Andy's Glasses

I always thought that ‘award season’ was like March or thereabouts. The Oscars, the Brits, the… I dunno, loads of them. Maybe its a long season. Like Marching Season in Northern Ireland, which lasts most of the year, to give the Orangemen time to upset every single Republican and Catholic by marching round in bowler hats waving Union Jack flags. Lucky the Province is so accepting and tolerant and understanding. Debutantes have The Season for their outcoming? outpouring? whatever, but that’s a bit Downton for most people to give a shit about.

But we seem to have a glut of awards right now. Mid-season? And last night the award went to Lionel Messi. Who beat Fleabag and Game of Thrones as well as Gone with the Wind and Christiano Ronaldo. Phoebe Waller-Bridge came third after Virgil Van Dijk.

The award for Most Clueless Fence-Sitting Brexit Neutral with a Beard went to Jeremy Corbyn.

And now its raining. Like, really raining. Whether this is a ‘late summer’ storm thingy or just the start of our drizzly season (6 months’ continuous) as the darkness descends for the year I don’t know. They didn’t tell me. But after the glorious sunny weeks its a bit dull and depressing. I don’t cycle to the station in the rain. You get wet. But like really, really wet. Bikes attract the water. Not a lot of people know that. And then the rest of the day I’m wet and its not nice. So many seasons. Not all of them good.

And the award for the most unbelievable and unbelievably stroppy teenager definitely goes to Greta Thunberg (which auto-corrects to ‘Thunderbird’ if you’re interested). Unfortunately she also wins the award for the most annoying person currently in America, including Donald Trump. But she is frighteningly possessed. Brilliantly clever. Pulls no punches and speaks English with a power and eloquence that most native speakers could never match. She’s very impressive, carries an incredible power, has started a movement that now involves about 20 million people in 30 countries and she doesn’t even go to school. She sits outside and just, kind’a ‘sucks up’ all the information by osmosis. You simply have to admire her. Even if you don’t exactly like her.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

At the Labour Party conference they’re not just intent on radicalising British politics, they’re re-writing the language. Inventing a new one almost. Because using ‘old English’, describing their intentions, should hell freeze- sorry, should they win a general election, would make them sound a bit criminal. So, like Russia before them over a century ago, they’ve entered the realm of linguistic restructuring and excessive euphemism-ing.

Among their intentions are plans to, basically, abolish all private schools. Not that they’re into limiting choices that people should be entitled to, but they’re just ‘making it  a fairer society’ (the blanket justification for any evil they wish to perpetrate; because who can argue with ‘fair’?) This would start with a removal of all subsidies to the Independent education sector, probably whopping on vat to school fees and removing charitable status. So far so Corbyn.

But then it goes further. That the ‘endowments, investments and properties’ owned by private schools should be ‘redistributed democratically and fairly across the the country’s educational institutions’.

So that’s euphemism 1. ‘Democratic redistribution’ = theft (in old wordage). Shut down an entire arm of the education system, albeit a bit elitist, albeit where all the conservatives were educated, and a very successful part of education, and just… just… just steal the riches and sling all the kids in state schools which don’t have any room for the kids they already have. Probably make the kids fight for their places. With knives. That’s democratic.

Then there’s property. Private landlords will have to sell their properties to the tenants. At a ‘fair price’ that the government would recommend. Not necessarily market price. Just a fair one.

So euphemism 2: fair price = land grab.

‘Business restructuring’ is how they plan to steal 600 billion quids worth of shares in big companies by redistributing them among the workers.

‘Reviewing governmental roles’ is what they call getting rid of Tom Watson, which failed anyway. If you can’t sack the man, sack the job.

Yet with all  this ‘fairness’ going on, its Brexit that’s going to bring Corbyn down. Or me with a chain saw.

Keep the red flag flying.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

Saw a message from a mate yesterday who’d watched 3 rugby matches before lunch, then (tragically) watched Spurs at lunchtime in the battle of VAR, then there was still the thrilling (zzzzzzz…) Newcastle vs Brighton match in the early evening. What a day he had. All he needed was a potty and he needn’t move for 19 hours. Uber deliver straight to the couch if you leave the door open.

I missed most of all of it. Thank God. That Spurs match was awful. Son Heung Min judged by VAR to be ‘offside’ by 1.6cm when they still can’t be in any way precise about the moment the ball is kicked. So the question we need to ask is WHAT THE FUCK!!!!! Why are they ruining my game for a half-arsed science experiment? An equation with only one half known? Ok, it took away a Leicester goal as well, but that was deserved. All decisions that go Spurs way are correct beyond question. But essentially, VAR is ruining our game. Is ruining MY LIFE!

