Andy's Glasses

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Monday

A xxxx

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Sunny Day

A xxxx

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy appropriation Day

A xxxx

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy drizzle.

A xxxx

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Monday

A xxxx

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy next day

A xxxx

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shabbat Shalom

A xxxx

Leo Messi, the greatest footballing Argentinian the world has every seen, although some think that should be cheating fat little coke-head, Maradona, looks set to leave his ‘home’. Lionel Messi wasn’t born in Barcelona but he’s lived there since he joined their famous and fabulous youth academy when he was an amazingly prodigious talent, at about 4 months old. And he’s never left. But now 33, he wants out. And he has a stipulation in his contract that this month he can leave without Barcelona implementing the…

The 700 million Euro buyout clause which has totally anchored him to his club for decades. Though the timing of that is in contention but will be resolved. Because Messi wants out. He wants to return to his spiritual foster-mother, Pep Guardiola. The current manager of Manchester City. Because new manager at Barca (they have about 4 a year), Ronald Koman, told the weeny Argie that ‘his privileges are over’. Oooohhhh.

So all Man City have to do is match the wages that the incumbent ‘best player in the world’ currently ‘earns’. Which is, for a starter, about 78 million a year. With bonuses that comes to 100 mil. Best of all, Messi would receive from Barca a 70 million Euro ‘loyalty bonus’ if he stayed til next year. So he wants that. A disloyalty bonus. Should Man City be so stupid as to agree to throwing that paltry sum into the mix.

Which they will because they’re stupid, cash rich and can’t resist the draw that Messi would represent. Even though for the foreseeable no-one is going to the Etihad to see him or anyone else. Why, in increased shirt sales alone they would make probably £4,634 a year!

So best of all, of course, is that City must be aware of the Financial Fair Play rules. The same ones they’ve flouted mercilessly for 10 years and they actually saw off the toothless, testicle-free legal battle raised by UEFA for those sins. City’s wage bill is currently about 320 million a year. And that, if FFP was regulated by anyone other than UEFA, would have seen them punished. So adding 100 mil minimum per year to that for one little Argentinian would cause problems. So they’re looking at Messi being employed by The City Football Group, rather than the football club itself.

And if that is not simply gobbing in the eye of UEFA, then I don’t know what more they can do. Move one of their oil fields to Old Trafford, perhaps. But hang on! Third party ownership of players is illegal! UEFA actually have done things about that in the past with another couple of Argentinians. So he either will NOT be paid by Man City which will be the loophole of loopholes if allowed. Or he will be paid by them and they can just ignore FFP like they always do.

The problem is: I really want Messi in the Premier League. I really don’t want Manchester City to buy him. No-one else here could possibly ‘afford’ him. Unless he decides to come to Spurs. The club he would have supported as a kid. If he’d have met me. And take a pay cut of about… 95 million a year. What’s the problem with that?

Happy dreaming

A xxxx

In light of the recent scandal at the BBC, where those fat, middle-class white people finally saw the light and will NOT be singing the terrible, racist, xenophobic, slave-trade-throwback lyrics to either ‘Land of Hope and Glory’, or ‘Rule Britannia’, there has been uproar by the lovers of the ‘Proms’. Who are also, by sheer coincidence, fat, middle-class white people, probably enriched at some point of their almost-aristocratic history by the slave-trade or the empire. And although White Attitudes Matter, its not enough. Political correctness must not only be seen to have a total reconstructive effect on all of history, but must be adhered to with every overly pedantic consideration imaginable and, even way beyond imaginable, until every bad person who was ever… bad, according to only the most contemporary definitions of ‘bad’, has had all his statues torn down. Not ‘her statues’ because in ‘those days’ women didn’t get statues. Waste’a clay.

So because I can’t contemplate a year in which those two wonderful (?), emotional (??), uplifting (???) songs are played as instrumentals devoid of lyrics, I’ve written some new ones, which may help the situation, I sincerely hope. Bring them a little ‘up to date’. Sorely needed. Bloody fascist anthems.

Land of hope and pleasantness
Britain is so nice
we serve vegan curries,
fish and chips and rice

In this multi-cultural para-dise
where no-one ever frowns
all God’s creatures are equ-al
whatever their chosen pro-nouns

We’ve destroyed all our sta-tues
of warmongering Imperialists
so now when we’re drunk on the stree-eets
there’s nowhere left to piss.

The NHS is now sacred
now they just need to stop us getting fatter
But the police just need to learn that
Black Lives really Matter

We all hug lots of trees now
do yoga in the park
we’re so fucking peaceful,
our dogs no longer bark

etc, etc, etc…

But don’t worry. We’ve been assured that next year the old lyrics will be back. War, death, cannons, murder, discimination against all. Our history.

Happy ‘if you wish to contest or even discuss any of these matters I WILL CANCEL YOU!’ day

A xxxx

I try always to be non-judgmental. Even handed. Give everyone the benefit of the doubt. Don’t judge books by covers. Or dipsticks by their socks & sandals combo. Even when I meet people who look like total, less-than-zero losers, (you know who you are), I try and find positives in them. Because you never know.

So when I first saw pictures/film of Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s right-hand-Rottweiler, back in 2016 when she ran his first Presidential campaign, along with Steve (Adolph) Bannon (currently serving 12-15 for fraud… well, soon will be) and a whole host of other Trumptons, my first thought was: SHE LOOKS LIKE THE ULTIMATE BITCH FROM HELL!!!! But I said nothing. Gave her time. Took in her words. Watched her working. Tried to ignore those teeth. And then, and only then, did I acknowledge that sometimes, things are exactly what they seem. If it smells like shit and looks like shit, then it probably isn’t a bacon double cheeseburger with chilli fries and a gallon of full-fat coke.

Firstly, what is ANY woman doing with Trump? Unless she happens to have the misfortune of being his wife-of-the-moment. Being a female in Trump-land means you have no pride, no value of ‘sisterhood’, no respect for women. Because you’re aligned with someone who wants to ‘grab ‘em by the pussy’. In fact being a Republican at all almost makes you either some kind of ‘chained woman’ or reduces you to being ‘goods and chattels’ of ‘your man’. Who you must stand by. Even in the gun shop. Especially in the gun shop. Ammo is heavy. Never mind that you, like Kellyanne, may have four kids at school, you’re happy to be a part of the massively destructive gun culture that kills school kids more than anyone else. Never mind that you have to be anti-abortion, with NO exceptions and no mitigating circumstances even considered. Because her God won’t allow them. Life means LIFE! Even for the unborns of 13 year-old rape victims.

Now Kellyanne’s husband is a different kettle of Americanism altogether. He fucking hates Trump. Slags him off regularly. Good bloke is George Conway. Like most Conways. So mealtimes chez them must be fun, fun, fun!

And that’s before eldest child, Claudia, gets going. She is, according to her profile, a “radical agnostic liberal/leftist”. Which, roughly translated means: ‘I know fuck all about theology and learned my politics from Sesame Street’. Because you can’t really be a ‘radical agnostic’. You can try being an atheist, that ups the radical quotient considerably. But you can’t be ‘radically’ fairly undecided about the possible existence of God, but I’m not quite ready to rule it out entirely. So what Claudia is really saying is: ‘I’m a teenager!!!!!!’ Which she is. And she supports Black Lives Matter which at least makes her a much better person than her horrible mother. Who Claudia wants to disown. Though she’s not that keen on Daddy either and wants ‘emancipation from both parents’.

So Kellyanne is no longer ‘his’ main adviser. Not even a minor adviser. She’s gone. Out’a there. Which is probably the most interesting thing to happen in American politics since Nixon.

Happy pre-election Days

A xxxx