Andy's Glasses

There’s a report out, 157 pages long, by ‘Historic England’ which lists, basically, slavery shit. This is a list of homes, castles even, schools, hospitals, pubs and sometimes entire villages, built by those financially benefitting from the transatlantic slave trade. The benefactors were either slave ship owners or ran plantations in America or the Caribbean.

And quite frankly, I take this as a call to arms. All us right-on, woken-up, anti-vax, anti-big-pharma, LGBTQIA (plus any more initials added to this ever-increasing acronym since publication) supporting, pronoun quoting, statue-toppling, portrait-burning, bust-busting, take-a-knee-ing imbeciles must stick together and do what we’re best at! Which is making frankly ridiculous protests, destroying beautiful objects of collective ownership and, most importantly, re-writing history! I could NEVER live in a village built by a slaver. Even if it is 300 years old, of incredible beauty and feeds the poor. NEVER!! BURN IT DOWN!!! We must not only react and reject all such horrors, all those revolting stately homes, useless schools, vile hospitals, but BE RID OF THEM FOREVERRRRRR!!! 
Signed, 
Lord Ponsenby, Tobacco-R-Us Plantation, Georgia, USA (he, she, it, them, us)

Australia doesn’t have slaves. Instead it has morons. Who get married to people they’ve never met before. Yes, series 6 of ‘Married at First Sight, Australia’ is now available, all 653 episodes. All of which come with a guarantee that ‘nothing will happen’. But if something should, we’ll show it endlessly for the rest of every episode. Which they do to heighten tension. Because there is, quite frankly, nothing more boring on tv than watching two people, deeply in love, being nice to each other. Who the fuck wants that???? We want to watch nasty, we desire sleazy, vile and horrendous. We want physical, as well as emotional abuse. And we want it NOW! This series is so bad it should come with a warning. “TOTALLY ADDICTIVE; KEEP OUT!!!” But there’s a fatal flaw in the concept. That the people you want to see because they’re so awful and horrid, leave early. So that all that remains is… is… is… nice people!!! Which is no program at all. Mel could just watch me all night if she just wants ‘nice’. 

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

When I left Los Angeles in 1982 I stopped in New York on the way home. For about a month. Lived with my mate Joey. It was on Long Island but it was like being in Saturday Night Fever. Everyone had Italian names. Everyone had real, Italian grandmothers who wore black and looked like retired olive pickers from Tuscany. And everyone was ‘connected’ and spoke of their ‘connections’ with pride.

The morning I arrived Joey picked me up from JFK, after the all-night ‘red-eye’ flight, and took me straight to a park. Where a bunch of his friends (Bellucci, Vespucci, Fabrisi, Tagliatelli et al) were going to play ‘football’. Great. I love football. Oh, not that football. The other one. The one normally played in armour. But we instead opted for shorts and t-shirts. And yet, because they were Italian, and young, and still pretty drunk/stoned/wasted from the night before, and definitely a bit stupid, it was decided to play ‘tackle’ as opposed to ‘touch’. The latter meaning that to stop you all they have to do is touch you and you have to stop, the former; you tackle. Proper. Stop me IF YOU CAN!

It’s worth pointing out that these were Italian Americans. Real Italians would definitely have played ‘touch’ so as not to crease their suits.

I scored a touchdown. Everyone did. At least 5. There were only 10 of us playing. But mine felt so good. I’d seen it on the tv (you simply can’t avoid NFL in America, it is on EVERYWHERE) and now I’d caught the ball and run it in to score. Outrunning half a dozen drunk Italians. I was very proud.

Tonight is Super Bowl 55. (Just FYI, the FA cup is 149 this year). And it features the one and only Tom Brady. He’s the quarterback (it really doesn’t matter) of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. And he’s married to Gisele Bundchen. But the incredible thing (ok, Gisele is pretty incredible) is that Tom is 43 years old. And the most highly decorated player in NFL history (decorated with those ridiculous and revolting Super Bowl rings they get). And playing his 21st season of the most injury-prone sport in the world. And the focus of the game, the focus of the injuries, the focus of every defensive player, is the quarterback. Put him down, take him out, kill him, whatever it takes. Yet Tom has survived that pounding for 21 seasons. The NFL average career is 3.3 years.

So whatever you feel about American Football (probably not much) you have to have a thought for Tom Brady as he vies to win his 7th Super Bowl.

Because I’m the biggest NFL fan now that I’ve given up ‘football’ football because it is hateful and horrible. My malaise is so bad that I barely enjoyed Arsenal losing to Villa yesterday. That bad.

Happy Super Bowl Sunday

A xxxx

You just gotta love them Corbyn boys. You gotta. Because there’s no denying, they learn from their mistakes. Well, not so much ‘learn’ in any normal sense of the word, more… more… more… more repeat them again and again ad infinitum until you just wish them all dead.

This time its brother Piers. Bless his unholy wooden head. Unholy because if there is a God, he fucking hates all Corbyns, and wooden because there was no room for a brain inside it. Which is why he’s an…

ANTI-VAXXER!!!!

In fact, brother Piers, along with David Icke, is the anti-vaxxer in chief. Brilliant scientific minds whose intellect, knowledge and understanding would have us in a world rife with Polio, smallpox, whooping cough and measles. Ahhhhh, Utopian dreams. These people are, in short, total tossers. That we know. But then we have to consider ‘the method’.

They made a leaflet encouraging people to abandon the vaccine. It was written and designed by Corbyn, and claims as such. And on the front is the ‘Auschwitz arch’, which normally holds the legend ‘arbrecht mein frei’ (work sets you free), but this time cannily replaced by ‘freedom from Coronavirus’. How the equation leaps from one to the other is beyond me, but I’m no mathematician. But the idea is relatively simplistic: enter ‘here’ and you’ll be free (as if).

Why is the hard-left default analogy always the holocaust? Ken Livingstone was always overly free with his ‘nazi’ accusations, even to Jews. Brother Jeremy spent his entire spell as Labour leader defending the indefensible, that invoking the holocaust as a comparison is NOT ok. He too used the N-word (the Hitler one, not the other one) with a frequency well beyond decency.

And so his brother had a lightbulb moment and thought, here’s a great idea, let’s use an iconic death camp image to show people what that vaccine is REALLY about.

Jeremy Corbyn is up in arms too because he resents the massive amount of money the big-pharma companies are going to make from the vaccinations. Thus if (heaven forbid a million times) he had won the last election, vaccines would actually be banned from the UK. And we’d all be dead by Christmas. Particularly as Diane Abbot would be working the numbers.

So a message to Piers Corbyn: PLEASE don’t have the vaccine. Or any medication for anything. PLEASE. I’ll send you a DNR tag myself.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

Captain Dr Sir Tom Moore died the other day. We’d never heard of him until last April but he immediately became the most important man in the country. At a time when the high point of our entire week was eating a Milky Way, when there was no movement allowed, no traveling, not even football!!!, Sir Tom’s laps of his garden with his little walking frame became the focus of our lives. He became our hero. He set out to raise £1000 for the NHS workers and ended up with 39 million.

How is that even possible. He’s not even a proper influencer. Doesn’t have a 36 inch synthetic chest. Doesn’t have peroxide hair extensions. Doesn’t spend lockdown traveling round the world at everyone else’s expense and shitting in the face of covid rules for ‘work’. Because don’t kid yourself, lying on a beach in Anguilla for 8 hours a day drinking only the right kind of rum is hard work. Taking fourteen selfies of your sandals can be really exhausting. Yet old Captain Tom didn’t even have a contract with Zimmer. And his Instagram account showed just 9 ‘followers’ but 32,562 crierchers. They’re like ‘followers’ but just do it much more slowly and stiffly. And normally by mail. Or telephone, (landline only).

It’s worth mentioning that although we all lionised this exceptional man, he was very ‘normal’. Although normal for his time as opposed to this one, hence the shirt-and-tie, the jacket, the medals. No trackie bottoms for Tom. No death metal t-shirts. And yet the transition from ‘ahhhh, sweet’ to ‘I love that man with all my heart’ came with his first tv interview. Because old Tom was not just lovely, but very very funny. He could have been a stand-up, other than his frailty preventing such a thing. And such charm. That’s why we loved him. And the Queen loved him, so she knighted him. She did it with him standing up. Because if he’d have ‘taken a knee’, as is usual custom, he would never have got up again. And the army loved him, so they promoted him to Major for the last few months of his life. 

And then his maker called him. “Ground control to Major Tom…”

The world lost a true legend this week. 

Happy Friday, unless you’re a Spurs fan, in which case I’ll message you with the Samaritans number.
 
A xxxx

“I’m off to a physio appointment”; “my back’s ok now so I just need a bit of physio…”

Casual sentences, banded around regularly among the creaking, aching classes, but they don’t tell the real story.

You know that wonderful bit in ‘the 40-year-old virgin’ when Steve Carrell, hirsute to the point of gorilladom, gets his body waxed. And as the first strip is yanked from him, this quiet, calm, polite, mousey man yells a string of expletives that would make ME blush. Yet its funny because it resonates. The effect of sudden, quite unexpected and brutal pain.

The word ‘physiotherapist’ comes from the Greek word ‘Physio’ meaning, probably, physical and ‘therapy’ is from the Latin ‘theror’ meaning terrorist. But when they first advertised themselves as physical terrorists the work did not exactly have their phones off the hook. Until the Spanish Inquisition arrived at which point it was a constant ‘Christmas’ for all purveyors of torture, and the ability to cause intense physical pain made the re-named physiotherapists the tech entrepreneurs of 1479.

Fast forward to 2021 and I went for my appointment yesterday. My inner masochist, who I never even realised was in there, so well surrounded by all the inner cowards and pain-averse wimps, arranged a visit because my bad shoulder has entered new realms of badness and needs improvement for when the tennis courts re-open in… errrr… well, its not just tennis. Putting a cup on a shelf in a wall cabinet should not require a 10 minute warm-up and a high dose of ibuprofen.

And my physio is wonderful. The absolute best. Sweet, charming, gorgeous and thus its so easy to lie there, all warm and comfortable (in my sodding mask) as she gently manipulates and massages my shoulder area. Ahhhhhhhh…

All done to lull the unsuspecting into a false sense of relaxation. Of preparation for the ‘real work’. When her thumb finds that knot of tissue and MUTHAAAAFUCKAAAA!!!!

Water boarding is banned by the Geneva Convention. Yet physiotherapy is still allowed.

The strange thing is, it tends to work. It improves. Relieves. Strengthens. Whitens. Sorry, that’s dentists, the next on my list of WHY ARE THESE PEOPLE ALLOWED TO HURT EVERYBODY???

In fact it was so horrible I’m going again next week. I have a history of endlessly repeating agonising and painful experiences. Being a Spurs fan has its merits.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

It comes as no real surprise that the leader in the vaccination race is Israel. It has the best medical research in the world, the best tech innovations and a population, all raised in the army at some point, who listen and obey. Argumentatively, but they obey. They also have a government who are used to making quick decisions. 70 years of living surrounded by sworn enemies will do that. Ok, the ‘ultra orthodox’ are an obvious exception in terms of anything to do with common sense, but that’s another conversation.

Next on the ‘jab-em-quick’ table comes the UAE. A tiny nation of 9 million people, all so rich that none have to actually go to work.

Then comes the UK. Bless ‘em. We’ve vaccinated over 8 million of our people already.

Europe is way down on the list. I mean ‘waaaaaay’ down. Because they don’t have enough vaccines. And so are enraged that Astrazeneca have told them they can’t supply all that the EU ordered in the time promised. Which is why the Europeans went into vaccine-panic on Friday and… and… and…

What they did was threaten to overturn a Brexit agreement which had only taken 3 years, 5 prime ministers, 785 negotiators and millions of foreigners to agree. Three weeks later the EU threaten to ‘prevent exports of vaccine from the EU’.

Seems a little harsh, a little greedy, a little reactionary. But that’s the tip of the iceberg. And the iceberg in question is the island of Ireland. As anyone on the Titanic could have told you, icebergs are dangerous things.

To ‘prevent exports from the EU’ translates, in English as well as Gaelic, into ‘putting a border up between Northern and Southern Ireland’. Always a fractious place. Between those that no-one can understand and those who understand very little that doesn’t involve concrete. As the government went into overdrive over this horrendous threat, the statisticians were greatly concerned as to whether renewed ‘troubles’ in the Province would count as ‘Covid deaths’?

The Euros have, obviously, removed this stupid threat, with even tossers like Macron realising that you don’t start a war because of… because of…

Because of your own tragic inefficiency.

The UK ordered 100 million Astrazeneca vaccines in May. The EU ordered 300 million (their population is 8 times what ours is, so not a massive amount), in August. 3 months later. The UK then ordered 40 million Pfizer (including my one) in July. The EU ordered their Pfizer supply in November. Four months later. Four months of (I’m guessing, but you just KNOW) endless bickering, arguing, debating, procrastinating and bureaucracy. It’s what they do best. Much as I didn’t want to leave Europe, the horrendous ‘processing’ of any decision or action whatsoever is something I won’t miss.

Our government, for all the accusations of it ‘acting too late’, got the vaccine bit spot on. ‘They’ didn’t. Tossers.

Happy peaceful Sunday

A xxxx

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