Andy's Glasses

Just the six of us.

Bill Withers said it first. But the numbers have been increased in line with inflation and then reduced in line with the pandemic. And then, and only then, can they be ignored once more.

Here’s the rule. Set by Boris. And Boris alone. No longer any kind of parliamentary democracy, unimpressed with the Belarus model of dictatorship, as being a bit ‘namby-pamby and limp’, Boris is now God. He and He alone will decide what happens, Nick Hancock will agree with him, as if he actually knows something, which is seriously in doubt, and then it is ‘passed’ into law. No due process. No debate. It’s called the law of the Headless Dictator. A perfect cross between a tyrannical dictator and a headless chicken. It works in North Korea, but possibly only because the head in question sports a stupid haircut. There again, Boris… haircut…

And thus the number shalst be six!! Not seven, nor even five. But six!! Is the number of peopleage wot can meet in any one place at one time. As long as said meeting adheres to proper social distancing criteria. Otherwise the Corona police will swoop in and pour a bucket of water over your barbecue! Families of greater than six (see above) will have to cast the weak ones asunder. Or eat them. Inside or outside, six is the number and THAT NUMBER IS SIX. One third of the devil’s sign.

The ONLY exceptions are for ‘organised sporting events’ and ‘religion stuff’. Possibly the sales at Debenhams. Otherwise YOU WILL BE FINED!!!! OR IMPRISONED!!! (They didn’t say how prisons might meet the criteria, unless they are going to reduce the locked-up populations to just 6 in each and free the rest). So my tai chi, f’rinstance, which is up to 12 warriors, in the park, performing our art, does that count as ‘organised sport’ or will we be arrested for being unsixish? Sixual Harassment?

The Jewish New Year is almost upon us. Just one week away. The time when even those more lapsed than me (if such a thing is possible outside of a salt-beef bar) go for their yearly pilgrimage to the synagogue. And this year I decided to sacrifice my seat, at great personal upset, so that someone more worthy might be able to pray in an area sufficient to meet the new criteria. However, there are two places I avoid like the plague, in times of, well, plague. One is hospitals, they’ll kill ya deader than dead in no time. And synagogues. Where our localised ‘outbreak’ of Covid began all those months ago. I wasn’t there that day. Nor any other day since last New Year, if I’m honest, but people who pray are in danger. All that chest beating and frenzy and shouting. Way too much spittle involved for my taste.

So I shall probably spend the new year in deep meditation and reflection. On the tennis court. And blame Covid. Like everyone else does.

Happy Last 2 days of 7, day

A xxxx

This year you may have noticed something distinctly absent from these pages. If you can call digital output ‘pages’. Have you noticed? What’s missing??? Probably not Lila or Joey, they’re still featured. Political intrigue is still… intriguing, football is still football, ok, there’s been a few less reviews of new movies and super restaurants (ok, super kebab shops, whatever) but that’s understandable in the circumstances. What’s missing is beaches. Tropical photos, exotic locations, bizarre creatures (I refer to, kind’a, animals here, rather than, say, Germans), exciting expeditions, underwater adventures, boat rides on magical lakes, cityscapes that leave you breathless, and overseas clubs where men can dress as llamas. Without fear of prosecution or being eaten.

Hi, my name is Andy and I haven’t taken a holiday since December 2019.

“Hello Andy!!!”

I’ve come to Holidays Anonymous to try and get some help, some empathy, some understanding from fellow holiday addicts to work out how to recover. I have a ‘seven step plan’ but every time I see a plane (which is not very often, currently) I have a burning desire to rush to Heathrow and stand in as many long queues as I can find. I haven’t ‘checked in’ for 9 fucking months!!! I miss the security scanner with a passion that burns my very soul. I yearn to stand in a snake line for 74 minutes for passport control. And when I go into certain shops I take my shoes off and put them on the counter. I’m a mess!

