Andy's Glasses

This is a wonderful photo. A metaphor for declining standards in the world, a potent symbol. And nothing is more potent than 2 Barbie dolls. Ok, one Barbie and one Sindy, if you’re that pedantic and anal about such things.

The Sindy on the right is Mel’s poor, wretched, doll, whose hair was cut off in a Les Mis moment about 50 years ago. The Barbie on the left is only about 25 years old, from Lila’s mummy’s days when such things were important. But Barbies don’t age; you get that, right? They’re like, ‘born’ at some undefined point of girl/woman-hood, somewhere between teen (the skateboard years) and the young woman (meets Ken, the rest, history). And they ‘die’ at precisely the same age, not a day older, nor younger, not a wrinkle, no grey hair (unless Joey’s been at the paints), no cellulite. Just a bit of faded plastic or, more normally, decapitated. Because the necks are always the weak point. Though little Joey has in fact totally redefined the meaning of anything’s ‘weak point’.

But Sindy (could have been a vintage Barbie, they were always the same) was a little girl. Dressed (yes, its original) as a nurse. No make up. No bust. Just a little girl doll full of sweetness and innocence and little girliness. Goes to church on Sundays. Eats ice cream. Without checking the calories.

 The Barbie is, basically, a slut.

In the 25 intervening years someone at Mattel had decided that little girls no longer wanted to play with facsimiles of themselves. They wanted to play with something more aspirational. Possibly with the teen/adult that they might become. And the presumption was that every pre-teeny gel wants to live in Geordie Shore. Or Jersey Shore. Made in Chelsea. Or (fucking) Esss-ixx. So they gave them curves. Not the full J-Lo, but curves. And replaced the nurses costume and the cheerleader and the ballet gear with pencil skirts, tight bodices, tight pants and thongs. Ok, not thongs, Barbies don’t have underwear, they are in permanent ‘commando’. And they come with a face full of make-up, fake tan and best of all, feet that can’t stand on the ground. Why? Because they’re angled at 45 degrees, permanently. So they can wear ‘6-inch’ heels. All the time.

But the Barbie, as mentioned, was from the 90s. If you extrapolate (that’s a statistical term, not a deviant one, unless that’s a standard deviation, one from the norm) to a Barbie one might buy today, she would come with a 36-inch (scale) chest, with boob-job scars, child-bearing hips and an assortment of dildos. Because she’s probably ’empowered’ and ‘doesn’t need Ken’, or any man. She should have gender issues. Possibly bisexual. Possibly pre-trans. So she comes with a suit and tie as well. And a football. Which she can’t kick unless they do something about the angle of her feet.

This is an extract from my new book, The Sexualisation of Toys and why didn’t it fucking happen 60 years ago!!!!!, published by Sheister, Shuster and Shweinhundt, 2021.

Happy Friday
A xxxx

I keep reading articles about hugging. Not shagging, they’re different ‘articles’. But hugging. Cuddling. In fact about touching. And how this is not just part of the human condition, this need for touch, but an essentially defining feature. If we were dogs we’d sniff arses, but we’re not, well, I’m not, we’re humans. Well, we used to be. Before… the thing that won’t be named because we’re all so fucking bored of it.

I WAS a hugger. And that was before reading research telling me how beneficial an activity it is. I was a pioneer. Men, women, children, animals. Hug and hug em hard. Stop just short of outright sexual assault. I grew up in a tactile family and consequently my own family then continued the tradition. Lots of people didn’t perhaps have this benefit growing up and thus are left feeling awkward when some virtual stranger embraces them bodily, squeezing the breath from their lungs. Those are my favourite victims. The ones you can feel squirming with the unfamiliarity of the whole exercise. Because the British are not essentially a huggy nation. Too reserved, too stiff, too much legislation about inappropriate behaviour, to really enjoy hugging. In America you can circumvent the legalities. But only for a while. As Harvey Weinstein learned. Yet I’m not talking about sexual abuse. Specifically. More just that as humans, we NEED to touch.

