Andy's Glasses

There’s a fascinating article in today’s Times. It’s proper title is ‘the calorie swap guide’, but I use the working title: ‘FUCK DAT!!!!’

It tells you everything you deeply, profoundly, intuitively and educationally know. Which is that all the food you really love is massively high in fat, calories, poly-unsaturated stuff, E-numbers and death. Which is why it tastes so good. And by a quick and ‘painless’ substitution, you effectively eat ‘the same’ but stay healthier and obviously LIVE LONGER. Unless you get Covid, obviously, then, as you lie in hospital being fed through tubes, you have time to wonder whether replacing scrambled eggs with boiled eggs actually paid any benefits?

Cynicism aside (impossible, I know), it was very informative, useful and, as everything has to be to find space in your morning rag, life-changing.

Who’d know that if you replace your lunchtime burger (2, quarter-pounders, cheese, bacon, mayo, more mayo, extra fat, extra bacon, sausage, pepperoni and extra cheese), with a Brussel sprout wrapped in lettuce, you save 2,397 calories and ‘it tastes the saaaaaaame!!!!’

Yet really some of the ‘swaps’ were logical and simple and, dare I say, painless? Like pasta, f’rinstance. Who needs fusilli, tortellini and penne when you can eat those very same shapes made from lentils, kale and… errrr, yoghurt, cod-liver oil and spinach? Once you get over the revolting texture change and stop gagging you’ll quite enjoy it. Similarly, tinned tuna in spring water has exactly half the calories of tuna in oil. And precisely a quarter of the taste, but that’s a reasonable ‘swap’. Whereas smoked mackerel being replaced by prawns saves you about 70% of the calories, unless you keep kosher and then the saving is a whopping 100%!!!!! because you won’t eat the prawns at all.

However, there’s more to life than calories. Which, its also worth remembering, are a measure of energy, not just, like fatness. And mackerel is a massively good and fabulous food, which they’ve been banging on about for years and we all should be eating it 3 times a day. Because its loaded with goodness, with omega-3s and great, cholesterol-busting shit and live forever-ness and is what God eats when he’s gonna do some miracles or create heaven and earth or such like. And just because all that goodness carries a high energy-producing designation like calories, doesn’t detract from its superfood qualities.

So here’s my rules. Eat whatever you want. But if its creating problems, just eat less of it. Only order 2 chicken tikka masalas for yourself, instead of 3. Easy.

Happy substitutions

A xxxx

Tomorrow night sees possibly the biggest football game in the entire history of the known universe. Which, as you know, dates back 13 billion years!!!! Because Tottenham play Liverpool. Doesn’t matter if its home or away, football’s really not about that any longer. But its a game that, up until a few weeks ago, would have been a classic ‘top versus second place’ battle. Now its a battle for 4th place. As long as West Ham aren’t still there.

And, I mean, like, how, at the end’a da day, I mean, in what world are West Ham in the top 4/6/8 of the best, hardest, meanest league there is? They should be fighting for relegation. Biting referees. Trying to get their rent reduced at the London Stadium for Coronaviurs, to bring it down from the 30 quid a week they currently pay (including policing and every other benefit you could, and possibly could not, imagine). Instead they’re up there with the big boys as if they have some kind of right to be at the top table. Or perhaps the top of the table.

Arsenal won last night too. So with that, West Ham beating Palace and the reaching of 100,000 people dead from Covid, yesterday was indeed black Wednesday. Black, red, claret-and-blue Wednesday. Whereas Monday was buoyant when we beat Wycombe in the cup. Doing it properly. Letting everyone think its a draw until 5 minutes before the end. Then get the winner and score two (very) late goals for emphasis. Hah! I knew it all along, never had a moment’s doubt. Really. Confident in their abilities. Honest. My nails are always bitten to my elbows at this time of year.

Manchester City become the 8th team this season to be ‘top of the table’. Tragically, according to the pundits, they’ll probably be the last. But eight teams? Amazing how coronavirus has improved our football.

Frank Lampard was sacked by Chelsea. Just because he has the lowest win ratio of any manager since records began. Is that any reason to sack a ‘legend’? Very unusual for Roman Abramovich to show such little patience and such a lack of confidence in someone with such promise. Rinse and repeat.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

The long and short of it is: we need vaccinations. Loads of them. So that good, English people of a post-Brexit and not-at-all-European-whatsoever nature can enjoy the protection that it bestows upon us, both as individuals and more importantly, nationally. In a British way.