We love a holiday. And all we’ve done this year is cancel them. Or have them cancelled. Grand Canaria went in May, we’re supposed to be in Greece at this very moment, on a special ‘child friendly’ resort with the whole fam. And I suppose we might not make it to Kerala at Christmas. Mel insisted we cancel even though I actually really want to extend ‘the full Indian experience’. I want to take it from the usual ‘2 weeks of eating curry 3 times every dayyyyyyy!!!!!’, to joining the second most populous nation on the planet on its quest to out-Covid every other nation on Earth. I want to risk getting the virus there, going to hospital there, and sharing the Indian way of ‘social distancing’ which is to cram 52,000 people into McDonalds. And then I not only want to quarantine for 2 weeks, I want to do it for THREE!

Can you buy masks with Air Miles?

Happy Holi-Days

A xxxx

I wish I could get excited about the new football season. It starts next Saturday!!! And yet… and yet…

And yet as with so many things in this mid-Covid world, it is tainted. Diluted. Reduced. And as normally a person who not only has his glass ‘half full’, but always the top half at that, this whole Coronavirus has left me decidedly ‘half empty’.

Maybe, just maybe, once Spurs start losing silly matches, dropping needless points, wasting countless opportunities, I’ll realise what I’ve been missing and become engaged once again with the beautiful game. Maybe I’ll volunteer to help make the fake crowd noises. “COME ON YOU SPU-URSSSS”, etc…

But at the moment there is just no sport around. The cricket’s resting, the golf is no more a sport than the return of parliament and the tennis is… over there. So its the perfect time to stage some international football matches. Because if there’s any other sport on tv normally during such games, then I’d watch that. But in the total absence, it gives England a chance to have some well-earned reluctant and apathetic support.

And we beat Iceland 1-nil (a penalty) on Sunday in the European qualifier. Brilliant. Iceland has a population of just over 1 million people. But the problem is that many of them look like those pictured above. That’s not the problem with the match itself, those canny Scandinavian team selectors generally pick the team who don’t at all look like those. The problem is after the match. When the team has to return to its extended ‘bubble’. A term which was meaningless until June 2020. And there must they stay. Team-mates. Hotel staff. Masks, gloves, screens, hand-sanitiser. All good, clean and SAFE.

Yet two of our team, two young’uns just playing their national team debuts, decided two-nilaterally (like ‘unilaterally’ but with 2 of ’em), that the benefits of spending quality time with these two Scandi-babes of Abba-esque proportions, was worth a bit of a risk. I won’t ‘name and shame’ because its embarrassing for both Mason Greenwood and Phil Foden, so I’ll keep them out of it. But faced with the choice between a ‘sure thing’ and the safety and security of their entire team, country, the whole fucking world in its battle against a pandemic and their future careers, they did what any man would do. It was never really in any doubt.

Both now sent home with their heads hung low. Mainly because they’re probably still smiling.
Happy daze
A xxxx

I play a lot of tennis. And we have very strict rules. Very strict. No points to be scored. That’s the first rule. No serving. No bouncing the fucking ball for 10 minutes between play. No changing of ends, unless its to even out the sun-tan. No swearing will NOT be allowed. (Intentional use of a double negative there. Insufficient swearing is cause for loss of rights, if not total dismissal). And no life insurance salesmen.

In my club, we are very reverential and respectful of the line court judges. Of the umpires, referees and ball boys… and girls… and anything else who picks up balls. In fact all the ground staff are… well, we don’t have any. We have a shed. That’s about it.

Because I am the judge, the jury, the witnesses and the advocates. As is whoever I play. Between us, we decide what was ‘in’ and what was ‘out’. Though in the game we play such things are actually meaningless. Except Rachie’s version of ‘out’, meaning out of the park and into the brook. Only one lost in that manner yesterday, a vast improvement on her part.

