Andy's Glasses

Ok, so I have a bit of a problem. With Easter Eggs. An obsession. Addiction. Thus when Easter finally arrives it creates a panic. Because that signifies the ‘end of life, as we know it’ and there’ll be no more Easter eggs til next year! What we (me, myself and I) call ‘the doomsday scenario!’ When I’m forced onto the wagon of abstinence by thoughtless and cruel retailers. But the other side of that Easter coin is that the remaining stock has to go. You can’t sell Easter eggs outside Easter. It’s agains the law.

I walked past the little Tesco on Fleet Street yesterday on my way to work, not needing anything. Then I stopped, walked back and went in. And I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. As I was faced with an Easter egg wall. A truly massive display, in prime position, of Cadbury’s Easter eggs. Piled up, the width of the aisle, must have been over a hundred. And marked with a sign that said: “50p”. Holy shit. Or perhaps, ‘holy grail’. Fifty pence for the ultimate ‘superfood’. But lacking my wheelbarrow, forklift, Transit van or even a bag, I decided to return later. Which I did. And by then there were about 15 left. So I bought 6. Had to. Couldn’t get more in the bag.

Yet this is the weird bit. There aren’t any people around in the City. But like, none. The odd soul. Tumbleweed. And me. So where did all MY fucking Easter eggs go? Who else bought them? When you don’t see more than 6 people on the street all day. When the little Sainsbury’s along the road hasn’t even bothered to reopen since the first lockdown. And yet 85 eggs had disappeared. Did the staff eat them? A few are pretty hefty. But even I’d struggle to eat, say, 20 in a day. I called the police. Then I called X-Files. Disappearing Easter eggs is a paranormal phenomenon. And is very worrying in case some alien motherfucker from Mars pulls up in his flying saucer over my kitchen and uses his tractor beam to relieve me of some of my hard-earned and well-protected stock!!! War of the World’s? More: War of the Eggs. And I would win. 

Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that there aren’t seven-legged, three-headed, green-and-yellow monsters from Mars who love chocolate. 

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

Ok so its the back end of the football season. The final run in. The exiting bit. When the decisions get made. Who goes up, who goes down, who suffer the indignity of mid-tableness, who wins the cups and, the biggest of all: who goes into Europe next year. So this is what you do, if you’re still fortunate (mainly due to the misfortune of others) enough to be ‘in contention’ for something. You win your fucking games. That’s it really. There’s hours of debate, endless billions of wasted words analysing all sorts of statistics and records and averages; all of which means precisely fuck all. All you need to do is win.

West Bromwich Albion showed exactly that with Saturday’s visit to that portal to Hell known as Stamford Bridge. Chelsea with their new, super-boring manager, have not been beaten in 14 matches. 12 of them they haven’t even conceded a goal. Numbers which have the statisticians drooling. West Brom are floundering. As they have been all season but worse. Because they brought in Sam Allardyce to ‘keep them up’. It’s what he does. Normally. He is the absolute ‘break glass in case of emergency’ manager. He won’t excite the fans. He won’t play like Barcelona. But if its sheer, bloody-minded pragmatism mixed with just a necessary soupçon of extreme violence to consolidate it, which you want or desperately need; Sam’s your man. Yet he had thus far failed to ‘secure’ anything. Leaving West Brom second from bottom and total shit.

A match made for the bookies. So obvious.

And yet it wasn’t. It was wonderful, marvellous, delightful and the kind of game that makes you realise why you can still love the beautiful game, just for matches like that. Because West Brom didn’t just defy the odds. They took those odds and incinerated them. They were simply brilliant to watch and deadly in effect. Ok, Chelsea were down to 10 men but that wasn’t West Brom’s fault. So they won 5-2. And it was simply fantastic.

Then Arsenal lost to Liverpool. Which didn’t do Spurs many favours, league-wise, but is always nice to see. Just because…

So the scene was set. Regal Spurs went to lowly, shitty, awful, hopeless Newcastle. And a win would have put us 4th in the league. Where we want to be, need to be and DESERVE to be, just because…

And we couldn’t hold on to our 2-1 lead and ended up with a draw. And what fucking use is that??? I didn’t even stay home for the end, instead going round to torture Joey (above). I needed to ‘vent’ on someone.

I’m going to start another #metoo movement. Perhaps a #methree or a #mefourfourtwo for football fans who are victims of historical and current abuse from their clubs.

