Andy's Glasses

The City of Beirut exploded last week in a stupid, ignorant, neglectful and appalling accident. Where a small fire in the port met 2,750 fucking tonnes of ammonium nitrate. One of the most unstable and explosive compounds around. Lucky they keep it right in the middle of town, makes sense.

So this chemical had been in a warehouse since 2014. It is used either as a fertiliser or as an explosive. As we found out last week. And it gets more and more unstable and volatile with time. Six years being, officially, ‘more than enough time’. Thus did over 200 people die (and sadly still counting) and over 6000 were injured. And half the city was destroyed. Hundreds of thousands homeless. The film of the actual detonation of the warehouse is the scariest image I’ve seen for decades. The force of the blast something rarely seen outside North Korean atomic testing sites. It was awesome.

Thus I’m getting to know Lebanon. More specifically, Beirut. And its people.

What I expected, following the tragedy, was mass insanity, lots of fat old women in black robes, ululating and beating chests, much screaming, more ululating and chaos. The men, toothless and wrinkled, in dirty robes, shouting. Always shouting.

But what actually happened was an obviously distraught and devastated people coming together, bringing brooms and shovels with them, and, despite their obvious collective distress, deservedly slating their useless and corrupt government and taking clearing up matters into their own hands.

The people they speak to on the news are all educated, multi-lingual, cultured, classy and eloquent in English. Even though French is their second language.

Yet what really endeared me to these people, these poor, literally shell-shocked masses, is that they are an exceptionally beautiful race. Or nation. Or state. Whatever the fuck they are, they are so in a very gorgeous way. Ok, I have prejudices, institutionalised or otherwise, and generally bestow more virtues onto people who ‘look like I do’. Which is gorgeous, obvs, and western in attire. It’s called ‘judging books by covers’ and we all do it a hundred times a day. Well, we did in the days when we were allowed out. That’s how we avoid bad people. And how the police decide on which cars to stop. Making instant judgments based on prejudice and ignorance of facts.

There was even a doctor from Beirut who was simply drop-dead gorgeous. A man-doctor. Though don’t like to presume any gender characteristics just because of a beard. But I’ll be careful with his pronouns.

The women though. Oh my. Once they rebuild Beirut, to its former glory as a gorgeous Mediterranean city, I might have to go there just to drool. Yes, I am that shallow and weak.

Happy too-fucking-hot-to-sleep Days

A xxxx

Lockdown has been a time for reassessment. We’ve had time to reconsider the format of our lives and we’ve had the need to reconstruct large parts of them. The new world is different. And thus we must spend some time asking ourselves some ‘BIG QUESTIONS’.

I’m not necessarily talking about existential angst, philosophical construct realignment, socio-economics in a world recession or global politics in a post-Corona world. They’re not BIG enough. I’m talking the REALLY BIG questions. Like…

Was Jimi Hendrix a better guitarist than Eric Clapton? Like…

In the wake of #metoo and #timesup, is Woody Allen’s Sleeper still allowed to be the funniest film of all time? Like…

Once Frieda stopped wearing those skin-tight satin pants, was there any point whatsoever in the entire concept of ‘ABBA’? Like…

When, exactly, did gender identification issues become militant? Like…

Now that Coronavirus has liberated us from previously socially unacceptable levels of alcohol consumption, will we have to return to the former self-deprivation ‘once its gone’ from our lives? Like…

Is Lionel Messi better than Maradona and Pele (possibly the biggest question of them all)? Like…

If they suspend all the Conservative MPs currently embroiled in sexual allegation scandals, will the government still have a majority in the House? Like…

Now that Stephen King’s collective books have outsold The Bible, does that make him God? I kind’a hope so because then, instead of The Virgin Mary, we’d have Carrie as a new goddess. And ya don’t fuck with Carrie! Like…

If the second prize is ‘a 2-week holiday in Cornwall’, is the first prize 3-weeks, or 1??? Sharing ridiculously over-crowded beaches with (socially distanced) coach parties from Scarborough, Blackpool and Great Yarmouth. Queuing up for 3 hours for a Rick Stein fish’n’chip dinner. Buying an ice cream cone from a man who definitely has Covid symptoms. And then it starts raining.

Over the coming weeks and months I shall be considering these issues. So your homework is a 30,000 word essay on each topic which will be marked on content, grammar and style. And I don’t expect any swear words.

