Andy's Glasses

I’m a strong adherent to social distancing. Mainly because I hate people. Hate crushes. Hate crowds. But only on group levels. Individually its different. I love hugging. I love the total invasion and complete overthrow of someone’s personal space. It’s not a ‘hug’, its a ‘coup’. An invasion. Oh, well can you get your hands off my ass, Mr Hancock? That kind’a thing. But in massed throngs such proximity is not so nice. Leaving a football ground can be challenging in the ‘bottleneck’ areas which all grounds seem designed to incorporate. It starts to feel a bit ‘Hillsboro’. Tube travel, with great fat sumo types forcing bodies onto carriages, that’s the stuff of panic attacks. Leaving a theatre or cinema, because ‘old people’ (beyond 70, for the purposes of this conversation) insist on stopping to look at stairs before descending. Don’t know why, they’re the same stairs they walked up not 2 hours before, but they have to stop first. Clogging up the ‘traffic flow’.

But nightclubs are different. They are there for the crush. Bodies jammed tightly together moving to the same beat (except for 1 or 2 who move to a slightly different beat), that’s the buzz. Enhanced, obviously, by alcohol or other ‘mood altering substances’, which are available at every decent nightclub or from an alleyway close by.

And on CGFI day, July 19th, nightclubs can open for the first time since March 2020. And at ‘full capacity’. But in view of the intervening 16 months, in case anyone missed that bit, the clubs are advising people to remain ‘sensible and spread out’. As opposed to insensible and spread-eagled, as many ended the night in ‘normal’, pre-covid times. So I’m not sure if that the geezer who asked for sensible and spread out, has ever been to a nightclub. He owns 47 of them but possibly has never been to play in earnest. I can’t wait til they re-open, personally. #itchinf’rarave.

Football tonight. The biggest… EVERYTHING EVERRRRRR. Words can hardly describe the bigness of this event, so immense is its magnitude.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

So what am I supposed to do with my mask collection from July 19??? I’ve spent the last 16 months building up a collection unrivalled on any western face, plus boxes and boxes of the shitty blue and pink ones. Which fill every pocket on every jacket, trouser and other suitable item of clothing I possess. (Yet I still arrive at a shop at least 3 times a week to find myself maskless; how the fuck does that happen???) So I’m refusing to ditch the mask on CGFI day, in 2 weeks time. CGFI? Covid Go Fuck Itself. And here’s our new mantra, which, due to our forthcoming masklessness, people will actually be able to hear repeated: ‘IT HASN’T GONE AWAY, WE’RE JUST LIVING WITH IT’.

We’ve all become a little too numerate in the last year or so. We’re obsessed about the numbers of positive tests, the number of vaccinations, the number of deaths, hospitalisation, first doses, both doses, anything countable. We’ve never done this before. But those numbers rule our life. Yet we’ve never before counted up those getting and dying of ‘normal’ flu, which always kills at least 15,000 every year. We don’t count up ‘new cases of hay fever’, nor colds, athletes foot, Irritable bowel or chlamydia. Because ‘wot don’t kill you makes you stronger’ and none of those kill you. So why count them? Which is pretty much where we are with our pet virus. Loads of people get it, but very few need hospitalisation and a minuscule number die. Ok, not good if you’re that number, but we all play the odds every day in a million ways. Ever crossed a road with me?

I hate wearing a mask. Don’t do it other than on the tube or in certain shops that give me dirty looks if I don’t. I just hate being muffled (my words are just too important to miss) and I hate being faceless. You smile at someone for helping you and think ‘why bother?’ But I’ll probably still choose to wear one on the tube. No idea why, I just will. Maybe because social interaction is completely banned on the tube so the mask won’t impede. Or maybe because that’s my one little bit of ‘Covid paranoia’, the rest of which I managed to overcome by April 2020 when I was bored with it.

Crowds are back. We can fly to Germany. This week. The laws governing our Coronavirus lifestyle end on CGFI day. It all becomes ‘voluntary’. Or, ‘ignored’ as we call it. We’re getting there. Oh the wonder of those vaccinations.

Happy nearly free Tuesday

A xxxx

There are winners and there are losers.

In Batley & Spen (what’s ‘Spen’? FFS), Labour held their seat in the ‘most important by-election the world has ever known’, but reduced their majority from 3.5 thousand to 350. And claimed this as a ‘stunning victory’. As in, ‘yeah, we did 10 times worse than last time so that’s brilliant, barely clinging on to a seat we’ve virtually never lost; well ‘appy with that.’ And yet Kier Starmer, who would not have survived a loss as party leader, was leaping around, punching the air. As if he’d just put four goals past Ukraine.

