Andy's Glasses

The current pope is a bit of a ‘rebel’. All terms being relative. He’s considering lifting the celibacy laws for priests. Which, as considerations go, is (no pun here) fucking humongous! Because its always been a given that priests of a Catholic flavour be celibate. At least outwardly. But in South America their church simply doesn’t have sufficient priests to match the ‘demand’. For all the prayer required for all those drug-lords, cartels, vigilante groups, militias and other murdering rabble. So something has to give. And that something would appear to be virginity. With the introduction of Shagger Priests. Married ministers, allowed to act in an un-celibate way whilst conducting their priestly stuff. Well, not at the same time exactly, like whilst giving a sermon, but in their private lives.

This is so ‘against the Church’ it has caused great anger among the more conservative people at the Vatican. Which is basically all of them. Other than, it would appear, Pope Francis.

From my own perspective, duly considered and all probabilities balanced, I really couldn’t give a shit. I’m a Jew. What do I know about the intricacies of the Catholic Church. Yet I do care. Firstly because I’m a caring individual. And secondly because if celibacy was lifted it would remove a great source of satire from my life. And with Jeremy Corbyn soon to be ‘GONE!’ I’m going to really have to search hard.

Yet also, speaking just as a ‘man’, albeit a rather special, handsome and dashing one, the whole celibacy thing not only was ridiculously stupid, but in fact even more ridiculously harmful. Mainly to children. Particularly those in close contact with that church. And I’m not saying all priests are bad, are paedophiles, are evil abusing motherfuckers, I’m really not saying that at all. But it doesn’t take Einstein (another bloody Jew) to work out that the proportion of men who are that wicked would appear to be way, way, WAY higher in the Catholic Church than in the general population. And just perhaps, this may have something profound to do with suppressing not just a ‘basic human urge’ but a basic urge of all animals. (Think that covers both me and you then). Add in the terrible cover-ups by churches and institutions going right up the Vatican itself and you have a pretty poor model for any kind of moral leadership.

Deprivation has long been seen as way to prove ‘closeness to Jesus’. Eat less, speak less, no sex please (we’re Catholic), bit of flagellation, lots of guilt, sorrow and self hatred. But as ever, in human terms, is pretty unworkable.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

My life changed when Peter Cook and Dudley Moore invented shower gel. It was nineteen seventy-something and they introduced the ‘green bat’ hanging in the bathroom. And why was it special? Why was it so revolutionary? Because it hung upside down. Like a bat. So it didn’t need a shelf, it didn’t need a receptacle, it just hung there. Magically inert and not spilling its contents. Until needed, then a little squeeze and suds would ensue. Seventies dudes no longer had to spend half an hour chasing a slippery wet bar of soap around the shower as it flew out of their hand time and time again. I was cleaner, I was happier. I was earlier for school/work.

And 40-odd years on, I still buy Radox Shower Gel. Of course, its no longer just ‘green’ but comes in the obligatory ‘tea-tree and chamomile’ flavour, it comes in ‘rose-petal and aardvark’ flavour, ‘sea mist and global warming’ and a whole host of other chemical additives, most of which are probably carcinogenic but smell nice.

Then something happened!!!!

Slimage in the bath. Blue puddles on the shower floor. Hmmmmm. I needed to actually close the lid. Like I remember that. WTF???

I wrote to them. Thinking ‘bad batch’. But no. They’ve changed the ‘valve’. Which was always a horrible little plastic ‘sphincter’ thingy which stopped leakage but allowed squeezage. And they’ve replaced it with… a hole. Just a hole. No valve, no cleverness, no fucking thought, just… a hole. Through which, unsurprisingly, the stuff just pours out. Constantly. And why?

Because the great god that is Climate Change must be appeased. And the old ‘valves’ weren’t recyclable and the new ones are. So Unilever/Radox can tick that box and act smug. Whilst I get Mel shouting everY morning and night that ‘YOU LEFT THE LID OFF THE SHOWER GEL AGAIN!!!!’

You’d think that Radox might print a warning on the bottle. After 40 fucking years. That, even though we provide an integrated hook from which to hang this, it will spew out all over everything if you choose to deploy it.

So I’m starting a new campaign, looking for signatures, if you please:

BRING BACK OUR SHOWER GEL SPHINCTERS AND FUCK CLIMATE CHANGE.

