Andy's Glasses

Having managed to avoid mooses (I know, it shouldn’t have the final ‘s’, I just think it should), all summer in Newfoundland where they’re ’everywhere!!!!’, in vast numbers (yeah, right, figment of the Canadian tourist board’s imagination), I instead make my own. Though being European, I call it ‘mousse’. And it tastes of chocolate. And is, quite frankly, the best chocolate mousse in the world. Here’s the recipe.

Take: 6 eggs,
300 grams of Bournville chocolate (you can use other chocolate but only if you’re stupid or want it to taste like shit)
A litre of boiled water,
A pinch of salt (to fluff the eggwhites, innit)
1 Lila
1 Joey
1 bath to put 2 chocolate covered children into afterwards.
And bowls. Lots of bowls.

A friend showed me this recipe and it’s easy and brilliant.

Separate the eggs. No, I don’t mean shells, I mean whites and yokes, right? Beat the whites so they go white and fluffy. I’m sure there’s a term for this, but no-one told me.

Get the children to fight over who breaks up all the chocolate, eventually seeming to use 324 grams up but there’s only 300 on the scales. And the kids have full mouths. Go figure.

Pour boiling water over the chocolate. I’ve found doing this in some kind of vessel works much better than pouring it all over the kitchen table. Leave it for a ‘while’ (just how long depends how lucky you’re feeling) then pour off virtually all the water. The chocolate, amazingly, stays in the pan. Then you stir it like fuck. This is the man’s way of melting chocolate. Those of a more ‘gender fluid’ outlook may use a ‘Bain-Marie’.

Mix the chocolate into the yokes and once more, stir like your life depended on it. Keep little fingers OUT of the mixture. Which you then fold into the whites.

This creates 3 pans/bowls in various stages of chocolatisation. Which again need to be fought over and the contents distributed over little hands, arms, faces and most of the kitchen. And those standing in it.

I would have taken a photo but I was too covered in chocolate to pick up a phone and too busy breaking up fights about who has what utensils to lick.

Make it. You’ll thank me. The rental terms for Lila and Joey can be found in the link below. Because, quite frankly, I couldn’t have done it without them. (HELP MEEEEEEE!!!!!)

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

I know a lotta yous are worried cos I’ve got me budget comin’ up in a few weeks and you’re concerned about the rumours wot are being spread by the right wing press. So I wanna reassure yous, to show you wot a kind’n’considerate Chancellor I am, even though I don’t seem to be particerlerry bright.

The main problem is the previous government. All the problems are ‘the previous government’. Winnin’ the election after that lot was not a good thing. Would’a been much better to have won an election when the economy was rolling along swimmingly. Would’a been better off not winnin’. Then I wouldn’t have to keep makin’ excuses. Which, I get, seem more and more stupid with each repetition. Specially as we’ve been in power over a year and it’s all gettin’ worse.

The main problems for the economy are: Brexit, the last government, the Crimean war, Churchill, rich people and Chelsea football club.

But we inherited a maaaaasssssiiiiiiive black hole. More than 16 trillion, billion, thousand and 37p. And the way to fill that hole is by growing the economy. And the best way to do that is to piss as much away in benefits as is possible. And then, we need to protect the workers. And the NHS, obviously, all bow.

The other ways to grow the economy are relatively simple. All you have to do is find out who is acherley responsible for creating jobs, wealth and all that range of wonderful things, an’ tax the shit out of ‘em. Tax their companies, their pensions, their houses, and keep taxin’ ‘em until they leave the country and go create jobs in Dubai or Monaco. An’ then, raise employer-paid National Insurance contributions to ensure businesses are priced out of employing new workers. Who we’ve now given a massive raft of new protections and security to enable them to be off sick with ‘mental health issues’ from the very day they start work, and stay ‘signed off’ for the next six years on full pay, without ever having to turn up.

So that’s what we’re doing. Taxing anyone with any clue wot’s going on and giving it away to the refugees who come here to use the NHS.

I appreciate that the stock markets are interested in what happens to the economy, which is why I’m not going to go all ‘Liz Truss’ and upset them. Instead I’m going to tax them.

To ensure the growth this country needs. For the future!!!

Rachel from Accounts xxxx

When Spurs drew with Wolves, it was tragic. When we lost, again at home, to Villa, it was catastrophic. But those terms of despair relate to the football, to the statistical improbability, to the sheer what should and shouldn’t happen in football. Even though it has a habit of happening. Especially at Spurs.