Happy Monday (grrrrrrrrrr…)

A xxxx

That BITCH!!!!!! Meghan Markle/Windsor/Duchess is in yet MORE trouble! As she should be for upsetting Piers Morgan. Oh, and the Queen. Prince Philip. Well, all the royals, except Harry. She invested money into a company promoted by ‘bestie’, Oprah, which makes Oatmeal lattes. For the pretentiousness of that alone she should be shot, but in fact, it gets WORSE! Much worse. The oatmeal in question (what’s wrong with fucking milk? But what do I know?) comes from Xinjiang in China. Where the Uighur Muslims are persecuted, enslaved, murdered and brainwashed (not necessarily in that order) by the Chinese in possibly the greatest human rights/ethnic cleansing tragedy since Bosnia. And thus Meghan, the queen of ‘ethically sourced’ and ‘woke’ and all things nice, is getting cheap oatmeal made by Uighur slaves.

And there’s only one thing worse than buying slave produce. Which is probably not buying slave produce.

Boycotting is the ‘big company’ version of ‘cancelling’. It happens when nations or corporations decide that we, as a nation, as a collective conscience, as a group of companies, must make a moral stance against something appalling. And just like cancelling, it is self-protected by the wonderfully unarguable: if you question this then YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM, FULL STOP.

If the Uighur slaves are no longer needed to produce stuff because no-one’s buying it, they will probably just be murdered or sent to ‘camps’ from which, in China, no-one ever emerges. As happens to thousands of them anyway. At least the slaves are still alive. But you’re not allowed to use any type of sense or logic or argument of any kind against such issues. I fully expect all my statues to be pulled down or defaced for just writing this.

There has been a ‘boycott’ on Israel products for years. Other than the really good stuff, like iPhone components and medicines that people, even the ultra-woke, can’t live without. So all stuff from ‘the occupied West Bank’ is boycotted. As a consequence, Ahava, the company who basically shovel mud out of the Dead Sea and sell it in Selfridges and Harrods for £75 a sachet as the ultimate skin/beauty aid, were ‘boycotted’ for producing ‘on the West Bank’ and were thus forced to relocate onto the Israeli side of the Dead Sea. Which resulted in the loss of gainful employment for hundreds of Palestinians.

It’s sometimes good to look at ‘the big picture’ rather than at some thumbnail sketch hastily drawn in a pub in Hoxton by a really ‘woke’ geezer with a beard down to his naval, just to see if you’re totally right-on behaviour will actually have the desired effect or in reality just the opposite.

I wanted to write about football today. But this just split my yin from my yang in such a way that my chakra was displaced, my karma brutalised and the entire feng shui of my life felt off kilter. So I’ll do it tomorrow. After Spurs have played, possibly a good thing, possibly not, but really, its about Chelsea. It’s all about Chelsea. And the ‘game of the decade’.

Happy sunny Sunday

A xxxx

Lila was 4 yesterday. It was a watershed moment. As 4th birthdays always are. She suddenly picked up the Times and read it, washed up her bowls after lunch and ironed three of my shirts. You know its not true because I haven’t worn 3 ironable shirts in the last year.

For her birthday we took her to choose her very own goldfish. They don’t charge you 5p for the plastic bag filled with water they put it in. Because if you refused to pay it would die. And we took it to her house and introduced ‘Goldie’ to her new home. For the next… for the rest of her life. Or his life. If Goldie is a boy-fish, he’s not very well hung. Anyway, the ‘rest of his life’ could be limited because he/she is living with Joey. Who is as much danger to animate as to inanimate objects. I have the scars to prove that.

Lila is having a party today, just 3 of her friends allowed, in the garden, with a n’entertainer. So yesterday we had a wee tea in our garden. Because ‘outdoor activities’ are allowed since Monday, I decided that ‘eating cake’ is definitely an activity. So we had one of Lila’s great-grandparents present and a great aunt. That way observing the rules totally. The rule of 6. From 3 or 4 households, exercising (their jaws) outside in a group, distanced a bit. Except Joey. Who simply refuses to get the whole ‘2 metre’ thing. On the grounds, as he says, that a ‘metre’ is a random construct invented by a Frenchman and therefore may not work properly on the under-2s. And you can’t argue with that. Well, you could try but he’d have already run off to destroy some daffodils.

But Lila is 4. That is quite amazing. Not because ‘time has flown’ or ‘it’s like she was just born’, but because she acts like she’s 18 and speaks like she’s 25. She is a force of nature.