Just a thought. Radox and I are currently in negotiation.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

About 20 years ago I won second prize in a short story competition. Won a fiver. Was hardly the Booker. My story was called ‘The last God’ and it was a ‘Noir’ type detective story, all Mickey Spillane and smouldering babes in pencil skirts and chain-smoking PIs who cross the line between legal and dubious on a regular basis. But what the story was really about was God. In essence, that the Romans had hundreds of Gods. And the Greeks. And the Egyptians. And everyone else in between. Because you needed explanations for the inexplicable. Things like wind. Rain. Sunshine. Good crops. Bad crops. The stars. Death. Any manifestation of the natural world was unknown back then, so you need a god to explain it. To pray to. To beg forgiveness. I’ll sacrifice my children before this alter if you just let me harvest my wheat. Fair exchange.

There were no weather girls back then, or the problem would have been different. There was no meteorological society. There was lightening, there were avalanches, volcanoes erupted and, in the absence of any better ideas, god dunnit. What? We don’t have a god for sinking boats at sea??? Then invent one. How hard could it be?

Then along came various forms of enlightenment, of understanding, of unraveling the natural world. Astronomy, physics, chemistry, medicine signalled the death of most of the gods. Who needs to make gifts to Tytronicus!! when a little pill will probably do the job much better? And the gods gave way to scientific explanation. One by one having no place in the world as the ‘mysterious’ became understood. And thus leaving just The Last God. Everything else has long gone into the realms of post-technological understanding, except…

Where it all began. Why it all began. Why the fuck are we here??? The BIG question. Hence, the Last God.

And I mention this because I think that we, collectively, the caretakers of planet Earth, have just invented a new God. After all these years…

I heard that as of very recently, 80% of Australians, as godless, pagan, satanic, demonic bunch as e’er walked the planet, claimed they now believe in ‘climate change’ and even their prime minister (the one who’s previous god was a lump of coal; his nation’s biggest export) is joining the cry. WE BELIEVE!!! they holler. Previously oblivious to the problem, even though it pretty much started right there with Ozone issues, they suddenly, as their country burns tragically all around them, are having a collective ‘my plane’s crashing; I’m an atheist but: HELP ME GOD!!!!’ moment.

The new God. Climate Change. The only sacrifice required is that we all drive a Prius.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

What happened to the Morinho honeymoon? When Jose came to Spurs and we won and we looked pretty and confident and dangerous and swept aside all who came before us… for at least 2 weeks? And we were promised trophies in the first couple of years (before it all turns to shit). And then it ended. So we couldn’t ‘even’ beat Liverpool. Though less of a surprise after not being able to beat Middlesboro’. No slur on ‘boro. Bloody impoverished, lower-league, northern no-hopers. That’s more a slur. Sorry Ali.

And coming at the end of THIS week as well, its just NOT FAIR. First we had the killing of Suleimani, then the retaliation by Iran, then the ‘accidental’ blowing up of a passenger plane from Ukraine, THEN Harry & Meg destabilising my entire life, and now THIS!!!

But we must draw what positives we can from football, mainly because its far less boring than worrying about whether Harry will have to buy his own stab vest when he’s in Canadia. And the positives we can draw from losing to Liverpool yesterday are these:

1. We’re not very good. Hence can only get better??? That’s not so much a ‘positive’ as a very optimistic form of hyperbole that only the truly deluded could propose. In the absence of a ‘proper’ striker we will struggle. Harry’s injury is a bad one and although we have ‘goals all over the field’, those goals still managed to total a big zero yesterday.

2. Its very easy to be find positives in Liverpool, so I’m really not going to bother. Fuck ‘em. The only satisfaction I can get is knowing that after their glorious victory they have to go back to Liverpool.

3. VAR started life as ‘shit’ and has now descended into unreliable and inconsistent shit. West Ham had a goal disallowed on Friday because the ball just touched the arm of the goal creator. Yesterday the ball hit Jordan Henderson’s arm on the way to Firmino’s goal and it was deemed fine. WTF??? Not that we lost because of VAR, we lost because we squandered so many chances on goal in the second half after playing the entire first half in a state of collective fear of the opposition.

4. Arsenal didn’t win. And although that doesn’t sound like much of a positive, it really is. Just from a nasty, spiteful viewpoint.

So there we are. Positives. Loads. Everything to play for.

Wake me up next season.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

Being a lifelong feminist, having burned my bra in 1972 and ripped as many others from as many women as I could to ‘enlighten’ them, back in the day, I like to keep abreast (ha, ha, haaaa…) of the rules. And it ain’t easy.