And whilst we’re not exactly ‘cool’ with that shit, while we’re still totally pissed off at our team who can go and stuff Man City at the Etihad one week and lose an ‘easy three points’ (as if) at home the following one, ‘that’, as they say ‘is football’. It’s about the underdogs always having a chance to win. It’s about the inconsistency of all teams, the unpredictability of the game. Why we all love it. Apparently.

But what Thomas Frank needs to understand is that there are some games which are not subject to normal laws. Not the laws of statistics, of probability, nor logic. These are the matches which, for every single Spurs fan, are deeply personal. They’re not subject to analysis as much as emotion.

Obviously we never want to lose to Arsenal. You wouldn’t, would you. No-one ever wants to lose to anyone, but your ‘local rivals’, your ‘sworn enemies’, it hurts to lose such a match. Even though they are pretty good at the moment.

And then there’s Chelsea. The team every ‘neutral’ hates. Even most non-neutrals hate them. For the simple reason that they are hateful. Yet we hold Chelsea in a special place in our dark hearts, at Spurs. We have a ‘history’. Oh my, such a history. Yesterday’s game was the first Chelsea fixture in a long while that’s ended with 22 players on the pitch. Normally it’s about 17. Probably fair to say that they hate us as much as we hate them. Fine by me. If they loved us we’d be doing something wrong. Or sending out mixed messages.

The problem with yesterday’s match was that we have no excuses. No claims of unfairness. Ok, it was brutal, flared up a few times, inevitably, but basically we were the creators of our own demise. The only actually creative moment Spurs had was in manufacturing Chelsea’s goal by a combination of incompetence and sheer arrogance. (Refusal to ‘clear your lines’, preferring to ‘play out from the back’ is nothing but arrogance). We posed no threat. Not to them anyway. We were appalling. The high point of the game was Joey’s burger-and-chips.

So yes, Thomas, that fucking hurt. And I’m not specifically blaming you, but I just have to ask: WTF???

Watching Man City as I write this, I’ve realised that all we really need is Erling Haaland. That’s all.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

The alarm went off this morning at 7.20, as it does every saturday. When I go downstairs and make tea, bring it to my dear wife, because I’m the best husband in the entire history of husbands, along with the newspaper. Ok, also because when she goes swimming four mornings a week at 6.45, she brings me tea and my newspaper. Which she irons before presenting it to me. Or not. Anyway, that’s a normal Saturday and I drink my tea whilst getting into character for tai chi. Relaxed and reading the sports section, sipping tea, knocking over the furniture doing a few side kicks. Not too relaxing for Mel, I grant you.

Today wasn’t normal. The alarm went off. Alarms are possibly the most evil things in the world. Including those formerly known as Prince. So I rolled over and…

“ITS 7.50!!!!”, Mel cried out, shaking me out of my slumber. That’s the time I normally leave. No time for tea. No time for anything. Brush teeth, dress, go. And I did. Drove fast. Ok, I always drive fast, don’t know any other way. Arrived with 3 minutes to spare. Oh, that’s ok then.

No. it isn’t ok. Because I felt… discombobulated. I felt… famished (that’s not as in ‘hungry’, but the Yiddish word (‘fer-mished”)meaning… discombobulated, but more so. It means being discombobulated in ways non-Yiddish speakers could never understand), I felt… strange. A bit disconnected from the world. And I needed to connect. You can’t throw someone on the floor when you’re not connected to them in some way.

So the question is: was this due to lack of tea? Or just the rushing out of bed when I was patently, ‘not ready’ to get up. (Spoiler: I’m never ready to get out of bed). Was it the lack of my customary caffeine, tannins and all the other shit that a ‘cuppa’ delivers, which left me in a universe which looked like the usual one but with me not quite part of it? Or was it that I’d been dragged instantly out of sleep without time to ‘emerge’ in a more natural, timely way?

I actually think it’s a combination of the two. Plus the psychological addiction I have to our national drink. I love tea. I drink it all day long. Only stopping long enough to go and get my morning coffee from ‘my boys’ (and gels) in the sandwich bar. I actually go there for the banter and the opportunity to insult and abuse both Spaniards and Portuguese people before the working day has begun. And the coffee is just my excuse for being there.

