Andy's Glasses

Carlsberg don’t make really annoying things. But if they did they’d make a leaf-blower. Those devil-inspired peace-disturbing muthafuckas that fire up at exactly 1 second past 8 o’clock, the time her majesty’s government allows such an awful fucking din to commence and upset the entire neighbourhood. As 57 gardeners stand there with their hands on the start-cord looking at the countdown. And whilst Carlsberg are at it, why not make a leaf-sucker??!!?? That actually takes the leaves away, rather than blowing them into the neighbours house so he can blow them to the next, like some tree hugger type relay race.

Yet the only type of gardening I really like is the noisy stuff. Hypocrite?? How dare you? One is noise, (the one I’m not doing), the other is petrol engines doing really useful stuff (my lawn mower).

But sometimes I get inspired. A synonym for ‘nagged’. And thus, last September, October time we ‘needed’ to get some bulbs. Our investment for future garden picturesqueness and horticultural beautification. So we went to Crews Hill. If you want to buy, like, two bulbs, a white one and a yellow one (the floral equivalent of: ‘are you feeling lucky, punk? Well are ya??’) you can buy them in your local wherever for about a fiver each. Possibly £1. I really have no idea. But if you yearn industrial quantities, if you hanker after making the neighbours so jealous of your wonderful display that they’ll blow all their sodding leaves at you for a year to come, then you need Crews Hill. Where we bought about 200 assorted bulbs. For… a tenner. Ok, 25 quid. Whatever, it was such a bargain we just kept buyin’ and buyin’.

Then got them home and realised we’d then have to keep diggin’ and diggin. And it took weeks and weeks because after about 20 minutes your back stiffens up and you’re bored as fuck with digging holes in the ground. If I wanted to do that all day I’d have stayed in Egypt with the slaves. Yet, eventually, dug in they got. (The single most horrendous grammatical phrase ever writ). And then promptly forgotten. Which is kind of the point, really.

Until a few weeks ago. When, for the first time this year, the term ‘green shoots’ was apparent in the strictly literal, non-metaphorical manner. Followed by flowers. Lots of flowers. I would tell you their names but… but… but they’re flowers. So I took this photo to share. And make you jealous. But if one of your leaves finds its way within 20 yards of my house, I’ll sneeze on your door-knob.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

Tomorrow is Passover. The celebration of the Jews leaving Egypt. In a plague. Ok, ten plagues. I mean, we’ve only got one and we’re not coping very well. But ten? TEN??? So the festival of Passover means that we have to tell ‘the story’. And because its a Jewish story it goes on and on. With everyone speaking at once. Lots of arguing. Shouting. Bit of singing.

As a consequence of which, the ‘seder’ dinner is a lot of fun. The story’s told, the songs are sang, bitter herbs are eaten, to remind of bitter times, horseradish is chewed, to remind us of… roast beef, matzos are eaten, the unleavened bread because the fleeing Israelites had to take their bread out of the fires in that state or wait til it had risen and missed the parting of the Red Sea through which they could escape slavery. For me, I’d have probably waited for the bread. I like bread and however bad slavery is, Egyptian whips don’t get stuck in your teeth. Or give you constipation.

The youngest person present has to ‘ask the four questions’, which start with ‘why is this night different from all others’.

But its a time for family. It’s a shared event. Last year there were about 30 people round the table. All participating. Ok, all forced by advance emails to participate. We hosted one with ‘just’ about 15, including Lila, obvs. Joey wasn’t born yet.

This year we’re all in isolation. It won’t be the same. Can’t be the same. Small groups. Not what God intended when he invented the whole thing, 3000 years ago. But heh, it is what it is. We are where we are. One plague. Family or single units.

Like my dad. 95 years old and doing brilliantly. Isolated but completely unbothered by coronavirus, even unbothered by the end of the football season. He’s that content. And today his synagogue sent him a Passover box. Everything he needs for the Seder, all the herbs and symbolic stuff and the kosher wine, then a meal, everything. Which is wonderful. Not that he’s so bothered about the Seder, having done 94 and quite frankly, they don’t change much with time. But he doesn’t have to cook. Which makes his life easier. But if he chooses to give himself a little service, he’ll have to ask the 4 questions. Being the youngest person present.

Happy pre-Passover Tuesday

A xxxx

So because of Coronavirus, the tv companies are making a bit more effort. They won’t make up for football, can’t, wouldn’t, couldn’t, mustn’t, but they can up their game a bit as their viewing market just multiplied itself by thousands at the government’s behest. And so, just a few days after Witness came on, there appeared, as if by magic, one of the true ‘holy grail’ movies. A genuine all-time top-whatever and must-see.

Rain Man.

Tom Cruise, again, and the impeccable, the irreplaceable, the outstandingly… Hoffmanable, Dustin Hoffman. It’s quite an old film. Because the phones have wires attached. But oh my it is wonderful. Not quite wonderful enough to make me bow before the tv in thanks, for that it would have to be The Graduate, but so good to revisit.

They never show old Woody Allen movies any more. He is no longer acceptable viewing due to… issues. With children. Yet really, any movie made BEFORE the first allegations came to light SHOULD be still watchable. In line with the presumption of innocence and the right of every man to a trial by the newspapers, this is a foundation stone of legal process in a democracy. If we had a written constitution here and if it had amendments, like some other, 3rd world countries, then the 17th amendment would read: “you can show Sleeper, Play it again Sam and Bananas, but NOT Vicky Christina Barcelona or Match Point or anything subsequent to marriage to any of his step-children…”

In their absence they keep showing Coyote Ugly. Nothing like as funny, other than the outstanding John Goodman, pathetically sorry in plot development (mainly: there is virtually no plot whatsoever that a 14 year old couldn’t write in her ‘aspirational’ homework essay, and it doesn’t develop far beyond ‘rubbish’) and the cast otherwise aren’t much into acting. BUT: they look fantastic, dance wonderfully and have lots and lots of fun. So if you just skip to Can’t fight the Moonlight, you’ll be fine.

And that movie is not unique in being pretty much a great big build up to just one number, one event, one… one little bit of brilliance following 90 minutes of absolute dross which, before they invented ‘fast forward’ may have had you leaving the cinema.

Dirty Dancing is the greatest example. I know you’re not supposed to talk ill of the dead but Patrick Swayze never pushed my buttons as an actor. Yet that dance scene at the end of the movie is fantastic. With Jennifer Grey. Name one other film she appeared in (without using IMDB) and you win a mask and four sheets of toilet roll! But she was the daughter of Joel Grey, the star (other than Liza Minnelli) of Cabaret. A movie two million miles from ‘one song wonder’. In fact one of my all time top 5!!!! (There are approximately 174 films in that top 5 but I’m working on it).

Flashdance. Shit. Total rubbish. Bollox. Dross. Oh but what a feeling…

Even Fame. Better. A bit. Enjoyable, to a degree. Yet defined and redeemed by dancing to the eponymous song across the streets of New York. The rest of it you can keep, or if you haven’t seen it, pretty much work out by yourself.

Wonder what’s on tonight?

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

This morning, or this evening, depending on your perspective, I was talking to Bulawayo Johnno, who lives in Sydney, if that’s not too confusing. He got thrown out of ‘Rhodesia’ and came here where, we were lucky enough to get him on the last convict ship bound for Bottany Bay. Anyway, he was in pre-bedtime relaxation (where most of Australia spends most of its days, pre or post coronavirus) and committing a cardinal sin. He was watching Shallow Hal. Not that I personally have any issues about a movie almost defining the ‘all men are rapists’ ethos from the male perspective. Nor that the essential message of the film was; don’t be fat and ugly, no-one will ever want you; get slim and gorgeous and all the shag-masters will be queuing up for a go. I find nothing sexist, misogynistic or un-feminist about that. The film does star Jack Black, always good value, and Gwyneth Paltrow, when she was a babe. Slim babe. Before Goop. Before vaginamania, before even ‘conscious uncoupling’. Just Gwynnie. And its such a shit film that even if it was the only thing on tv… I’d watch it again. Even if it was one of the usual 733 Sky offerings, I’d forgo the other 732 to watch part of it again.

Because shit films belong on tv screens. It’s their natural resting place. And somewhere that I feel I can enjoy/endure them in a completely non-judgmental environment. As opposed to walking out of a cinema that’s only showing Mary Poppins (new version). Where do you hide? How can you deny? How do you hide your shame???

On this side of the world, just a few nights ago they showed a true ‘monster’ movie. The official definition of which is either: a truly fantastic piece of entertainment which leaves you exhilarated and begging for more (brothels don’t count), or: any movie made during the Kelly McGillis era when she was a babe. In the totally non-objectified meaning of ‘babe’. Obviously.

They showed Witness. And its brilliant. Everything about it is brilliant. Harrison Ford is brilliant. The Amish people are brilliant, the story is brilliant, the little kid is brilliant and Kelly McGillis is… just Kelly McGillis. Who was only ever better in…

Top Gun. And only because in that she drove a Porsche 956 convertible, rather than a pony-and-trap. But another sensational film. Ok, its juvenile, puerile, pathetic, predictable and cheesier than Welsh rarebit, but you’re up there, with Tom, and even Val Kilmer is tolerable, and the Russians get shot down and the missiles fly and, and, and, and…

Watched Unorthodox on Netflix. Made in Yiddish. Quite brilliant. No Kelly McGillis but a lot of people who look and act like the Amish. But even stranger.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

Of the fundamental cause, accounts may slightly vary
Man bites bat or bat bites man, either way its pretty scary.
In a market selling food to the poor; scorpion, bat and dog,
Millipede, cat, locust, beetle, hamster, slug and frog.

People so poor they can’t afford a tin of spam
Thus is life on the streets in Wuhan.
For there was invented, for our enjoyment, fun and pleasure,
The virus known as Covid 19, the worldwide newfound treasure.

The virus spread, the people sick, some even went and died!
So the Chinese issued a new law, all bat-meat must be fried.
Several weeks later the shit there hit the fan
Sickness and dying everywhere, all across Wuhan.

But the world is global, international, and we’re all into sharing
And the latest gift to cross the globe shocked even the Chinese into caring.
Alexa started coughing, never a good sign
President Xi admitted that a little problem he indeed did find.

By then it had started in earnest, the spread of the disease.
Italy, Spain, America and Britain, all brought to their knees.
Markets crashed, shares dropped out of sight
The world in financial crisis and forced into a fight.

People locked up, public meetings banned
Because coronavirus travels so easily from hand to hand.
Shops closed, workers all sent home to wait.
Mask up, stay indoors, we all await our fate.

We’re getting a taste, in this apocalyptic gloom
Of what life might be like, when we never leave a room
Gym classes done online, speak to the family over Skype
Post modern techno-society forced upon us overnight.

We drink with friends over Zoom, use Streetparty to meet the gang
Work is done from the bedroom, until the WiFi hub goes bang.
No hugs no kisses for friends you may pass
Groping strangers not allowed, not even a pat on the arse.

But we WILL get over it, like Gloria Gaynor we’ll survive,
Because the human condition is such that as long as we’re alive
We simply have to make direct contact, that will indeed return
Staying two metres apart makes that indeed a hard corner to turn.

We will return to ‘real life’ and hopefully pretty soon
Boris is getter better, and not a moment too soon
To lead us back to health, both physical and monetary
Good luck with both of them, especially the monetary.

The NHS are heroes to every last man, woman and thing
Working right in the face of that awful viral ring
They don’t have tests, they don’t have vents not even sufficient masks
But God bless ‘em all, keep ‘em well, help ‘em with their tasks.

Yes, the same ‘omnipotent and omniscient’ God who started this whole thing
Looking down benignly as that bat felled Chi Dong Ying. (Name changed for his protection and my rhyme).
I make no judgments, the religious take comfort where they must
I’ll pray to the NHS in whom we all must trust.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

Ok, I haven’t watched one movie since this insanity started. Try to avoid watching things on tv because that’s how you die. Internally if not externally. Binge-watching 17 hours of Songs of Praise, just ain’t my thing. And although, according to everyone; everything on Netflix is ‘just brilliant!!!!’ it’s generally one person tells you their fave, the next person tells you theirs, and so on, but the faves rarely coincide. So you have to watch everything they have. 22 million years of collective series. Just so you don’t miss the ‘one’ which ‘you just MUST see’.

I did watch a bit of ‘how to tame a dragon’, which I’ve seen before and is a truly brilliant animation, clever and funny and cute. But I have two ‘lists’ of movies. One is the films ‘I’ve seen’, which means on a cinema screen. Tvs don’t count, however big they might be, in-flight movies don’t count because you wouldn’t want turbulence whilst watching Touching the Void, f’rinstance. And pilot announcements always seem to come when the dagger is poised over his heart/their lips are about to touch/the dog is just going to take a dump on the neighbour’s lawn/the car is at the cliff edge, and that upsets me. I don’t want Keanu Reeves bullet-time interrupted because there’s a special offer on Clinique fucking make-up. So when I ‘watch’ a movie it has to be the full extra-large, sweet popcorn experience.

But that frees up that movie for repeated watches on tv later on. I’m not saying this makes any sense to anyone, I’m just saying. My rules. We all have our own. And once ‘liberated’ then I can watch that movie any time, in any bits and pieces I may catch, to my heart’s content.

And my heart is never as content as when I’m channel-flicking (yes, I AM that annoying ‘man’, as apparently no-one with a Y-chromosome has ever done it) and come across Terminator 2. Even 1. Or Kill Bill. Any number. Anything by Tarantino. A Knight’s Tale. Don’t ask why, I just love that movie. Possibly having a mediaeval square dance to Bowie’s Golden Years is the reason, I don’t know. Batman movies. Love them all. Anything with Gene Hackman, Robert De Niro or Wonderwoman. Just because.

This week they showed Fatal Attraction. I couldn’t be bothered to watch it. When it came out we went to the ABC in Golders Green (now deceased, long before coronavirus) and were sitting in the ante-room before the 8.30 show, waiting for the last people to come out. I got bored. The world’s most impatient person is not a badge I wear lightly. And wandered. And opened a door. To be facing the screen. Just as Glen Close rose out of the bath, dagger in hand, at the very end. The absolute AHHHH!!!!! moment of the entire fucking film. Which I’d seen ten minutes before my showing began. I’ve always been ahead of my time.

But those movies are just the ones I love to see in bits. My proper ‘all time faves’ are different. Because I have my movie-snob image to consider so I’d have to include at least 4 subtitled films in any top ten. Preferably made originally in Uzbekistan, Zaire or Madagascar.

Happy Day-which-seems-like-all-the-others

A xxxx

It’s life, Jim. Yet an alien, bizarre, obscure kind of half-life in which ‘lunch’ becomes the main feature of the week, followed closely (ok, and dinner) by ‘the allotted exercise period’. The police have new powers in which ‘being somewhere’ is now possibly a crime, depending on the mood of the particular officer in question. And whilst people have been banging on for weeks about infringements on our liberty, I’ve been reminding everyone that ITS A FUCKING VIRUS, POTENTIALLY A KILLING ONE, DON’T BE A NOB!!!! But the changes are coming fast and furious as the plague escalates. And so laws can’t actually be passed quickly enough. Therefore the government make suggestions, albeit very strongly worded ones, and leave it to the police to interpret and implement them ‘as they see fit’. Ergo; we are living in a police state.

Yet even more importantly, there’s no football. Leading to the most interesting question (other than ‘WHERE ARE MY FUCKING CORONAVIRUS TEST KITS????’) of all, which is how the immense and massively extensive gravy-train that is ‘football’ going to cope and/or survive being hacked off, quite literally, right at its wallet.

People are cancelling their Sky sports packages, with Sky worried that they won’t put them back on afterwards. Assuming there is an ‘afterwards’ (that’s gloomy). So they won’t be paying the clubs for tv rights. And the clubs have immense wage bills. Truly immense. So Daniel Levy, the most financially conscious and careful of all Premier chair-people, has stated that as all the 550 non-playing staff at Spurs are ‘on furlough’ and thus will receive only 80% of their salaries, what do you do about the players?

An office worker there may get 35k a year. But for now that reduces to 28k. Whereas virtually all players get in excess of 60k a WEEK. So how bad for the people who basically keep the club running, if the players don’t take a cut that they can afford to the point of barely noticing, to keep them in line with those who will now struggle with rent or mortgages or car payments?

They reckon that the current situation may now create a massive reassessment of all the (stupid, ridiculous, outrageous) money in football and cause a total restructuring. Which will be one great thing to emerge from the current shit-storm.

Lila is 3 today. She is an April no-one’s fool. And every one of those 1000-odd days has been a thing of wonder. Not that I’m in any way obsessed or obsessive. It’s just what it is. Happy birthday to my favourite granddaughter on any world.

A xxxx

Well rules are meant to be broken, right? So my rule about not mentioning the c-word(s, as we have both Coronavirus AND Covid 19; we are twice blessed with fucking c-words) has to go out of the window. Because people are doing it wrong and it needs to be righted. Organised. Sorted. Protocols need to be in place. And adhered to. Boris used to tell us such things but was so good at it that he contracted the virus. Tosser. But as he had to chair meetings and talk to groups of people all day every day, it was inevitable really that he succumb. Which is why Carrie No-Fool-She had already taken off with unborn babe to some part of the unknown countryside to isolate and gestate simultaneously, well away from Number 10.

And the rules we shouldn’t break are the social distancing things. They are important. If I don’t know you and even if I do, I will assume you are a disease-ridden plague spreading motherfucker. Which is why I will smile nicely as we pass on the street, keeping the minimum of 2 metres (preferably 20). And for those who forget this basic principle upon which the lives of our 60 million people ALL depend, I’ve reduced the rules to something really easy, really simple, really… unambiguous. This is the rule:

JUST FUCK OFF!!!!

If you are on ‘my’ pavement coming towards me; JUST FUCK OFF!!!
If we are in the supermarket and I want to come down ‘your’ isle, JUST FUCK OFF!!!
If we are nearby on the heath, JUST FUCK OFF!!!
If you’re ambling along in phone zombie mode not looking out for others and oblivious to what ‘2 metres’ means, JUST FUCK OFF!!!

We should all carry 2-metre sticks and swing them constantly in a horizontal arc around us. And for the phone zombies, make it a really big heavy stick. That was Rachie’s idea yesterday after the 25th heath walker decided that following their doggy was way more important than infecting innocent people and the 2 metre rule is only for people without dogs. The easy solution to this is to kill any dog who comes within the required degree of separation. Sounds harsh but desperate times necessitate desperate measure.

Just back from Waitrose. Surprisingly calm, easy, almost 2-metre-ish but with only about 6 people at any time in there, avoidance is easy, and enhances your daily step-count as you run round 3 isles to end up where you were before.

Ok, happy Monday

Paranoid of NW11
xxxx

So yesterday’s lesson was about the perfect ALBUM. Obviously, the only person who learned anything, and took vigorous notes, was me. Because music is almost the most personal thing ever. One man’s Bridge over Troubled Water is another man’s Tie a Yellow Ribbon. As they say. One man’s Iron Man is another man’s Summer Holiday. Whatever.

So my lovely friend Sparkle (that IS his real name before you think all my friends are given pet names based on household cleaning products) sent me a list of tracks, singles and songs which floated his own personal boat across the Atlantic and beyond. But there’s just too many to list every single song that is wonderful. However, I must thank Sparkle for reminding me of Steely Dan. How could I ever forget my introduction to that fantastic ensemble.

I was 17/18 and went to work for the summer holidays selling double glazing. Yes, I was THAT MAN. So on the Monday morning I pitched up at the crack of about 11.30 to ‘the office’. In Ilford. Tiny little space at the front of the factory. Where payments were made, but not for me because you got paid for the week just completed, commission only. And we, the newbies, the lowlies, the unworthies, were to be ‘picked’ by the proper salesmen, to canvass for them. To knock on doors and get them leads from which, if sales were made, contracts signed, we’d all get paid. And generally, for the work involved, its safe to say we got paid much too much. But… like… that was the point, no?

So the widest of wide-boy flash Harries picked me. I felt like a hooker in a particularly downmarket brothel. And Gary (most of them were Gary, made it easier) took me in tow, to canvass for him and ‘learn the required skill set and technical knowledge’ to become… a ‘closer!!!’ The salesman. Those skills being the ability to dissociate yourself from any kind of moral or ethical constraints for the next 5 days. And to say the words: ‘don’t worry about that, just sign here and fill in your bank details’.

We walked outside and he opened the door of his brand new, French blue, Triumph TR6. Gary was 19, been selling double glazing for about a year and the car was ‘bought’, no hp, leases weren’t invented back then. We had two stops to make, always, without fail, every Monday. First to the bank to cash the cheque he’d just received. And then to the local drug dealer to buy half an ounce of whatever was on offer. Then we hit the road. Gary unwrapped his latest tape cassette and stuck it in the stereo system.

Pretzel Logic by Steely Dan. And as we headed down the M4, that music seeped into my head and has never left. Every track sensational. Even without the dope. Every guitar strum, drum beat, every riff simply mind-blowing. Even ‘With a Gun’.

And as the years progressed and Can’t Buy a Thrill came out, and Countdown to Ecstasy and Aja and many others, they became something of an obsession. Shattered only, for me, when Donald Fagan’s solo album The Nightfly came out and for some reason, although massively Steely Dan in almost every way, it sounded like elevator muzak. Yet the rest of the albums remain magnificent to this day.

Happy memories

A xxxx

Three songs I hate: Bohemian Rhapsody, I’m not in love (10cc), If you leave me now (Chicago). They all suffer from chronic radio overkill ‘back in the day’. And however good the most iconic of Queen songs is, and it really really is, it just got tired after 226 airings a day. For 3 months. It spread faster than coronavirus and for (hopefully) twice as long. The other two were played to death too and lacked the ‘that’s interesting’ factor of the Queen hit. And they were slushy. Nauseatingly, sickly, sacchariney, broken-heartedly slushy. Gimme a fuckin’ break.

Yet before you think me an some heartless, un-romantic love-a-phobe, or someone so mired in ‘his’ own musical genre(s) that there’s no consideration for anything outside my own narrow criteria, let me dispel that theory with three words: I love Jolene.

There, I’ve said it. Broken the taboo. Come out the closet. Crossed the line. Credibility shot to shit. Not only did I love, and still do, a country and western song, I loved a country and western song about a broken-hearted woman. Ok, its one of the few Nashville offerings in which a dog doesn’t die but otherwise, it ticks all the good ole boy, yeee-haaaw, confederate flag-waving bollocks that they all have in common. But it gets worse. I love Miley Cirus version in the ‘backyard sessions’. I even love the Petersons bluegrass take on Dolly’s finest.

And whilst I’m in the confessional, I have sinned further. I love a love song. Obviously not all, some are just bollocks, but others send shivers down everywhere. Anything by Adele. Most things by Whitney Houston. I believe (when I fall in love) by Stevie Wonder. And possibly best of all, Alison by Elvis Costello. I know this world is killing you. Holy shit. Let me just mop my keyboard before continuing. And I used the photo of that very album today as an homage to one of my all time favourite composer/performers. And possibly the album of his that I love the most. His first, obvs. Though Punch the Clock has such a host of memories attached to it that it too ranks very high on any list I may choose to make.

Yet a ‘perfect album’ is one in which every single track is a wonderful. You never have to fast forward/skip. You just leave and wallow. Combat Rock by the Clash. Cafe Bleu by Style Council. Hunky Dory. Even (and this is both well obscure and approved by the brother) Split by the Groundhogs. The Beatles White album. Sargent Peppers. Blood on the Tracks. And Little Creatures by the Talking Heads because it spoke to me when David Byrne had a little baby, and so did I. Reluctantly I’d have to add either of Oasis’ first 2 albums, the ‘reluctant’ because they’re such horrible people. And the soundtrack from the Sound of Music.

Joking about the last one. Honestly. I for one wanted the Nazis to gun Julie Andrews down as she gambolled across those fucking hills. I willed it to happen. More disappointment.

Let me know if I’ve forgotten anything.

Happy Saturday. Don’t feel like a Saturday, but trust me.

A xxxx