As feminism morphed almost seamlessly into post-feminism, without even a chip in the glass ceiling, and twerking oscillated (in so many ways) between ‘the worst kind of objectification’ to ‘taking control of YOUR BODY, GIRL!!!’ depending on who was doing it, I’ve been trying to stay current. It took me a decade to realise that ‘post-feminism’ wasn’t another way of saying ‘pole dancing’, but at least I make the fucking effort.

Now its weight. Size. Body shape. And ‘body positivity’.

The wonderful singer, (and Spurs fan) Adele, lost 3 stone of her ‘curves’ and posted pictures, showing her svelte, slim and smiling. To receive an immediate slating from the feminazis for ‘not being true to her shape’ or ‘size’ or whatever, and ‘adhering to the catwalk concepts’ instilled by the patriarchy, blah, blah, blah.

Yet over in the blue corner, we have the NHS. Struggling for funds to cope and stating that last year over 700,000 hospital admissions had obesity as a contributing factor. From which we may deduce that being overweight is not really a big help in life. Possibly in death, but not life.

So how can I be a true feminist and stay alive? When it would appear that the only way to be a real ‘sister’ is to pile on the pounds until you resemble Jo Brand then get type 2 diabetes, congestive heart failure, cholesterol-clogged arteries and die stuck to your bed at 37 stone, eating eclairs all day (and night) at 32 years old. Is that ‘the feminist ideal’ then?

It’s so confusing. I want to be a good feminist but find it difficult to put on sufficient weight as to qualify as ‘grotesque and obese’ as the sisterhood requires.

As if I don’t get enough aggro being a Spurs fan. Now this!!!

Happy Saturday, though from 5.30 onwards, that is rather doubtful.

A xxxx

When the Ukrainian jet went down four hours after the Iranian air strike I thought: ‘hmmmm’. That was all. That was it. Just: ‘hmmmm’. Everyone did, at some conscious or unconscious level. Because we’re humans (speaking for myself here) and we have a natural knee-jerk against any form of ‘coincidence’. And when there’s missiles flying around skywards, that ain’t a good time to be in a nearby airplane. But we were told ‘engine malfunction’, we were told, ‘unrelated’, we were told all sorts of things that really didn’t ring true. Either on an uninformed but intuitive level, or on a more professional ‘flight expert’ kind’a level. There was no message of distress. These planes can easily land with just one engine. How unusual for a plane to just… blow itself up.

All of which may be the perfectly reasonable explanations for the terrible disaster which killed 176 people.

But this is Iran. And, although they have, I’m sure, a fantastically organised defence system, a rigidly disciplined and highly active armed force, I just can’t get out of my mind the image of a bunch of men (only men) all screaming (they’re always screaming in Iran) at each other, rushing round a mobile missile launcher, in a chaotic, Keystone Kopsy kind of way, and then someone, we’ll call him ‘Omar’, accidentally pushes the button. Don’t know which button. Nor does Omar. But it gets pushed in an exceptionally ‘oh shit’ moment and up goes the missile. Not saying it happened like that, I’m just sayin’…

Then Donald Trump had the same thought. Probably thought it twice. He does everything twice. Does. Everything. Twice! And then they examined footage filmed by people who… who film every plane that flies by in the dead of night? Who film the sky at all times to reduce the charge on their phones? Anyway, people filmed it and they found ‘missile patterns’. More hmmmm. Then the plane explodes.

Now even Boris is having those thoughts. But only once. And the Iranians have taken the plane’s black box and won’t give it back. Strictly it should be examined by the Ukrainians first, but Iran are playing tough. Almost as if they have something to hide. Something shameful and stupid and ridiculous and really embarrassing.

Even Justin Trudeau is unhappy and has grown a beard in protest.

The case continues.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

OMG!!! Meg and Haz are ‘leaving’!!! They’re going!!! It’s like they’re contestants on ‘Love Palace’ and they’ve both been voted off!!! And I’m distraught. Devastated. Don’t know if or how I’ll ever get over this. It is THAT catastrophic for ME, personally. And there’s even talk of ‘un-royaling’ them if they move to Canada to live with the Lehbergs and the Polar Bears. Royal Rule number 2258353/ahe73:23vvde/72a states that, eh-hum, “… forsooth and forthwith and pursuant to royal leavage by parties of a previously royalish disposition but whoth shalt instead turn to common trading to earn their crustage, shall be removed from the honourable honours of honourdom and thereafter be treated similarly to that ginger tart, Fergie, and become thereafter HRH-less in perpetuity…” (King Harold, 1066, just prior to the arrow).