I shall therefore attribute my deep feelings of morning malaise to the lack of tea. Because, basically, I have a drink problem.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

The answer to the question is: ‘when he’s a total c-‘, when he’s an obnoxious, arrogant, unapologetic, remorseless, unsympathetic cretin. You act like that, they take away your very Princey-ness. They can do that. His brother can do that. And he did. Because whatever good the Royals may have been doing; waving really nicely, shaking hands most sincerely, smiling benevolently, it all became secondary to Andrew’s historic antics an his choice of old friends. And that can’t continue. So Charles kicked him out of his home and un-Princed him. Andrew now has only his testicles to call his own. Only because no-one else wants them.

Life in the public eye can be demanding. Not only are higher standards expected of you, but every utterance you’ve ever publicly made can be brought back and used against you. Like… f’rinstance, if you were, say, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and you commit a crime. In fact a major crime and an even more major crime.

The first being that not holding a landlord license, which are all the rage this year, but only in about 4 boroughs, is a crime. It carries a criminal conviction. To such an extent that this very day I applied for mine for the little flat we rent out in the borough of Brent. After I read that you can fined £41,000 (where the f- do they get that from???) and earn a slot on the ‘rogue landlords’ list. Which is like the sex-offenders register for the marginally less sleazy. It became mandatory in April but I forgot. Even though, like Rachel Reeves (revised version), my agents told me about it.

The second of her crimes is way more serious. She either lied, made shit up or just changed her story. From ‘I never knew you needed a license’ to ‘my agents said they would sort it out for me’. The second of which immediately makes a lie of the first. And, of course, when Lady Rachel was a mere ‘shadow minister’ in Covid, she accused leniency showed to then chancellor, Rishi Sunak, for breaking Covid rules, as being ‘ONE LAW FOR THEM AND ONE FOR US!!!’ (Her exclamation marks). She then demanded his resignation.

So I hereby accuse the Chancellor of the Exchequer of being a lying, cheating, ‘rogue landlord’, hypocritical, two-faced toe-rag. And demand her resignation. Any time between now and the upcoming budget would be fine with me.

Because the PM ‘forgiving her’ is just so much total bollocks. Can everyone who fails to get a license get a Prime Ministerial ‘pardon’ then? Or, better still, he can pay the £640 license fee for me.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

So King Charles is ‘at work’, on Monday, walking round Lichfield Cathedral, smiling, shaking hands, waving, usual Royal busy-work, and some rude, nasty, anti-royal, disrespectful, probably Chelsea-supporting, moron shouts out abuse regarding Prince Andrew and asking whether MY KING!!!, His Royal Highness-ness, knew about the Epstein link and implied that the King of all England may have been in some way complicit!!! A cover-up!!! How dare an impudent commoner challenge the most Royal person in the world? So they duly frog-marched him off, where his venomous words could no longer upset His Majesty and Mrs Majesty, and hopefully took the fucker to the torture chamber at the Tower.

It’s an interesting question though. Did Charlie know about Andy’s… involvement with ‘that man!!!’ or not? And if so, to what extent was his involvement? Yet, Andy is such a consistent fucking liar he probably glossed over the important parts. Like Virginia Giuffre. Who’s important parts he also glossed over. Allegedly. I make no judgments. But we’ll never know.

Should ‘we’ make the Prince homeless? I’m 100% behind the ‘fuck, yeah!!!’ brigade on that. Except… Andrew’s lease, which has him paying no ‘rent’ as such, had him pay for renovations when he moved in. Seven-and-a-half million worth of renovations. Which, if averaged over the following, 20 years of ‘no rent’, still amounts to £375 grand a year. I would say ‘he’s paid his way’, but we all know mummy ‘helped’ him.

What he should do is move far, far away. Papua New Guinea maybe. Terra del Fuego. And, in the interests of public hygiene, he should take Fergie with him. I think though, in light of what we know about Andrew, Dubai is definitely the place for him. It could have been made (and pretty much was) for a money-hungry, worthless, deviant scumbag like our Prince. (Warning: the ‘Prince’ bit may change in due course).

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

Under our new manager, Thomas Frank, Spurs have opted for a revolutionary method of team selection. The model is familiar in NFL, where your team members are role specific. So your ‘defence’ team is 11 completely different geezers from your ‘offence’ team. Then you have 11 more on ‘special teams’. And a few spares. So Spurs now have a ‘home’ team and an ‘away’ team. What confuses the issue a bit is that the two teams call themselves by the same names. So you have one ‘Pedro Porro’, shirt number ’23’, for home games and a completely different ‘Pedro Porro’, shirt number ’23’ for away ones. Frank has installed this system to cope with the fundamental differences between playing at home, in Tottenham, and away, in foreign lands (Liverpool) and unfriendly places (Manchester). In that home games are generally… errrr… more… sort of ‘home-ish’ and the away ones… further away. Each has its own and unique set of problems.

Obviously we’re still in ‘prototype’ mode, currently, and the results are mixed. The ‘away team’ are quite brilliant. Stuffed Manchester City, thrashed Brighton and, just yesterday, showed the necessary contempt for the ‘we’ve never lost in our new stadium’ arrogance at Everton. Well, they have lost there now. Defeated quite magnificently by the Spurs Away 11. NOT to be confused with any superficial physical and nominal similarities to the 11 hapless, imbecilic, misguided, clueless and gutless morons who lost at home to Villa last weekend. And got beaten by bottom of the table Wolves in their previous attempt to try and play what they loosely call ‘football’.

So the answer is simple; just play the ‘away team’ every week, sell the entire home team and stop ‘shutting up shop’ when we have a lead in the game. And we’ll win the league!!!

Because if we don’t, its looking, even this early in the season, like it could be the doomsday scenario. Arsena-geddon. Liverpool have completely lost the plot, Manchester City go from ‘TOTALLY UNBEATABLE!!!’ to ‘heap of shit’ in a matter of days and Chelsea, thankfully, aren’t in the mix. So the main threats seem to be Spurs (hmmmm…), Sunderland and Bournemouth.

Well I’m up for the challenge. Not sure if my team is, but I’m fucking ON IT!!!

Happy increase-my-medication Monday

A xxxx

It’s totally amazing. The event of a lifetime. The most ‘must see’ event for 500 years!!

Pope Leo (little bald geezer, white dress, big hat) and King Charles (little grey geezer, dark suit, crown) are praying together!! At the same time! Like… together!!! For the first time in 500 years, an English monarch and a pontiff are doing a kind of ‘duet’ to God. Simultaneously. And at the same time. In the Sistine Chapel. They could have done it at White Hart Lane but instead opted for that most wondrously opulent place in all of Catholic opulence, so they can check out Michelangelo’s famous paintings.

A big fuss has been made. Which I like. Two geezers, ‘bonding’, over a quick pray, then out for lunch. But the thing is, praying is communing with whichever God you choose to believe in. It is possibly the most singularly singular, personal, internal thing any person can ever do. Other than fantasising about Labour front benchers involved in activities with donkeys and maple syrup. Praying is just about YOU and HIM/HER/THEY. Whoever you’re standing next to is completely irrelevant, when you’re doing it. Unless it’s ‘competitive praying’ and you both score points and the loser gets struck dead by lightening. Otherwise, basically, you pray ‘alone’, whether you’re in a church full of people or sitting on the toilet.

Which may account why such an event only comes around every half-millennium, because it is pretty much pointless and meaningless. Maybe it takes 500 years to forget that bit, so you do it again.

Charlie and Leo also pray to different Gods. Our King is the head of the Church of England, which is Protestant, thus his God wears a hair shirt, a scruffy beard and has no place for ostentatious displays. Leo’s God has a fuck-off, diamond-encrusted solid gold cross round his neck, 4 inches long. He dresses like a rapper and drives a Lamborghini, all the while swinging incense around in a ruby and emerald smoker thing.

But you know what; vive la difference! As they say in Burnley. Let them pray together. There are worse things they could be doing. Like discussing Charles’s family or historical child abuse. Given those options, I’d be praying too. But to MY God. Who’s the oldest of them all. But still plays tennis. And listens to old rock music on YouTube.

Maybe I’ll call them, see if they fancy a ‘threesome’ in the Sistine?

Happy Thursday

A(men) xxx

According to heroin addicts, one of the few addictions I’ve managed to avoid, the first time you ‘use’ gives you such an amazing ‘high’ that the rest of your ‘career’ is spent trying to relive that. And, obviously, failing. Tragically.

Chocolate’s the same. An addiction I know plenty about. When I was 10 months old (guessing, obvs) someone, probably my father, put a bit of chocolate in my mouth. And changed my life/ruined me forever. That would have definitely been Cadburys. Because in nineteen-fifty-whatever, there was simply nothing else. Ok, there was ‘Terry’s’ but no-one liked that.

Then along came the ‘chocolate revolution’ in 1993 (randomly selected, like all the best ‘research’) and people actually started questioning Cadburys and its constitution. “It’s not chocolate!!!!”, they cried, “it’s just SUGAR!!!!” To which I immediately thought: ‘yeah? And your point is??’

There followed ‘the wilderness years’ where no-one ever gave you a bar of fruit-and-nut, when they came round. It all degenerated into ‘Green & Blacks 85% Cocoa!!!’, and horrible, hard, bitter, inedible shit unworthy of the name Cadburys created. That really wasn’t what the Mexicans had in mind when they invented cocoa in 1500BC. They wanted a Flake. Ok, they put cocoa into savoury food, which is understandable because 100% cocoa is not for consumption but to be used more like cinnamon or ginger.

Anyway, the Times, today, this pic. A group of ‘experts’ have rated chocolate options. What they are ‘experts’ in, they don’t say. I’m guessing skiing. Possibly astronomy. They’re certainly not ‘experts’ in chocolate. Not because they disagree with me, (obviously, or we wouldn’t be talking about it) but because I deeply question their paradigm and their criteria. They’re judging these bars by their organic-ness, FFS, their lack of sugar, their disapproval of palm oil, their ingredients, their stuck-up, know-nothing preconceptions whilst missing the real point by a million miles.

ITS ABOUT TASTE!!! ITS ABOUT ‘THE EXPERIENCE’ ON YOUR TONGUE. ITS ABOUT ENJOYMENT!!!!

These are the people who label all really lovely food as ‘ultra-high-processed’ just because it wasn’t plucked from a nearby bush and eaten unwashed. Slugs’n’all. These people are ‘dieticians!’ For whom there really should be ‘registers’ to protect the public. Like paedophiles. They approach everything from a reductionist viewpoint. Forgetting that the ‘whole’ is far greater than the sum of the parts, when food is concerned.

So you can take your measly 2 stars given to the best chocolate that the world will ever know (even when owned by Crafts) and replace it with the confectionary equivalent of lettuce.

Glad I’ve got that off my chest.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

Virginia Giuffre’s posthumous memoir comes out today. I read it. Ok, I can’t read it, its not available here. Not sure I want to anyway. I like reading happy books. Like Stephen King. Slow Horses. Not the memoirs of a dead bird famous for shaggin’ a Prince.

But in fact, its much more than that. Its a truly tragic story of a lovely girl used and abused by exceptionally rich and powerful men for their pleasure and gratification. Not the sort of men who might have the teeniest shred of empathy sufficient to understand that what they were doing for their selfish enjoyment would scar their victims. For life. As all child abuse does. It is truly the worst crime. So much so that those convicted for it have to be kept away from the prison’s ‘general population’. Because even murderers, rapists, serial killers and burglars find child abusers immoral. They steal the lives of children.

Virginia Giuffre never got over what was done to her by Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein, Prince Andrew and possibly Donald Trump. Virginia was ‘spotted’ whilst working at Mar-a-Lago, when she was just 16. And whisked away to become a ‘private masseuse’ for Epstein.

I always want to know what the parents were doing at this time. Same as the ‘grooming scandals’ over here. Or Michael Jackson’s ‘young men friends’ who frequently had ‘sleep overs’ with the superstar. What the fuck were the parents doing? Who would allow a 16 year old girl to be flown up to New York to provide ‘rub downs’ for a sleazy billionaire? Either Epstein and Maxwell were amazingly credible in their duplicitous ways or the fact that it was probably Epstein’s private jet flying her up which provided a temptation they couldn’t resist. I make no judgments. But reserve the right to ‘imply’ a few.

Virginia was so scarred she never got over it. And finally killed herself. At 41. Either because of those terrible mental scars or because of the fact that getting people to believe her was so incredibly difficult in the face of all the money and power calling her a liar.

Her siblings are now trying to get Andrew’s ‘Prince’ title ‘removed’. Apparently only King Charles can do this. I mean, whatever his (so many) shortcomings (no pun), Andrew was born to a monarch, therefore is a Prince. Personally, I couldn’t give a shit either way. His title is now ‘The Right Disgraceful’, and whether you put ‘Andrew’ after that or ‘Prince Andrew’, the message is still the same. The crimes were bad. The arrogance worse still.

Happy Monday

A xxxx