Andy's Glasses

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

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

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

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

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

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

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

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

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

And why? There’s only two alternatives.

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

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

Tragic mistake, whatever happened.

Happy nearly face-mask day

A xxxx

… and Manchester City win 5 nil.

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Sad Day

A xxxx

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy lovely day

A xxxx

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy paranoid-day

A xxxx

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

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

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

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

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

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

Onwards and upwards

A xxxx

I found a new radio station. Our painter/decorator/all round get shit done person had it on his phone. And it is just great. If, like him and me, you are mired in music of the 60s, 70s, 80s. He told me it was ‘absolute classic rock’ and now, having passed Chinese censorship rules, Alexa plays it for me. I love it. Even though it upsets Mel because they never play Ed (fucking) Shearan, James Blunt and only rarely do you get Van Morrison. It’s one of those stations that needs playing at volume ‘11’. And they just played Bachman Turner Overdrive. But, like, without any irony. They just played it. Like they’d never seen the Harry Enfield/Paul Whitehouse spoof. As if you could play the opening bars of ‘you ain’t seen nothin’ yet’ and not just laugh. It’s not just slavery that gets misappropriated. Happens to rock songs too.

Last night we went out for dinner. Not to a restaurant. Who really could be bothered with that? Chicken Tikka Masala and a face mask. Or through a face mask. Whatever, there’d be a lot of ‘red’ about. So instead we went to friends for a ‘garden barbecue’. Safe, distanced, mask and gloves, detol, sanitiser, outside. Perfect.

Then it started raining. Ok, inside we came. And what do you grab first? The cleaning agents or the plate of meat? Just asking. Vegans don’t need to answer. And we sat at a table inside a fucking house!!! Like… like… like… inside!!! Almost as if we were in a restaurant, which would be legal, but we were in a house. In much much more space, far fewer people, open windows and doors, so it was illicit, if not strictly illegal. Go figure.

And as my mate pulled up Spotify on his phone, we just kind’a stumbled into a game of ‘beat the intro’. He scored really highly. Then I thought; ‘it’s his phone, his playlist’, sodding cheat. And it is quite amazing not just how many songs, complete with lyrics and guitar riffs, the average person can access in their personal soft drives, but how quickly songs that you haven’t heard for years just appear in your head. It’s enough to make you want to challenge intel or Apple. Or realise that AI has a long way to go before it can identify ‘whisky in the jar’ from just one note, as probably 95% of 50+ people can. And I really don’t ever want to meet the other 5%. Or Hendrix’s ‘all along the watchtower’. ‘The boxer’. ‘Born to Run’. Or, obviously, ‘you ain’t seen nothin’ yet’.

Happy much-too-windy-for-tennis-but-we-played-anyway Day

A xxxx

It’s a BIG day today. Humongous. Yeah, its July 4th, the day when any American with any sense will look at their president and rue the day that the British were cast from their shores. But there’s bigger things than Trump. Even bigger than Trump’s hair.

Because today represents the absolute and total distillation of everything we knew, we felt, we thought, we feared, we considered, about this entire, hateful ‘pandemic’, all condensed into one tiny place in time. It’s like a singularity in physics (or a black hole, ya higgoragmus), a point of infinite smallness yet almost infinite power.

And that point is where and when the pub opens.

We’ve all grown accustomed to the regular, confusing government ‘briefings’ telling us to ‘work, but from home, unless you have to, then go in, just to bring it home, unless you can’t then you can stay, for a while…’ And we’re all too familiar with the equation that cannot be solved. The one that has two contradictory variables, health and death on one side, versus the economy on the other. Boris’s Last Theorem. Maybe Rishi’s Last Theorem. Insoluble whoever’s it may be.

But we’ve come so far. To the point where 2 metres becomes one metre PLUS!!!! and we can meet in distanced groups. The end point of which is that today pubs, restaurants and bars can re-open. With limits and constraints obviously. Nothing in this entire crisis has ever been easy. And once more we have so many conflicting opinions. “It’s too soon”, say the health-obsessives, “should have done this weeks ago” says anyone who owns a pub/bar/restaurant. “It’ll lead to the dreaded SPIKE!!!” Say other people. Spikeaphobes.

Thus Boris has stated how today needs to be done in considered and careful manner, whilst his chancellor is imploring us ‘to go out to eat; FOR THE NATION!’.

But it will be fine. Because as everyone knows, opening the pubs with a very clearly defined set of complex but achievable regulations and precautions is fine and everyone will comply to their fullest.

It’s closing the pubs that’s the problem. 11 hours and 46 pints later. When two grossly obese, heavily tattooed drunks from Millwall proclaim their love for each other, when the fights break out, when the puking starts. How can you hold your best mate’s hair away from her mouth from even 1 metre plus? How will any kind of conga chain be organised down Carnaby Street? Can you catch the virus from people pissing in the street?

It’s a brave new world. Sadly, one in which my football team seems to be faring no better than in the last one.

Happy Independence Day

A xxxx

It’s an old family motto. All families descended from the shtetls of Poland have family mottos. And coats of arms, family ‘piles’ in the countryside (ours is a mud hut outside Omsk; nice in July). And the Conway motto is: “I stand therefore I play tennis.” I would say it in Latin but you wouldn’t know what it meant. It does translate in Yiddish though, as “oyyyy, such a mensch!!! A laban on his pipik!!!” Loosely.

But this isn’t about Joey. Joey’s fine, thank you very much. And will start his tennis lessons just as soon as he can take more than 5 steps without falling onto his bum. Even though such shortcomings never stopped his grandfather.

This is about sex offenders. And its also about socio-economic status. Because if I was a poor, perhaps unemployed, lowlife, council housed pervert, I’d get a much better deal from everyone than if I was a super-duper billionaire sicko, helicoptering from child abuse to sexual harassment with a team of flunkies, assistants and yes-men.

Harvey Weinstein? Didn’t stand a chance. Jeffrey Epstein? Was crucified by the press, before, during and after his death. And now, ‘poor’ Gislaine Maxwell. The spawn of possibly the most immoral man ever to walk the planet, Ms M has now been arrested for ‘procurement’ of young girls for her ‘boyfriend’ Epstein, and for committing abuse herself. And I’ve no doubt she’s as guilty as… as sin. As guilty as… Epstein. As guilty as… Prince Andrew. And IF SHE IS then they can hang her for all I care.

But she hasn’t been proven so just yet. In fact she was only arrested yesterday. In New Hampshire. And thus has a continued ‘presumption of innocence’ that every person has until found otherwise.

And yet one of the prosecutors, when making the arrest statement, made a big point that she’d been hiding out, under a false name, in a 152-acre home (presumably he’d measured it himself with his… errrr… acre-ometer) which she’d bought because of her ‘immensely privileged life’. Which is almost as true as it is totally fucking irrelevant. She’s not accused of money-laundering or fraud. She’s accused of sex offences. Why should the ‘presumption of innocence’ only apply to the poor? Unless that privilege is now a crime too in America. In which case their stupid president has much to answer for. Though at least he can plead grounds of mental frailty.

The red tops have a field day with the ‘mighty falling’, because everyone hates a spoilt bitch like Gislaine. We almost ‘want’ them to be guilty. So that it levels all that money and brings them down to our level. Financially if not morally. But you don’t expect the authorities to vent their jealousies and nastiness in the public forum. It almost acts to distract from the horrors of the crimes, rather than enhance them.

It’s like someone being arrested here for murder and the police telling you they’re an Arsenal fan. It causes immediate prejudice and calls into question all their actions and their basic decency.

Happy Day-after-Lila/Joey-day

A xxxx