Happy Good Friday

A xxxx

I played tennis on Monday evening. It was hot. Sunny. Gorgeous. And legal. It was day 1 of the (sodding, fucking) ‘roadmap’ (pause for vomit. Ok, done that) to recovery. And I was recovering. Unfortunately my shoulder wasn’t but that’s another story. It was simply wonderful. Liberating, quite literally. And felt so good. Except the shoulder, but you can’t have everything.

So Tuesday night my martial arts group convened in another, very nearby park. So great to see everybody without their screen-frames, and kick them in their heads. Oh, we weren’t actually allowed to do that. No contact. Social distancing. Groups of 6, possibly up to 15, outdoor only, from 9 different households, children not included, masks optional. Something like that. And as our Grand Master said; how wonderful for us all to be able to take the piss properly once more. Oh, and perform our tai chi in unison (ish) for the squirrels to marvel at.

Light at the end of a very long tunnel. Sunlight, in this case. Which really is the game-changer.

Which you could see by the thousands in Hyde Park yesterday, all rammed together spitting at each other. Well maybe not, but lots of people there. Too many for the new consciousness to cope with. Photos that make you shudder. But sunshine and restrictions really don’t do well together.

Then yesterday evening, the holy grail. The second vaccine. I am Pfizered up to the max. Therefore I must be English. The French are struggling. Mainly with their president being the most obstructive tosser since… pick one. He stated yesterday that ‘he regrets rien’ in that obnoxious French way they have of saying that. Unfortunately, as a consequence of his bipolar stance on vaccines, its left to the rest of the population to regret plenty as they get locked down for a third time today.

But heh, not my problem. I’m ‘done’. I’m jabbed to the max. I am INVINCIBLE!!!!

I hope.

Happy Easter Weekend.

A xxxx

I picked up the sports pages (really? How unusual!!!) in the Times yesterday to see a seven page article about how likely, possible, almost essential and totally desirable it would be for Harry Kane to leave Spurs. So I put it down again. Burned it. Made a mess on the sheets but Mel will get over it. And buy new sheets. In disgust I picked up the Mail, turned to the back pages, and there it was: 19 great reasons for Harry Kane to leave Spurs, THIS SUMMER!!! Same fucking article, basically, just dumbed down for the Mail readers with more exclamation marks, hammy sub-headings (Kane is able; he Kane-not stay at Spurs, etc, puke, etc… ok I made those up but you get the gist). And the argument goes that all players want to win things. Not matches, they don’t count. No, they need lumps of iconic silverware (made of zinc) to feel justification of their life’s work. The assumption being that such a thing will NOT happen at Spurs. Therefore, ergo, to reconcile those two truisms, Harry must go!

No-one’s asked Harry. Though probably his agent does on a daily basis as he calculates his commission on a transfer that would carry an astronomical fee. Because Harry Kane is as incomparable as he is irreplaceable. There is simply no other player in world football with quite so many strings to their bow. An outstanding and devastating scorer of goals who can then ‘drop back’ and become creator. He may have scored his first England goal for over a year yesterday but in his last 13 matches for country he has scored or made 18 goals. Same as he does for Spurs. Making him Jamie Vardy (without the ugliness) AND Kevin de Bruyne (without the Belgiumness) combined.

So let’s assume that he does yield to the pressure from the media, because that’s where its come from, and decides to go. Where to? Daniel Levy would never sell him to ‘opposition clubs’, so he’d have to leave the country. And with an inevitable price tag of, what, 100 mil? 200 mil? attached, you’re basically talking Spain. Possibly PSG. Or to China. And love him though I do, with all my heart, he is no urbane sophisticate like Gary Lineker, able to learn Spanish in 3 days and embrace his inner-euro. He’s our ‘arry and would probably adopt the ‘duck out of water’ approach. And all he has to do is ask (at his time ‘the best player in the world’) Gareth Bale, how that worked out for him? Though if Harry is looking to reduce his golf handicap significantly, Madrid’s the place. 

So just a polite word to all reporters who have nothing better to write about and choose facile disruptive speculation as their preferred line; FUCK OFF, THE LOT OF YOU!! Harry’s going nowhere and this nonsense will then come back and make you look stupid and you’ll end up writing obituaries for the Thames Ditton Express (35p every fortnight; order your copy NOW!!!)