I’d usually rather be playing sport than watching it, if I’m honest, but today just wasn’t meant to be. No-one who lives within a 23 mile radius was free at 10 o’clock for tennis. Which would have been alright if the predicted rain had arrived, but it didn’t, which further adds to the frustration.

Which is somewhat lessened by the first England match of the rugby World Cup being played, as I type these very words. And Manu Tuilagi just scored his second try of the match against Tonga. Who performed magnificently during their haka but haven’t translated all that posture and aggression into play on the pitch. Though they do have a 24-stone prop who they call ‘the wardrobe’. Though he’s bigger than any wardrobe I’ve ever seen. Certainly heavier.

New Zealand beat South Africa, which is great because I love the All Blacks and I’ve never forgiven South Africa. For anything. France just about beat Argentina and Australia beat Fiji.

Meanwhile, back home, the question ‘would Manchester City recover from actually losing a football match, as they did last weekend?’ was sort of answered as they chose to only put 8 past Watford. Took their foot off the pedal. And in case you had any doubts/hopes, Kevin de Bruyne seems to be fit again. Holy shit, he’s fit.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

If I was at a fancy dress party and someone there was dressed as a chasidic Jew, with the stick on beard and side curls and the fur hat and shiny coat (I’m gonna presume for these purposes that this is NOT a Purim party at the synagogue but something more secular and the wearer is not perhaps a Jew) and funny trousers and perhaps a prayer book? some chopped liver or gefilte fish in his hand, would I be offended?

No. I wouldn’t. I’d think: ‘great costume’, wish I’d have thought of that. And yet black face is out of the question. Probably red face too. Definitely brown face. Green is fine. Until we land on Mars then that too will become verboten on grounds of political correctness. The two words which translate literally as ‘totally fucking unable to laugh at yourself’. Which, in the ‘world’ bordered by my hair and my glasses, is nowhere I want to live. It’s a sorry and serious place of offence and pettiness and humourless imbeciles like Jeremy Corbyn and Kier Starmer telling us precisely how to speak, act and ‘be nice’. (Jews excepted in that particular example, obviously).

I don’t wanna be ‘nice’. I want to speak without fear of prosecution and make fun of anybody and everybody, myself included.

As, apparently, did Justin Trudeau, all those years ago when he dressed as a kind of ‘dark Aladin’ with the robes and shit and painted brown. OMG!!!!! yell the delicate of nature and frail of mind, ‘he’s supposed to be a master of tolerance and inclusivity and love for all humanity, but dressing up like that!!! He might as well rape a baby and bite the throat out of its mother!!!!’ That kind of sentiment. ‘Appalled of Winnipeg’.

He was a kid at a party, FFS. Who cares who he dressed up as? It was something called ‘fun’ and if it was mildly offensive then it was so much more fun. Get over it. Move on.

To the Labour Party Conference. That’s a good place to be. Where they can’t sack Tom Watson, the Party’s deputy leader, but instead can decide, collectively, obviously, that there is to be no more role of ‘deputy leader’. Unfortunately (only because had it succeeded it would have made Corbyn’s mob more laughable and horrible and manipulative than they already are) the move was voted down so Watson keeps his job. For now.

John McDonnell, Labour’s ‘real’ deputy leader, the one on message with the main dude, refuses to allow talk of leadership challenge, even though Jeremy is now, according to polls, the most unpopular leader of any opposition party of all time. Well done Jezza. McDonnell said ‘if Jeremy was run over by a bus, maybe we’d have a woman leader’. Well, in fact Jeremy has. The ‘bus’ of popular opinion has slammed the miserable fucker into a wall. Then backed up and rammed him some more.

Wish I’d been driving it.

There is no football to speak about today because the rugby World Cup has started over in Japan and that’s taking all my attention.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

So I went out for dinner Wednesday night with Greg…

Yeah, Greg. Geezer from ‘Masterchef’. Oh, weren’t you invited? Yeah, lots of (very B-list) celebs take me out… Angelina (keep your hands to YOURSELF, Jolie, I’m a married man), Prince Andrew (I’m not going to the school gates with you again, Andy, I’m hungry), Taylor Swift (ok I WILL let you pay but only if you don’t write another song about me, it gets embarrassing).

Ok, it was sort of a work thing and he, Greggy, was the ‘host’. But I didn’t go for Greg. I went because it was at a new Indian restaurant run by a Michelin starred chef in a hotel in Canary Wharf. Well, not IN, in, that would be something floating, but in the area.