Happy Heat-wave

A xxxx

This is my google activity summary for the month. And it tells an interesting tale. Of someone who don’t go very far. I’ve visited one city. London. I fucking live there so not sure where the ‘visit’ comes in. And my ‘highlights’ are the beautiful Northway Gardens, where my tennis club lives, Toulouse Cafe, where I pretty much live when outside the house and Sherrards, one of our local bakeries and another cafe too. But one to which I never go. Because in Toulouse I get greeted with hugs, kisses and smiles by Benny, my favourite Kosovan in possibly the entire world and the place is without doubt the ‘community centre’ of the area. Where everybody knows your name. Or gets it wrong, but at least make the effort.

But Sherrards doesn’t employ Kosovans. It favours heavily tattooed women from other parts of Eastern Europe. Parts where smiling is verboten!!!! and customer service is something that is done purely out of the need for a financial transaction to take place, with the minimum of engagement or apparent job satisfaction. Okay, how satisfying is it to put three croissants and a rye bagel into a paper bag and then rob the person of £8.64 for doing so? (I never said it was cheap there), but you gotta make the most of
things. And they don’t. So the only time I enter that shop is when I’m desperate. When Lila’s coming over and no-where else has a ‘proper’ croissant. Where the almond ones look dry and uninteresting, the pain au raisin look just like they did last week, but about 6 days harder. Then, and only then, will I go to Sherrards. Where some of their stuff is quite outstanding. And Google caught me.

And my walking is still on the decrease. Which is sort of understandable, until you factor in the best reason of all. I don’t always bother to take my phone out whilst walking. Call me odd, call me old-fashioned, call me Fatima, if you wish, but if I’m out strutting round the Heath, I don’t need my phone. And if I don’t have it, then, according to Google, those miles don’t count, don’t exist, won’t make me a better or healthier person. Wasted miles. The diametric opposite of ‘wasted calories’. It’s good to be ‘off the grid’. Even for 42 minutes.

On Wednesday night I went off grid. Went to Mill Hill, which is waaaaaay off anywhere. Out in the rural wastes. And there, in a lovely little park, my tai chi school met up. We socially distanced completely, other than the hugging. We wore masks throughout, except when we took them off or, in my case, never put it on. And there, together and as one, and ‘live’ AND without (fucking) Zoom, we celebrated in the moving meditation that is that most splendid of Chinese… things. Probably, now, the only splendid Chinese thing left. About 20 of us. Ahhhhh, remember ‘people’?

Happy Hot-as-hell Saturday (‘perfect tennis weather’)

A xxxx

So here was the deal. Coronavirus arrived, we retreated. To our homes. Locked down. Shops closed. Everything closed. Work from home. Unless you can’t. Then don’t work. Only at home. Or from work. If you have to. But mustn’t. Not really. Wash hands. All the time. Wash your shopping. Don’t touch anything. Or anyone. Avoid like the plague (hah), 2 metre distance. Masks? Don’t be stupid, we’re British, we don’t wear masks, they’re useless in the face of a PAN-DEM-IC!! and only for delusional Orientals. Don’t meet anyone, don’t see anyone, don’t… don’t… don’t… JUST DON’T ANYTHING!!!! Except allow plane loads of foreigners into the country every day. Unchecked, untested, unbelievable.

And the odd thing was; we complied. Scared shitless by the power of the government rhetoric, we hid from the virus, we locked down completely, we did as we were told. All 60 million of us. Except for a few ‘raves’ which still went on and in the confines of extremist ends of religion where the the ‘God’s will’ brigades of all flavours continued to join in prayer. And in the wholesale spread of contagion. Personally I’d have put those priests and rabbis and imams and bishops in a garage and let God sort them out, rather than waste valuable NHS resources on them, but they were taken into hospitals just like ‘normal people’.

And then gradually, it started to lift. Just a bit. Then a bit more. Then… football came back! But no crowds. People could meet up, in limited numbers and wrapped in cling-film. Liverpool fans were exempt from the bans because they hadn’t won the league in 30 years. Which is fair.

But as the ‘gradual’ becomes the new normal and the general feeling of ‘I’m so over this’ pervades, boundaries get pushed and guess what? The virus is returning in numbers. Not the same, over-exaggerated heaps of statistical dung that they were using in the first instance. It’s been refined and remodelled. And as people come into more and more contact, so the virus ups its game. Or plays the same game but with more people once more. Because it never ‘went away’. It took a holiday. But unlike the rest of us, it was allowed back.