Yet I appreciate that in a more… structured type event, like a professional tournament, some rules are fairly useful. Not the swearing one, I have no idea how anyone could play any game without profanity, but others. You can’t stand there shouting at each other for 10 minutes over whether the little ball touched the white line or not. Better to have an objective decision by a third party. Hence; line judges. And if you invite them to make such decisions, should they be protected from angry Serbs?

This is the crux of the matter. As yesterday, in the US Open, the angriest Serb of them all, Novak Djokovic, was thrown out of the tournament. The top seed (or thereabouts) had just ended one of his games in the 4th round match. He was left with a ball in his hand. Probably the ‘second serve ball’ that he didn’t require. So he walked to the baseline and, without looking, just hit the spare ball towards the back of the court with his racquet. It wasn’t vicious, there was no malice, he was just hitting it in the direction of the ball… gender-fluid trans-whatever… things. A bit hard but not very. He wasn’t looking. And the ball hit a line judge in the throat. To her credit, she hit the deck like she’d been gunned down with an M16. Nothing too dramatic for that babe. She was floored. In my club this would have led to ridicule and encouragement to, perhaps, GET UP OFF YER ARSE YA SORRY WIMP!!!! but this wasn’t my club. This was the National Tennis Centre in New York. And thus comes under the auspices of whatever ruling body tennis lives by. And the rules state that ‘any abuse of line judges with balls is not a nice thing’. And is grounds for dismissal from the tournament. Which is what they did.

So Djokovic had to walk the lonely walk. To the dressing room. To his hotel. Back to Serbia.

Which did seem a little harsh. You can always get another line judge. A tougher one. But heh, rules are rules.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

I been busy. Watching old music on tv. You can never have too much. Though its not only the old music. For that I’d just watch Top of the Pops 1964 to 1975 and stop watching when the Osmonds or Suzi Quattro comes on. In fact I fast forward until ABBA come on with Waterloo. Voted ‘the best ever Eurovision winner’. Which is an honour akin to being voted ‘the best turd in the bog’. I could replay the special Old Grey Whistle Test, 50th anniversary edition. Some of the musicians are even still alive! Not the good ones obviously, they all died at 27. But its more the stories that I love. The connections.

There was a tribute programme to Peter Greene who died this year. He invented Fleetwood Mac. Which should have been called Peter Greene and others, but he shied away from the limelight so named the band after Mick Fleetwood and John McVie. Even though he was the writer, composer, singer, lead guitarist and main dude. In fact he stole Fleetwood and McVie from John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, for whom all played. Greene had gone to join Mayall as the ‘new guitarist’ after the old one left. That was Eric Clapton. So, no pressure there then. But Peter Greene did no disservice to the man he replaced and was revered by the fans who initially had called Clapton ‘God’. Though none had ever heard God play blues on a Stratocaster.

Then there’s Laurel Canyon. A short history of the eponymous LA area in the early to mid 60s, produced by Amazon. Because EVERYONE gravitated to the Hollywood Hills at that time. Drawn by a vast and powerful talent-magnet, which just drew them. The Beach Boys were there. The Mamas and the Papas were the first proper settlers. Dave Crosby left the Byrds as Stephen Stills left Buffalo Springfield and the two met up with Graham Nash of the Hollies, ‘just getting stoned by someone’s poolside’, which was what counted as ‘serious work’ back then. Neil Young, another sometime Buffalo, also drifted by on Sunset Boulevard one day and quite literally bumped into Stills. Jackson Brown arrived at some point, Bob Dylan would hang out, Janis Joplin moved round the corner, and from that primordial ‘soup’ of immense talent, music was created. Brilliant music.

None of these bands lasted very long. But their legacy is still going strong. The bands suffered from personality clashes, generally. Or, if there was a/some woman/women in the band, from relationship shit.