Which was the problem. Ok, the (fucking) Jubilee Line in the (fucking) rush hour was a bit of a (fucking) problem. Then you emerge! Into the daylight, just. And its… its… its just beautiful. Who’d’a thought. The Isle of Dogs now looks like that. Millwall Man now wears a suit. And appears to have been born in Shanghai. Because even though Canada Tower went up about 25 years ago, I’ve managed to avoid going to that area ever since. Mainly because no-one’s invited me to a free Indian meal, or I’d have gone sooner. There is precisely nowhere on Earth I wouldn’t go for a Lamb pasander and a chapati that someone else is paying for.

So we emerged onto this rather wonderful, skyscrapery wonderland surrounded by various bits of waterway, and other than the fact its a bit soulless, its great. So, being the super-hi-tech-kid-of-the-millennium type dude, I hit google maps and it told me I was just about 11 minutes walk from my destination. Easy-bloody-peasy. Obviously, being google maps, it doesn’t exactly tell you in which direction may lie that destination, but it does show you… something. A little man. A lot of dots. Some roads, possibly, could be streams, could be walkways.

30 minutes later we arrived. Flustered, stressed and embarrassed, having totally given up, jumped in a taxi, only to be told “nah mate, iss juss’a round dat corner. Take me longer in da cab dan you cud walk it, innit” and he threw us out.

The food didn’t taste of Michelins. It tasted pretty good though. And Greg was… well, you know Greg!!! Oh, I forgot, you don’t know him. I do. Oh well. And I must admit I have never watched Masterchef even en passant. If I’m flicking and it’s on, I keep flicking. No interest.

But no longer. Now I’m getting the box sets, the dvd collections of the old series, I’ve ordered a t-shirt and I’ll never again miss a single second. That’s what being a best mate is all about.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

My country is fucked.

Brexit dunnit.

Cast us asunder from each other in a shit-storm of acrimony, bile and hyperbole. And more than a few lies, fictions and, what we can generalise as ‘Farage-isms’. We are a nation divided.

And yet still, nothing has actually happened. Because the shit-storm doth continue and the casualties mount up. And now its reached the Supreme Court. Who have to decide, legally and only legally, whether Boris suspending parliament is, well, legal. Whether, within our unwritten constitution, the Prime Minister is allowed to economise with the truth when asking the Her Maj to prorogue the House. Because she’s not allowed to say no. Unless she wants to. Which she only would if she felt Parliament was being denied its power for his political gain. Which it was. But he didn’t tell her that.

It’s all very complex at this point. The Supreme Court are not there to decide on Brexit. They stated that at the start. And yet… and yet… these judges, all eleven of them, an entire football team of judiciary’s finest, are just people. Ok, they’re clever people, quite brilliant in fact. But you can only view the world through your own head. And even judges, sworn to impartiality, will examine the facts presented through the prism of their own personal belief system. If I was a Supreme Court judge (surely its only a matter of time) I’d have Boris’s head on the Tower by Friday, throw Dominic Cummings in a gulag in Siberia and send Nigel Farage to Afghanistan on a little inflatable boat, jammed to sinking-point with English Defense League refugees. But I’m not a judge. Just a Superman.

Interestingly the Lib Dems, at their conference, have stated that ‘if’ they win the next election they would just abandon Brexit altogether. Revoke Article 50. Oh, that’s democratic. The ‘nation’ voted to leave but the Lib Dems know better. Why not just say; well, the Conservatives won the general election but we don’t like that so we’re going to disband government and do it ourselves? That’s as fair. Or as stupid.
Jeremy Corbyn remains on his fence.

I hope the splinters are sharp and long.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

Sometimes the news is so ‘good’, so funny, so stupid that you really don’t need people like me (as if) to take the piss out of it, it does it all by itself. And I think yesterday must have been ‘national tossers day’ or something because the ‘news’ today is just stupid.

A story that actually made it onto the front page of the Times is of a couple from Somerset who haven’t told anyone, even close family, the gender of their baby. Because ‘it’ can decide, when ‘it’ gets older.

How old do you reckon that should be? 2? 6? 11? I’m not sure either, but think its a great way to raise a child. Truly ‘gender neutral’. Except for its nob, if its a boy, or other bits, if otherwise. But that’s mere physiology!! Who needs it? Gender is oh so much more that what hangs (or not) between one’s legs. It’s an experience, its a feeling, its a drive, its… hmmmm, I can’t say ‘bollocks’ here, wouldn’t be appropriate in the context.