Prince Harry will still be a Prince, I’m guessing, but won’t be… something else in his title-ability, which currently stretches to 19 pages of A4. He can afford to lose a couple. (Protector of the Grand Dutchy of Rutland, Chief Patron of the Knights of the not quite so round table, Slayer of Valendor the Magnificent!, etc., etc…) It’ll save a fortune on printing costs. Whereas Meg will lose her HRH and be known as ‘that Yank bitch wot stole our Prince’ in all correspondence. Certainly all correspondence initiated by the Daily Mail or Mirror or Sun.

But what’s really pissed me off is that they never asked me first. Before deciding on this lifestyle change of an in-vegan nature. In fact they never asked the Queen either, so she’s none too pleased either and wrote a rather nasty little press release stating one’s displeasure.

But how will they cope? Harry n Meg??? How will they go from butlers and footmen and private secretaries and personal secretaries and carriages and horses and security and all that paraphernalia, to just being ‘the Windsors wot lives darn the road’? They’ll probably have to get on a council housing list, assuming they have such things in Toronto. Queue up at food banks. She’ll have to go back to work. Actressing again. And he’ll have to look for a job as… as… well, as a Prince. How hard can that be down the job centre? “I’m good at cutting ribbons” it will say on his application.

Ok, so she’s actually rich and he’s worth at least 30 million quid by all accounting, so maybe they can eat for a bit. And they have several houses lying around in various countries. But still. BUT STILL!!!!

It’s harder to leave the royal family than it is to leave the Mafia. So it would appear. But Harry and Meg are right in what they’re doing. They’ve been the most loved of all royals since Arthur the Third (1427-1457) and what did it get them? Slated by the gutter press, racially abused by the legions, derided just for taking a few private jets to Climate Change meetings and all manner of other petty shit which, as Royals, they have to just ‘take’ or ‘turn the other cheek’. But as non-Royals they can just say a big FUCK YOU to all those slimebags and shitheads and go away. They tried being Royals but it was just made too hard for them, even with all that apparent love.

Good luck to them.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

I like food. As one somewhat predictable mate has said for the last 40 years “I seldom eat anything else”. Ha, ha. And the expression ‘you are what you eat’ has never been more appropriate. People now define themselves by their diets. Ok, normally its fairly silly people, but it happens to such an extent that after last week’s ruling in the courts, ‘vegans’ are a ‘protected minority’. Like LGBT people. Like Zoroastrians. Like Lib Dems. Legally protected from persecution and discrimination. Fortunately the freedom of speech act means we can still make fun of them all, as long as its not nasty and there’s no death threats.

Last week’s vegan in fact found buses to be just such a death threat to insect life that he refuses to use public transport. That a bus might hit a flea. Which I’m guessing, though I haven’t spoken to many fleas about it, happens quite a lot. Please enter into evidence the windscreen from the 102 to Brent Cross. Covered in the bastards. (Fleas, not vegans.)

But veganism has transcended from just a peculiar food mania, into a complete lifestyle. Once you become a vegan you can no longer wear shoes. Unless they’re made of wood (replenishable) or paper (good in the rain). Your trousers will fall down through lack of a belt. Everything has to be ‘natural’ and non-animal, or synthetic. And you take a pledge to try to convert 15 people every week to your choice of personal deprivation. Vegans are the modern day monks. Unfortunately without any vows of silence.

But there are issues. Why is everyone always trying to make plants taste like meat? If meat is bad, start again. Eat something else. Why try to cook the bark from a tree in such a way that it tastes ‘just like a hamburger!!!’ Because to create such offerings the lovely, plant-based, organic, natural, animal-free ‘stuff’ has to be bastardised to create a completely different texture and taste. Which means adding shit. Lots of shit. Apparently processed vegan food, ‘burgers, sausages, etc’ is just loaded with unhealthy amounts of salt, saturated fats and shit-loads of (plant-based) chemicals. So its ‘vegan’ but it’ll kill you. Vegans are prepared to sacrifice themselves to protect the animals! Nothing is more noble. Or more stupid, perhaps.

What do you fancy for lunch? A cheese sandwich or a chemistry set?

The other problem with wearing non-leather, non-wool, is that cottons and synthetic clothes all come from the Far East. The sweat shops. Underage labour. Horrendous working conditions in Bangladesh and China. For $3 a day.