It’s physical, its psychological and thus, inevitably, its measurable. Which is why I keep reading about it. Research. And even though I’m normally the world’s biggest research-skeptic, on the grounds that it is always biased (well someone’s paying for it, ain’t they?), prejudicial and open to ambiguities on interpretation, even though all that, I’m prepared to forgo my natural cynicism for a good hug.

Because all the research says the same thing. That humans have a physical need to touch. Ok, this varies between individuals, and between volumes of alcohol consumed, but our wellbeing is in a big part dependant on contact.

And now we’re not just no longer touching, but actually developing strong touch-averse reflexes. In which we recoil if touched. “Holy SHIT!!!!! Did you just brush against my arm?????” And even react with discomfort seeing people in movies shaking hands or making ‘unnecessary’ contact.

So just a little question then: could this be the very end of humanity, as it was once known????

Wow. That’s deep.

Happy socio-philosophical musings

A xxxx

There’s now 3 questions to ask people to reduce viral risk. “Do you have a cough?” “Is your temperature high?” And, “have you been involved in any goalless draws this week?”

Because if there’s one positive (other than Trump’s test) to be taken from this horrible pandemic, its the amazing effect its had on football. Not usually any yardstick of medical anything, but football has changed. And for the better. It’s more… more… more… odd.

When Manchester City (EVERYBODY’S choice to win the league this year) lost 5-2 at home to Leicester the other week, it was just ‘a blip’, an oddity. A freak result which found City off colour and Leicester having one of those freak days when the ‘ball just kept going in’. But 5 is a big score in football. Really big. Spurs put the same number past Southampton that same weekend. Less of a surprise result but more statistical blips. Which, you’d imagine would favour the ‘big’ teams, who’d be notching up 4s and 5s and more, just because, generally, they create more chances.

City played Leeds on Saturday and could only manage to draw 1-1. They were lucky not to lose. Leeds were brilliant and refused to be intimidated by City’s billion pound team which actually looked a bit ‘bargain basement’ in comparison to the quality produced by Leeds. FUCKING LEEDS!!!! Playing football that doesn’t draw blood and break legs??? Billie Bremner’s statue outside Elland Road actually produced tears.

Then came yesterday. The most absolute and total ‘FUCK ME!!!’ day football has ever produced.

Spurs went to play Manchester United at Old Trafford. Went 1-0 down with a penalty after just 30 seconds. Pulled level 4 minutes later, went 2-1 up seven minutes after that and were 4-1 to the good by half time. The final score of 6-1 was so… magnificent, so… amazing, so… JUST BIIIIIIGG!!! that I still can’t quite get the smile off my face. Spurs were simply breathtaking, United plain abysmal. Defending the ‘high line’ is a little risky and depends on the speed of your defenders. Toby Maguire and (dirty bastard) Luke Shaw looked as if they could only catch Son if they were racing for the last pizza. Harry Kane was magnificent, again, Sonny simply pure class. And Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg (yes, that is his real name), world class. Add in Aurier’s best game for Spurs, the strength of Sissoko and Ndombele and even the embarrassing performance for his Oscar by Eric Lamela and it all just worked out fine. More than fine. The stuff of dreams in the Theatre of Dreams.

Football can’t get better than that.

Yet just a few short hours later it did. As Aston Villa did a number on Liverpool. That ‘number’ being 7. Seven. SEVEN. Beat the Champions 7-2 in the best game they will ever know.

So, I’m lovin Covid right now. Of course, next weekend that may change but when ‘viral load’ is translating into goals, how can it be a bad thing?

Ecstatic Monday

A xxxx

As the world prays for Donald Trump and his deliverance from the dreaded disease that he actually didn’t even believe in until last Tuesday, we need, as always with the world’s slipperiest dickhead, to question a few ‘facts’. Well, ‘facts’ can only get you so far, and they’re always questionable anyway when coming out of ‘his’ White House, so we’ll stick with what is better still. Speculation. Gossip. Rumour. Anything really which will paint the dimwit Prez in a worse light.