Now THAT is a fucking victory. That is a ‘win’. But I will NOT gloat. I will not become ‘that’ person. No. Not for one minute. Just because we’ve gone 5 matches without conceding a goal. And have now reached the semi-finals of the biggest competition held in Europe. And just because Harry Kane not only proved his impatient, short-sighted, clueless detractors wrong in emphatic style, but also increased his selling price by at least 50 mil in the process. But I won’t be in any way arrogant, complacent or horrible about this amazing, stunning, spectacular trouncing of a bunch of almost-Russian racists and anti-semites. I bear them no grudge. Nor will I mention ‘Scotland’. Even ‘Wales’. Because that would not be in keeping with the nature and tone of this day of glory. Our glory. England’s glory. So I won’t. Don’t try to make me.

And if that wasn’t enough, there was Wimbledon. The only tennis tournament in the world. Which actually matters. To ‘proper’ tennis fans. And the best news is: we no longer need Andy Murray. Because we have…

Emma!!!

In tennis as in football, its not about winning, but how you win. And if you’re winning with a smile on your pretty face, boundless energy and enthusiasm as well as a killer game, that’s almost as good as watching a whingeing moaner grumble his miserable way Scottishly round the court. She’s 18 years old, a ‘wild card’ entry and simply brilliant. And funny. Clever. Gorgeous doesn’t hurt either. And although she has a funny name, at least it doesn’t end in -ova.

What a day for ENGLAND. Just sayin’…

A xxxx

I watched a program called ‘Canada hits on the BBC’. I love those programs and watching BBC4 always makes me feel like the intellectual I really should have been, had I been more… intellectual. More cleverer.

Originally I didn’t intend to watch it. I thought ‘wass’it gonna be? Celine farkin’ Dion? Justin effin Bieber??? And Leonard Cohen (all bow)’. And its not about knowing lots of Canadian artists, because we all do. It’s knowing that they are in fact Canadians and don’t belong to that nether-world to the south.

But a theme emerged, as I watched. They showed about 10 numbers by different artists. And 3 of them had suffered badly from Lyme disease. Shania Twain, who lost her voice for 15 years as a consequence, Bieber himself (see the tattoo of a tic, midway down his left forearm, just beside three death’s heads, a Mona Lisa and a big red maple leaf, before you get to the polar bear on his elbow), Shania and Avril Levigne.

So being a keen statistician I’m going to argue that 30% of Candians have Lyme disease. Or probably will get it. At least before they get their third number 1 hit. And its a horrible thing. You get bitten by a tic and the next thing… you’re Lymed out for the foreseeable.

Therefore if you go to Canada, remember to watch out for 2 serious problems: Polar bears and tics. Of which, Polar bears are much easier to see. And hence, hopefully, avoid. They also don’t eat humans, which tics do. Warning over.

Bryan Adams is obviously Canadian. Obviously. And Alannah Myles who sang the brilliant ‘Black Velvet’, a song filled with Mississippi and other such references, presumably because ‘Calgary’ didn’t rhyme. Anyone with the surname ‘Wainwright’ is a Candian, hundreds of them, generations, all really good. Who knew? Alannis Morissette, yeah we knew that. And Nickleback. Canadian rockers extraordinaire. If ‘How you Remind Me’ isn’t the best rock track of all time, its in my top 5… possibly 15…

There were others, loads of others. But I was suffering withdrawal at that point. I’d been watching the tv for more than 30 minutes and hadn’t seen a goal scored or an ace served. Shaking uncontrollably, I quickly switched channel.

I’d be prepared to forgive Canada a lot just for producing Leonard Cohen. In fact, just for ‘Halleluyah’. But for a small country (I know, its either the biggest or second biggest, depending on who Russia invaded this week; I mean people) it has produced some seriously great music. And Celine Dion.

England playing Ukraine tonight for a place in the semi-finals. Could we… can we… will we…

Answers to all those questions tomorrow. Unless we lose. Then you can all fuck off and let me sulk.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

Well that felt good. Nice. Satisfying. Refreshing. WE BEAT THE FUCKING GERMANS!!!!!

In an incredible turn around of the norm, an amazing suspension of reality, an outstandingly unusual event, which happens in nature with the regularity and frequency of the Cretaceous Extinction, (when the dinosaurs died), England beat Germany in the knockout stages of an international competition.

Yes, for the first time since 1966, WE BEAT THE FUCKING GERMANS!!!!!!

HARRY KANE 1, ADOLPH HITLER 0.

That wasn’t the scoreline, just the overriding emotion. And it was emotional. Winning big matches is always so, but that baggage, those horrible memories of defeats past of penalty shoot-outs gone wrong, of just doing well in tournaments ‘until we meet the Germans’, made last night especially sweet.

England, my England…

We did meet the Germans and then we won. To progress. To the quarter finals where we meet Ukraine. A nation, like America, who elected a comedian as its president. But unlike Trump, Ukraine’s was a real comedian, rather than a mere laughing stock. The nation deserves respect just for that alone.

But heh, I’m getting ahead of myself. Ukraine, then who? Italy? Belgium? But we need, like the team, to take it ‘one game at a time’. I’m focussing all my fan-ness and supportivity on Ukraine. Thinking too far ahead gives you further to fall when it all goes wrong (Spurs fan Help Book, page 3). So I’ll leave the hyperbole and the incessantly annoying ‘WE CAN GO ALL THE WAY!!!!’s to the pundits.