So little Jonny/Janey (name not revealed due to the hilarity it would probably cause, the mum’s name is actually ‘Hobbit’, so I hate to imagine) gets to grow up playing with BarKens and doggies and is dressed in… clothes. Neutral clothes. What porn will ‘it’ watch? Some parents make interesting choices for their children, others make stupid ones. I make no judgments.

Then Boris goes to Luxembourg (sounds like an Enid Blighton; as does Boris himself) to show the world his Incredibly Hulky way of leaving Europe but a bunch of housewives from Esher started heckling him so he didn’t turn up to the press conference. Skulked out the back door. Like Bruce Banner. Probably crying.

And here’s a tip for you: don’t ever drive through Rutland. The county. The smallest on the planet. Because there is no drive through. In fact there’s no McDonalds at all. Never has been. Not one of the burger chains 1249 UK stores is in that county. Because the residents of Rutland (up north a bit, blink and you’ll miss it) are simply, one must assume, ‘not the sort of people who indulge is food of a speedy nature’. You could say ‘stuck up’ but it would be rude. If accurate. But McDonalds has applied for a store and the council have approved it. To the outrage of the 40,000 residents of that fine, if almost worthlessly small, county. Who don’t want ‘golden arches’ and don’t want fast food.

I’d bulldoze the whole county and put a Primark there instead. Big one.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

When Joey gets tummy time, we ALL get tummy time! That’s a house rule. Some of the Barbies didn’t get the memo.

But in between tummy time, and Barbies, and tennis and all sorts of stuff, there was some sport played this weekend. You may have missed it. But it was just… one of those weekends.

The cricket was awesome. We (farkin) beat those Aussies in the 5th Test, tying the series, though not regaining the Ashes, which was a small mark on an otherwise outstanding display from England in the final match. Which basically came down to one event. If you can get Steve Smith out for 23 runs you’re probably going to win. And we did.

But the football. Oh my, the football. There was turmoil in the ‘top 6’. Even though half of the alleged ‘top 6’ were nowhere near at the time as the season’s only 5 matches old. So EVEN Spurs (top 4! If you fucking per-lease) were languishing midway through the dross at the start of Saturday.

Liverpool, predictably, inevitably, understandably, won easily against the same Newcastle team which Spurs had so struggled against just a couple of weeks ago. The result of the Liverpool match won’t please many people outside of the Mersey region but it opens up a 5-point gap at the top of the league. ALREADY!!!! Suffice to say, should Liverpool fail to win the Premiership this year there WILL be a public inquiry. If not more than one.

Then Spurs played. Against Crystal Palace, who had been, due solely to quirks in early season flukishness and nothing to do with being a ‘good team’, 4th in the table. But Spurs suddenly became Spurs again and scored 4 fab goals in the first half. Then took the rest of the match off to recover. But it had been more than enough.

The late game on Saturday was the expected Manchester City demolition of Norwich at Carrow Road. But it don’t always work out that way. Norwich were brilliant, City fazed by being forced onto the back foot for a lot of the game, and so the £400 million difference in squad value proved to be in fact worth less than a bag of chips as Norwich won.

Then yesterday came. And Arsenal visited Watford. Who are my 3rd favourite team in deference to Sir Elton and due to the fact that going to Watford’s ground reminds me of playing football at school.

The mighty Arsenal went 2-nil up in the first half, typically Arsenal, though Watford had come right at them early on and could easily been a goal or two up themselves, if they had anyone who could actually… kind’a… sort of… kick a ball into a fucking net. But they don’t, with Troy Deaney injured, so the Arse strutted off after 45 with their normal horrible arrogant complacency.

The second half, which I watched in its entirety, was the most entertaining football I’ve ever seen. It was entitled: Arsenal: the collapse into chaos and it was a thing of sublime beauty. Gifting Watford a quite ridiculous but wonderfully hilarious first goal due to the Gunners’ insistence on only EVER running the ball out of defence and NEVER just kicking it. And when you have ‘stars’ like Sokratis and David Luiz back there, it can be risky, and it was. The former giving away the first goal and the latter giving the penalty for the second. Watford forced Arsenal to defend with endless attacking play and defending is not really what the Arse do particularly well. And it broke their rhythm, they couldn’t pass, couldn’t play, it was simply: a thing of beauty.

