Andy's Glasses

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

Let me tell you about MY Joey. Little Jojo, who turned 2 this week. Because what I have to tell may shock, may horrify or may even having you calling the Police. You see Joey is the most adoringly lovable little boy ever. And I state that with total certainty, with the statistics drawn from a massive sample of… one. He’s the only little boy I know. But he’s sweet. He’s cuddly. He asks for a ‘hug’. He’s beautiful. Big dark eyes, head of light curls, he is just wonderful. Bright, obviously. Speaks fantastically, when his sister allows, and has one quarter my genes so has more ‘genius’ in him than most. The other 3 grandparents I’m not prepared to comment upon without a lawyer present.

So that’s Joey. Well, one half of Joey. The other half is more sinister, more evil, more violent, more… he’s just a thug. A hooligan. A terrorist. He is Jeckyl and Hyde without any medicine. If they made a Magnificent Eight, he be the last one. He’d be Mr Blue in Reservoir Dogs. Mainly because every colour you show him, currently, is ‘blue’. He breaks things. Examines them, works out how they work or what goes where, then just breaks them. His violent tendencies are legendary. Suffice to say: ya don’t mess with Joey!

Yesterday I was in his garden. Involved in a Lila-game, I was a mermaid. Ok, imagination stretch required, but Lila has no issues with that. And she, the ‘wicked pirate’, had trapped me in her net. A little garden football goal. And as I lay there, ‘trapped’, I felt something. Joey had joined in the game. And was kicking me in the head. Normally if I’m anywhere near the floor he’s jumping on my back, but the goal was in the way so he did the next best thing. Kick the shit out of Papa Andy.

I didn’t actually realise until I heard his mummy shouting at him to stop doing that! Then I laughed. Because it was so funny. So Joey. He would only attack someone in such a way who he felt comfortable with. Or, perhaps, knowing that ‘telling off’ is not in that victim’s repertoire. I saw it as a sign of love. No greater love has any man than kicking his grandfather in the head.

Yours deludedly

A xxxx

David Baddeil wrote a rather interesting book recently called ‘Jews don’t count’. It’s a rather novel way of looking at anti-semitism and how no-one considers it as ‘racism’, not really, even up to (shadow) Government level. Because although Jews are, by any possible definition, an ‘ethnic minority’, we don’t get any of the usual benefits that all others enjoy in terms of (normally quite obsessive) protection from slurs, slights, abuse, violence, desecration and discrimination. If I were stand up in Hyde Park next to a person as they attack Gazans for having the audacity to attack an innocent nation with thousands of lethal rockets, I’d be lambasted, cancelled, vilified on social media (even though I don’t use it). Especially if I was famous/political.

Yet Corbyn and McDonnell joined a protest last week which attacked Israel as ‘worse than Hitler’, called the defence of its people ‘another holocaust’ and even went so far as to say that ‘Marks and Spencer is like the Israeli embassy on every high street’. Even though it hasn’t been ‘Jewish owned’ for decades now. Diane Abbot was also there, but she really doesn’t count. In fact, as she proved more than once, she can’t count. Not past 10 anyway. Or, ‘7’, as she calls it.

So where do hard-lefties buy their underwear? That’s the question. If M&S is ‘boycotted’, where does Corbyn buy his pants, socks and vests now that there’s no more army surplus stores around? An interesting question that will be debated for years to come.

The long and short of it is that if people have really stupid views about Jews, then fuck ‘em. I don’t care. Because even if I did care, I’m not so daft as to think I might be able to change those views with one, carefully considered, 15-word sentence. And if they have stereotypical prejudices, as Corbyn does, then fuck him too. And just embrace the fact that he is an ignorant pig. It’s really easy.

Yet at Cambridge University they’ve now installed some new report-a-transgression system by which students, or staff, can ‘report’ any little incident in which they perceive some form of prejudice might possibly have occurred. And by ‘prejudice’ this is emphatically the modern interpretation, meaning any positive reference to anyone or anything that had any remote connection to the Empire or, God forbid, slavery!! Anything that even implies dilution of the Black Lives Matter ideology, or questions any Muslim religious or cultural concept. I’m guessing that jokes about the Irish, Polish or Chinese are definitely reportable. Obviously greater tolerance will be shown to those slagging off Jews. Obviously.

This is a very positive step. Encouraging wokeness to the level when every sane person might just as well pack up and go home. It attacks the right of any kind of freedom of speech and gives Universities, once the epicentres of free thinking, reason to just ban or ‘cancel’ anyone not adhering to the prevailing zeitgeist and questioning its views. It is a cross between the Cultural Revolution in China, the Spanish Inquisition and the KGB. I hope it makes them as happy as it makes them blinkered to open-mindedness.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

Who would have thought that in the middle of a fucking global pandemic, we’d have the cheek to start doubting Albert Einstein? I mean, really? Einstein? He who has never been proved wrong, despite 43,573,865 degree and doctoral dissertations using ever-increasing computer power and vastly improved universe understanding, all failing to undermine one word (ok, one ‘number’, Einstein didn’t really do ‘words’) the great man spoke. How dare they question him now? Because of ‘dark matter’, that’s how. And how they’ve now mapped it across the galaxy and… and… and it don’t act like Alby said it would. In his maffs. In his revered ‘theory of general relativity’, which would produce more ‘clusters’ of the stuff, rather than the more even distribution that they in fact have found. And just because Albert virtually invented dark matter, just him and God one day in a coffee shop in Zurich in 1904, doesn’t apparently give him any control over how it actually ‘is’. In real life. Einstein never looked to the heavens. He looked down at a pen and paper. No observation, just sums. I reckon quite a lot of them. And because he actually met Marilyn Monroe, my money’s on Einstein. Watch this space. Literally so.

And we’re living in a world of variants. Dominic Cummings is a human variant. Not like a normal human, but a nasty, vindictive, cheating, lying, Asperger-ish human. Slagged off the health secretary something rotten. Not that he doesn’t deserve slagging off but some of those accusations! OMG! Not testing old people when they leave hospital before submerging them back into care homes without testing was perhaps not Matt Hancock’s wisest move. But claiming that ‘tens of thousands of lives could have been saved if the government had blah, blah, blah…’ is just so much hindsight bollocks. No-one knew. Not Boris, not Hancock and certainly not Cummings.

Coronavirus is so named because it resembles a crown. Albeit a spherical one. With little spikes on, giving it the ‘corona’. The Brazilian variant had spikes shaved to leave just a central, linear spike. The Moroccan variant was more cylindrical than spherical and looked like a Fez. And the Indian variant, the most dangerous of the moment, under a microscope, looks like Chicken Tikka Massala with a peshwari naan, pilau rice and onion bhaji with aloo gobi on the side.

Happy Friday

A xxxx