He’s in hospital. Which is where you always put people who are fighting fit and not in any difficulties whatsoever. He is receiving shit-loads of experimental medication. But not mainlining bleach. Not yet, anyway. And maybe these quite radical measures are intended preventatively, or maybe The Don is actually suffering, we don’t know and really, we never will. He’ll either emerge onto the steps of the West Wing in 5 months time, 4 stone lighter and a hundred years older, claiming ‘it was nothing, just a cold’, or he’ll die. Which, from an intellectual standpoint, would put America in a stronger position than it is now.

The infection, we were led to believe, started with Hope. His communications babe, Hope Hicks. To whom, the prez is apparently ‘very close’. ‘Like a daughter’. And I’m concerned that this refers to ‘like a daughter in Tennessee’, or even Norfolk. But its nice for Trump to give so much power and control to the former swimwear model.

Hope had symptoms on Wednesday, just after the Biden debate. The Prez went ‘positive’ the next day. Though then stories emerged about him having it for 72 hours. Which meant he went to the debate knowing he had Covid.

But the actual ‘source’, it is reckoned, was last Sunday at the ceremony for the new Supreme Court puppet, sorry, judge, on the lawn at the White House. Where, in Trump style, 200 unmasked important people sat in ridiculously close proximity, shared a buffet, hugged and kissed and spat over each other repeatedly. As Republicans often do. 11 of those present have now tested positive.

And this is all so terribly worrying that I’ll have to distract myself by watching Spurs play Manchester United this afternoon. And if I’m honest, I’m far more concerned with getting 3 points at Old Trafford than with the health of an Old Tosser.

Happy, healthy Sunday

A xxxx

Lila laughed at the idea that she was ‘a white girl’. She’s not white. She’s pink. If only the whole world saw such issues through the prism of 3 (and a half) year old literalism and without the baggage of nuance and context and (mainly bad) experience. But then Prince Harry would have nothing to write about. And Donald Trump would have to not condemn the ‘orange supremacists’.

Having read about, and seen part of, the Presidential debate on Wednesday, I can see why leaders here are always reluctant to enter into such media circuses. They achieve very little, other than the humiliation and shaming of all involved. Deeply personal slagging-off-fests which reduce the entire political world to basically ‘my dad could beat up your dad!!!’ Particularly, but by no means exclusively, in America.

Trump was typically aggressive and repetitive, its what he is. Biden managed to keep hold of the plot for good whiles and then… errr… sorry, where was I again? And then it came, inevitably, to ‘law and order’. Which is what Donald Trump thinks is his specialist subject, which is why half the cities in his country burn every night. And he thinks Biden would be ‘weak’ in this regard, which could mean that half the cities in America would burn every night.

But Biden asked the Prez what he felt about the ‘Proud Boys’ storming into Portland Oregon. That is a white supremacist group who’ve gone, armed to the teeth, to America’s most riotous, most protesty, most BLM of cities, to ‘help’ the ‘poor residents’. Meaning, roughly, that they’ve gone to shoot black people. Loosely translating from KKK speak into English. And Trump refused to condemn them, he later stated that he, like me, had never heard of them before. That was the next day, when he was on a tv interview and was reading from a script written by people much more clever than he is. Maybe written by road-sweepers, tattoo artists, five year-old dyslexics. They all qualify.

But the fact is that Trump NEVER condemns white supremacists. Not properly. Not in any meaningful way. He prefers to consider just their immediate actions, ie violence, or its intention, protesting, causing riots, and equates it to same behaviour in others. He creates an equality of action between people protesting for a fairer, better world and those wanting a return to slavery and the Wild West values. And because BLM has been hijacked by hard lefties and rioters, it gives a slight credibility to this most unequal of equalities. One tyre-burning looter is the same as another. So Donald won’t condemn white supremacists. Feels he doesn’t need to differentiate them from a few duffle-coated equality campaigners.

Because he’s a tosser. An idiot. And now he’s all that, but with Covid 19.

Americans may not get irony, but God does.