I particularly love that these stories represent brilliant and gifted musicians. Not pretty boys (gels or ‘other’) selected by tv audiences to mime to other people’s output. And it was MY music. The soundtrack of my youth. But at the time when ‘pop’ music started. When ‘rock’ music emerged from the Blues. When sex and drugs and rock’n’roll was a massive positive in a one-generation post-war, newly liberated world. When Spurs last won the league…

Happy Sunny Day

A xxxx

Imitation used to be the sincerest form of flattery. No more. Not in this hypersensitive atmosphere of post-woke, Covid-rich, ultra-correct, nouveau-intolerance. Now its called ‘cultural appropriation’. And is ILLEGAL!!!!

Adele posts a picture of her new hair-do and I thought; ‘that looks stupid’. But everyone else thought ‘NOOOOO!!!! That’s an AFRICAN hair-style and you ain’t no African (even though she comes from Tottenham, which is the nearest approximation outside Zaire), therefore J’ACCUSE!!!! CULTURAL APPROPRIATION!!!” I never realised hair styles had cultural copyrights. Yet apparently they do.

They went back to 2005 to find a photo of Prince Harry attending a fancy dress party as a Nazi. And the Nazis were up in arms (not literally, this time). “How dare that over-privileged (grand)son-of-a-dictator whose family took over the world, shame the good name of Nazis?!!!!” Cultural appropriation.

It wasn’t so long ago that Ali G arrived on our (initially) small screens. Pretending to be a black dude. “Is it ‘cos I is black?” he actually said. On tv. Live. And recorded. It wouldn’t happen today. The hard-lefties at the BBC would show their tolerance and understanding of all races and genders and everything in between, plus those who haven’t yet made up their minds totally, or did once but reserve the right to change it again, by being totally intolerant and demonstrating their total lack of understanding.

I was walking down Golders Green road and I saw a man eating as he walked. In one hand he held a massive chopped liver sandwich, in the other a pickled cucumber. He wasn’t Jewish (I asked). So I called the police to arrest him for cultural appropriation. “THAT’S MY CULTURE!!!!!” I screamed at him. “HOW DARE YOU!!!!”

But the prize goes to Jessica Krug. She’s a professor at George Washington University, specialising in the African American struggle, the problems for poor kids like her growing up in the ‘hood’, in her case, Spanish Harlem, and hardships for Puerto Rican blacks like her.

Except she’s not. She’s a nice (?) Jewish girl from an affluent suburb in Kansas. Who has lived her personal and professional life as someone else. Lecturing, writing papers on the ‘black experience’, on repression, division, inequalities. Where all along she was more equal than most. But now she’s admitted all. Quite bravely really. And is replacing her normal, Friday night dinner of jerked chicken tacos, with roast chicken and tsimmus. Chopped liver. Chicken soup. Kneidlech…

Happy appropriation Day

A xxxx

The City is still in a state of near death. Yet oddly enough the tube is definitely getting busier. Not, like jammed, rammed and slammed, praise be, but, like 10 people on a carriage now instead of one. Or two. So where are all the tube travelers going? If not to work?

They didn’t look like workers. They looked like… like… like imposters! I generally take the 9 o’clock tube, or nearest. What is known as the ‘alta-cacker express’ because its the first tube of the day that over-60s can use their free passes. And I’m not saying I’m too mean to pay for tube travel, its just that I’m too mean to pay for tube travel. WHY THE FUCK SHOULD I??? AT MY AGE???? I FOUGHT A BLOODY WAR FOR YOU, LOST ALL 3 LEGS, GOT SHRAPNEL IN MY EARS!!! AIN’T PAYIN’ FOR NO TUBE RIDES…

Sorry, I seem to be suffering from Alf Garnett syndrome, it’ll pass.

So these journeyers were old couples, probably shopping. And there were other parents with kids. But no-one looked like a ‘normal commuter’. Who you can recognise by the dead eyes, the hang-dog expression, the aura of gloom that surrounds them, even in a mask.

Yet this was tonight’s headline. Tell London its safe to go on the tube. Until you all go on it, then it becomes seriously unsafe. Where social distancing will reduce from 2 metres to 2 millimetres. Where you become more concerned about the guy next to you having hygiene issues than Coronavirus. Where the sneezing and coughing starts. And people aren’t deploying their masks properly. I don’t deploy my mask properly.

So every day I hope the tube is empty, but pray that its packed. Just like the government. It’s a mini-distillation of the entire Covid issue. Health vs the Economy. Though I don’t really know who I’m praying to. Possibly to Boris. Definitely not to Sadiq Kahn. Maybe to Lucifer. Or Trump. Same thing really.

So there we have it. Maybe next week all will go back to ‘normal’ again. All we City bods have to do is click the heels of our red shoes together three times and we’ll be back in Kansas. Which is probably much busier than the City right now.

Happy drizzle.

A xxxx

Golfers describe a shot they need to take as perhaps, ‘4 iron, 70%’, naming the club needed and the amount of power required. Gotta be long enough but don’t want to overhit. In tennis, that being a proper sport, a real, running-round, sweating type gig, we don’t use such things. Because we don’t have time to perform calculations before each shot. Sometimes you barely get time to even shout ‘FUCK!!!’ before needing to hit the ball. But those percentages are worked out unconsciously anyway. Because you know that if you try to hit that winner, you have more chance of getting it wrong than if you play a simpler, weaker, easier shot which won’t win you the point, but won’t lose it for you either. And we rarely use 100% power. Unless we have a load of balls we never want to see again. The difficulty with tennis not hitting the ball hard over the net. It’s bringing it down again on the other side. Which is why God invented top spin, I know, but still, its hard. And the harder you hit the ball, the greater the potential error if you get it just a little bit wrong.

I play Spurs Paul every week. He’s a big dude. And hits the ball hard. Really hard. Because he has good technique. When I last played Dom, he hit the ball hard. He’s not as big as Paul but he hits the ball (I reluctantly admit) really well. For a gel. Ok, even for a boy. But the hardest hitter of the tennis ball I know is my dear daughter wot lives in Berlin. Usually. Though she’s come ‘home’ for a visit because ‘working from home’ doesn’t specify which home nor which country that home should be located in.

So, as is our way, and has been for over 30 years now, we played tennis yesterday. And Rachie was hitting the ball well. Really well. Meaning it comes searing over the net, clearing it by about 1/4 of an inch at about 153mph. It is a wicked shot. And doesn’t always go in but when it does it is ‘challenging’ to return.

But the problem, as mentioned, is margin of error. Because at that power, a tiny little miscalculation, a slightly wrong angle of racquet, a crosswind as you hit, the margin of error is fairly catastrophic.

I took three balls to the park yesterday and returned with an empty canister. They were getting a bit used anyway. But Rachie’s first game after a 4 month gap is really not the time to open new balls. Next week I have no choice. New balls or no balls.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

Because I’m the ultimate, post-modernist, post-feminist, urbane, right-on, woke kind of dude, many people assume I would be a vegan. Ok, only when I’m wearing sandals, obviously, and when sporting a benevolent, beautific kind of almost-sincere smile, but in fact I’m not. I’ll eat road-kill if its reasonably fresh. Raw and on-the-bone. With fur.

So when people make a big fuss, but like a BIIIIIIIGGG fuss about a restaurant, I make certain assumptions. Firstly and most importantly that there’ll be loads of meat. Big meats. All sorts. Think ‘hungry lion’ and you’ll understand. A lack of asparagus in my life is NOT a problem.

Imagine my horror then when I arrived at that very restaurant and saw the ‘vegetarian menu’ looking up at me defiantly from the table. Ok, no problem, I’ll just turn it over and see… ‘VEGAN MENU!!!!’ I turned it over once more, hoping for a kind of Harry Potter moment where there’d be ‘MEAT’. But… but… but…

And for that I’d shlepped all the way to Shoreditch. Or Aldgate. Depending on whether you’re buying or selling. The dress code is ‘hip’. Or in my case, ‘dodgy hip’, but I don’t think I’m the target audience in London’s most happenin’ place. And if Shoreditch is ‘happenin’ then the restaurant Bubala is its epicentre.