And now the Europeans want to screw it up. They want to restrict the amount of vaccines which are to be ‘exported’ from the EU, where both the AstraZeneca and Pfizer are made. Although the AZ one is manufactured all over the place, Pfizer’s one is made mainly in Belgium. Where production has been reduced as they expand their manufacturing plant. The ultimate supply chain irony.

The other issue is that although Ursula van der Whotsit and all those other Euro big wigs have made big promises about how many they intend to vaccinate, they haven’t even got around to approving the AZ vaccine for use yet. Oh, so its ok to test it on those poor Brits then, wait for any adverse reactions and then jump on board after its proven safe, not allowing it to be used themselves, but still moaning about not having enough. Euro-tossers.

So there is a minor discrepancy between the UK and Europe in terms of vaccinations.

Germany has vaccinated 14 people. France 212, Italy 17 and the rest don’t really matter. England has vaccinated 6.5million. I don’t see that as a ‘discrepancy’ as such, they’re just a bit slower over there. And if you don’t approve vaccines that will indeed limit the pace a bit. So basically, they’re a bunch of slackers and blaming us for hogging all the supplies. Which we may be but with very good justification.

Part of which is that we’re losing more people to the virus than any other country. Almost than every other country. Today we passed the 100,000 mark. Holeeee sheeeet.

The other part is that we’re much more important.

Yet it remains an interesting question: why did both Pfizer and AZeneca make promises for delivery that they can’t actually meet? Didn’t they know that making 300 million of anything is a logistical challenge? And that’s just what Europe ordered for phase 1.

I’m sure if we google it online we can all find the recipe for the vaccine and inject ourselves with a turkey baster. How hard can it be?

Happy Tuesday (ish)

A xxxx

Lisa Nandy, Labour motormouth northern spokesperson for everything, described Joe Biden as ‘woke’. Has she seen him? He’s more half asleep. Yet, of course, she means ‘woke’, the most stupid, nauseating word purloined by the militant PC brigade, who’ve also stolen the term ‘cancelled’ for those found wanting in the woke department. To the extent where it is simply moronic. And reminded me of a high quality purveyor of the way things should be.

Stephen Jay Gould is my favourite ever (and now sadly departed) non-fiction writer. He was averagely clever. Being only a professor of geology, palaeontology, evolution, history of science and philosophy of science at Harvard. He wrote essays for Science magazine which were then grouped together into books which were unapologetically not-dumbed down. But he didn’t need to dumb down. He was funny. And something of a polymath, bright enough to make everything accessible. So he would use for analogies things like baseball and Hershey bars (the only thing I ever disagreed with him about. Not that he’d have known).

And he believed in God. He didn’t spend his life praying but he was comfortable with some kind of divine presence. And although he spent a lot of time writing, for example about Darwin’s battle (both internal and external) with the church about presenting his theory of evolution, which attacked religious interpretation, he never stooped as low as a Richard Dawkins type who calls you stupid to believe in anything spiritual. He lived and worked under his own construct of NOMA. Non-Overlapping MagesteriA. Meaning that he won’t argue about the spiritual world because its not his domain. But similarly, religion shouldn’t quote the bible to try and refute scientific fact. Like evolution. That’s not their domain.

Yet best of all was when this New York liberal related various histories in the scientific world in which the ‘establishment’, like the Royal Society and other esteemed organisations, had published articles ‘proving’ that black people were lower down the evolutionary scale than white. Had smaller brains. And other such ‘scientific facts’ which a bunch of Victorian ‘scientists’ (all white, all rich) paraded before their colleagues.

Yet Gould’s position was always one of learning from the errors of the past. Moving forwards, as science should. He advocated that we should never judge the past by the values of the present. The eminent aristocrats of the Royal Society didn’t know ‘woke’, didn’t have ‘PC’, they were just victims of their society. Just like the justification used for some criminals now, but obviously a very different kind of ‘society’. They couldn’t know how ‘wrong’ they could be judged by standards not yet available to they.

Gould never advocated ‘cancelling’ pretty much all of scientific history because of racism, slave connections or anything else. Nor the removal of the statues and busts and portraits relating to it. That form of revisionism would have been abhorrent to him. As it should be to us.

Happy snowy Sunday

A xxxx

I think we need to talk about words. Not just any words but special words. Loaded words. Prejudicial words. Words that cause upset, depression, consternation and even constipation. Because words can be inflammatory. We know that. Sometimes that’s their purpose. Like Donald Trump before the Capitol invasion. Or Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream”. David Bowie, ‘wham, bam, thank you maam’.

