gift. In fact it was a total blessing, but the wokish assholes of today use no word with as much accusatory venom as ‘colonialism!!!!’ And according to this bimbo, ‘curry’ reeks of its colonial past. As well as garlic, herbs, capsicum, pepper and onions.

Jamie Oliver was accused of ‘cultural appropriatin’ when he made ‘jerk rice’. HOW DARE YOU!!! A WHITE MAN, NOT FROM JAMAICA!!!! Marks and Spencer were attacked for their ‘vegetable biryani wrap’. They were told ‘in India there is no such thing as vegetable biryani’. Yeah, but in Croydon there is, so just piss off.

It is not ‘cultural appropriation’ to take food ideas from different countries and mix them, include them, change them, to create new ideas, new tastes. It’s called ‘cookin’. It is the finest compliment you can pay.

My own food-history-line started in Poland. It was all about what you could eat quickly before the Cossacks came and beat you with sticks. And my grandmother, bless her soul, loved something she called (in Yiddish) ‘feece’. Otherwise known as ‘calves foot jelly’. It was revolting to look at, I never ever tasted it, but she adored it. Peasant food from Poland. But was making it in England ‘cultural appropriation’? No-one ever complained. Only the calf. About where his foot had gone.

So to the Californian-Indian accuser who wants us to ‘unlearn’ the word ‘curry’, I only have one word to say… possibly two words… one word split in two…

Tex-Mex!!! Eat that you pedantic bitch.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

So I’m obsessed. Addicted. Devoted. The Olympics, which never excite me any more than new electric car charging points at Arsenal’s stadium, simply take over my life once they start. I don’t watch it, but then see some on the news. And then see more in hilights programs which just come on. And then it slowly creeps up until…

It rules my life. And being in Tokyo, a perfect 8 hours ahead, its always on. And because Britain are winning, its on even more. I don’t mean ‘winning’ in the probably normal sense of… of ‘winning’ as such, like counting up medals and shit like that, I mean ‘winning’ because… because we are. And we deserve to. Morally, we’re winning. You can’t count the Americans because they cheat, nor the Chinese because with a population so big they can pluck 25 synchronised swimmers off any street in Beijing, half a dozen pole vaulters and a 13 year old gymnastics champion. Then they just stick them in specialised institutions where they don’t emerge for 5 years, force fed proteins, worked 19 hours a day, drugged up to the eyeballs, and then they’ll win gold medals. Or be killed, along with their entire extended family, upon their return.

Yesterday I watched ‘artistic gymnastics’. Painting a portrait whilst performing back flips? I’ve never heard of it either, though it must be said, the busiest people on the Olympics committee are those in charge of changing the names of the sports to confuse everyone. These are gymnasts, but a bit bigger than the usual 12 year olds, bit older, bit stronger. And they dance across the mat playing with toys. Maybe batons, a 6-metre twirling ribbon, hoops, which must keep moving all the time whilst the athletes dance in a gymnastic way, contorting and flipping in ways that no real human can. And the Israeli girl won. Beat the Russians and Belarusians, who were so pissed off that Putin immediately declared war. On Israel. And Japan.

This morning I watched Jason Kenny win his 7th gold medal on his bike. You actually deserve a medal in the velodrome just for understanding what you have to do in any of the obscure versions of ‘pedalling very fast’ they come up with.

Next was volleyball. No, nothing pervy here, this was INDOOR volleyball. Which is a shame. Because they let the contestants wear clothes in that one. It was brilliant. It’s all brilliant. We won golds in the men’s and women’s modern pentathlon, FFS!!! I mean, what’s more ‘modern’ than fencing? And I want to know who invented the bit they run around a track stopping to shoot guns every 3 minutes. Just targets. I could understand if they were shooting people, but then the Russians would have probably won.

And now its over. Other than the doubtless ridiculously overlong, overblown, over there, ‘final extravaganza’, which will go on until Wednesday, thrilling the massive crowd, who aren’t there. I can’t wait.

Then its just 3 years to wait for the next one!! By which time I’ll be totally indifferent to it, and the cycle win begin again.

Happy End of Olympics day

A xxxx

So I’m happy to reduce my carbon footprint. I haven’t been on a plane for 19 months. Because of my respect for Greta Thundberg. Oh, ok, there’s a covid factor in there but my adherence to every syllable the horrible Swedish schoolgirl mumbles remains absolute. I only drive a petrol car any time I want to. I rarely burn forests down and don’t graze any cattle. I’m thinking of replacing my gas boiler with one which burns air and water or hydrogen and fairy dust, because I’m always conscious of my emissions. I’ve even reduced my intake of baked beans in the interest of reduced methane. There’s only so much I can do. There are limits.

And now they’ve crossed a line. They’re talking about peat. The fairly useless stuff which is used to flavour my favourite whiskies. They take a really dull, lifeless whisky, open the lid, put the bottle on a bunch of peat, set fire to it and what comes out of that bottle later is the stuff of dreams. Sometimes nightmares. Often hangovers. But all worth it for that taste.

Apparently peat holds and stores carbon. Which is Greta-good. Peat bogs are seen as import in Greta-land to keep carbon down. But when you burn it, it all gets released. Shit-loads of the stuff, which is Greta-bad. Very bad. But, I’m guessing, she’s not a whisky drinker. Probably drinks mountain water from local ponds out of re-usable bottles made of recycled wood by women’s sanctuaries. Sanctimonious little…

I found this photo from our pilgrimage to the island of Isla. Where all my faves come from. These particular casks were at (I think; it all got a bit blurry; wonderfully, beautifully, peati-fully blurry, at that point) Ardbeg. Could have been Laphroaig, which lives next door.

So now they’re applying pressure on the Scottish whisky bosses to stop burning peat for their product. I can’t understand why. Scotland’s full of trees and all the released carbon will be their problem, not ours, especially when they ‘leave’.

But get things in proportion: its a bottle of Scotch. How much fucking peat does it use? The entire whisky industry uses less than 1% of all the peat… mined?, dug??, removed?, whatever. Most of the rest is used by gardeners. So I reckon we need less roses, more whisky. There’s no competition.

LEAVE MY WHISKY ALONE!!! Motherfucking, interfering, tree-hugging…

Climate change protest has crossed a line!

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

I’m a total devotee of token gesturism, much as I love a bit of hypocrisy, get high on stupidity and as for boycotts? Love ‘em to bits. My shelves are now totally empty of clothes, food, even toilet rolls. I’ve boycotted everybody and I’m sure they’re all regretting their actions now!! Bastard fascists, imperialists, child-labour-hirers, atmosphere polluters, people who drive on the right, or left, worst of all people who drive in the middle, capitalists, neo-nazis, neo-communists, neo-liberals (possibly the worst of all), radical feminists, radical rapists, people who refuse to state their pronouns in every text message, those who ‘take the knee’, those who won’t ‘take the knee’, royalists, Roundheads, slap heads, 3-day eventists and Arsenal fans.

I set the bar quite low when it comes to supporting the oppressed. I’m on the verge of boycotting Mel just for… because… well WHY NOT???

Yet even I can’t see the point of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream banning sales in the ‘occupied territories’ of Israel. Where you can no longer buy their product. To protect?, support?, stand as one with the Palestinian people in their oppression.

Ever been to the ‘occupied West Bank’? I have. You really don’t know you’re there so seamless does it live adjacent to Israel. The people there get state education, state medical provision, it is just Israel with bumpier roads. Ok, there are ‘the settlements’ which are ‘frummer’s follies’. Ultra religious, usually Americans, who wish to live in the biblical lands. They’re daft and inflammatory places. Filled with ultra-orthodox people who will never buy Ben & Jerry’s because its not kosher enough. And if they want it they can just go to West Jerusalem and buy it. With a special rabbinical sticker on it and a massively inflated cost. So the only people who ‘suffer’ from this boycott is the Palestinians themselves. Who may really fancy a scoop of Chocolate Obscenity on a sunny Sunday and will now do without. So how does that ‘help’ them in their struggle? They still struggle, but without ice cream.

Unilever, who own Ben & Jerry’s, are taking flak over this latest ridiculous ‘boycott’. Yet as a wonderful example of token gesturism, hypocrisy and stupidity, I can only admire them. Though I’m not sure politics and ice cream mix that well.

Happy Friday

A xxxx