Andy's Glasses

I like to swear. Don’t know why. Makes me feel good. Makes me feel rebellious. Even though everyone swears. Makes me feel like a builder. Though they swear in Polish. I don’t know the reason, I just know its a fabulous way of self-expression. And never better than when juxtaposed with delightful and flowing eloquence of excessive fucking wordage. Maybe I think its ‘hip’ and should know better. I don’t give a shit. Swear I will.

But there’s one word. One really, really, awfully awful, dire word which I generally don’t employ without taking precautions and qualifiers and warnings of a positively Covid nature. Especially if women are around. Itself an oddity in that if you were to call me a prick or a nob I would actually like it. Depending on the context. But to even use the ‘c-word’ in a woman’s presence is to invoke wrath and anger and reprimand and disgust. Which is why it must be used with exceptionally judicious caution. Women get more upset by the c-word, men get more coronavirus. Remind me why there’s a God?

So I save such a word for when it is absolutely necessary. When it is truly required. When no other word will even start to impart the true feeling of the sentiment. When someone has exceeded everyone’s natural right to be a tosser. To be a wanker. An idiot. A horror. A gobshite. A dickhead. When mere throwaway insults pale into the humorously ironic.

And thus is the ideal word to describe Sadiq Kahn. The Mayor of London. The limp and slightly leftish (depending on to whom he’s speaking at the time) son-of-a… bus driver. Who has all the charm of a… build-it-yourself garden shed. All the charisma of Philip Green. Speaks with the flowing prose of a Millwall fan and has done nothing of any use whatsoever in his four-year tenure at the helm of the greatest city in the world.

He is the man for this crisis!! Definitely. In fact he can take a ‘problem’ and make it a ‘crisis’ all by hisself.

Just as lockdown started I was still taking the tube to town. And it was fine. 6 people on a carriage, all far apart and away. So Sadiq reduced the tubes by 60%. ‘To encourage people to stay apart’. Which is hard to do on a train with the adjacent passengers nose in your left ear. Because the trains were rammed. That act elevated the Mayor from nob-end to total-arsehole.

Then on Friday he announced that suspension of the congestion charge for cars entering central London (which stopped when lockdown started) is to be reinstated as from TODAY. Five days after Boris told us to ‘use our cars, avoid public transport’.

And then: from June 22, that congestion charge will increase by 35% (15 quid a day) AND operate all day and night, seven days a week. Leaving Londoners who need to go to the City no viable option but to use the public transport system which can’t now cope with anything approximating social distancing.

So congratulations to Sadiq Kahn. He is a total, utter and absolute C***!!!!!

Happy more shed-building

A xxxx

There’s a new facet to Cornovirus that’s just coming to light. Something that wasn’t noticed in the original list of symptoms. It’s called: ‘Coronavirus associated, with this much time I can do fucking anything! syndrome’. And affects a certain class of people. Not the fatties, they get enough of a rough deal from Covid as it is. Neither diabetics, specifically, cos they don’t do well either, statistically. No, this affects those who should know better.

Hence, when Mel noticed that we possibly needed a new shed, I went into my normal state of ‘oblivious’. Even though both windows fell out the shed about a year ago, there’s a massive hole in the roof and most of the corners just aren’t there any longer.

So we ordered a new one. The old one was collected Tuesday. 2 Polish geezers quite literally tore it down with their bare hands. Took 10 minutes. And this morning, our new shed arrived.

When ordering basically the same one we had, but without the holes, we just went of the best price/deal/availability/EASE. Because we’d ‘made’ the old one. It was delivered, about 6 panels. Mel and I, one Sunday morning about 20 years ago, glued the sides to the floor, put a couple of nails to hold the roof on, and bish-bosh, one shed. Easy peasy.

Today’s version is the Airfix fully working Harley Davidson Electra Glide model, version. There are 600 parts and 24,000 screws, nuts, bolts and nails. The roof ‘stuff’ comes on a fucking roll, FFS. It’s one step up from ‘here’s your tree and a hammer and saw; build yer shed’.

But I have time. Sorry, WE have time. Absolutely no construction skills whatsoever. But time. And tools. Got lots of tools. Electric ones, petrol ones, leaf-blowers, I got fucking EVERYTHING!!! There’s just one thing I don’t have.