Happy Tennis is allowed Day

A xxxx

I love a World Cup. It’s just the qualifiers that cause me grief. No ‘football’ this week. And by ‘football’ I mean, proper, English, Premiership, top draw stuff. I mean Spurs winning, Arsenal losing, Chelsea all getting sent off, Manchester City making the awesome look mundane. Football.

What I don’t mean by ‘football’ is an otherwise (that World Cup thing) meaningless match against San Marino. But we won 5 nil!!!! I hear you shout. We should have won 15 nil. England has a population of 60 million people. San Marino has 33,000. The same as Bury St Edmonds. Bit less than on Canvey Island. Few more than Coalville. Which I’ve never heard of. None of which are allowed ‘international status’ or World Cup entry. But some poxy town in Italy (its actually lovely; went there about 50 years ago, sweet) was declared by some old geezer in a white frock to be a ‘principality’ and that gives them the right to be the lowest ranked football team in the world.

Next up we play a much stronger side. Albania. A ‘proper country’, albeit one more famous for producing Marble Arch pickpockets than world class wingers. My advice to the team, my tactic talk to Gareth Southgate and the boys would be: make sure your locker is secure.

But never mind. I’m going to have my SECOND vaccination on Wednesday. I received a personal phone call from NHS ENGLAND (not NHS San Marino or NHS Albania) the other day, inviting me, as an ‘essential front line worker’. I was rolling my sleeve up as we spoke to make the appointment. Because the first dose made me feel like I’m invincible, this second, the booster, the ‘last piece of the puzzle’, the ‘way out of this shit’, will simply turn me into A FUCKING GOD!!!!

And tennis starts again tomorrow. We’ve waited so long. Nice of them to arrange it for a Monday, when I generally play on Saturdays and Sundays, but… well, it is what it is. Just gotta try and remember what to do once I get on court.

We’re getting there. I just wish I knew what ‘there’ was and what it looks like.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

If I start a debate about cancel culture, will I be ‘cancelled’? Probably, ‘yes’. Because extremists (and the cancel thing is nothing if not the extreme end of the already horrible obsession for a totally PC world) have no sense of irony. In fact, if you have a sense of humour of any description (but for heaven’s sake, be very careful how you do choose your descriptors) you will probably be ‘called out’ and ‘cancelled’ already and thus not invited to join the most obsessive, intolerant, dictatorial, inflexible bunch of fascists who ever proclaimed left-wing leaning. Because the holy grails of that movement are inviolate. To such an extent that they become unmentionable with any kind of question mark attached. They are, quite simply, not open to debate.

JK Rowling tried to question a gender issue and was attacked, insulted and cancelled. Not that she gives a shit, quite rightly, and she continues to argue her side. Which no-one else will take up because of the ‘dangers’ which await on fucking Twitter. That could have a big effect if, unlike Ms Harry Potter, you don’t have a couple of bil in the bank.

Then there was the Eton school debacle where in a debate about feminism, a teacher role-played ‘the bad guy’, the one with opposing views. Banned from school, ostracised, probably hunted online by the morons who do such things. Feminism, a wonderful and noble thing, has been reduced to a set of rules-by-consensus, (which is fine), that are not open to any discussion (which is the opposite of fine).

And now, once more, we have Prophet-gate, up in Batley. Where we return to the deliciously circular, ridiculous question dilemma like the one at the very beginning this message. This time it reads: is it blasphemous to show examples of blasphemy in a blasphemy lesson? And because absolutely any issue anywhere can be ‘called out’ as ‘Islamphobia!’, there has been uproar. The school immediately suspended the teacher concerned. There have been protests every day by ‘concerned parents’ about this ‘blasphemy’ and ‘insult’.

And then someone showed some sense. The school board actually defended, subject to a little enquiry to check the context, the teacher. The government spoke up about free speech and the importance of debating uncomfortable subjects as educationally beneficial. And so the people who almost invented the extreme version of ‘cancel culture’ (just ask Salman Rushdie), are being frustrated in their attempts to see someone stoned to death over the matter.

Sometimes you need to step back, stay calm and consider the implications.

It’s enough to make you vote for Laurence Fox as Mayor.

Happy Saturday. May your clocks go forward and your matzos not constipate your movements.