Happy rainy, wet Saturday

A xxxx

Before I move onto to the important matters occurring at White Hart Lane yesterday evening, I wish to take a moment to explain to you the latest rules regarding the new, non-lockdown-but-not-far-from-it, status in some-but-not-all areas, with possible amendments to the rules of adjacent towns and cities. Not forgetting the countryside and the inhabitants thereof. Who may, at times, travel outside their current excluded-from-any-type-of-lockdown zone, into an area of more stringent controls. And these rules and, in fact, in some cases, now proper laws, are so simple that no member of parliament, the Prime Minister included, seems capable of explaining them to the nation. Not without copious notes and cross-referencing and consulting three legal experts and a professor of immunology.

The rule of 6 is sacred. Unless you are in a new lockdown area or worship the devil. If you are in a lockdown area up to six people can sit, distanced, at a pub, as long as you are OUTSIDE, but not inside, where you can’t mix with anyone. However, should those same 6 people, being ever respectful of the full 2 metre personal exclusion rule, move from the outside of a pub into a park, or garden, they will be BREAKING THE LAW!!!! Because the air outside pubs is known to be medically beneficial and has healing properties. Whereas fresh air in a park is a health risk to everybody AND YOU WILL DIE!!! You must all stop drinking at 10. Or hop on a ferry to Belfast, where its 10.30, but actually 11 before they close the doors. And under no circumstances can you see your grandchildren. Unless your name begins with ‘A’.

Bald-headed social misfit Tory advisors are obviously exempt from the above.

The Caribou Cup came to the Lane last night. Well, not the Cup itself, just a match within it. Spurs played Chelsea. It was awful. Dire. Chelsea had 80% possession in the first half but still didn’t look like scoring. Until they scored. That’s football. Spurs didn’t look like anything really. And it was hard and horrible and lacklustre and dull.

Until the 76th minute when Eric Dyer went to the toilet. No, he actually did. Middle of the game, when ya gotta go, ya gotta go. And go he, errr, went. Yet this most natural of events in the life of any human is so rare during a football match his manager followed him. But that event changed the game.

Just 7 minutes later, the Spurs team, collectively revitalised by Eric’s act, scored the equalising goal, sending the match into a penalty shoot-out. Which Spurs won and the crowd (noises) went crazy. In fact ‘the crowd’ was Gareth Bale. Supporters at football matches are now so rare we had to pay 13 million quid to get one. Eric Dyer was named ‘man of the match’ and deservedly so. Because him going to the toilet was by far the most interesting thing that happened before the penalties.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

I was looking at the Sunday magazines the other day. Probably Sunday. And I’m always drawn to images of food. And the photos all look fab, but then you read the recipes and I can’t help thinking that there is a fundamental issue with the whole genre. That there are only so many foods and once you’ve mixed them all up in every possible permutation and combination, then you can only re-invent the wheel. Ya got meat, ya got fish, ya got vegitibals, innit. Then ya got chilli powder, curry powder, za’atar and coriander. Ok, you can add pomegranate or tahini or even dandelions, but a roast chicken is a roast chicken, whatever.

And that got me to thinking about a simpler time and place for food. Some of the places I frequented on my great world tour of Los Angeles in 1982. And when I say ‘simpler’ I generally mean light on the za’atar (wasn’t invented until 2007, even though its actually mentioned in the bible, Exodus, ch 14, v.19: ‘Moses cooks up a storm’) and high on the… calories and speed. I mean places which are open 24 hours a day, specifically to cater to the massive California market of partying drunks and stoners. Generally places you wouldn’t necessarily term ‘restaurants’. More ‘caravans’ or ‘stalls’.

Tommy’s Burgers were legendary. I’m guessing, and hoping really, that in the intervening 40 years they’ve survived and still thrive. Because they were fantastic. There was one branch ‘downtown’, which, back then, was a fairly ‘no-go’ area at night due to gangs and guns. But for a fabulous burger, there is no danger or peril too great for this heroic foody. So as the bullets whistle by your head you could zone out into the awesome sandwich and hope you were still alive to finish your coke. Which, in terms of probability, had a greater chance of killing you. Tommy’s also had a branch ‘in the Valley’, which was safer, but 20 minutes away from anywhere.

White Castles are New York’s ultimate street food. Tiny burgers. Single, double or triple, and so small (40 years ago a ‘slider’ was an out of control car) that you ordered, like, 3, or 7. Or 12 if you were really hungry. Or really stoned. The US soldiers in Afghanistan had White Castles flown over for their requested Christmas dinner. A caravan in the middle of Long Island but international in fame.

Best of all was ‘Oki-dog’ in West Hollywood. They only sold… Oki-dogs. Which was a great big tortilla upon which they laid 2 hot dog sausages, covered them with cheese and pastrami, then added a shovel full of chilli beef, just in case the rest wasn’t enough. Then it was wrapped in such a way that the first bite was sufficient to have half the rest of the contents on your lap. Brilliant. They don’t make food like that any more. Not since the word ‘obesity’ became a watch-word and Americans, as in so many other walks (or ‘waddles’) of life, led the way.

I just checked and in fact all three of these businesses are still there and (hopefully) thriving.

Next week’s food item will feature vegetables. Possibly salad. Bit’a fruit maybe. Or at least mention them.

Happy eating

A xxxx

Spurs played 3 matches in a week. All played ‘away’ from home, if such a thing has any significance with the partisan effect being obviously absent. And all won. One of the 3 teams we played I’d even heard of previously. Southampton. The other two, played in all the glory and splendour of the Europa Thursday Night League of Shame, I initially thought were clues in an anagram puzzle. But then learned that Lokomotiv Plovdiv and Shkendija are in fact real. And correctly spelt. And represent Bulgaria and Macedonia, respectively. Or, for the purposes of this essay, disrespectfully.

But that’s the rule in the Europa Cup. As it is written: (eh-hem) “and thou shalst travel, on the night of the Thursday, to a far away land in the East. Never to the south, where its warm. Only to the East, where it is bleak and cold; where racists and anti-semites are free to walk the streets and make obscene gestures to away teams. Sometimes to the North, where games are played in the Scandinavian arctic in permanent darkness where the population of the town must never be more than 37.”

But heh; you can only play who they bring. And always better to win rather than lose. So we were triumphant.

In the following 8 days we play 4 more games. Tomorrow its Newcastle. Who have been shit, but only for about 8 years, yet seem to be ‘resurging’. If one win in the league and thrashing Morecambe in the league cup could be grounds for such a claim. It’s a ‘must win’ for Spurs. We seldom have ‘must lose’ games these days.

On Tuesday its Chelsea in the Carabao Cup. Which would be an ‘ooooohhhh’ but its the Carabao Cup so only really warrants a meagre ‘oh’.

Thursday we host Maccabi Haifa in the Europa. Just 3 days after Yom Kippur, Spurs (the Yids) have invited Haifa (bunch’a Jewish people) to their home in North London to celebrate the festive season. Happens all over that part of the world. With the hosts showing off their latest gadgetry and fancy shmancy appliances and telling of all the work they’ve just had completed by a wonderful bunch of Polish builders, and it ‘only cost a billion quid!!!’

Finally, if any of our players are still able to walk or stand, we’re off to Old Trafford Sunday week. To play the Manchester United team that was so full of promise, until they actually played a match. Then the promise seemed to turn into the same old lies. But ya never know.

So that’s it. That’s ‘ALL’ we have to look forward to in terms of football. As long as the Covid rules don’t change again. Or as long as they change but then change back again really quickly. Either scenario is distinctly possible.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

Sorry? Pardon? What??? Say that again?

These have been my most commonly used words over the past… while. Not saying how long, just a ‘while’. But… NO MORE!!!

I have just acquired a pair of… hearing aids!!! Yeah, I know, shoot me now, Dignitas time, its all gone to shit. I am OLD. But hearing aids??? Holy shit. I mean, my hearing is fine! If I put on Smells Like Teen Spirit at volume 11 through a headset, my hearing’s perfect. It’s only at times there’s a problem. Like people speaking. The phone. Talking to someone who’s using a hands-free kit. It’s only a problem when sounds are involved. In particular, sounds you need to hear. Otherwise, I have no problem at all. My knees are fine.

So I went for a ‘test’. And they looked and said, ‘ahhh, there’s wax there, need to get that out first’. Ok, hack away. No, you need to go away and put olive oil (note, only the best for me, extra virgin stuff, imported from Tuscany. Morrison’s vegetable oil would only help the wax in a lorry driver’s ear, not mine) and then come back and we’ll remove it. So for 2 weeks I anointed my ears twice daily with the oil that Ottolenghi would use on his most delicate of salads. And I reached the point, having dislodged all this stuff, by Wednesday, of blocking both my ears. Totally. Absolute deafness. Most horrendous thing ever. Taking a credit card payment on the phone from a woman (higher pitches are my specific problem) took 3 hours and 27 minutes. After my first 4 phone calls I stopped saying ‘is anybody there!!!’ really loudly. I’d forgotten completely that ‘f’ and ‘s’ are actually two different letters! Like, who’d’a known?? ‘D’, ‘T’ and ‘B’ similarly. All the fucking same ta me.

Yesterday the dude ‘syringed’ my ears. They actually use a tiny little sucker thing. And, in my case, supplemented this with an industrial shovel. I will spare the details. That action changed my life. I could hear again! It was fantastic. But, not quite well enough, as the following test showed up. High range? What high range? I don’t have one any longer. So try these matey; and he programmed up a pair of little hearing aids. Digitally!!! So, rather than just having, like, a miniature Marshall amp in each ear, these are programmed for the specific ranges that an individual is missing. And I tested them.

I took a piss. And heard it in the most glorious of full, Dolby stereo, panorama-techno-colour-for-ears, quadraphonic sound ever. If Bang & Olufsen took a piss, it would sound like that. And I can even hear a sibilant ‘s’ once more. Yesssssss…

Happy loud Friday

A xxxx

Like Churchill before him, Boris Johnson is inspiring the entire nation, every man, woman, person, object, thing with multiple bits, undecideds, crossovers, gender fluids and any group I may have inadvertently missed, to fight, fight fight!! this horrible pandemic. We are all being encouraged to stand up, get battle ready, bare arms, join together (no more than 6, obvs) and… and… go back home, lock the doors and stay inside. Hmmmm. Harder job to motivate people to do as little as possible, rather than Churchill’s fighting them on the beaches.

Viruses aren’t like Germans. For a start you can’t see them. They don’t wear helmets. In fact they wear crowns, but only at microscopic levels. So Boris’s job is in fact much more difficult than Churchill’s. To get people to agree to limit their lives in every single respect and aspect. And even then, as has been shown over and over, Boris and his team of incredibly clever and professorial advisers, know approximately the square root of absolutely fuck-all about the spread of this virus. Which is why the rules change on a pretty much daily basis. Along with infection rates.

The main problem we have here, which probably accounts for why we ‘lead the world’ in infected people and deaths, per 1000/100,000/million of population is that we’re rubbish at testing. And without tests you have no chance. Most surprising comment of the last few weeks, and certainly the funniest, was from Dame Dido Harding. The gel wot is in charge of our nation’s testing. Da big boss lady. And she stated, live on tv, that ‘we possibly underestimated test requirements because no-one predicted that rates might rise when the kids went back to school’.

Well I knew. She only had to ask. The man in the butcher’s knew. The bus driver knew. The masked up Uber driver knew. People, whose lives have all been reduced and concentrated into the microcosm of Covid-world, now talk of nothing else. And everyone, from Nicola Sturgeon to possibly someone even more obnoxious, simply KNEW that when the schools reopened it would be a turning point, possibly a tipping point. But the ‘models’ used by the government advisors are waaaaaay more powerful than mere logic and common sense. So, ‘no, we never knew’. So we can’t test ailing teachers, or kids with symptoms, so have to take out whole year groups and force them into isolation.

I’m isolating. I’m in the City of London. The only place left where you’re truly safe from bumping into people. Where you’re at least 200 metres from the next soul.

Happy quietest Wednesday since May

A xxxx