A clue.

Which is why I’m writing this rather than…

Happy Building

A xxxx

This is my ‘roadmap to normality’. I think it explains more than all Boris’s words of good but misguided intentions which constitute his ‘roadmap’. Plus, I really hate that word in such a metaphorical context. It’s patronising. Don’t know why, but it is.

Anyway, life goes on. Went to work yesterday and had lots to do, including meeting my own personal detective. The ‘alleged’ burglar who broke into my store is in remand, having pleaded ‘not guilty’. The man who was found round the corner with my cabinet. Kicking it. With the crow bar used to smash the window. Caught with hands full of Ray Bans. Not guilty. Must have been mistaken identity. In a completely deserted City of London at midnight during ‘lockdown’. Or police brutality. I’m hoping the latter. And hoping its continuing during his time ‘on remand’. Another burden on the tax-payer.

Jonathan Sumption was on the radio yesterday pointing out some uncomfortable statistics for the government and repeating his 7 week mantra which is, we should just carry on as normal with those at risk, over 70s or health impaired, taking all the precautions they want. And stating that, essentially, for the (truly minuscule; not even rating the thinnest entry on the DEATH FROM CORONAVIRUS!!!! statistical charts) risk which the virus represents to the majority of people, we’ve sold our economic and financially viable future. And Lord Sumption may be a bit ‘odd’, but he is also exceptionally clever. And being probably the foremost expert on the Tudor period, he’s fully qualified to comment on plagues.

So the news that ‘the furlough’ will be extended until October offered me scant relief. October… October… FUCKING OCTOBER!!!!! When I was hoping to be hugging people by July. Working normally by August. Going on holiday in September. Exchanging bodily fluids with strangers in Waitrose by June. And who wants to be furloughed when the weather’s shit?

Thus the ‘furlough’, planned until June initially, will extend to October. BUT!!!! Employers will have to contribute. Oh. Fine.

Actually, what’s the opposite of ‘fine’?

The whole ‘furlough’ thing is to pay employees during the time when businesses are closed and thus having virtually zero income. To keep the businesses (almost) viable and prevent mass unemployment. The government pays the wages because the businesses can’t afford it. Yet the chancellor somehow implies that in June, following 3 months of zero trade and regular expenses, those same companies will be in a somehow healthier financial situation than they were in March. And can thus ‘contribute’ to keeping people off the work that would otherwise might have paid their salaries.

I need more maths lessons. My brain hurts.

Happy re-think day

A xxxx

Hello Britain… well I should say ‘hello England’ because for the purposes of this wonderfully simple, completely uncomplicated and totally lacking in confusion statement, we need to separate ourselves from our family of nations who seem to think that Patty Peroxide in Edinburgh, somebody Welsh and the current incarnation of Lucifer’s sister in Belfast, can do a better job than we can. So fuck ‘em. It’s every man, woman and Devil for themselves.

YOU!, the people of England, have done a fantastic job of isolating, of distancing, of being sensible and observant. So good a job that the all-important ‘R’ number, for the reproduction of the virus, has positively plummeted below the magic number ‘1’. It now is 0.5. To 0.9. No-one’s really sure about that. Nor, if I’m honest, how, precisely, they work it out. Quite frankly, statisticians working within +/- 50% are not worth the extra-marital affairs they may choose to have.

But we’re all doing so well that we can now change the current status from DON’T FUCKING DO NUFFINK!! to the more relaxed DON’T FUCKING DO HARDLY ANYTHING!!!

In the lockdown, only those that couldn’t work at home were allowed to go in to work. Whereas now, we’ve positively eased that situation to allow people who wish to go to work to do so. As long as that work is at least 2 metres from someone else’s work. And doesn’t involve food, drink, hospitality, sport, retail, wholesale, buying anything, selling anything or doing anything productive whatsoever in any part of the economy.

So those who can go to work, now should do so. But under NO CIRCUMSTANCES should they use public transport. Better to stay at home. Though we are now actively encouraging everybody who can do so safely, to return to work. Preferably from home. Though you may walk to work. Or cycle. Even drive. Pretty much like you were before. But more so. Just don’t use buses. Trains. Trams. Tubes.

So as you can see, we are slowly easing ourselves back to normality, whilst maintaining a policy of being scared shitless about absolutely everything. To protect the NHS.

And furthermore we’re hoping for even more good news in the weeks to come.

Keep up the good work, England.

Ideally from home.

But you may go in.

Better not to.

I hope that clarifies everything.

Boris
Xxxx

Have you ever met my dad? If you have he will have hugged you. We’ve never been a hand-shakey kind of family. We hug, we kiss, we molest, grope, fondle and stop just a tad short of sexual harassment. It’s our way. So to visit my dad, as I did yesterday, and not hug, kiss, etc, etc, is actually painful. A stark and horrible reminder of the current status quo. Not the ‘Rockin’ all over da World’ one, the other one. So although in this pic (which I love, my dad giving his ‘salute’, albeit with the wrong hand because of a recent dislocation to the shoulder of the correct one) it would appear that we have crossed the ‘2-metre line’, the arbitrary but legally enforceable regulated proximity rule, its all relative. He is my relative. But for us, this is social distancing. Mainly because sound, as all waves, works on the inverse square rule. So at 2 metres away, you get one quarter (inverse the square of 2, ya nob, where the fuck were you in physics???) of the sound you do at the source. And my hearing’s shit and his is way worse. So at 2 metres away he’d have to lip-read. But his sight is worse than his hearing, so it all becomes a matter of balance, of give and take, of win and lose, of cost/benefit.

And there’s the rub. Cost/benefit.

My dad’s been, basically, stuck in his flat for 8 weeks. He’s a very sociable 95 year-old. Normally he’d be out every single day. He has activities. He meets his mates for coffee (which takes approximately 4 hours, Tesco coffee shop just love them taking up 7 tables for that time, nursing one extra-shot soya latte mochachino between 3 of them), he goes to lots of things. He goes to synagogue. Not because he’s religious but because its sociable. Ok, and because he gets whisky too. A win-win. One day he goes over to my brother’s, another he comes over to us, sees the great-grand-kids, where he is in his element.

All reduced to zero by a fucking virus sent by a bat-eating Chinaman.

We all know that ‘the lockdown’ is all about keeping things manageable for the NHS. So illnesses don’t exceed bed/respirator availability. And the ‘cost’ of that is the economy. Which has now officially reached the status of ‘FUBAR’. But there’s other costs. Massive ones.

There’s liberty but only a total nob would raise that argument. Someone like Trump, perhaps, Nigel Farage or every gun-owner in Michigan. Even for those (like MEEEEE) who reckon we should have locked up the old and just adopt a ‘go-for-broke’ paradigm to reach ‘herd immunity’ because then everybody would be safe (well, those still alive) and would have to worry no more.

There’s also sanity. A massive consideration for now and for when we go back to work. And in particular those who don’t make it back to work because its no longer there. And with unemployment comes depression. Sanity.

So my dad decided that next week he’s coming over to the gang for dinner. It’s his choice. We’re all ‘isolating together’ because that’s our choice. And he’ll join us. Because when you’re 95 you’re kind’a not planning for 2021. Or even May the 17th. So why would you forsake a little happiness and enjoyment now for the promise of something ‘better’ when you might not even be here?

Hugging optional. From afar.

Happy… yeah, whatever

A xxxx

Today I turned into my own worst enemy. A (fuuuuuuccckkkkkiiiiinnnngggg) leaf-blower. You know those things. The curse of every suburb. Leafy Britain’s collective wake-up call. WHHHHHRRRRRRRRRR…!!!!! at the crack of 08:00:03 every day from spring to… well back to spring really because there’s always something to blow around the garden to kill half an hour (30 minutes = £12.50, ker-ching) and it sounds like you’re really productive.

But mine is the ‘green’ special. It burns no fossil fuels (directly). No tree-frogs died in its manufacture. It has a zero carbon footprint, and mine is as much carbon as the mud I leave on the floor. If Greta Thunberg blew leaves, this blower is the one she’d use. Though she probably eats them.

It’s electric, you see. Which we ‘decided’ upon for reasons of ecology, sustainability, environment, emissions and that it was much cheaper. Not necessarily in that order. And, unlike every other electric garden tool I’ve left lying in a heap with a severed power cord, it has no blades! Therefore can’t kill me. Like my original hedge trimmer nearly did. The only tragedy is that it is much quieter than its petrol-driven cousin. And I wanted revenge more than I wanted a leaf-free driveway, let the truth be known.

But best of all, or possibly worst of all, (I’ll confirm in due course), this machine sucks and dissects as well as blows. So you blow the leaves into a little pile and then at the turn of a switch you suck them up into a little bag. And in between the leaves get mashed into nothings. Pulped. Blended. Killed. Amazon delivered it in 2 days and I’ve already blown a leaf. Just to try it. Blown and sucked to death. Job done. Can’t wait for fucking autumn.

Whatever happened to ‘herd immunity’? Remember that, in the deep, dark days of about 6 weeks ago, the cunning plan to infect so many people that coronavirus just is no longer a threat. Cos we’d all have had it. Oh, we didn’t go that path. Sweden did and the results are catastrophic. People are lining up… to get their coffees. They’re piling up bodies… in bars and restaurants, generally on seats until its gets too busy. And they’re being blonde. To great effect.

Ok, I know that Boris felt if we went that route ‘people would die!!!’ Which they have anyway, but more importantly, that the NHS couldn’t cope.

So we locked down. And it seems to have worked? But there is no way out of lockdown. Because not enough people have now had the virus to make us safe from the dreaded ‘second wave’. So we’re never going back to school/work/accountancy and we never will. Just… IN CASE!!!!

Happy gardening. Forever.

A xxxx

Suppose a married couple were isolating separately. It can happen. I’m gonna MAKE it happen! He’s living with his 92 year-old mum and she’s with her 108 year-old dad, polishing his WW2 medals, keeping him fed, ahhhh, sweet. And suppose the husband and wife chose to meet up because… for reasons of… intimacy. Would that be wrong?

It’s a crime against Covid 19. It’s a crime against lockdown. But those aren’t really ‘laws’ in any strict sense. Otherwise all those tossers who brush past you on the pavement because they’re looking at their phones and ‘meandering!!!’ (a new crime too) would be serving 18 months in Pentonville. Along with most people who shop in Waitrose. And most cyclists. Just because.

But if a-nother couple choose to hook up, for the same reason, it is basically the same thing. Unless one of them is married to another person. Then it’s still the same Covid crime, but there is now a moral element to it as well. Plus, more people involved. As party number 2, let’s say, is a mother of children and will be taking… bits… of party number one (eeeeuuuuwww) back home with her. Particles. Microbes. VIRUSES!!!

And to be honest, all that would be funny enough, all by itself and on its own. But when that same party number 1 happens to be the head of the entire Coronavirus advisory team (SAGE, as its known), the organisation who made us lock down, who virtually invented ‘social distancing’ in a world where it had previously meant ‘no actual penetration when meeting on the street, everything else is fine’ then it adds hypocrisy to the crimes of Covid-measure-avoidance and shaggin’ a married bird.

Three strikes and you’re generally ‘out’, so Professor Neil Ferguson ‘resigned’, calmly and, I’m sure, with no pressure at all from the Conservative government. Which would normally have distinct moral issues about such things… but its Boris. Whose only ‘moral compass’ lives in his underpants. And when it points north; GET THE FUCK AWAY!!!!

One columnist was concerned in reporting the above matter that the word ‘mistress’ in such a context was discriminatory, prejudicial and anachronistic. Which it emphatically is. Which is why I love to use it. You can offend three lots of people with one horrible, patronising, Victorian word. The reporter bemoaned that there is no male equivalent to the word. Well she’s wrong. The male equivalent is ‘a hotpoint’. Hotpoint fridge-freezer = geezer. Simple. Woss’er problem?

Happy Day 97 since the last count of the first incidence of the second wave of the third lockdown for the second virus.

A xxxx

There was a ‘singer’ in the 60s called Adam Faith. I say ‘singer’ because he couldn’t. What he could do was look very pretty and cool and cause multiple mass screamage in teenage girls. Though anyone with long hair holding a mike in those days produced the same effect. If you doubt his inability to sing, google ‘what do you want’ and play it. Very quietly and with your hand on the STOP!!! button. I’ve just checked and Alexa played it for me. Whereas really all recordings should have been destroyed in human interest.

So he re-invented himself as an actor. Which he wasn’t that great at either, but didn’t need to be. He appeared in a tv series called ‘Budgie’, which was the nick-name of his character. I loved that show. Everyone did, but remember, in 1971 there were seriously limited options available on the 3 tv channels so we were all a little less discerning.

In fact, after that I loved Adam Faith. Who, bizarrely, coincidentally and yet more reincarnatedly, strolled into my practice in about 1988 for some glasses. He was dapper and smart, suited and booted, as he was then working for the Daily Mail (then in Fleet Street) as a stocks and shares pundit/advisor/tipster. And apparently a pretty hot one. And he was a lovely guy. Not quite as Cockney as in his previous 2 lives but charming. Then he died. Shame.

Budgie was an artful dodger of his time. He was a scummy little geezer who ran errands for a big-time gangster. And he was very funny, a bit tragic, often pathetic, but wore ‘fab Carnaby Street gear’ like this horrendous satin jacket. In Soho. Which was gangster central in 70s. Because it was the last central area of London which posh people wouldn’t visit. It was sleazy, grotty, seedy and filled with sex shops, strip clubs, gambling dens, amusement arcades (so you could buy drugs) and even then, a few nice restaurants. For those who liked to dine ‘on the edge’.

And that was the Soho into which I was immersed, aged about 14. In a bespoke tailors shop. Owned by a mate of my dad. In Berwick Street. So as I walked down the road I’d be greeted by half a dozen blow-up sex dolls in shop-windows. All staring at me ‘open-mouthed’ as if in amazement. Then dirty book shops, then closed, darkened windows of brothels, dangly plastic chain curtains of the strip-joints, and then a hand-made, custom-built violin craftsman. What? Yeah. Soho was always about music too. Sex and music. Just round the corner in Old Compton Street was the cafe where every aspiring musician had met up, from the Beatles to the Stones, from the Who to Gerry and the Pacemakers, to find fame.

And as I trundled round, picking up buttons from Beak Street suppliers and fabrics from… errr, fabric places, I was (in my mind) Budgie. Soho was also ‘little Italy’. Where the cafes served ‘real cappucinos’ just like we get them now. Everywhere else in the country served ‘coffee’ by placing a spoonful of Maxwell House in a cup and pouring on water. Only in Soho would Italy’s finest export be enjoyed. I got friendly with the cafe dudes. I chatted with the ‘regulars’, who, it turned out, were mainly prostitutes. What did I know? I was 14 FFS. They were nice. And very friendly. I knew all the strip-joint bouncers by name. I recognised them by their scars.

It was enlightening. I still love Soho, but only through the sepia lens of reminiscence. How many All-Bar-Ones does anywhere really need?

Happy almost pre-post-lockdown Day… ish

A xxxx

I was always pissed off with Jeremy Corbyn (generally and totally) specifically about his constant use of the term ‘working people’. With the implication that unless you’re risking industrial accidents with a lathe or ending the day with a really dirty face, then you’re not a ‘worker’. Like England is some pre-Victorian feudal land segregated by the toffs, who end the day cleaner than they start it, usually because they employ teams of serfs to maintain their cleanliness, or you’re a 9 year-old boy going down the pit from 6 in the morning til 8 at night with a canary for company. Bankers aren’t ‘workers’. Lawyers aren’t workers. Doctors aren’t ‘workers’, but nurses are. Go figure.

As an aside, Corbyn criticised Kier Starmer yesterday, because he’s a tosser and can’t stop himself, to which a Starmer aide replied: “Corbyn has nothing to pass on to the new leader except bad advice, an incompetent team and an 80-seat Tory majority”. I’m liking this new opposition more and more.

Anyway, workers, dirty fingernails, severed fingers, overalls and me.

I’m a worker. I’ve always worked. First ‘Saturday job’ when I was 14, for a tailor in Soho. And Soho in 1970 was not the hipster-foodie cool place it is now. But that really warrants a story to itself (doubtless coming soon). And then I always had jobs. Weekends, holidays and eventually, when I could put it off no longer, a ‘proper job’. And that’s where I’ve been for 40 years (zzzzzzz) until… Coronavirus!!! Gave me the sabbatical I’ve always wanted but no-one’s ever offered to fund. Not that anyone’s funding this one. But now, when I have to go in to work, I actually find myself getting excited. Not, like, ‘Jennifer Lawrence is upstairs waiting for you’, excited, or even ‘Spurs are 4-nil up against Liverpool with 2 minutes to play, we might hang on for a draw!’ excited. But just ‘work!!! I remember!’ exited.

So I went in yesterday. I had to go in to meet the rubbish man. He was coming to pick up the display stand that the burglar had dragged out the hole in the window he’d made with his crow-bar and smashed to bits to get the sunglasses out before the police asked him, politely and calmly, to LIE ON THE FUCKING FLOOR WITH YER HANDS ABOVE YER HEAD AND DON’T FUCKING MOVE A FUCKING MUSCLE!!! Then they kindly brought it back to me. Dragged it back. But I had 3 people to see while I was there, all pre-arranged in a new, virusy, sanitised, mask’n’gloved kind’a way. And I sorted out their broken specs and, for one, his burning need for a new pair of sunglasses, and then I washed, disinfected, sanitised, unmasked, de-frocked, showered in Detol, mainlined Brobat, burned my outer garments and drove home. In my underwear.

And noticed how much busier the roads are now than even 2 weeks ago. Not BUSY like rush hour busy, or even Saturday night going into town busy. Just, much busier than they were at the beginning of ‘lockdown’. Don’t know what that means exactly, but it must mean something.

Happy lawn-mowing Day

A xxxx

My undisputed all-time absolute favourite film ever of all time is a list so long that I ran out of gigabytes trying to write it. Same for songs really, how can anything ever be ‘better’ than Layla? Or, While my guitar gently weeps? Smells like Teen Spirit? Jolene??? Someone like me? Suffragette City? (Etc, etc, etc…) They all push different buttons. Or the same buttons in different ways. I’m not doctor. So I can’t say.

But my favourite car of all time is so much easier. It is this. A 1960 Chevy Corvette. Yes, a little red one, as Prince noted. And yes, the Ferrari this or the Porsche that handles better (probably difficult to ever find anything which handled worse than early American ‘muscle’ cars) or shifted smoother or had triple overhead dangly things which protected drivers from coronavirus but I don’t give a shit. It’s just the prettiest car ever to leave any production line anywhere. Ok, if it was powered by a Nissan Micra engine I might possibly reconsider. But it wasn’t. It had a massive monster engine, as only the Americans can produce.

Massive and monster engines were always needed there because, as anyone who has ever rented a car in the States knows, anything with a ‘normal’ type engine, the sort of engine that makes every car in Europe seem perfectly adequate if not downright perky, will not pull an American vehicle up any hill without unloading baggage and a few passengers first. They just have a brilliant knack of making massive engines with outstandingly minimal performance. “Oh yeah, the 6 litre supercharged V8 will get you to Walmart, long as you don’t buy too much, but if you want to get there and back comfortably you really should look to the 9 litre V16…”

So ‘my’ Corvette came with a ‘mere’ 289 (4.5 litre) V8 engine. With loads of horse power. But the horses were all a bit lame. So the conversion factor has to be applied to account for American horses being so ineffectual compared with Euro ones.

Interestingly, they made bigger engine options from 1959 but didn’t bother improving the brakes til 1960. Hence why I want that one. Not what you call ‘planning’. Conversely, its the fun way. Make the engines bigger, produce a few thousand, then realise (as the death toll increases) that probably the old brakes (taken from a pushbike) were struggling to halt one ton of metal traveling at 120 miles per.

Brakes, engines, performance, horses, phah! Just look at the thing. A testament to chrome, curves and beauty. They didn’t invent ‘wind resistance’ and ‘uplift’ til 1972 so neither were problems the design team needed concern their little heads with.

It’s so gorgeous it deserves a gorgeous driver. Just sayin’. With my birthday not far away, n that…

Happy… happy… happy… Days

A xxxx