Ahhhh, very happy Monday

A xxxx

I’ve started playing with my Barbie dolls once more. I’ve missed them. Forgotten what great fun it is to stretch a (plastic-)skin-tight t-shirt over unbending arms and immovable wrists, squeezing tiny shoes on feet permanently angled for 8 inch (to scale) stilettos, so that when you put ‘her’ in trainers or onto her snowboard, she either falls over or the footwear comes off. I love my Barbies.

It’s been probably about 20 years since we consigned our stock to the loft with a good riddance note, scattered the odd extra limbs we had knocking around into the box and bid it farewell. And then someone gave Lila a Barbie to play with.

So out they came once more. The next generation. And it is generational. Which I kind’a love.

When my girls were little Mel gave them her Barbie. From the ‘60s. It had hardly aged. NEITHER HAD MEL!!!! (he hastily adds). And yet it was different from the new ones we collected in the nineties. Because Barbie of old had been a little girl and the 90s one had, quite literally, ‘grown a pair’. They had breast-shaped plastic bits. They had little curves. They hadn’t so much ‘aged’ as been Beyonceed. Not completely because that would require much more plastic, but in that general direction.

In the box was also a pair of black shoes. Men’s shoes. Yet no sign of the Ken wot once owned them. As Lila said: ‘where Ken don?’ (Lila don’t do ‘g’). And that’s is a key question. Where the fuck is Ken??? I’m sure he was there when we left him in the loft locked up with 15 gorgeous, plastic women. Did they eat him??? Or did he do the proverbial runner?? Typical mannnn! He’s don.

But then I thought that this whole Barbie and Ken thing is a bit ‘binary’ for the end of this particular decade, its a bit stereotypical of the 60s to 80s mindset. And really, Mattel should be upping their game, modernising, upping their options and coming up with something in between Barbie and Ken on the gender scale. We didn’t have a gender scale back then, but we do now. We need a trans-Barbie/Ken. Barken. We need gay Barbie, camp Ken (though he’s always been a bit camp really) and we need a gender neutral version. Otherwise WHAT ARE WE TEACHING OUR CHILDREN!!! What terrible messages are we giving them about a boy and a girl falling in love, getting married and having children!!! WE MIGHT AS WELL GIVE THEM AK47S!!!!!

And that was all very funny, until I googled Barbies and came up with the above picture. The Ken Merman. Honest to god, I didn’t make it up. But its the answer to all the dreams of anyone into satire. A man without a nob. The feminist’s dream.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

I love a survey, as you may know. The general rule is: all surveys are bollocks, all statistics is bollocks and if you combine the two you end up with a level of bollocks that is significant to a statistical degree of bollocks-squared. Which doesn’t occur anywhere in nature.

But YouGov surveyed 2000 adults to find out how they felt about themselves. 1% of women thought themselves to be ‘beautiful’. Vain, deluded, arrogant… whatever. 2% considered themselves ‘good looking’.

There was no objective comparison. You can’t. Because beauty is quite literally in the eye of the beholder. But the interest comes with the men. 9% of them thought themselves ‘handsome’ and 7% ‘good looking’.

Which either means that men are 5 times better looking than women, or are 5 times better at overestimating their looks and at self-delusionment in general. Or that women are less forgiving when analysing themselves physically. Whereas men are actually much better at analysing women physically because we get so much practice and learn to make objective judgments in the time it takes to yell ‘fwoaoaoaoaoarrrrr; get’cha tits aaaart, darlin’!!!’ from a van window.

The issue in question really is self-image, which relates directly to self-confidence, which is so important in every facet of life.

So when my lovely mother, may her wonderful soul rest in peace, told me, at about 4 years old, that I was ‘handsome’ and ‘beautiful’, I took that on board totally and made it my mission statement for life. I didn’t know that all mothers tell all their children such fictions about themselves. How could I, I was 4, FFS. So when I was a gauky, skinny, clumsy teenager, with glasses and a school blazer in shit-brown, in my mind people simply didn’t come any cooler. Ok, I was cocky. Because I knew I could generally make people laugh. And for the ones I couldn’t, I could run quite fast. But even though (according to Mel looking at old photos), I was a creep, (and remember, she fucking married me not much later), I always managed to date the best looking girls around. Though stalking played a part, probably. ‘Punching half a mile above my weight’, I believe its probably known. Because I never doubted my mum’s white lies about how gorgeous I was.

I’m still gorgeous. I have no doubts. Though apparently all people feel better about themselves as they get older. Even women!!! Go figure that one.

Guess what Lila started today? Her teacher said she is undoubtedly the most gifted future ballerina since Darcey Bussell. Ok, maybe she didn’t but she thought it. Well, I thought it. Same difference.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx