Andy's Glasses

Here’s the sports round-up. Though if you substitute ‘football’ for ‘sport’, which my mind pretty much does on its own, there is no round up. Other than the Under 21 European Championships, which I seem to have completely missed. And the Women’s World Cup, which actually became of minor interest yesterday. Which I’ll come back to later because there are 2 British sports-people who actually did rather well yesterday.

One was Lewis Hamilton who notched up yet another Grand Prix win in France yesterday. He started the race first and ended first. In the intervening 4 hours, safe to say, absolutely nothing happened. Other than pollution. Lots of pollution. But we don’t shrug off Hamilton as a mere whizz kid. He’s no longer really a kid, for a start. And he is rapidly becoming ‘the best F1 driver ever’. Which makes me kind’a proud. If only I could ever force myself to watch it.

And then in a much more real sport, Andy Murray won the final at Queens. Ok, it was ‘only’ the doubles, and real men don’t really play doubles. Really. But considering he had a new hip fitted about 4 months ago, you have to admit he looked ‘fairly mobile’ as he hurled himself round the court, twisting and turning and… being Scottish. The only surprise is that the new hip seemed to have made him smile more. I only saw the bits of the tennis they showed on the news (can’t watch tennis on tv unless its Wimbledon, absolute red-line rule) but he smiled more in six 20-second snips that he usually does in 27 hours of Wimbledon. Great surgeon.

I turned on the tv and there it was, before my very eyes: football. Played by women, but football. England were 3-0 up and it was 65 minutes gone. So I’d definitely missed the good bit. What I saw was decidedly underwhelming. But then I heard what had preceded and I was impressed. The Cameroon team were elbowing people in the face, spitting at opponents, shouting and screaming at the ref, arguing with the God that is VAR. It sounded brilliant. Yet all I was left with was a bunch of pony-tails, and a few affro hairdos, strolling round a park. With a ball.

Don’t think they played any cricket yesterday. Another sport I can’t watch but otherwise love (go figure).

Happy Monday

A xxxx

The good things about gardening are:
1. Your garden looks lovely
2. …
3. Errrr
4. …

And that’s what I’ve been doing. (Fucking) Gardening. And its… great!

Normally I limit gardening to using very loud and powerful devices. If ya can’t fill it with petrol it ain’t fer me. But sometimes the rules need to bend a little. In the interests of marital harmony and a pretty garden.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my garden. Front and back, both beautiful and gorgeous and flowering with… flowers… an’ shit. But when Mel says ‘we need a few border plants’, my heart sinks. And my back starts aching before we’ve even reached the garden centre. Where we buy little packs of flowers in disgusting polystyrene cases (very environmentally friendly they are too; and you know how much I care!!!) and they’re such good value that you can fill a car boot for 40 quid. Hundreds of plants. Purples and whites and blues. Never red. Mel doesn’t like red flowers and I find anything in Arsenal colours offensive. Even a pansy. Interesting choice of flower…

And that’s ‘job done!’ But of course its not. Because every one of the little fuckers needs to be dug in, composted, protected, loved, nurtured and watered within a centimetre of drowning. Every fucking day. And as I’m in charge of all ‘dangly things that spray all over the place’, the hosepipe becomes my own cross to bear. My own ‘bete noir’. (And if you’re familiar with French euphemisms for ‘nob’, mine ain’t black).

I rose out of bed this morning at a strange angle. I didn’t have a protractor handy but guessing, I was listing by about 30 degrees from the vertical, just from the waist up. I walked past our mirror and saw a bent up old git looking back at me. Which is a depressing way for any young man to start the day. However: I did what I do every Sunday, when the toll of Saturday’s physical excesses reduce me thus, and have a soak in a hot bath. That makes the problem simply go away! And then, once I’m on the tennis court, the movement improves it back to 100% very quickly.

But ten minutes bent over a flower bed with a fucking trowel and I’m Groucho Marx once more.

Therefore I need to spend much more time on the tennis court and way less doing gardening. Doctor’s orders.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

Boris and his (latest) bird had a barney. A big one. So ‘big’ that a neighbour called the police. Though not before pressing ‘record’ on his phone and sending it to the Guardian.

There’s no law against having a row with your partner. Apparently other people do it at times too. Even to the point of ‘GET OUT MY FUUUUCCCCKKKIIIINNNNGGG HOUSE!!!!!’ Or flat. It happens. It’s human. Not necessarily humanity at its best, but we aren’t always at our best.

Nor, dare I say, does ‘having a row with your bird’ imply any major character flaw or moral vacuum or render you unfit for high office. It just happens.

Yet its made the headlines in every single daily paper today, other than, bizarrely, the Guardian. Who a. