Andy's Glasses

In 1762, John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich (no spoilers here) invented the doner kebab. The legend goes that he was such a compulsive gambler that he wouldn’t leave the tables to eat and demanded, as Earl’s do, that food be brought that he could eat with his hands. Well, preferably with one hand so he could do gambly things with the other. Or scratch his nose. So he requested that someone put some roast beef between two slices of multi-grain, half-spelt, no added salt, reduced fat, sourdough… breads, and bring it to him. They couldn’t find a beef handy so went round the corner to the Turkish and grabbed him a doner instead. Or possibly went on a crusade to Turkey and got the real thing. In which case it would probably be 1773, allowing for traffic. Good ole Jonny Sandwich.

But I remain unconvinced. Bread was introduced to the world in about 8000BC. I checked. Ok, it wasn’t Hovis and it probably didn’t come in bags (bags weren’t invented until Lord Bag, another gambler, probably, put his winnings into… something, and defined it forevermore) but it was bread. And they’re telling me, and possibly you too, that it took a further 9762 years before anyone got the idea of, like, sort of, kind’a, putting something IN IT!!, before eating? So it should be called an Ug. After the cave dweller who first put the leg of a fresh killed stag inside his bread. Or, possibly, be called the Bin-Ug, as the cave in question was in Egypt.

And it seems even more wronger that the sandwich was named not after the person who made it but the person who, in desperation, just barked a few orders rudely. Like some proto-Gordon Ramsey. Without the expletives. (Lord Expletive, 1439 and the Duke of Fuck-Shit, 1527)

However, I love a sandwich. And wanted to share today’s with you. Not in the ‘break bread together’ meaning, I would kill you stone dead if you even touched any part of my lunch, but ‘sharing’ in the nice, soft, cuddly way. Because this one was worthy of sharing. This was my opus magnus and was even nicer than a stag’s leg in pitta. Because it contained: (from the bottom up), avocado, hummus, cheddar cheese, coleslaw, sliced pickled gherkin, sliced boiled egg, sliced tomato and chilli-mayonnaise. It was simply wonderful. I was going to make the ‘low calorie’ version, but when I took the slice of tomato out it went lop-sided, so I went ‘full fat’. Lots of people would find this a ‘mess’. Others would doubtless love the total taste ‘explosion’ that every mouthful provides. Even though actually getting it in the mouth is not easy. Lila’s mummy would be gagging just reading the ingredients. She’s like that. Others should replicate. It’s worth the effort. But you need a fabulous roll to do it justice. And then send me 50p because I’ve patented it. And I’ll know.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

We watched a movie last night. I think probably our first since… since… since The Pandemic!!! started last March. Well, if there were others, they’re so notable they’re forgotten. I’d like to have my own cinema. Not a ‘home cinema’ but, like, The Electric in Notting Hill, or The Phoenix in East Finchley, big, proper, Art Deco, loads of seats. Because they have popcorn machines.

Anyway, as I couldn’t find a cinema to buy in time, (though its probably an easy thing to acquire at the moment) we had to improvise and watch it on the tv. And we watched…
One night in Miami. Because it has been raved about. A wonderfully conceived fictional account of an interesting ‘could have happened’ event in 1964.

Cassius Clay beat Sonny Liston to become ‘the’ Heavyweight Champeeeen of the (whole) World. There was only one champion back then, now there are 17. And note, Cassius Clay rather than Mohammad Ali, which only happened later. That fight was held in Miami. And on the night Clay won, he met up with three friends at a motel. The friends were Malcolm X, the civil rights campaigner who took the ‘non’ out of ‘non-violent protest’, Sam Cooke, The soul legend and Jim Brown, the American Football star who later became an actor.

In 1964 a massive part of America was still ‘segregated’ (think ‘apartheid’ but with burning crosses) so the motel, in Malcolm X’s room, was just a sleazy dive, because black people weren’t allowed to stay in ‘white’ hotels. Today they can, obviously, but in the South, only if the room’s booked by a white person for them. Otherwise the hotel is ‘full’.

And the four guys are totally brilliant. The acting is wonderful. And after a fabulous beginning, to ‘set the stage’, when Clay first beats (our very own) ‘enery Cooper at Wembley, Jim Brown goes to visit Beau Bridges (some footballing upper echelon type of non-specified variety) and (no spoilers), the end of that scene blows your fucking head off. And sums up the ‘age’ totally, so you know where the film wants to take you.

But then instead of taking you there using Waze-for-movie-directors, the quickest, neatest, directest, but not necessarily most comfortable route, instead it opts for the ‘I’m sure its around here somewhere’ method.

This may just be a reflection of watching it in my lounge. Whilst doing a rather challenging Samurai Sudoku, checking my phone, stretching out my hamstrings and deciding whether to have tea or open the 4th bottle of wine.

Mel thought it was too long. She thinks every film is too long. She finds the BBC weather too long.

I was expecting Mississippi Burning meets Rocky with a soundtrack by Marvin Gaye. Instead I was treated to an acting masterclass in a somewhat circuitous mode.

Happy Sunday. Today they’re ‘screening’ Sheffield United vs Spurs AND Liverpool against Manchester United in a double billing at the box office.

A xxxx

The thing I like about football is winning. The thing I hate, loathe, detest, get sickened by, and become maddened by, in football, is not winning. Particularly against teams we ‘should beat’. Ok, there’s no guarantees in life or football. Anyone doubting the wisdom of that truism just think back to March, April, May…

So if wins were guaranteed, there’d be no point playing the matches. You could just award the points in absentia, crown the winners, avoid all that goal celbratory, Covid-risking touchy-feeliness and reduce injuries by 90%. The 10% because they’d still have to train. And then only play the ‘close’ matches. Like Liverpool vs Man United on Sunday. Like the Chelsea Man City type matches. Too close to call. So therefore, Spurs vs anyone.

We trounced Man City then drew with Newcastle. We thrashed Southampton then lost to Everton. We mullered Leeds and then… and then… and then FUCKING DIDN’T BEAT FULHAM. On Wednesday night. It was a horror show. We played well, scored a totally brilliant goal, simply taking of breath type goal, 3 players, 65 yards, 3 touches, about 5 seconds. So good a goal that we immediately ‘put the brakes on’. Ok, that’ll do. Shut up shop. We’ve done enough. It’s only Fulham. They won’t score.

The Morinho method. Which is so great that we’ve drawn or lost half a dozen matches because we don’t keep on pressing to close the game up. Or we do, but only half the matches. Alas its the other half that kill.

The second half of the game brought on a different Fulham. Who were fantastic. Attacking brilliantly. To which our inevitable reply was: bring it on. Wave after wave until the equaliser became inevitable. And by the time they scored it we’d forgotten how to mount an attack, it had been so long. So can consider ourselves lucky not to lose the game altogether as Fulham pressed on after scoring knowing that there was only going to be one winner, and it weren’t us. The draw was a kind of victory. For both teams.

I’d like to think lessons have been learned. But I fear not.

If there’s one team even more a ‘sure thing’ than Fulham, it is poor, one-win, hapless, Sheffield United. Who we play on Sunday.

God help us.

A xxxx

Today, I was attacked. Not like, at tai chi, when we do it with swords or knives, planks of wood, lumps of concrete, done nicely, friendly, no. This bastard came at me with a fucking needle!!! Attached to a  syringe!!! Filled with… LIQUID!!! Bastard!!! Doesn’t he know I’m a lifelong needlephobe? 

But as the liquid in question was the Pfizer-Biontech Covid Vaccine for  Old People and Opticians, I bore him no malice, nor went into self-defence, BREAK THE FUCKING ARM, mode. And suprisingly (I’ve been surprised like this with every injection since 1962) it didn’t hurt. In fact I couldn’t feel it and thought for one moment I’d been conned out of my due. 

So now I’m safe. I’m cured. I’m allowed out. I can party like its 1999. I can return to football. Play tennis. Go pole dancing.

Because Covid doesn’t just rule our lives, it actually alters our perception.

I have a grandson called Joey. You may have missed that. The world’s smallest, and definitely most beautiful, bulldozer. And on Sunday, it was noticed, in between destroying a few walls and taking the back off the tv, that Joey was ‘warm’. He had… a temperature!!! Yeah, I know, everything has a temperature, this is just an expression meaning ‘a HIGH temperature’. And we immediately entered ‘the protocols’. Which is this: panic, then PANIC, then FUCKING PAAAANNNNIIIICCCC!!!! for all you’re worth. We were banned from visiting, for our own protection. Joey immediately entered lockdown, quarantine, isolation and his own ‘bubble of destruction’ which is just him and George. George? Yeah, Peppa Pig’s brother, do try and keep up. Ok, mummy and daddy were allowed in, just to avoid starvation, dehydration and hygiene issues, and Lila, obviously, or they’d have no-one to fight with. And after 24 hours of this, it was realised that little Joey was sprouting a new tooth. Not a new virus. And even though he’d been pointing at his mouth and crying, this had been duly ignored. Not JUST because of terrible parenting, not JUST because of a total lack of understanding of babies and their developmental health, but because we have all been ‘shielded’ from seeing the wood from the trees.

Well no more!! Covid? I’m over it. Totally. 

Happy Liberation Day

A xxxx

Brilliant! I’ve just learned that Steps, the millennial errr… well… not quite ‘super’ group, more… sort of… like… oh yeah, total waste of space, time and AIR!!!, are having a retrospective type thing to ‘get people moving in Lockdown’. Because most people are totally unaware that sitting on a sofa for 16 hours eating chocolate biscuits and drinking extra-strong lager, all alone, in front of the tv, is not very good for you. So well done Steps! The band who, almost single-handedly, represented the demise of popular music from being a wonderful expression of creativity to the karaoke show they produced. With hand movements. In case you don’t feel inspired to just, kind of, dance. Music for the dancably challenged. Anyway, its brilliant!! And you just have to either go walking to the soundtrack of their ‘what the future holds’, or you dance to it, (they show you the moves, obviously, wouldn’t be proper music otherwise) and then put it on tik-Tok so everyone can hate you, revile you and make your life more of a misery than it already is. Brilliant! Love Steps. And it raises money for charity too.

But I want to talk about ‘romance’. Not, like in the Mills & Boon type way, not, sort of Mr Darcy in a threesome with several Bronte sisters, not ‘proper’ romance, but ‘the romance of the Cup’. The FA Cup. You can barely mention that esteemed competition, the oldest national football competition IN THE WORLD!!!, without some tattooed Millwall thug bursting into tears, the Shed End at Chelsea wellling up or Mesut Özil crying into his millions. It’s the ‘romance’. Innit.

And that comes from BIG teams playing ‘minnows’. That only happens in the cup. When Premiership high flyers play non-league amateurs. And that’s where the romance comes in. You don’t get it when Everton play Leicester. You get it when Liverpool play Dagenham & Redbridge. When Manchester United play Yeovil Town. And you get it when Leeds play Crawley.

Because the ‘romantic’ bit is that these lowly teams can actually win. And, on very rare occasions, they do so. Man United, Arsenal, Newcastle, have all been the giant victims of the giantkilling over the decades.

But I’d just like to say, there is NO romance in losing. For little teams there can be nobility, valiant attempts, brilliant opposition, to the inevitable which brings them no shame. For the big clubs who fail to beat the underdogs there is plenty of shame. And a distinct lack of romance as even Leeds players’ wives probably would’t talk to them after Crawley thrashed them on Sunday.

Lowly Marine FC who played Spurs on the same day made £400,000 from the day. Probably enough to keep them going for 5 years. Or they could have Kevin De Bruyne for a week.

There is no place for romance in football. Unless you can count it, put it in the bank, and keep you afloat.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

Ok, so having slagged off lateral flow tests yesterday, I thought I’d better take one. For YOU. Because I’m prepared to lay myself on the line in the interests of my people! Ok, not so much lay on a line as shove a stick up my nose. Quite a long stick in my case, obviously.

Mel & I both received ‘lateral flow kits’ from the NHS, to test our staff weekly. Because we are front line… whatever. And today’s photo is of our results. Mel’s is on the right and shows, quite clearly, that the test was negative. Mine’s on the left and shows that I’m pregnant. Unless I read it wrongly. Yes, I’m going to have a baby and I’m going to call it Covid.

There’s been big issues about ‘procurement’ during this crisis. Basically, companies who would normally making, say, beer glasses, which no-one is now allowed to use, so the machinery is modified to bang out PPE instead. Beer glass… sterile, safe, secure masks to British Standards… what difference. A thing is a thing, right? Just make ‘em.

Which is why there are lots of court cases currently underway about government PPE contracts by companies making absolute rubbish and selling it for 14 billion quid to Rishi Sunak. Who, let’s face it, would buy up Halloween masks if nothing else was available.

And so to lateral flow tests. Made by ‘Innova Medical Group Inc.’ And the thing is that they don’t actually claim to be that good. They just claim to be ‘ready in 20 to 30 minutes’ rather than the 2 days for the normal ‘swab test’. In the instructions it actually states that ‘If a positive signal appears, it should not be reported as positive’. Oh. And that ‘negative results are presumptive and do not preclude infection’. Ok, that covers most of it. Other than: then what is the test for, exactly?

But I don’t blame Innova Inc. I wanna know why our government firstly bought zillions of pounds worth of self-confessed fairly useless test kits and worse, is now putting massive stock in the results for using them in their asymptomatic testing. IT WON’T TELL US ANYTHING. I think I’ll revert to the coin toss method. I’ll sell pound coins to the government for a fiver each. 

Happy daze

A xxxx

For the next part in my ongoing (to eternity) and very popular series “All statistics IS bollocks” (and apparently a lot of grammar is too, innit), I’d like to look at… well, statistics, obviously.

A new one came out today in the sports pages. And remember, in the beautiful game that none can watch live, there is Mega-giga-tetra-things of data produced and stored at each minute of every game. So the raw data is all there. That’s not the problem. The problem, as always, is with the chosen form of analysis.

Today it was ‘points won compared to goals per game conceded in that time’, and that time, for the purposes of this instance of numerical diarrhoea, was since November 28th. Just like that. Not ‘January 1st’ or ‘the start of the season’, but November 28th. 14 days after my dad’s 96th birthday, just so you know its not just a random date. Anyway, what the statistics said aren’t even worth discussing. The POINT (if there is one, and its generally something I really try to avoid) is that I don’t question the results that these numbers represent. Nor the validity of the data. Just the fact that, as always, a statistic was needed to conform to the desired narrative. So they found one. Or created one. As in: there must be some line of mathematics that can bolster my argument that Manchester United are performing better than anyone else. We’ve tried all the usual ones, like ‘are they top of the league?’ And ‘are they really yo-yo-ing around in form under a pretty clueless manager?’ But they didn’t work, so we had to be a little more creative. Well, Jonathan Northcroft of The Times: WHO FUCKING CARES???

Especially as we’re in mid-fucking-pandemic mode and are already saturated daily with meaningless numbers. I wish I was a statistician today, I’d live in a palace and drive a… Prius. Only because they’re really not very imaginative people.

So now we have over 60,000 new cases of covid EVERY DAY!!!! Over 1000 people die every day. Again, meaningless numbers unless you happen to be one of the latter. In which case, my condolences.

But ‘it’s not enough’. Matt Hancock (how do you spell: ‘tosser’?) and Boris (ditto) have decided that the only way to beat Coronavirus is to statistically bamboozle your way out of it. Drugs won’t work. Medicines useless. Statistics is the only sure way.

So we need more testing. Which is in fact the only sensible thing they could say. And quicker testing. Again, WE KNOW THAT AND HAVE SINCE MARCH; WHERE THE FUCK HAVE YOU BEEN???? So Hancock is recommending ‘asymptomatic lateral flow testing’ to allow workers, like me, safe passage on the empty tube trains. And this random mass testing was almost really successful in Liverpool. And when I say ‘almost’ it is because lateral flow tests are up to 50% inaccurate. 50. Per. Cent. It would be cheaper to send everyone in the country a one pound coin and have them toss it to see if they have the virus. That would produce exactly the same degree of reliability. 50%.

However, if you measure: covid cases per day resulting in hospital admission but not ending in death and divide it by the number of vaccines we’ll be administering per week by March 22nd, and add in the square root of Boris Johnson’s inside leg measurement (in millimetres), you get an outstanding result which should encourage everybody that we are, in fact, headed in the right direction.

Fuck. Me.

A xxxx

Look I don’t like to gloat, unless football’s involved, I’m not normally smug, unless I’m speaking to you or any other unworthy, and its not in my nature to be competitively celebratory. I’ve never previously had the opportunity to create vaccine envy.

But I’m getting the vaccine on Wednesday. What? How? Who? Where? Really???

Yes, really. A geezer will give it to me, behind the car park near Sainsbury’s, but its genuine, apparently, his mate Deano told me so, and he knows all about drugs, and its only £4,279, cash.

Joking. Though I think many such things are on offer. The ultimate ‘placebo’.

This is through the NHS. Because I am a ‘front line practitioner’ and risk life and limb every time I send some contact lenses remotely to Berwick-on-Tweed. When everyone was clapping on Thursday nights, I was bowing and thanking them for their support. Even though at that time I hardly realised I had anything to with the NHS.

Anyway, we had an email. For people such as Mel and me, we get on the vaccine list. Not, like, high on that list. Not even, medium. Barely low. Even at my age. But because of our work, and our NHS contracts, we get the honour to become the bottom feeders of the vaccine lists and await leftovers from Doctor’s vaccination clinics. And yesterday Mel got the call. We’re in. We’re on. We are chosen!!!

Mel said she felt like she’d won the lottery. I feel like I’ve got a golden coin in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Even though in normal times, the way to see me run faster than Usain Bolt is to produce a syringe.

Having the vaccine is wonderful. It means we can… well, we’re allowed to… errr… well, it means I can’t get Covid. Not guaranteed, but… better than not having it. It means I may not be able to transmit the disease… but they’re not sure. It should last… well they don’t really know. I can fly again!! I mean, on a plane. But no-one will let me land because I’m from London. And obviously we’ll be able to go to parties, eat lavish meals in restaurants and go back to the cinema. Oh. Sex with strangers is permissible, but only outside and only if they’re animals.

But with all that, or rather, with all those questions unanswered, I don’t fucking care. I’m getting vaccinated and I’m happy as can be. I just have to stay covid free for 5 days.

Yours (soon to be) with antibodies, hopefully

A xxxx

America is burning! Not, sort of, literally, they didn’t set any fires. That’s probably today. But metaphorically, the ‘home of democracy’ is under mob rule. The only problem being that the leader of that mob is, currently, the (once) elected president of that country. Normally civil insurgence occurs to overthrow a dastardly, vile, corrupt and evil leader. In this case he’s leading the charge. Inciting the masses. Inflaming the plebs. And unlike most ‘plebs’ in the world, America’s arrive carrying semi-automatic weapons, dressed in bullet-proofs, combat gear, with helmets, gas masks, the full… 9 yards… 9mm, the full metal jackets.

And this ‘flash mob’, has been on waiting since Election Day. Which is why they could arrive so quickly that they outnumbered all the police and security. In Washington DC. Where, I’m guessing, there’s rather a lot of such people.

