Andy's Glasses

Football was my first love
And it will be my last…
Football of the future
And football of the paaaaast

That was a pop song in nineteen something or other. Terrible bleedin’ song, so I changed the lyric a touch due to ‘artistic freedom’. Yet the sentiment is true. Football was my ‘first love’ and yet now that love is waning. Nothing to do with Spurs awful season so far… ok, everything to do with Spurs awful season so far, lying 11th in the table, just behind West Ham, Bournemouth and Sheffield United (per-lease!). We’re so bad even Manchester United sit above us in the table. Even Arsenal! And they’re really terrible. So terrible that their captain stormed off the pitch yesterday, ripping off his shirt. The dreaded ‘disrespect!!!’ which is a massive red line in the beautiful game. You can racially abuse players, you can dive and cheat and commit common assault, but you CANNOT DISRESPECT THE SHIRT!

I blame VAR. For EVERYTHING. As soon as they started with Video Assistant Referees everything went to shit. Brexit got scuppered, Trump pulled his troops out of northern Syria, the pound crashed against the dollar, lorryloads of poor Vietnamese died in Essex and the Northern Line suffered delays to Morden. All because of VA-fucking-R.

This is what happens in rugby, a well-organised, intensely regulated game with a million rules, most of which prevent death, some of which are involved in scoring ‘goals’. A decision occurs on the pitch. The referee is unsure so calls on the VAR. But he does so over the ground’s PA system, telling the ‘man watching the telly’ exactly what he should look for. The replays are then shown, as the VAR watches them, on the ground’s screens, so everyone can see what he’s looking at and the different angles and is ‘there’ with the judgment. Which is then unarguable. Everyone’s seen it, everyone knows that, the number 7 was offside in the ruck, that the tackle was high, that the ball wasn’t grounded. And the referee announces his verdict to all. Publicly.

This is what happens in football. An incident happens, 22 players crowd the referee pushing and shoving him until he makes the dreaded ‘VAR’ signal. And then all is silent, all is quiet, no-one knows what’s being done or why nor is privy to the replays. The referee CAN go to the sideline and see them but often doesn’t. Simply trusting the VAR to decide for him. Even though many of the rules in football are ambiguous and the technology struggles with offside decisions. The fans can send a few text messages while they’re waiting. Have a game of chess. Go to the toilet. Then the decision is given to the ref and he just points to one spot (penalty, free-kick, GOAL!) and the game continues. It’s stupid, its opaque and its downright rude to the 45,000 people sitting there having paid a king’s ransom to watch their beautiful game stopped, stuttered and ruined by a new and poorly thought-out system.

Delays. They happen. BUT TELL THE PEOPLE WHY. Same at airports, there’s never any information. So the Premier League adopted the RyanAir model for their VAR rather than the slightly more relevant rugby version.

Spurs played Liverpool. VAR wasn’t involved. Didn’t need to be. It’s a tried and tested formula. Mo Salah scores a penalty and we lose.

It’s almost enough to make you redirect some of that love to your husband/wife!

Happy Monday

A xxxx

Have you seen Joker yet? Then you should. It’s remarkable. Brilliant. Mesmerising. And a bit brutal. Joaquin Phoenix plays the eponymous hero(??) in a study of a sick, warped and abused mind. Mel found it too long and too slow. Pretty much as she finds every movie due to her lack of patience with everything except me. But it had to be slow. It had to smoulder, it had to explain the emergence of the sociopathic psychopath lurking underneath a tenuous veneer of mere strangeness. Joker is portrayed as a victim which, according to this version, he most certainly was. But victimhood can only get you so much sympathy. We’re all victims. My mum wouldn’t buy me the bike I really wanted when I was 2 and couldn’t even walk. Joker’s mum was an insane schizophrenic and physical abuser. So we all have tales of woe. Doesn’t make us all killers and Batman haters. I loved Batman. In fact (guilty secret) I kind’a still do. Ok, not as much as I loved Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman but the Caped Crusader was instrumental in making me the person I am today. Whoever the fuck that might be.

Do you have to be a nutter to play a nutter? Well as Marlon Brando, Heath Ledger, Jack Nicholson have shown, it certainly doesn’t hurt. Joaquin has had his own, personal mental health ‘issues’ but is such an amazing screen presence that you don’t care nor know where the man ends and the acting starts. He’s also a vegan, from age 3, so his mental health has always been questionable, if not his common sense.

Parallels have been mentioned between Joker and Taxi Driver. And you can see why. Both are studies of ‘injured’ men trying to cope with their own demons whilst the world around them turns to shit and compounds their despair to breaking point. Possibly ironically (even though its American) Robert De Niro is in Joker too, maybe a nod to Taxi Driver, maybe just because he’s Robert De Niro and if you can get him in a film you do. Though in Scorsese’s 1976 masterpiece the Taxi Driver was the ‘solution’ and in Joker De Niro’s character is more ‘the problem’.

But its all about that ‘breaking point’, when the psycho bursts free. And it simply has to be arrived at slowly or its just a slasher movie without screaming teeny babes running round half naked.

Taxi Driver is probably better. But mainly because its set in some kind of real world, rather than Gotham City. And because of the now immortalised ‘you talking to me???’ But Joker is brilliant too and if Joaquin doesn’t win an Oscar then there is no Santa Claus, no God and no hope of Spurs winning the League this year.

England to play South Africa in the final next weekend. OMGeeeeee…

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

PS. Everyone will always remember exactly where they were when Joey sat in a high chair for the first time.

If only Maro Itoje was our Prime Minister, and Kieran Read the leader of the opposition, life would be so simple. Because everyone would know their roles and everything would go like clockwork and there’d be no posturing, no posing, no cheating; no room for liars, procrastinators, deliberators or outright masturbators. As seems to be the case most of the time in Westminster. In Japan its different. England met the All Blacks this morning and re-worked the whole ‘St George and the dragon’ legend to create a totally new one. We beat the fucking All Blacks. Didn’t just beat them but did something much more seemingly impossible than that. We made them look completely ordinary. Took away their potency and left them decidedly second best. And it was awesome and it was inspirational and it was the finest thing that has happened since 1936, possibly 1983. It was THAT good.

But the Brexit which was ‘done’ on Tuesday then ‘undone’ about 10 minutes later when it was voted that the deal couldn’t possibly be approved by next Wednesday, firstly because its very long and needs reading very carefully without falling asleep, and secondly because it probably is a pretty shit deal otherwise the EU wouldn’t have accepted it.

So Boris needs to call a general election because his ‘lame duck’ government can’t pass water at the moment, lacking a majority in the house. But the opposition party won’t agree to that. Even though a general election is all Jeremy Corbyn has been banging on about since he lost the last one. Ah, but not now. Not til Brexit’s done. Not til ‘no deal’ is taken off the table. Not til we’ve won the rugby World Cup. Not til the ozone layer is restored. Not til Greta Thundberg sits on the throne. THEN we’ll have a general election.

But to put more cats among yet more pigeons, Mnsr Macron (little French geezer; married to his granny, small man syndrome personified, the new definition of ‘Napoleon Syndrome’, lots of syndromes and psychological hang-ups) is now threatening to scupper the extension request. The one Boris never wanted in the first place. But Macron has the power of veto and may implement it. Thus sending Britain ‘crashing out of Europe’ on Thursday, sans deal!!!! Because the extension is to ‘article 50’ and if its not extended then we’re gone. And that’ll be Corbyn’s fault. For refusing to accelerate the time table. Bringing about his (claimed) worst nightmare of crashing out without a deal.

Though really his actual worst nightmare is losing another general election, which he most certainly would. I read today that 78% of Jews would rather have no-deal than Corbyn. That would include me. I’d rather have head lice than Corbyn. I think we should convert the rest of the country to Judaism and then Corbyn would never get in.

So vote for Itoje. I would. And tomorrow morning we find out who England will play in the final. Wales or South Africa. Oooooohhhhh…

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

Yesterday was Lila-day and I was sitting with her doing… whatever, when she just suddenly said; apropos of nothing; ‘grand-daughter’ and laughed. But said it properly, beautifully (she’s a posh bird, or will be once she masters ‘L’ and ‘G’… ‘J’… ‘K”….‘Z’…). And I said, ‘yes?’ And she repeated it as if the word itself was sufficient. Which, to a grandfather, it kind of is. It was the randomness of it which was particularly pleasing. But as Lila speaks most of the time (like her MOTHER!) its not uncommon to just put an idea, or a word, ‘out there’, for discussion. And her vocabulary is awesome. Yet unfortunately is not matched by her powers of pronunciation. Not yet. So when Lila speaks to me its fine, we chat, we chew the fat, we shoot the breeze and there is a minor stumble or two at some of the words, both hers and mine, I’m fairly fluent in ‘Lila’. It’s only when others come along and I realise she needs an interpreter. She’s 2.5 years old. Bright enough to form arguments, which she does, but not ready to incorporate unnecessary consonants into her speech. Don’ need it, as she would say.

And there’s hope for us all. All of us that is who are concerned about forgetting… errr… hmmm… forgetting things! Yes, that’s it. Some people do, I’m told. And those who do worry about ‘the future’ even though the entire planet might be gone in a puff of smoke (literally, well several million puffs of smoke from YOUR plane/car/boat/cow) before we reach the point where we’re chewing the newspaper, pissing on the dog and finding the Labour Party manifesto interesting.

There’s a drug. Combats Alzheimer’s. Being tested right now in a United State near you. And it can prevent the spread of the brain damage caused by that most horrible of destructive diseases. So that’s good.

What’s not so good is that this drug was trialled for a few years before the company abandoned it in February. And now, just 8 months later, its the ‘next biggest thing’. Ah, so that’s brilliant. Why the turnaround? Because they’ve re-done the tests/analysis and found its 40% successful!!!! (Totally fucking meaningless, is that a 40% reduction on everybody? Or it works on 40% of the people??) So what we really need to know, whilst we can still remember the answer, is: ‘so what has changed: the drug or the statistical analysts?’ Because as all cynics know, statistics can say anything you want them to say or pay for them to say.

Happy Friday. Gotta get ready for the World Cup semi-finals for the rugby, with Ing-er-lund playing tomorrow!!!!

A xxxx

It’s always the same; the only sin in public life is hypocrisy. So they’ve gone and calculated the carbon footprints of lots of holier-than-thou and greener-than-green type ‘planet-savers’ to see if they ‘walk the walk’, rather than ‘fly the plane’. And it would appear that only Greta Thundberg is worth listening to without thinking ‘yeah, but that’s not what YOU do’, and no-one wants to listen to Greta.

Yet Bill Gates, massive donor to charity, deeply concerned about climate change, endangered species and everything, last year traveled 213,000 miles on his private jet. Meaning that his personal emissions (its just an expression, for cows its more literal) were 1,600 tons of CO2. The ‘average’ human being emits 5 tons. Yet the average ones don’t bang on so much about saving the planet, and Bill does. When in reality he is a PLANET MURDERER!!! J-Lo didn’t fare so well either, emitting carbons by the million and flying around the world to tell everyone how bad it is to fly around the world all the time. If more people flew around the world to tell of the evils of air travel the planet will be dead in 3 years, 2 months and 4 days. Yet I’m more lenient to J-Lo than to Bill Gates because even though she’s now 146 years old she is still the most gorgeous thing in a private jet.

Jeremy Corbyn’s hypocrisy is different. He can’t afford a private jet, never wants to go anywhere beyond Scarborough and no-one listens to what he says anyway. But he’s still a terrible hypocrite. Because in the 40 years of being an MP before he became party leader, he holds the record for voting against his party more times than anyone else. Always ‘voted with his conscience’. But unfortunately, Jezza’s conscience was hijacked by Trotskyists in 1961 and he’s never got it back. But that’s no excuse. Because the 19 Labour members who voted on Monday for the Boris Brexit Deal have been hounded, terrorised and attacked on social media. Not by Jeremy himself, but by all those lovelies who support and encourage him. Who imply that voting against the whip makes those MPs vile, scum and ‘vermin’ and unfit party members.

Ahhhh, the left wing; so tolerant and inclusive and open to thoughts and ideas. As long as those thoughts and ideas are EXACTLY in line with the rule with ABSOLUTELY NO DEVIATION.

The Labour machine is approaching ‘Cultural Revolution’ standards, I fear. In which everyone is scared of saying, doing or even thinking anything that doesn’t comply with the strictly Corbyn/McDonnell/McLusky/Chairman Mao party line. And will be reported, will be ‘shopped’ by friends, family, neighbours and never seen again. Because that is true democracy.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

Well, it had to happen at some stage, I suppose. Spurs won a game. And not just won in any normal sense, but really, really WON! Beating Red Star Belgrade 5-nil at the Tottenham stadium. But its not really about beating out-classed Serbians, given a place in the top European competition on the grounds that they’re European and have to be given one, even though their league is not a particularly high standard (name one other Serbian top league team and you win an all expenses paid trip to Kragujevac for the whole family) and they’re not very good. But we’re only allowed to play the team that comes along for the game, that’s the rule. And the path to Champions League glory is paved with ‘banana skin’ teams which screw you over. Or which you allow to screw you over, like we did at Olympiakos.

But football is a game played in the players heads. Which is the tragedy really because most of these guys have 98% of their life gifts in their feet and the rest, normally, in their genitals. Not much happens on a more cerebral level. And what’s been missing at Spurs this season has been the spirit, the joy of the game, the love of the group, the togetherness, the unity. Their very mojo. And last night it appeared to return. All of it. And maybe that’s just they were allowed to play by inferior opposition and the stars were aligned in our favour, or maybe the malevolence in the dressing room has finally been dispelled. I don’t know. Sunday at Liverpool may prove to be a little more testing. But you never know. Buoyed in spirit by last night, anything can happen. Can’t it?

And Liverpool are due a slump which actually appeared to start last week at Old Trafford. Even though they want to end their ‘30 years of pain’ in which their poor fans with a tragically over-inflated sense of entitlement, have had to endure not winning the league!!! I mean: Liverpool! Not allowed to win the league for 30 years!!! We really need a public inquiry. I wonder how fans of Leyton Orient, Scunthorpe United and Crystal Palace feel when they hear about ‘30 years of pain’.

Yesterday was in fact ‘Super Tuesday’, the day Spurs won again and the day ‘Brexit got done’!!! Yep, its over now. Parliament approved Boris’s deal. Hooray!! So we’re ‘outa there’!!! Hooray. But then voted against it happening in the next 3 days, so it may just drag on for another few… days, months, years, decades, millennia. But it WILL get done. At some point. Just as long as it takes Jeremy Corbyn (even with his new glasses) to read through the 100 odd pages of joined up writing and having the long words explained to him and then object to every single point raised and insert the phrase ‘workers’ rights’ into every sentence. Or we might have a general election first. So yes, ‘we are leaving’, but when, exactly, is still, kind of, ‘out there’.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

I’ve found another gender difference. And I’m just talking about the 2 ‘primary’ genders here, for simplicity, and because I can’t be bothered with the other 32 in between. In this context. But I’m always keen to find a good, honest, pure gender difference, mainly because that’s what keeps them ‘primary’ and prevents us turning into hermaphrodites. Or deludes us into believing that women’s football will ever be like men’s. And the new difference is Lycra. That wonderful, washable, durable, stretchy but rather synthetically tacky stuff which prevents me from taking my cycling more seriously. Lycra is the nylon for the noughties and if you cycle more than 2.5 miles in any one ride is compulsory by law. So I go 0.63 miles to the tube station and thus avoid the legislation. Because I cannot deny that Lycra on women can be a truly wonderful thing, the gym-babe’s material of choice, always seeming to cling… just right. But on men? ON MEN??? Oh my god its ugly. Vile. Revolting. They need a glass ceiling in clothing stores, just for men, only women allowed in Lycra-land. Probably not in a short skirt though if the floor was glass.

And this football season is so awful, so pitiful, so… so… so not winning any fucking thing at all, that one must take one’s pleasures where one finds them. And I managed to find one last night. Amazingly, it was right here on Sky Sports 1. I’m not saying I’m proud of this, not saying it makes me a better person or even a half decent human being, but the pleasure derived from Arsenal losing at Sheffield United can only be described as ‘disproportionate’. In any other season I might have shown compassion for our North London rivals, may have ‘felt their pain’ (yeah: right) but this season has been so tragically impoverished for Spurs fans that we just needed a ‘release’ and I’d like to thank Arsenal for providing it for us. Bless you.

What we gonna do about Harry & Meg??? It’s the question on most people’s lips. Well, those that can be bothered to read it. Royals whingeing about their lot? I think they just need to find a new job. Might not pay quite so well but they’d have their freedom and space. I love Megan and simply can’t understand why the press give her such a rough ride. But ‘privacy’ and ‘royalty’ has always been an unlikely combination.

Off to the doctors to get a referral for my hip. Bothers me when I play tennis. Can’t move so quickly to the right. I want a prescription for a tennis court that only has a left side on it, then I’ll be fine.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

We elect a parliament to govern us. We delegate to them the running of our entire nation, a responsibility for which they are keen and eager. So why bother ever having a referendum? Ah, because it tests the will of the country. Or, more cynically, it allows government to blame someone else when it all turns to shit. It was YOUR decision. Even though we, the general population, are insufficiently enlightened about the facts and they, the MPs, we like to think, are not. That they know ‘everything’. Or know people who do. That’s what ‘running the country’ means. So calling a referendum is basically looking for a scapegoat.

And they want to have another one? But obviously, another referendum would just continue to show the pretty much 50/50 split in the nation. It would depend on what question was being asked, but it would always be close. Because all the leavers on the radio would walk away from Europe tomorrow. Nigel Farage reads any ‘deal’ as compromise on the Brexit ideal.

So for ‘leave’ MPs to say now, oh, but I never wanted to leave ‘without a deal’, is fairly stupid. The whole point of leaving was to extricate ourselves from the dictates and demands of Europe. To be free from them. ‘Take back’ FUCKING ‘control’. The vague and woolly concept of which appeals to small-minded Islanders keen to lock up the borders and legalise incest.

Oliver Letwin has actually done what no-one else since this entire Brexit mess started has done. And polarised the entire nation. As one. Together.

Because his amendment which was voted in on Saturday, demanding an extension to Brexit, has universal effect. The 51% of the nation who voted to leave hate him because it stops us crashing out of Europe at the end of this month. The 49% of remainers hate him because it effectively stops Boris’s deal from being accepted and thus dragging the entire process along for another 3 months. Thus with one amendment, Letwin has alienated every single person in the Kingdom. Tosser.

Which brings me to my Guy Fawkes moment. If parliament can’t overcome their political differences and their glory-seeking opportunism and get this fucking thing done, then they are no use to us whatsoever. They are in opposition to 100% of the people. Because they’re so busy jostling for their own 50% later on they are upsetting every single person. Therefore they should go. All of them. In favour of a parliament of goodness and light who actually think of the nation and its people rather than their own political agendas.

Apply here.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

Talk about football? I don’t even want to think about football. It’s a horrible game that I used to follow a bit, just when nothing else was ‘appening. Which is in fact, 9 months each year. But now its just a horrible, racist, scummy, vile game and… and… and…

And I don’t wanna ‘play’ any more.

So now I’m into the community protection game. As you can see by this photo, which is simply oozing threat and malice and danger! Mainly to myself in case I bang the bokken against my head accidentally. Yes, its a bokken. Martial arts thing. Very different from a normal, errr, piece of wood, in that its more… martial arty. A normal piece of wood could hurt someone if banged repeatedly against their head. This one does something similar but in Chinese. So its different. Should be for what if fucking cost.

A message came round on a local message thingy about a burglary on Wednesday night. We’d heard the police helicopter which attended and pursued the baddies. Who forced their way into a home with people inside, kids, really horrid and nasty. The noise from the chopper disturbed a particularly tricky 2 diamond contract I had declared at the bridge table and I was going to complain to the authorities.

I got the message in the morning. And 10 minutes later the house alarm opposite went off. Ok, alarms go off all the time. But… that message… baddies… police chases… and now an alarm.

I have the keys. So I went and beeped the alarm off from 20 paces. But I had to go check. Because I’m a good neighbour (possibly the best, maybe even the most stupid) and because l just had to. And as I’d just come back from my Tai Chi, there was my bokken. I don’t have a gun, not yet anyway, and knives are messy and there was no baseball bat. And although I wouldn’t want to deploy a bokken in my own house, because Mel would have to clean up all the things broken, I really didn’t mind in their house.

But our hero only found an empty orderly home with all points of entry in tact and nothing edible left lying around.

So we can’t talk football, we certainly will NEVER mention fucking Brexit again, but there’s rugby. Loads and loads of truly amazing rugby. Best World Cup ever.

Happy intrepid Sunday

A xxxx

Where international rugby is concerned I’m always conscious of being respectful of all teams. Ok, ‘respectful’ can translate to ‘fearful’ when it’s the All Blacks, as it will be next weekend. But I have lots of respect for Ireland, for Wales, South Africa, certainly Japan, not quite so much France. Then there’s Australia. Which is just a little bit beyond my sphere of respect. Into the world of ‘gloating’. Of serious rivalry. Of trash talk. Of piss-taking, merciless, brutal and often. In part because that’s how the Aussies are, and in part because THEY FUCKING DESERVE IT FOR THE CRICKET.

So what a joy this morning, what a pleasure, what a… what a… what a… EVERYTHING to knock those Southern Hemisphere criminals out of the World Cup in the quarter final. And it wasn’t just a victory for England, it showed a gulf in class that was immense. 40 to 16 is a big score for such an important match. And filled my boys with the confidence to be optimistic, to almost feel invulnerable.

Then the Kiwis played.

Our next opponents in the semis. Who today played Ireland. And beat them. But didn’t just ‘beat them’ like a normal team would. They beat them on 27 different levels. Where most teams can only think in about 5. They simply out-everythinged the Irish team which had in fact beaten them in the previous two tests they’ve played. The difference being that those 2 weren’t World Cup matches, and this was. It was simply awesome.

And at this very moment Spurs are losing to Watford. Who I simultaneously have a lot of respect for and have total fucking contempt for having the audacity to score at Spurs. Who do they think they are?

Brexit is miring itself deeper into the shit with every meaningless vote in parliament serving to weigh us down even further. So the vote later is immediately devalued because of Sir Oliver Fucking Letwin.

Otherwise, I’m good.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx