Andy's Glasses

The city of Paris is awash with the glory and prestige of reaching tonight’s European Champions’ League final. They daubed the Eiffel Tower in PSG (that’s Paris St Germain, their football team) colours and made the biggest fuss ever about reaching the world’s most prestigious football match, for the very first time. (When Spurs reached it last year, they drew a cockerel in chalk on the pavement outside Tottenham town hall, but it was spoilt when a kid was stabbed there ten minutes later). Such is the importance of this game.

The City of Doha was even more celebratory, as it might be tonight again if PSG manage to beat Bayern Munich. They’ll be drinking Coke (not even Diet!!!) all night long, and will doubtless paint their robes in PSG livery. Well, the men will, the women aren’t allowed out at night. Unless they have written permission from their ‘man’, or for purposes of being raped by someone else’s ‘man’.

So PSG is Paris’s team. I get that. But it is owned by a Qatari sports investment vehicle, run by the state. Much like Manchester City is owned by Abu Dhabi. And the team is captained by a Brazilian, much as mine is captained by a Frenchman. I get that too. I also have a real soft spot for their Brazilian, Neymar Junior, because he is a truly gifted and characterful dude who graces the game with sublime skill and ability.

Yet there’s something noble about Bayern Munich, which is also filled with ‘forrriners’, because the German model is that clubs are in part always owned by a collective of its fans. Local people. Ok, ‘local’ where Munich is concerned may not conjure up the best of ‘local’ imagery if you go back to the 1930s and 40s, but Bayern Munich was always known as a ‘Jewish team’. In part because it was owned before the war by a Jew and also because it always had Jewish connections. Which is why the Nazis hated the club, particularly after numerous acts of defiance by the club. And defying the Nazis at the height of their power was right on the line between ‘bravery’ and ‘stupidity’, but they did it anyway.

Tonight’s game is massive. The two undoubted ‘best teams’ in Europe fighting for its most prestigious prize. The two most entertaining teams too. Bayern beat Barcelona 8-2 in the semi-final. That’s some score at that level of the game.

So in line with my absolute golden rule of ‘NO POLITICS WHERE FOOTBALL IS CONCERNED’, I need to know whether to favour the illegitimately owned bastard club of a horrible French nation, the plaything of human rights abusing oil billionaires in the Gulf who made a mockery of the entire beautiful game by corruptly ‘winning’ the World Cup in 2022? Or the noble Germans who stood up to Hitler and is part owned by lovable(??) beer-swilling, lederhosen-wearing… Krauts.

Tough one.

Happy Euro Day

A xxxx

There was a supermodel once called Elle McPherson. Known as ‘The Body’. Even though her body was about 6 feet tall and six inches at its widest point. Or ‘points’, maybe. I saw her once. We stopped to buy water (I was with Mel, on holiday, its what you do) at a shopping mall in Florida. My least favourite state, including North Dakota and Iowa. But Florida we were. Middle of nowhere. Like most of Florida. And as we walked out with the 73 litres of H2O which we needed for the gruelling, cross-country, 12 mile ride in an air-conditioned car, a massive Rolls Royce pulled up at the main doors. And out stepped ‘The Body’. Or rather, out unfurled, The Body. It was long. And thin. And not dressed in a very supermodelly way. Though it was very pretty, even unadorned by face paint and lacking anything Gucci whatsoever.

Halle Berry is different. She has ‘a Body’. And although this picture was taken 18 years ago, according to recent images, now at age 54, she still has a killer body. But unlike ‘back then’, it takes a little more work. Not surgical work, that would be no story. Anyone can use a scalpel and play-dough to create ‘perfection’.

I’d just like to say that by writing this, in no way does it imply any form of ‘objectification’ of the female form. No. Not from me. I’m a radical post-feminist, not some drooling old perv finding pornographic imagery where he shouldn’t. Like in Bond movie posters. Good. Glad to clear that up.

But Halle Berry is possibly one of the most gorgeous people ever. Along with Bridget Bardot (in 1971, I hasten to add), and me… at any time. And to sustain her body into its levels of gorgeousness she works hard. Fucking hard. Gruelling hours every day. But in the interview in today’s paper with her ‘fitness guru’ (everybody has a fitness guru these days, you are positively NO-ONE without one), we find that a lot of what she does is slow and measured. Rather than the more Joe Wicksian leap up and down until you’ve wrenched every joint out of its socket and strained every ligament, cartilage and muscle you own. Because Halle, like me, trains with a martial arts guru. And thus spends 10 minutes in ‘horse stance’ rather than 20 minutes running round in circles carrying 50kg weights sweating like a mutha.

The only difference is that Halle’s diet of low-sugar fruits, pulses, seeds and good fat proteins, I’ve replaced with bread, potatoes, chocolate and peanut-butter. Not all together. Though, hang on…

So you see, fitness and body perfection can be achieved in so many ways. You just have to work really hard. Or just be me.

Happy work-outs

A xxxx

America is voting for a new President this year. It’s in the constitution and therefore can’t be changed. Like gun laws, or total lack of them, it is enshrined. And the question is: WHERE THE FUCK IS MICHELLE OBAMA WHEN YOU NEED HER????

Because currently, the electoral options facing America’s 360 million voters, is to select either the Devil or the Deep Blue Sea. Because if Trump is the Devil (and that’s actually giving the Prez a lot of credit), Joe Biden is indeed the Deep Blue Sea. Because he’s useless. And just a bit ‘out there’. Kind’a ‘background noise’. Just like the sea. Have you heard him speak? Or, rather, have you heard him start to speak? Then falter, forget where he came in and drift off on a dingy. Possibly the most underwhelming politician I’ve ever seen. Although Kamala Harris is impressive. Seriously impressive. She’s strong, clever and charismatic. All the things poor old Joe simply ain’t.

So how bad do you have to be to not beat Trump? Joe’s up there, I’m afraid.

Because if you think you’ve seen just how daft Mr POTUS is, when you think he’d reached the limit of his ridiculousness, his impulsive, childish, thoughtless, moronic outbursts, normally on Twitter, then you need to see the latest attack on Goodyear Tyres.

America’s only home-grown tyre manufacturer, hundreds of years old (when did they invent the wheel?), lives in Akron Ohio, serious manufacturing country. For a company with almost 100,000 employees. A serious, NASDAQ listed company with lots of figures, all of them in the ‘billions’ category. And Trump heard that Goodyear had told employees that they can’t wear the Trump ‘make America great again’ hats, the ones made specially to fit dickheads. So he tweeted for America to BOYCOTT GOODYEAR!!! entirely, ‘buy someone else’s tyres; they’re cheaper!!’

The only American tyre manufacturer and the most insular, home-grown president ever is basically telling America to buy Chinese imports. And causing stress and insecurity to 100,000 voters in Ohio, which is a ‘swing state’.

It is knee-jerk, school-playground type reactionary total lack of thought or consideration for the wider consequences. Because Goodyear have a ‘no political statements’ policy, which they’ve implemented for years. So you can’t wear a ‘Biden hat’, even if there is such a thing. No politics at Goodyear. But Trump missed that. Ban the (stupid) hat, INCUR THE WRATH. I’LL SHOW YOU WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU CROSS MEEEEE!!!!!

So, despite all of the above, I’m voting Biden. Even though I don’t get a vote.

Happy days

A xxxx

It’s now a scientific fact that Covid 19 makes you stupid. Even if you haven’t actually had it and test negative now. It’s the mere presence of the virus in the atmosphere that increases how thick and less intelligent people are, regardless of insufficient levels to infect. And this has now been officially, statistically, proven by the government.

How else could a kid/young adult be predicted getting 3 A-star A-levels due to a stellar school career and marks in their mock exams, and just 5 months later, actually achieve 2 Ds and a Fail? At Christmas they’re looking forward to breezing into Cambridge to study medicine and by August they’ll be lucky to get into Burnley Polytechnic to study refuse collection. Part time.

There is simply NO other explanation for this tragic shortcoming in the A-level results. The kids must have become at least 40% less clever in the last 5 months. The virus, even though it appeared to affect virtually no-one in the sub-18 age group, had a massive effect. On their intelligence. On their fundamental IQ. And on their density potential.

Oh, I suppose one could question the methodology? One could cast a doubt (heaven forbid) on the algorithm the government used to ‘mark’ the students? But really? Really? That kind’a has the air of Jose Morinho about it; blaming everyone and everything except those truly responsible. And its time these kids accepted that you only fail exams by doing poorly. Spending valuable work-time playing hunt-n-kill video games, posting photos of their genitals to people who really don’t want them, taking too many drugs and listening to that popular music. Even when… errrr… you aren’t actually ‘sitting exams’ in any meaningful way.

Or, possibly, by being cheated out of them by an inept and panic-stricken government with insufficient time to produce a viable alternative to what we’ve always done. I think they probably employed the same group of techies for the exam results software that they used for track’n’trace. Because that worked so well?

Why didn’t they just have zoom exams? Just email them the test papers on the morning and complete them online. Invigilators could watch thousands at a time to see who was rushing out to check their Encyclopaedia Britannica. Or those who log in as ‘Amy Williams’ for their physics, but look remarkably like Albert Einstein.

It’s ok. The government have U-turned. The education minister, who sounds uneducated himself (read: ‘speaks with a northern accent’) said it may have been a bit of an error. Oh. Ya think so?

Happy re-marking-results-but-NO-FUCKING-PLACES-LEFT-IN-UNI!!! day.

A xxxx

Nothing’s as sustainable as it used to be. Not the planet, not the oceans, not the furlough scheme, not really the economy and certainly not football. And as football is much more important than all the rest, we should look at that first. We’ll come to cod fishing… next week.

Because there’s a new ‘model’ in the beautiful game and it is the epitome of both ‘unsustainable’ and ‘stupid’. And thus needs to be addressed. It happens when a true superstar falls from grace. A ‘galactico’ even. And its becoming more common.

The best example is Gareth Bale. Who was the world’s best player when surrounded by his colleagues at Tottenham. He was brilliant, he was incredible, he was virtually unplayable (Inter Milan certainly failed miserably, twice) and he was so outstanding that Real Madrid paid 100 million Euros for the Welsh maestro. Because he was so good, they didn’t want anyone else to buy him. Did he fit their style? Would he compliment their players and vice versa? Irrelevant. He’s a star; they bought him. End of. And as (at the time) the world’s most expensive player, they could hardly pay him 30 grand a year plus luncheon vouchers. So they paid him handsomely. And gave him pay rises along the years. Even though he’d never really established himself with either the fans or the ever-changing-turnstile which is management at the Bernabau. And then Zidane took over. And Zizou don’t like Bale. So now, Gareth earns a ridiculous 500 odd grand a WEEK and spends his time on the golf course and re-doing his pony tail. No other team could afford to buy him because he’d insist on not taking a pay cut. Well, pony tails don’t grow on trees, ya know.

Arsenal have a similar situation with Mezut Ozil. The funny looking Turkish German (depending on which anthem is playing) who has the incredible ability to win games single-handedly but… only does it about once every three years. And only against, like, Stoke or Watford or Brighton. In between he does less than nothing. And again, to keep this ‘star’, Arsenal pay him about 340k a week. And rarely play him.

Barcelona possibly have a worse situation. In that their team is ageing. And with ‘age’ comes experience. And with experience comes bigger salaries. So the team now have half a dozen outrageously overpaid stars (not Messi, there isn’t enough money in the world to overpay such brilliance) all in their 30s now, all consequently more injury prone. And less saleable than they were 7 years ago. To lessen their wage bill they sent Phillipe Coutinho on loan to Bayern Munich. Where he helped the ruthless Germans knock his ‘parent club’ out of the Champions League on Friday. Good business.

This season has been massively hit, financially, in that no clubs are receiving gate money. Or the masses of merchandise sold and food and drinks consumed on match days. No-one there, not ‘appening. So how are these massive clubs going to rebuild, restructure, plan for whatever the future might look like, when saddled with horrendous wage bills? Which in turn can only really be paid by acting in total breach of the Financial Fair Play rules that were recently proven, in a COURT OF LAW!!!! to be risible.

Control the agents and the wages; control the world. Otherwise, the game is fucked. Sorry, better word: ‘un-sus-tain-er-balllll’.

Happy Muggy Sunday

A xxxx

I wish to pay homage to Mr Sadiq Kahn, the esteemed mayor of London. I wish to praise him, I wish to list his accomplishments and commend his character. I’d like to extol his virtues and proclaim his wonderfulness during his time in Mayoral office.

But I can’t. Because he’s a tosser way beyond normal standards of such people. If he has one unique qualification above each and every other man, woman, person and thing in the entire world, its is his ability to consistently be the Tosser of Tossers.

I’ve given him time, I’ve been very patient. But enough is enough.

It’s not physical. I don’t care that he looks like a schoolboy on an economics day trip to a biscuit factory. Although not sure he’d have studied economics. Art, maybe. Woodwork. General Studies.

And its not aural. Just because he speaks terribly, awfully, badly. I’m an East End boy. I love a glottal stop. I ‘ate it when ‘e drops ‘is aitches, but I can live with it. Even though the problem seems to be getting worse rather than better. In his time at the top levels of national politics his image advisors seem to be sending him the wrong way from ‘received pronunciation’ towards the way more ‘estuary’ phonics. “No, no, nooooo”, they say, “that is way too Boris Johnson, Sadiq, too posh, too proper, not what we’re looking for at all. We need more ‘school playground in Dagenham’, so try it again…”

It’s not even because he promised to build 50,000 new homes and has actually produced 3. Though the roof’s not complete on the third one yet. There again, all incoming mayors promise housing and don’t produce. It’s expected of them.

But Sadiq is a tosser because he cannot make any public statement, rehearsed or otherwise, no comment, no single utterance without adding the phrase “… due to the awful way the epidemic has been handled by this government.” Which is petty, it is politicising something that is apolitical, and implies someone else might have done better. All from a man who was conspicuously totally absent for the first 6 weeks of lockdown. Invisible. Out the way. Locked in his house with guards. Hiding. Yet feels compelled by some quasi-Corbynistic faux-leftish posturing to add his rather pathetic little digs at ‘this government’ just because he can. Because he’s the Mayor. Because he’s a tosser.

Happy weather’s-gone-all-funny day

A xxxx

The most brilliant news ever. The Coronavirus death total in England has changed from 46,000 to just 41,000!!! I mean… I mean… I mean… this government has just saved 5,000 people!!! Jesus Christ himself didn’t save that many. (Ok, if you count the ‘re-borns’ in Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, and re-define ‘saved’, then maybe). Where are we going to house them? The 5,000 whisked from the ignominy of Covid Death, back to fucking LIFE!!!! Think how happy they must feel! Last week I died of Covid and now, thanks to Boris, thanks to our blessed government, thanks to a whole bunch of faceless, humourless, charisma-free ‘suits’ in the statistics department, I bloody didn’t!!!

And its so spiritual. Though sadly, most of us inhabit the real, boots-on-the-ground world, down here and reckon, philosophically, that ‘dead is dead’. Whereas ‘up there’ in Westminster, they think in such high planes of purity and enlightenment that they now have five ways of assessing Covid death.

1. You died from catching Covid 19.
2. You died of something but had Covid 19 at the time.
3. You died of something deathly but had a mild cough 5 months previously.
4. You were shot 17 times at close range but one of the people in the room at the time should have been isolating.
5. You didn’t die at all but these are Covid times so you could have.

What could be more simple than that? Bravo Boris!! Our leader and saviour.

Let me tell you about ‘my’ Joey. My little grandson. Because he’s 1 year and (nearly) 3 months old and I want to enrol him in terrorism school. He’s a natural. A destroyer of all he touches. A person who leaves a trail of devastation and chaos in his wake as he stumbles along looking to eat the entire world. Ok, he’s a baby. They’re all like that. But, but, but… actually they’re not. I had two daughters. They were nothing like that. Then along came Lila, now a virtual ‘grand dame’ and a picture of demure elegance and calmly considered everything. She was like that a little bit but was always happy to read 6 books in a sitting without trying to eat them or rip them to shreds before rushing off to thump an iPad repeatedly with the pepper pot. Joey has the face of an angel. And the attitude of a Millwall fan. A hungry one. I couldn’t love him more even if the entire house was not totally broken.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy too-fucking-hot-to-sleep Days

A xxxx

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Heat-wave

A xxxx

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

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

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

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

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

A xxxx