So the second wave is coming in isolated regions. Generally up north where its just not so important but return it will. Because it never went anywhere whilst we were hiding from it. Thus, as we peek out from our hidey-holes, it grabs us once more. Which is inevitable.

I would despair but having been in pretty much that very state for the last 6 months, I wouldn’t be able to feel it. And its not really the virus I despair about. It’s more the endless statistics. Where’s that whisky bottle gone…

Happy Days

A xxxx

I mean… I mean… I mean… I mean what kind of football season has it been whereby my entire footballing joy for the entire year hinges on the possible departure of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang from Arsenal? How is that a ‘defining moment’ in my life? How could I be so shallow and low?? Oh, that’s easy, I’ve done that all my life. But now that Arsenal have won the (fucking) FA Cup (agaiaiaiaiain), my only hope for salvation of the entire human condition is that their talismanic Frenchman with the funny forehead and unpronounceable name, might leave to ‘find glory’. Like; the FA Cup is not enough???? Loyalty to club and badge, plus entry into the Europa League of Not Quite Champions, is insufficient ‘glory’ for a man of his stature? Is he unaware of how big the FA Cup, the world’s oldest sporting club competition, is? Or, rather, how big it used to be, not so long ago? The answer is ‘no’, or rather, ‘non’. Because he’s French journeyman tosser who wouldn’t know Islington from a hole in the ground (ok, there are similarities) if someone else pays him 250 grand a week.

However, I don’t want him to go because he’s a tosser. I want him to go because he’s so bleedin’ good. Much too good. So please, get onto twitter, follow him, or whatever one does on such a thing, and just tweet “you’re too good for this shit” and appeal to his inner arrogance. Which, being a Frenchman, is not too far from his outer arrogance. And then he’ll leave.

One man whose loyalty can never be questioned is Eddie Howe. The (former, as of yesterday) manager of Bournemouth. He, basically, other than a few aberrant years, spent his entire career either playing for or managing The Cherries. If you bit him there’d be a stone in the middle. He was THAT Bournemouth. But they sacked him because they were relegated. Never mind that he took that team from Division 2 to the Premiership and kept them there for 5 seasons. Four more than the most optimistic Bournemouth fan would have dreamed. And without the normal ridiculous levels of over-spending that stupid clubs delude themselves into making.

I will miss Eddie. Quite frankly, I love him. He is eloquent, charming and quietly spoken. But unlike some (virtually all) managers, he accepts his responsibilities and never blames others. In fact, he’s much too intelligent to be in football altogether. A thoroughly ‘good bloke’ all round and his departure (though probably not for too long) is football’s loss.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

“Yesterday, in England, 274 people tested positive for Coronavirus…”

Ooooh, that’s up on last Tuesday, 29 less than Sunday, just above the average for the weeks with a ‘2’ in their dates…

We get this daily. Initially from dour governmentalists and health type people, now from the news presenter. And we look at the trends and the totals and the… important data.

And its all total bollocks.

274 tested positive. OUT OF HOW MANY?????

If they only tested 275 people then Houston, we have a problem. And Houston, like most of that God-forsaken state, does indeed have a big problem. Other than the President.

But if 274 tested positive out of 100,000, that’s rather different. Yet if they test 100k one day, 80k the next, 30k the day after and 120k the following week then its all irrelevant verging on totally meaningless. But no-one tells us ‘…out of xxxxx tests performed’. Because… errrr… because its of no use? Because we can’t handle the numbers?

Even Trump realised this when he stated that if too many people are testing positive we should do less tests. Yes, even a retarded sex-offender with an IQ smaller than the size of his quiff realised the abject stupidity of meaningless numbers, yet we’re presented with them daily as if… as if… as if our lives depended on them.

Statisticians have a lot to answer for. In fact, they have the square root of the difference between the second differential of the binomial expansion and the square on the hypotenuse, to answer for. Not just for the above but for the succession of ambiguous and meaningless numbers hurled at us over the last 2 months.

1,463 Coronavirus deaths in Wales, today. Holy shit!! But that doesn’t include (probably about 4,381) deaths in care homes ‘or the community’ but does include the man who was smashed to bits when hit by an express train. Because 6 weeks before he had tested positive for Covid 19.