So, for the foreseeable future (assuming I have one after all the meat I eat and all the wars kicking off), I shall be sticking to my ‘faux-vegan’ diet. I’ll only be eating artificial non-meat-based food. So it looks just like a non-meat burger, but it contains meat. And they may look like tofu sausages but they are in fact beef. On health grounds.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

I’ve been in Fleet Street for 35 years. It’s changed. Used to have newspapers and lawyers, back in the day, now it has lawyers and lawyers. And bankers. Accountants have always been there too but you generally don’t notice them as they skulk around bookishly. The only remaining newspaper thing there is the Dundee Courier, as just a kind of museum to the old days. Every regional newspaper used to have an office in Fleet Street when it was ‘News Central’ but then someone invented the telephone and they realised it wasn’t necessary any longer to have an actual presence in the place where all the newspapers were printed. So Maggie and Rupert Murdoch moved the papers out. Breaking the incredibly powerful unions whilst doing so.

There are few of us left from those days. An endangered species. Because the retail equivalent of ‘global warming’ arrived in the form of the internet, the phone shops and the coffee shop chains.

Once upon a time there were 10 little sandwich bars in the area. Run by Italians, not just because they were the only people capable of putting some cheese between two slices of bread, but also because they, and they alone, were trusted to make something as exotic and revered as ‘a cappuccino’! Which came in little styrofoam cups, which can still be found inside every fish in the oceans.

But the Starbucks and the Prets (the Pret office was in Fleet Street when they started, Julian Metcalfe was a regular visitor) soon presented a more sanitised, sterilised, corporate way of dispensing food and one by one the little sandwich bars folded. And now we have just one. The last survivor. MY sandwich bar. But not just a mere survivor, the veritable Tyrannosaurus rex of sandwich bars. (I know, they became extinct too, but there’s no guarantees in life… or death). It’s called De Lieto. After the first owner, funny enough.

Starbucks and Pret are always busy, generally with people nursing a glass of water whilst spending 4 hours on the free WiFi. Others drift in and out buying their near-frozen, pre-prepared, steri-packs of fairly tasteless food with the nutritional values stamped on the pack.

The queue for De Lieto starts at about 11.30 and lasts, pretty much 30 to 40 strong, until about 2. Before that they are preparing for the vast number of deliveries they do every day, all custom orders (hold the butter; two with beef and horseradish, three with mango and aardvark), to all the law offices, courtrooms and barristers’ chambers.

They offer 20 different types of bread and rolls and a million ways to fill ‘em. And most importantly, they’re lovely lovely people who know your name and charge you less for a feast than Pret do for egg’n’cress-on-white.

I intended to write about the benefits of certain types of carbs, but got carried away. So for today you can still eat what you like. Only today.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

I had a horrible thought whilst watching the news on tv last night. That we are probably closer to a ‘big war’ than we have been in my lifetime, other than the Cuban Missile Crisis when I was 7 and didn’t know the effects of a 1000 megaton bomb from a hole in the ground. A fucking big hole. Even then I must have been pretty bright.

We survived the entire ‘cold war’ without anyone ‘pushing the button’, itself an absolute miracle of restraint and commons sense by people who weren’t expected to demonstrate either.

And now we have ‘the Iran Crisis’ to herald in the New Year. Because whether or not you agree with Trump’s action of ‘taking out’ unquestionable bad buy Qasem Suleimani, there will be repercussions. Last time the Donald took ‘action’ like this was in Syria when he bombed the launch site from which Assad had sent chemical attacks against his own civilians. Syria didn’t respond and their main ally, Russia (holy shittttt!!!) chose to let the ‘statement’ pass.

But this is not Syria. This is Iran. A dark place. Filled with concepts like ‘honour’ and ‘pride’ and ‘vengeance’ in truly biblical measures. Where revenge is not necessarily the dish best served cold. But flaming hot and unarguably horrible. And as America is so far away and itself, due to the current incumbent of the White House, run along similar lines, the ‘repercussions’ become kind of infinite in scope. And the repercussions from the repercussions. And the rep… you get it.

Iran has to retaliate or will be seen as weak. As opposed to just ‘mad!’ as most of us see it.

Unfortunately though, the death of Suleimani has not killed his methods nor his ideology. His ‘militia’ occupy Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, under a host of different names. Call ’em ‘Houti’, call ’em ‘Hezbollah’, call ’em fucking ‘Nigel’ for all I care. They’re radical Shias intent on wreaking as much havoc on Sunni muslims as they are on anyone else. But now can all be focused on Americans anywhere in the region. Or Brits. Or on Israel, always a target for Iran, over and beyond all others.

So yes, Donald did away with a man who definitely wanted doing away with. But at what price? Because now, like a Miss World contestant, all I really want is ‘peace in the world’. And I fear we’re not really gonna get that.

Happy Monday
A xxxx