The team were collectively good. Harry Kane was probably the worst-performing on the night, but then scored a goal and rose instantly to man-of-the-match. Which is a bit annoying as I actually had to spend time admiring scumbags like Jack Grealish, who changed the game pretty much instantly, and Kyle Walker, who was outstanding. Thought the real man of the match was Jordan Pickford in goal.

So now we have it. England are in the Euros and I’m finally on board. I have a red-and-white cross of St George on my face and its staying TIL THE END!!!! Ok, its only metaphorical currently, but if we win on Saturday????

Official, national, Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

The relationship between England and Germany is a complex one. Emotionally, psychologically and, especially, footballingly. We love the Germans, most of them, we cheered when the wall came down and their nation was re-unified and we send our daughters to live in Berlin because its the best city in Europe. Yet we can’t forgive them for those wars. And if we could, we could never forgive them for the repeated tortures on the football field.

None more tortuous than in the 1996 European Championships when Gareth Southgate, our national team manager, missed the penalty that sent the Germans through to the final. And although his teammates immediately flew to him to support him, to give him love and comfort and ‘it’s not your faults’, that event scarred Gareth. He went to see Eileen, the famous Glenn Hoddle favourite and faith healer, which in fact had a very positive impact and brought his game back to its previous exemplary standard. But underneath… in those dark moments… you just know, it can never leave you.

We beat the Germans in the World Cup final in 1966 and in the intervening 55 years we ain’t done so good. And tonight, its game on once again. Victory would be a belated redemption for Gareth, no question about that. But a loss? A LOSS??? Unthinkable. Hands up all English people confident (truly, deeply, in heart-of-hearts) that we can win…

Ok, none exactly flying up in the air.

Last night’s matches were amazing. Simply brilliant, exciting, thrilling, come-from-behinds, extra time, penalties, they had everything.

We don’t want that tonight. We want a dull and dreary 1-0 win. Harry Kane in the 7th minute then shut up shop and bring on 9 more defenders. I have no desire to thrill every Slavic ‘neutral’ or Italian bar-fly. Just to beat the Germans.

They want to ban mobile phones in schools. Research has shown, conclusively, that children’s productivity improves by 6.4% as a result. Possible 9.7%, up to 14.2% for the more challenged pupils, and as little as 0.3% for bright kids. Maybe there’s a 10.6 in there as well somewhere, I gave up the will to live at that point in the article. Which can only really be described as ‘inconclusive’. But sounds like a great idea anyway.

Yet I feel this infringes on children’s human rights and intend to bring action. Because it is the basic, fundamental right of every schoolboy to send pictures of his penis to every 13 year old girl in the class. In fact its his duty! What’s wrong with spending the Advanced Algebra class surfing porn sites? And how are you supposed to be a proper, totally committed bully without using social media for 15 hours a day?? Eh???

Very happy, massively important Tuesday

A xxxx

Now if Matt Hancock and Gina Coladangelo had been clever, like Mel and me in this picture, there’d be no story. No sacking. No aggro. No bother at all. Sensible, that’s us. And Covid safe.

Ok there’s the whole moral issue about two families being destroyed, about chronic self-indulgence and lust over decency and a few other trivial concepts which don’t seem to worry anybody outside the Daily Mail, but the resignation was about breach of (stupid, pretty ineffective, possibly meaningless) covid measures which HE put in place for the rest of us.

Now its all about ‘Boris should have sacked him on Friday’. Rather than waiting for him to fall on his sword on Saturday. The whole message from the inept and useless opposition party has become about ‘Boris lacking the spine, the balls, the backbone… lungs, teeth, hair, elbows and most other anatomical parts, to sack him!’

I don’t even like Boris but this is an argument not worth having. Unlike the one about Gina’s initial appointment but ‘we’ are still looking into that. Her Majesty’s Opposition really needs to up its game.

I’ve worked out why the Cotswolds are so beautifully, gloriously, spectacularly, verdantly, green. Rain. Then more rain. Then loads more rain. Then 10 minutes of sunshine, then let the heavens open once more.

It wasn’t actually too bad today, the overnight rain had stopped by breakfast. Not that I gave a shit at that time, because hotel breakfasts are magical things and I don’t care about the weather whilst indulging. And indulge I do.

So we went for a country walk. Got a map from the hotel, checked the parameters of Google maps (as if) and out we went. Like the true townies we are, into the countryside where Oxfordshire meets Gloucestershire. I wore shorts and hiking boots. Because mud was predicted. And even before we got catastrophically lost, as we always do, we got catastrophically wet. The water being borne by the long grass and… catastrophic levels of stinging nettles. And we’re in shorts. Hmmm…

We circled several fields several times, looking for a landmark which wasn’t a tree or shrub. And… we were lost. But found our way back. Eventually. Wetly.

And now we’re home. To the paved streets and solid pavements and bloody sunshine!! in London. Safe. I’m done with green.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

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