I would say ‘go figure’ but quite frankly, they’re not up to the task.

Yesterday was the hottest day since Coronavirus began. That’s hot.

Happy FA Cup Final day (yes, I’d forgotten that almost-irrelevance too)

A xxxx

How many BMIs make one Covid? Alternatively if the score is: Covid 19, BMI 8.3, will the victim die? These are interesting questions. Ok, stupid questions with possibly interesting answers.

Boris has decided that obesity is the key to life. Or, in fact, to death. Fat people die more of Covid than thin ones. In case he hadn’t noticed, fat people die of many things more than thin people. The only benefit of obesity, healthwise, is that they never die of malnutrition. Everything else is bad news for big’uns.

So now there’ll be no more adverts for ‘junk food’ until after the ‘watershed’. When all the thin kids are asleep in bed and the fat ones are watching tv whilst inhaling their third pizza of the night.

Britain has an obesity crisis, with more fat kids than any other country. Surely that can’t count America? I’d be amazed but can’t find the article that inspired this investigation into food habits and the world distribution of tubbies.

Boris’s answer is simple: cycle more. So, riding on the tailwind of the virus (EVERY-FUCKING-THING rides on the tailwind of the virus), Boris has essentially given half the capital’s roads over to new cycle lanes. This has the double advantage of making everyone healthier by cycling more and keeping the air cleaner with less room for traffic. So, presumably, in Boris-world, Tescos will only need their stock lorries half the time, carrying half as much produce because… Ok, so Tescos will still need their trucks, but the vans… well, maybe only half the building work will be needed, and half the things that break down, will do so… errrr… because of the virus.

Ok, so in reality there’ll still be the same number of vehicles, but moving half as quickly. Which, trust me, wasn’t very quickly at all, to being with. Therefore the Tesco lorry plus all the vans will be sitting on the Embankment (once they bother again) spewing out more carbons each day than Battersea Power Station. Although that’s now a block of flats so presumably its carbons have diminished from its ‘glory days’.

But we’re on the right path. I think. It’s just that, like Boris, I’m not really sure where that path leads.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

Well that was exciting. The football season. Finished. Finally. Usually its over by the FA Cup Final in early May. This year we had a stay of execution until almost August!!! I think they should keep that every year. Then give everyone a month off and be ready to start again in early September. New season starts on September 12th. But, as with everything, this is ‘subject to change due to conditions and viruses’. So the putative footy season might end up like Spain. Being; totally fucked. On the whim of a government long accused of ‘acting too late’ on virtually every step of the corona pathway, so suddenly acting very very early. “We’re banning Spain, the entire nation, as from… NOW!” No more: “these very important measures will start in 3 weeks from next Friday”, gone are the “we think masks are important now, even though we thought them rubbish for the first 3 months, so you have to wear them in shops. From 19 days time. At midnight”. Those days are gone. Boris has become ‘Action Man!!’ From the ‘Fat Man!’ he once was. Again, as with everything he does, this is ‘virus driven’. Less fat, less likely to die of Covid. Simple. The PM has lost a stone already. Though still resembles a cross between a pig and a tub of lard in a shaggy wig.

Liverpool still won the league. Which they pretty much did in January before ‘the delays’. Which were organised by God so that no-one had to be there to actually witness it happening live, or risk being immersed at Anfield with 50 thousand smug, overly-entitled Scousers. Thank you God.

Spurs managed to limp to 6th place to be sure of European football next season. Hooray. Arsenal didn’t. Spurs may now have to sell Harry Kane. Not because they want to sell him, not because he wants to move, because he loves Spurs like I do. But because the press, collectively and unanimously think ‘its the right time for him to move’. He’s 27 today (Happy Birthday Harry, I love you, love you, love you!!!) and thus can’t wait any longer before… I don’t know. So to the entire sporting press of my fine nation I’d like to offer a single, heart-felt and sincere: FUCK OFF, THE LOT OF YOU!!!

The relegation battle was as edgy as always. Norwich were already down before Christmas, but they needed accompaniment down to the depths and so Bournemouth, Watford and Aston Villa were the contenders, 2 of whom were to take the dive. Villa won the prize of staying up and we say a fond (ish) farewell to 3 teams who were punching way above their weight to begin with. And I wish them well. (Read: good riddance).

The rest is history. The weirdest football season since records began (1327 or thereabouts) and its finally, eventually, agonisingly, over.

Happy season’s end

A xxxx

So what do you do when the news finishes on tv? And its late (because you have the news on series record because you’re stupid and obsessive and its not like you believe what most of the lying scumbags who appear on it say anyway), but you just have a quick flick and… The Blues Brothers is on. Oh my. Now Pretty Woman is on another channel because the new law states: masks MUST be worn in shops; Pretty Woman MUST be on every night. But the Blues Brothers. Which is without doubt, possibly, my favourite film of all time. It simply has it all: stupidity, insanity, driving cars way too fast, crashing cars in vast numbers, complete madness, brilliant songs by incredible artists, a storyline so ridiculous as to be virtually irrelevant to the plot (no other movie ever has achieved that particular feat) and it even features Illinois Nazis. Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Carrie Fisher, James Brown, Aretha!!!, Ray Charles, Cab Calloway and so many other luminaries in the worlds of comedy and music. Rather than, errr, acting, note. But how many films have the line: “we got a full tank’a gas, half a pack’a cigarettes, its dark and we’re wearing sunglasses”. You don’t get that in Gone with the Wind or the Godfather. ‘We’re on a mission from God’. As it must have felt for John Landis who directed a drug-crazed John Belushi, when he could find him on shoot days and sober him up sufficiently. It’s legendary. Not necessarily in a good way. All fabulously related by Bob (Watergate) Woodward in his brilliant biography of Belushi called ‘Wired’, which shows the genius and insanity (strong connection) of the big guy as he self-destructed. What? You thought Jonny Depp invented drugs and terrible behaviour? RIP, JB.

And, all you (little) Englanders, today is FUCKING MASK UP, YOU NOB!!!! day. As of midnight last night (in case you were making a late trip for some quinoa that just couldn’t wait) it is COMPULSORY, it is MANDATORY to wear a mask in all enclosed spaces. All of them. Other than the exceptions. Of which there are many. So if you walk into a take-away food store YOU ARE BREAKING THE LAW if you’re not wearing a mask. However, if you decide to perch on a stool and eat the food there, you may remove that mask for the eating. And remaining time. Even though you’re just as likely to be infected/not infected as you were before. Taking a mask off in public is ILLEGAL unless you want to. Or need to. Or have to. Or don’t feel like wearing the thing. But the basic rule is WEAR THE MASK!!

It almost makes you wonder what might have happened if they’d said that back in March. But heh, who am I, who are we, to question.

Happy Tennis morning (I hope, weather looking iffy)

A xxxx

Not content with going to battle with those pesky Chinamen, our tough, hardened, powerful, almost super-heroic Foreign Secretary (even though he looks like the ‘last man picked for a football match’, or a reject from a school for failed accountants), has now started war on a new front. The Russian front. Hitler tried something similar in 1943; how’d that go? But this is currently just a war of words. Words of distrust. Words of accusation, words which basically are like pushing someone repeatedly to start a proper fight.

But Russia and China are joined by a common difference. They’re both ‘communist’. Which at one time meant something deeply political and somewhat noble in intention, if a little failed in the realisation. But now, what’s left of communism, in both of those fine (hmmm) nations is all the bad bits. The noble intentions went when the politicians did a deal for bulk buying Lamborghinis. The proposed ‘equality for all’ mantra gave way to a ruling elite who are neither questioned nor elected (in any significant sense of the people having ‘freedom’ to vote). Free speech went out of one window and returned as state propaganda machines. And with that came what both those nations see as their self-governed right to zero accountability. What’s good for China/Russia, as perceived by their dictator, is good for all. Even if it might appear to be bad for most.

Like Hong Kong. Like the Uyghurs. Like institutionalised athletic doping. Like sending hit squads to wreak vengeance in foreign countries using radioactive isotopes. And most recently and most damning, interfering with other countries internal politics (the Russians) and/or security (the Chinese). I won’t even mention Alexa. Not out loud anyway.

But what both these nations now specialising is is denial. They are so proficient at it that they have elevated it to levels so blatant, so at odds with evidence, so downright efficient that it needs no thought, no consideration, it just happens. It’s autonomic. Whatever is said; we didn’t do it. There film of it? Fake. Here’s the dead bodies you buried? Not us. The hackers all come from Moscow. Must be a different Moscow. In, like Alabama, maybe. And so on.

So its war with the communists. How awfully 1955.

Happy times

A xxxx