But the American government legislated that words such as ‘brother, sister, son, daughter, mother, father’ must be replaced with ‘sibling, child and parent’. So as to avoid… to avoid…

Well, its a gender issue. NOT, as you’ll have already deduced, an issue about sex. So we need firstly to define the difference between those two words. And its a big difference. That’s not me boasting, its just what it is. My sex is masculine, because I was born with a penis. I still have it. You can see it on Facebook, instagram or various blackmail sites. But my GENDER is whatever I choose to identify with. And I don’t think ‘Spurs fan’ counts as a gender. (Though ‘Arsenal fan’ in fact does. And not a very good one.) They mean, sexually identify. Or gender-ally identify maybe, must check that.

So you’re born with your sex defined by your organs but you later (or earlier) can choose your gender. That’s easy. Unless you choose your somewhat alternative gender a bit too early and then retain the right to sue all those you had sued to enable you to change, when you realise later that it was a mistake. As all those being sued again spent half a decade repeatedly trying to tell you.

But when you change wording, making it more ‘gendery’ rather than ‘sex-y’, it also has an impact on the tiny number of people who aren’t part of the ‘trans’ community. I know, they’re barely worth considering but as they almost now constitute a ‘persecuted minority’ we’re obliged to give them a footnote on the page which re-writes everybody’s lives.

Any man in America claiming to ‘identify’ as a woman can enter, by law, any woman’s toilet, shower room or partake in their sport. A rape victim can no longer request that the ‘sex’ of her post-trauma examining doctor be female, just that its ‘gender’ is female.

You see, talk is cheap, but words can be very very expensive. I’m glad I’ve got that off my chest (which will measure 36DD by next Wednesday).

Happy non-gender-specific-day-of-your-choice

A xxxx

I thought I’d seen it all. I thought the world had really reached a kind of ‘rock bottom’ normally reserved for wartime levels of ‘atrocious’, for acts of genocide, for apocalyptic meteorological phenomena, for tsunamis, even for Donald Trump. I thought nothing could surprise any longer. Until yesterday. 

When I saw a brand new Porsche. Plugged in!!!! Like ‘WHATTTT?’ I thought a family of gypsies were living in it and needed the power for their tv and washing machine. I thought all sorts of things. Including ‘why is that Porsche tied to a lamppost? Doesn’t it have an anti-theft device?’ And then I looked and saw the most dreaded letter in the history of all alphabets, emblazoned on the boot. The letter that makes grown men cry. That leaves superheroes, of a certain generation, beating themselves up with sticks and stones. The letter… “E”!!!!

It still looks like a Porsche. It probably still goes (almost) like a Porsche. But it sounds like… it sounds like… like a Tesla. It sounds like my car when its switched off. The sound of nothing. Simon and Garfunkel would turn in their graves. Except they’re both alive and well. 

The University of York has always had pretensions of grandeur. All of the City of York has really. Whereas the reality is that its just another almost industrial town in the nation’s northern floodplain. The bit of  the country we sacrifice willingly to the Gods of the weather so that London may stay dry and secure. Anyway, now York Uni has decided to make ‘a statement’. And a statement worthy of its pretentions. It is going to abolish one of its usual images. The classic ‘3 monkeys’ image (see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil), used to symbolise intelligence and part of the university’s long-term iconography on printed matter and digital media. No fucking more! Enough of that shit; it is (according to the very clever people in York)… racist!!!

How can 3 monkeys be racist? Monkeys are all brown. I don’t get it. Furthermore, that image is Japanese and goes back centuries to represent cleverness and… brains and shit. Ahhhh, say the wise men of York (nothing like as wise as the monkeys obviously), anything to do with a monkey is ipso facto racist because racists use that animal in its tropes and racial abuse. Most modern racists wave Union Jack flags around but no-one’s banning that. Yet ask any minority person which intimidates them more: a 6 foot 5 skinhead with a swastika tatooed on his face waving round a Union Jack, or a monkey eating nuts, go on, ask him. 

I have never considered the 3 monkeys image… well, anything other than the 3 wise monkeys. Were they part of the slave trade? Were they alt-right monkeys? Trump supporting primates? York University is, I fear, suffering from premature woke-imagination. They’ve taken a sign of intelligence to make themselves look stupid. 

Happy Friday

A xxxx

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

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

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

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

Happy Monday

A xxxx

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A xxxx

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

God help us.

A xxxx

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Liberation Day

A xxxx