Andy's Glasses

Spurs played yesterday. Beat Leicester 3 nil. Brilliant. Superb. Stunning. Free points. To take us nearer to a competition we really don’t like very much but Morinho has won the Europa League twice with various teams and if we were to win it, we’d get into the Champions League (a competition we like very much) the following year. If we hadn’t already qualified on league position. Or by winning the league 35 points clear of the next team. Which is the best case scenario. Or the least likely scenario, if you’re of a more pessimistic or anti-Spurs kind of mood.

And here’s the problem. That we’re winning. Gathering up those points like they were falling apples off the trees. Which must be a good thing, right? Winning games. Beating teams like Leicester who, not so long ago were high and dry in 3rd place. Beating Arsenal? That can never ever be a bad thing.

Leicester have injuries. That’s the party line. Essentially, they’ve lost it. Can’t beat anyone, look quite likely to have squandered a seemingly invincible entry to the Champions League. And they weren’t very good. Yet came to ‘my’ stadium yesterday and had the audacity to have 70% of the possession. Leaving us with just… errr… 43.95%. Or less! They had 24 attempts on goal. We had 7. Their time might have been better spent going to Specsavers.

For Jose Morinho, life gets no better. A good win against a good club. A clean sheet. Strong and resolute, almost impregnable.

BUT ITS NOT SPURS.

It’s not what we do, not how we play, not what we want. It’s George Graham’s Arsenal. It’s Stoke. Route 1 football. It’s about parking buses and scoring on the break. Even in home matches. Which we did to great effect yesterday, obviously. But as Jamie Rednapp astutely noted; we’d never get away with playing in such a way with a full stadium. The fans would get nervous, that would transmit to the players (usually in really unsubtle, totally unambiguous ways), and frustration would result in errors.

So yes, of course I want my team to keep on winning. But do I want them to win ‘like this’? Would I sacrifice points for style? Hmmmm. Why does David Ginola’s face always spring to mind when I have this conversation? And as its generally a conversation I have with myself (a more common occurrence with age, and the arguments get more passionate and demonstrative, even when I’m on the train or walking down the street), it ends with ‘I want it all’. The wins, the style, the grace, the flowing football, the strong defence, the killer through balls, rampaging wing backs, power, pace and glory…

Which is why I’ve now become a Manchester City fan. Possibly Liverpool. Even the very recent Manchester United. Never Chelsea or Arsenal, obviously, they’re unworthy and not very good.

I’m struggling with Morinho.

Monday in a quandary.

A xxxx

We’re going to war. Say goodbye to your sons, lock up your daughters, build a shelter (though possibly a financial, off-shore ‘shelter’ might be more useful than a bunker at the end of your garden), its all kickin’ off!!!

Boris Johnson has declared war against China. And remember, Britain, never never never, shall be saved. Even though there’s 60 million of us and 1.6 billion of them. All experts in martial arts, sword fighting and eating with chop-sticks.

But this won’t be your usual ‘boring old’ war, with guns, soldiers, nukes maybe, submarines and bombs. This is economic warfare. Which is much more bloody. It’s cyber warfare, which is much more… oriental. Yet its war nonetheless.

Boris ‘kowtowed’ (exquisite irony) to Donald Trump and told Huawei to fuck off, they’re not wanted in our telecoms infrastructure because it represents a massive security risk, which it unquestionably does. But Trump is embroiled with his own trade war with China because they make steel much cheaper than he can make it in Pittsburgh, which pisses him off greatly. So Boris ditched Huawei from our 5G project. Even though 5G is essential for our businesses and telecoms and without the Chinese giant company providing the infrastructure (lots of which is in place already and has been here for many many years), we’ll be making our own 5G stuff using old car radio parts, breaking up our Betamax players for components and using a lot of balsa wood, empty washing up liquid bottles and string. Should work fine. By 2073 at the latest.

China has immediately retaliated. In that fabulously opaque Chinese way which proclaims they are an ‘open’ and ‘democratic’ society, Tik-Tok, the online video site, yesterday ditched its plans to have its world centre here in London. Employing 3,000 people. Tik-Tok is obviously a free and independent company acting in no way due to any influence from its government. Who are famously ‘hands off’ in such matters. Yeah. Right. And if the Chinese pull all their students from our shores (there are millions of them, literally) half a dozen universities will immediately become financially unviable.

So Boris has, for some reason, brought in the moral issues. The apparent genocide of the Uyghur people. China hates them. Has somehow ‘reduced their numbers’ by 84% in a year and is involved in a campaign of forced sterilisation of Uyghur women. All denied by their ambassador to London on Andrew Marr today. Who hotly disputed authenticated video footage of truckloads of Uyghurs being carted off never to be seen again. ‘Lies by the west’. Obviously. Bloody westerners!

But the Uyghurs won’t make my phone download yesterdays goals any quicker. Huawei can. For that alone, Boris should reconsider. I’ve asked Alexa and she agrees. She told me the Chinese were the most honest, trustworthy, non-listening people in the world.

Who am I to argue?

Happy days

A xxxx

In the entire Cities of London and Westminster there is only place buzzing with activity. The shops are deserted, offices empty, roads and pavements like the fucking morgue. But at the virtual junction of those two fine cities sits the Royal Courts of Justice. The High Court. And every day as I walk past there is the crowd of paps, the journalists, the tv vans. Two of our posher coffee shops have opened up in their honour. And when I walk in to get my morning latte (pretentious fucker that I am) every table in a Pret the size of a ballroom has three cameras sitting on it, each with a metre long lens attached.

Finer points of the legal system would not receive such attention. Intricate cases upon which may turn legislation that could affect our lives would be ignored. But stick a couple of A-list slebs in there and the world’s press descend like… like… like a virus!! It is nothing more than collective voyeurism by proxy. We send in the hacks so we can learn about ‘lives of the rich’n’famous’ whilst they’re under oath.

And this is what we learn about Johnny Depp and Amber Heard.

They are both certifiably insane. Immoral. Amoral. Revolting. Disgusting. Evil. Nasty. Horrible. Vile. And more revolting. With no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Other than Amber looking like Amber. That redeems quite a bit in my mind, but is it enough??

So in Depp’s desire to ‘save his reputation’ after the Sun newspaper’s allegations that he is a ‘wife beater’, he’s prepared to present himself as pretty much the world’s most obnoxious and disgusting human (barely that), who takes drugs and alcohol to excess, falls over unconscious quite a bit, remembers very little about decades at a time, behaves in a terrible way to everybody, loses all his money, never washes, throws tantrums, eats shit, but DON’T CALL ME A WIFE-BEATER! The rest he’s proud of. Or at least insufficiently not proud to be happy to parade it in front of a court and thus the world’s media.

But by all accounts, and there are many, she was just as bad, if not worse. And there is just cause, it would appear, if we lived in a world of true equality and non-presumptive egalitarianism, to call Amber a ‘husband beater’. But the term doesn’t exist. It’s not allowed to exist.

Yet it seems that basically they spent their entire marriage fighting, but like, proper, physically assaulting, beating, attacking with a variety of household implements, real, gloves-off, fighting with each other. When she wasn’t in bed with Elon Musk that is. But that’s not an implication of any moral judgment. Just a massive fucking question mark about her taste in men. In fact if I had such poor choices of men I’d become a lesbian too.

Amber speaks next week (or two). But so far it just seems to have painted a picture of a totally dysfunctional marriage between two equal and opposite imbeciles.

The whole thing is so stupid as to be totally compelling.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

So we need to mask up. Everywhere. Essential. Critical for the ‘R’ number. In shops, on transport, in bed, showering, masking up is compulsory. Even though Boris, as the end product of countless advisors and think tanks and medical gurus, has been telling us since… since March 23rd, that masks are shit. That they make us look like obsessive-compulsive-neurotic far-Eastern pro-democracy demonstrators. Or defeated U.S. presidents engaged in a series of U-turns. That masks ‘don’t make any difference’. Which is logical, for a breath-based, airborne virus. It’s like saying that shoes won’t necessarily protect your feet. Yet in the absence of even 1, single, measly reason why masks might do any harm to anyone, they are now to be part of our daily lives. Even though us tube travellers are hardened veterans. In that every day that I use the Underground I deploy mine around my neck. I sometimes pull it up but then it ends up dropped again due to a distinct lack of anyone I might breathe on. And if anyone does dare step onto my carriage, fuck ‘em. I hate wearing the thing. And it makes Joey cry, so its simply out of the equation. But you don’t HAVE to wear them in shops and stuff until 6 weeks next Thursday. Or nine weeks from last Tuesday. No rush.

Meanwhile, Spurs go marching on. Following our ‘thrashing’ of Arsenal on Sunday, we put poor Newcastle to the sword last night at St James’s. Which means our hopes and dreams of… of… of a UEFA cup slot next year are still burning as brightly as they were when… when… errrrr… when it actually was a decent cup to be involved in. Arsenal beat the new champions last night when Liverpool visited the Emirates, mainly because when you’ve already won the league, who can be arsed? Not Liverpool, apparently.

Manchester City won in not such convincing style against Bournemouth as they prepare for next season. As they’ve now been freed by those all powerful (don’t make me laugh), super-controlling (like Joey) omnipotent (right) tossers at UEFA to spend, spend, spend, they’re looking to go shopping again. Lock up yer centre backs. Because replacing the retiring David Silva is nigh on impossible, as he demonstrated yet again last night, but winning the league with Otamendi and John Stones as your centre back partnership is a far more unlikely scenario. And the court ruling has just open the door for yet more Emirate excesses. Just what the game needs.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

Look, I know it happened on Sunday and now its Tuesday but Monday was just a blur so now we have the opportunity to sit back, with the fullness of hindsight, history and… something beginning with ‘h’… hamazingness, and consider the meaning of life, the universe and everything, as represented by the simple equation: Spurs 2; Arsenal 1. Ok, so its not an equation. If you want one, have this: Spurs 2; Arsenal 1 = Joy + Happiness + Fabulous + Love.

Joey watched it. He’ll never forget the day. Oh, he has already. Never mind there will (possibly, hopefully) be plenty more. And its not like one match has defined the season or made life worth living again or re-kindled my love of football or anything profound like that, its more… more… just the best result. Further enhanced by the fact that it took us above Arsenal in the league table. And we came back from a 1 goal deficit to win.

But this is not about gloating. Never. Don’t do it. We leave that to ‘them’. Spurs fans only ever act like gentle-persons of not-necessarily binary nor any one specific coloured nature. All lives matter, even trans-thingies, Arsenal fans and poofs. So we don’t do that smug thing and we don’t get all arrogant. We just sit back, smile knowingly and shout NAAH NAAH NA-NAAH NAAH, at any nearly Gooners. We’re above that.

A bit like Manchester City. They’re a bit above the law. The law states: (eh-hum): you are not allowed to fund a football club like its your own, personal fiefdom, pumping it so full of cash which is NOT EARNED BY THE CLUB ITSELF that it makes competition impossible, irrelevant and reduces that club, or what’s left of it, into an oil billionaire’s plaything. (For Chelsea please replace ‘oil billionaire’ with ‘gas and airline billionaire’).

The governing body in Europe, UEFuckingA, for once took action against flagrant breaches of all financial rules by Manchester City, over a sustained period. Oddly, that same period in which they seemed to win everything. And UEFA punished them with a 2-year Champions League ban and a 50 mil fine. Damaging their finances and their reputation. And putting at risk their ability to keep hold of their (horrible, mercenary, self-centred, disloyal… shall I go on?) players and management team, who would run away without having European competition. Yet on appeal, this ‘sentence’ was reduced to no ban from Europe’s biggest tournament and a 10 million Euro fine instead of 50.

And why? There’s only two alternatives.

Firstly, that Sheikh Mansoor bought the entire UEFA team the Mercedes of their choice, and a garage to go with it. Attached to a villa. No accusations, I’m just putting it out there. I mean, footballing government and bribery has a deep and horrible history.

Or secondly, UEFA are just a limp and testicle-free bunch of absolute, useless and clueless tossers who know as much about football as they do about wearing face masks in a pandemic. Oh, sorry, that’s the other bunch of useless tossers, our government.

Tragic mistake, whatever happened.

Happy nearly face-mask day

A xxxx

… and Manchester City win 5 nil.

That’s it. That nasty northern spawn of oil billionaires have been reduced to one single result. They win 5 nil. I’d hate that. Can you imagine if your team won, like, every game with style, class, beautiful flowing football, clean sheets and 5 unanswered goals? Awful. Where’s the challenge? Where’s the uncertainty? Where’s the panic, anxiety, stress, shame, worry, shattered dreams, massive disappointment and heart-rending AGONYYYYYY!!!!!! which for Spurs fans (and don’t kid yourself, so many others too) is not just ‘part of the game’, but in fact is the game in its entirety.

And today we play Arsenal. The biggest sporting rivalry in the world. Well, in my world. Yet we don’t hate Arsenal the club. We hate their fans. Who, fortunately won’t be attending today’s derby match. Unfortunately neither will our fans. The only difference is that their fans are horrible, smug, arrogant and have no endearing features whatsoever, whilst ours are charming, gentlemanly (even the female ones… ok, and all the others in between) and rather beautiful. Tests have actually shown that Arsenal fans are the ugliest in the country. (Withnail et I, 1987). I’m not making judgments here, just stating scientific facts.

And we’ll probably (ok, definitely) lose, which will bring on heaps more smugness and horribleness, which will miss the point that both clubs, currently, are mid-table shite, leaving many good people wondering when Jose Morinho might possibly contract Covid 19 and how serious is might be.

Norwich City were relegated yesterday. But will be allowed to finish their last few games in the Premiership before they complete their demotion. That’s the rules. And I wish I could say something nice about them, or to them. Something positive, something… anything other than Delia Smith, but I can’t. They came, they were fairly anonymous for a year, and now they’re going. Bye-bye.

But Jackie Charlton. Oh my. Now that is sad. Big Jack died yesterday and for a certain generation (ok, mine) he represented one part of what is brilliant about our national game. That part being club loyalty (only ever played for Leeds), a wicked charm, a World Cup winner, and all coupled with a ‘pragmatic’ approach to the art of defending which verged (and went right over that verge) on the extremely violent. As only that Leeds team of the 60s/70s could perpetrate. As he said himself, his brother Bobby could play football (arguably the best English footballer ever) while he, Jack, could stop people playing football. Because that was his job. Which he did brilliantly. And very very dangerously at times. And I’m sad not because we’ve lost a World Cup winner, or a footballer, but because we’ve lost someone who was always much more intelligent and witty than all others around him.

Happy Sad Day

A xxxx

If you took a double-sided bulldozer, a really big one, put a tower on it so you could add a full size wrecking-ball which could take down a three storey building, added metal spikes round the track so you could downward destroy as well as front, back and above, and then, made it look like Amber Heard, all gorgeousness and exquisite and beautiful and softness, once you’d conceptualised that complex image in your mind, and only then, can you imagine life with our Joey. Oh, and this 27 tonne bulldozer falls over quite a bit too. And eats dirt. Pebbles. Earth. Anything.

You see I had two daughters. Then the Lord sent me a granddaughter. Not just any granddaughter but the best one He’d ever produced. And thus my experience of ‘babies’ was very girly-orientated. Which is fine, cos I just love little girls. And they play and they fall and they tumble and they break things, because babies do and they have poor co-ordination and they’re very excitable, particularly around me because apparently that’s what I do. Not saying its a good thing, just sayin’.

But then came Joey. And the world changed. And got broken. Along with most things in it.

No-one taught Joey to do that, its an innate skill. No one ‘programmed’ or ‘conditioned’ or ‘gender stereotyped’ him. Other than the boxing gloves I bought him at 3 weeks old and the samurai sword for his first birthday present. And I may be making judgments based on a very small sample size (for which I would crucify any and every ‘study’ guilty of such a crime) but I don’t care. Boys and gels are different. Just different. In the way they act. Of course, you get down-time with Joey. He’ll read a book with you for approximately 9 seconds before tearing a page off and jumping to the floor in search of things to destroy. Though he does relax (as you can see, during his busy working day) to attend to his… errr… correspondence, and of course he does sit still while he eats. Which is a large part of his day. Because he knows how to eat does our little Jo-Jo. His lunch. His sister’s lunch. My lunch. Your lunch. Lunch is not just for wimps; its just for Joey.

But heh, eating’s not a gender thing. Does Joey behave as he does (which is not in any way ‘bad’, just rather ‘dangerous’) because he’s conscious that his jeans are blue while his sister’s are pink? And thus has been ‘trained’ by un-woke, gender-binary parents to live as he does? Shame on them.

We’ll let Joey decide on his own gender, when he’s ready. Age about 4 should be fine. We’ll explain all the wonderful options available to him in the world of the NON-binary, the trans-options, and draw him pictures. If we can understand what the fuck they mean. Or who the fuck they mean, perhaps. Then he’ll have surgery, if necessary, as appropriate.

Yes, life in the post-woke world is easy. Just don’t choose to talk about it. Debate has been banned. Ask JK Rowling. I would, but I’ve ‘cancelled’ her.

Happy lovely day

A xxxx

Big Brother watches us in many ways and many guises. I’m not talking about Cctv cameras all over the place, reaching such a ridiculous level that a man can barely take a piss on a subway train any more without fear of repercussions! Exposing oneself in public is now almost a thing of the past. And they track us by our credit cards, and by our travel with Oyster cards, though its pretty quiet for most people on that front at the moment. And what those guys miss, there’s always the brace of busy-bodies from Beijing. Huawei and Alexa, keeping tracks on us, reporting back.

And then there’s Google. They know what you buy. They know where you buy it. And they show you loads more just like it. Because the first thing you need once you’ve just spent the last four weeks building, f’rinstance, a garden shed, is another 3 garden sheds. Obvious. Basic marketing.

But the worst is Google Maps. Maybe its because I’m an Android, rather than an Apple, I don’t know. I generally try and avoid all contact with i-phone users, so don’t know if they, like me, receive their monthly ‘statement’ showing what a lazy, useless fucking waste of space, time and not much energy, they’ve been for the last 30 days.

Yet it makes you think. Makes you analyse. Makes you wonder. And, obviously, makes you feel guilty.

In April I walked 82 miles. In May 76 and June, a paltry 61. My world is shrinking. But this may be because the weather in April was so outrageously splendiferous that you just had to walk that extra yard here, another kilometre there. Or possibly that the younger daughter was accompanying us on our daily allowance and she adheres to the philosophy that if you’re not bleeding at the end of it, then it wasn’t really exercise. Maybe even my mileage has dropped due to greater work time.

My cycling has increased. Which means I’m going to the station more. Last month, 1 hour’s cycling, totalling 19 miles. Ok, its not far, its not Sunday morning Lycra-man type pedalling, but 19mph is a good speed, so I’m content.

I visited 2 ‘cities’ in June. London, obvs, I fucking live there, and Northwood. Where I keep my brother-in-law and his old E-type Jag. But, a city? Northwood? Have they been there??? Firstly it doesn’t have a cathedral. Secondly, it doesn’t have anything else. Unless having a Pizza Hut is the new criterion for City status.

Be careful out there; they’re watching YOU!!!

Happy paranoid-day

A xxxx

So we’re all living in dread and anticipation of ‘the second wave!!!’ When the virus will return. And they’re working on it already. Obviously. They were actually working on the second wave before the first one arrived. But the advice now is unambiguous. Ok, let me rephrase that because the word ‘unambiguous’ has been officially deleted from the ‘government advice lexicon’ for the duration of this pandemic.

Lose weight before the second wave. Those are the words of England’s deputy chief medical advisor. Known as ‘Tubby’. She’s said we need fitness and lack of fatness to fight the next round.

Something our Chancellor, Rishi Sunak (skinny bastard) has taken on board by reducing the price of a Big Mac to £1.36. Holy shit!!! I’ve had three for breakfast today.

Because the great restaurant revival plan is that the government will pay half our restaurant bills!! Only ‘eat in’, obviously, not booze, sadly, and only up to a tenner per person, tragically. They’ve also dropped vat on such food by 5%.

The effect of this is two-fold. Speaking as a pig. Firstly it will encourage me to eat twice as much. Because the second bit is ‘free’. Secondly, it only has an effect on cheaper eateries. Ten pounds won’t get you a plate of olives to nibble whilst waiting for your starter at Le Caprice. Your 85 quid steak at Hawksmoor won’t taste any better for being a tenner cheaper.

But Nandos? McDonalds? And most importantly, that all-time British standard: curry. All reduced to the point where you simply have to order just one more aloo gobi, a cheeseburger on the side, the garlic bread starter.

All the cheapo, comfort foody, high fat/salt/sugar places will be there, encouraging us to loose weight by giving us ten pounds (cash, alas not weight) of extra food. Pig out on the government.

And just a brief word about David Silva. Manchester City’s ‘old’ midfield player. One of those few who grace our league. Who bring genuine artistry and majesty to our game. I watched him last night and, to be honest, its hard for any player to look even half decent when Kevin de Bruyne is on the pitch, but little David, with a smile on his face, as always (except when he’s grimacing, obvs) was magnificent. Other than that, I have no interest in football in any significant manner.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

How do Oriental people ask to be furloughed? It’s like they invented a word (didn’t exist before March 18th, 2020) which was inherently and totally prejudiced against Far Easterners. Some things just can’t be done. The words just don’t fit, won’t come out, can’t be formed by your tongue. It’s like you asking for directions in Xhosa.

Meanwhile, as the world ‘opens up again’ and ‘economic recovery’ beckons, this is what the Embankment looked like in the ‘rush hour’. That’s the Victoria Embankment, part of the cultural and business heart of London, not like, some other embankment on some far away little stream in Gloucestershire where three fishermen represents a ‘crowd’.

And this is my world. The City of London is a thing of the (quite recent) past, now relegated to tumbleweed rolling down empty streets filled with vacated offices. Feels almost post-apocalyptic. Quite horrible.

So what a surprise yesterday morning, as I ambled my way to work, to see a massive crowd outside the High Courts. I mean, massive, sprawling, climbing over each other in their efforts at social distancing. This was the press pack, I discovered much later, waiting for Jonny Depp. And Amber Heard. Not they they were against each other, but they were both there because Jonny is suing the Sun newspaper for defamation. Which stated that he was a ‘wife-beater’. And a drunk and a drug addict at times, but he’s not worried about those. They’re just badges of glory. It’s the wife-beating allegations which apparently ‘damage his reputation’. And he wouldn’t want that delicate image, cultivated over decades, of being a wild, crazy, lunatic, violent, unpredictable, insane, dangerous head case, being damaged by accusations by our gutter press of being an abuser.

He should have taken the Sun to court in Saudi Arabia. Where wife-beating is not so much ‘not a crime’ as, more, on a par with buying a loaf of bread. And just as criminalised. But he chose the London courts instead. Probably due to the Sun being British. Like Punch & Judy.

Onwards and upwards

A xxxx