The ‘average’ Trump supporter is some poor misguided wretch from Alabama. These were not average. These terrorists were emphatically ‘sub-normal’. And all ‘on standby’, as they have been since Hitler was overthrown. Right wing paramilitaries. America’s full of ‘em. They’re all unemployed and arrived with military precision, the confederate flags on their Chevy pick-ups blowing as one and grouping like a SWAT team (‘hut, hut, hut, hut, hut…’)

But Trump handled it so well. Having fired them all up, he waited til the Capitol was completely taken over and Joe Biden had implored him, on national tv, to call off the dogs before the army goes in and nukes ‘em. Waste of a good building that would be.

Narcissistic personalities inhabit their own reality. It’s not a matter of mere delusion for imbeciles like Trump. Theirs is the ONLY possible reality. And thus, poor Don has invented a fiction for himself in which he could only possibly have lost the election if it was unfair. And this he believes in the face of any trivial ‘facts’, like the opposition getting more votes in every state and his own party declaring ‘it wasn’t even close’.

The idiots who perpetrated yesterday’s madness are the same ‘alt-right’ he’s been courting since he invited the KKK grand poobah for tea before the election he won. And ‘alt-right’ is an anagram of ‘Black lives don’t matter’. If you’re a bit dyslexic.

I’d like to feel sorry for Trump. But yesterday he elevated himself from ‘total asshole’ to ‘totally dangerous, oblivious, deluded and moronic asshole with no care or understanding of the damage he inflicts’.

Happy Thursday, vive la revolucion!!!!

A xxxx

I don’t know if this is an extension of Tier 4, morphing into an official lockdown, or a different thing altogether, like, forget Tier 4, we’re over that and NOW we’re having a proper lockdown. Not like the last one, that was shit. Like the FIRST one. The proper one. Except for two important differences. They’re still playing football matches and places of worship are not closing. Which is essentially just one thing really. Football is the thing we worship, love, adore, exalt and praise (and spit, swear, abuse women, chant racism and drag knuckles, but that is NOT for this conversation!) so our ‘places of worship’ are a bit different to those mentioned in Coronavirus rule, number 42,782,075,881.23, but what does Boris know? In fact the only difference between today (last day of Tier 4) and tomorrow (first day of 3rd ‘lockdown’) is that I CAN’T PLAY TENNIS. Unless I’m ‘elite’, which many feel is a worthy term, or ‘disabled’, which even more might find appropriate. So as I don’t really do ‘that kind of worship’, all I have left is football.

But this is turning into the best season of all time. Because Christmas is now behind us and normally, we’re already looking at the Champions Elect as they smile smugly down the table from their 18-point ‘cushion’, defying other teams to challenge their unquestionable supremacy. But this season is different. No clear leaders. No cushions, no big ‘gaps’, just lots of teams all within just a few points of each other. And all way above Arsenal. I’m going to say that we now have a top 8. Ok, the 9th team in fact have the same number of points as the 8th but as that team is Chelsea, I’ve decided that it is my arbitrary fucking line and I’ll draw it where I fucking want!

But no fat lady is singing currently. And is unlikely to stoke up her voice for a long while. As every team seems to go through waves of form. Spurs were ‘unplayable’ for a good while. Then suddenly they became playable again. Hopefully that’s over with the fab win against Leeds on Saturday. Liverpool are still top, but not in any meaningful way after losing at Southampton last night. Who, in turn, enter that ‘elite’ top 8. Chelsea appear to be heading down whilst lowly Arsenal are temporarily heading in the opposite direction. Which is a shame because conversations involving Arsenal and relegation are my all time favourites. Manchester City are threatening but still aren’t quite as they have been previously. And Manchester United have shot up the table but hopefully will revert back to their former hapless form pretty soon. Leaving Spurs and Leicester to fight it out. I will mention Aston Villa because I have to, and now have done so, fulfilling all obligations.

But first, Brentford tonight. The Carabao Cup semi-final. Doesn’t get much bigger than that.

Happy Lockdown

A xxxx