I’ve read nothing but rave reviews about the place since it opened. And hearing stunning reports from everyone who’s been there. Which is why it took a world pandemic to be finally able to book a table. Because its small. Neat. Hip. Which you can tell because its studiously unadorned. And doesn’t serve meat. In case you missed that.

I was tragically disappointed. Almost to the point of tears. Because it was possibly the most outstanding meal I’ve ever eaten. It was different. Everything was original. And amazing. And wow! But like WOW!!! Everything is for ‘sharing’, which is a bit of a problem, for Mel in particular, but her hands will heal in time. Incredible dishes, loosely ‘middle-eastern’, very contemporary Israeli, a bit of Moroccan, some old world Jewish thrown in brilliantly and every dish (there are nine in all) presented and prepared wonderfully. Even the service was brilliant. Nicest waiting staff you can find outside of my kitchen. So imagine my problem. Its a vegetarian (or worse; vegan) restaurant which I loved to the point where I will never eat anywhere else again.

It passed the ‘curry test’. Which is, loosely, I really enjoyed that ‘blackened cod’ at 65 quid and a bowl of rice for 15 quid in a pretentious upmarket and up-itself fine dinery, but would I have preferred a curry?

Book now. But be warned: serious risk of enjoying a non-meat meal!!!

Happy next day

A xxxx

I don’t really do religion. Not in any meaningful way. Because I don’t think slagging off people’s deep-felt beliefs counts as ‘meaningful’ in any real sense. However enjoyable it may be. But my problem is not religion as such, they’re the symptom, the problem starts with God. Everything starts with God, we are led to believe.

There used to be loads of gods. Hindus still have over a thousand. 1500 is not enough; one is too many. And gods were used to explain the inexplicable. Crop failure, weather shit, tides, wars, the stars, chartered accountants, all the things we really don’t understand. But then… we understood.

Weather is controlled by the BBC and the weather girls, not God. Computer systems tell us precisely what time we should play tennis, in between the early rains and the later storms. Michael Fish controls the wind. Then he got it wrong and they employed 17 babes in short skirts to do it instead. The tides are governed by the moon, gravity is elevated to a deity. Once Newton and then Einstein got hold of it that was 17 more old gods made redundant. The stars, the moon, the sun, the universe, all neatly and succinctly explained by the new god; Science. Evolution was a real problem. It took God 6 days to build a human. Whereas it took Darwin 4.6 billion years. Darwin really needed to up his game. Though how long was ‘a day’ before He built the heavens? Ooooohhhhh.

So now we’re down to just one God. Whodunnit? Who/what made it all start? The universe, the everything. Where’d it come from? And although this God is, apparently, omnipotent and omniscient, he actually, in the vernacular, don’t do nuffink. He didn’t stop the wars, the deaths, the diseases. Like, March would have been a really good time for a miracle, Oh Lord!! The holocaust, AIDS, even cancer. So why would anyone bother to pray? If this omnipotence and omniscience is never actually deployed?

Yet pray is what people do. To an entity of dubious existence, who/which if he/it does exist, never takes any action anyway.

And not only do people pray, the extremists of all religions will compromise their and everyone else’s safety and security by insisting to pray and worship and gather as if Covid 19 was half of a rugby scoreline. Be they Christians, Muslims or Jews, those at the extreme of any religion will forgo any consideration to others as being way secondary to their continued rituals. And now the right wingers in Israeli government have threatened to boycott Netenyahu’s always fragile coalition if he locks them down over the upcoming high holy days. Because praying this year is much more important than being alive next year. Regardless of the adverse effects it may have on the rest of society.

Join me today in devil-worship, paganism, whatever. It’s safer than being religious.

Shabbat Shalom

A xxxx