A xxxx

I’m always concerned greatly about matters gender related. Specifically two (of the countless) genders now available. Male, because that’s how I was born and on occasion choose to ‘self-identify’ (how am I doing so far? This is so difficult) and female because that has been my major source of obsession since I was 11. And I haven’t always treated (self-identifying, chromosomally orientated) women in ways I was always proud of, but I’ve definitely avoided prison. So far.

However, in the light of the recent ‘#me-too-extension’ we all have to reconsider what is or isn’t acceptable, both currently and historically. Even though really, its about moving forward. Into a world where perhaps women might feel less vulnerable, less pestered, less objectified. By shifting the responsibility onto the males. Particularly, but not limited to, builders and politicians. Taxi drivers. Accountants. Social workers, statisticians, footballers, cleaners, doctors, lawyers, car-washers…

Thus the obvious solution. Men, when still boys, must be educated. Less geography and woodwork, more ‘respect for women 101’. A ‘fuller’ education. Where social norms and protocols can be included. Manners. Politeness. Good behaviour. A bit like they currently do at the ‘finer’ of our schools. Because if you send your son to the Scumbag Academy, Dagenham, your expectations are very different to those if he’d gone to Eton. Westminster. St Pauls. Dulwich College. Where they train you first and foremost to be a ‘gentleman’. Then a Tory MP. Unless you’re not quite bright enough, then you get fast-tracked to Prime Minister.

And yet what do we find? That these ‘elite’ schools, the ‘finest in the land’, are in fact centres of excellence for rape, misogyny, groping, abuse and sexual assault. These ‘top’ schools are rife with porn culture among their ‘boys’ and reports of horrors to the girls they encounter or socialise with.

It was different in my day. Sexting was unavailable. Or was called ‘flashing’ and would land you in serious trouble. Revenge porn didn’t exist unless you had a film studio and ‘online romance’ normally meant being parked on a dark stretch of railway track out near Ongar.

Smart phones are not the whole problem but are definitely the facilitators and enablers of an entire culture of Neanderthalism. And when that meets the horrendous levels of ‘entitlement’ found in those ‘better schools’, it ain’t going to end well. And it doesn’t.

It’s not like these kids don’t know what they’re doing is wrong. That’s part of the game, the creator of even more frisson. The ‘education’ required is to realign their moral standards and remove the ‘boys will be boys’ bullshit. Or at least try to modify it to add; as long as you’re not causing hurt and suffering to girls.

Or train all girls in martial arts.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

I’m not particularly a wine snob. I should be really, as I generally like to act as smug and princessy as possible at all times over any snob-worthy thing. “Oh, you wear ‘synthetic’, do you? How nice…” or “we only eat organic, high fibre-fed, free-range, naturally grazing Cod. Don’t YOU???” Or even, “well we had to close the house in the Cotswolds because of Squatters, so we had them killed, its a terrible mess”.

Yet wine snobs are definitely the worst. It’s not that I can’t taste the ‘underlying blackberry and lard with tones of lemming and elderbury and hints of mud’, its just that I’m not that bothered to try and discern them. I either like the taste or I don’t. I’m too binary to be a wine snob. I like hamburgers. With a heavy aroma of meat, base notes of ketchup, mustard and onion, and just a soupçon of bun. And more meat.

We like Torontes. It’s an Argentinian white wine. Which is very light and fresh and fruity and fab. But not the easiest wine to get hold of because it has to come a long way and its not an expensive wine. Evita probably liked it. And Maradona. Who, like me, was probably a ‘quantity over quality’ wine aficionado.

Our first stop on the great world tour of Argentina was in the north, a town called Salta. Most spectacular place in the world. And there, in the northern Andes, grows the Torontes grape. Which they send down to Mendoza to process, but ‘up there’ at altitude and northerliness, they only grow that white grape. The Malbec reds come from farther south. And in a nice restaurant on our first night, we sampled this local white and fell in love. It cost less than 3 quid for the bottle. In a decent restaurant. (Reasons why I LOVE Argentina, number 3. Would be number 1 if there were no sheep or cows to eat down there).

Waitrose announced in the newspaper that they had Torontes ‘on special offer’. Holy shit! A sign from heaven. I rushed up to North Finchley with a flat-bed truck. Only to find that they didn’t have any. I was devastated. But while the very helpful lady was searching the stock-room, I found my favourite whisky on offer so grabbed a bottle of that instead. God moves in mysterious ways. And I am a terrible whisky snob. The worst.

The moral is: as long as it gets you pissed; who gives a shit?

Happy (hic) Tuesday

A xxxx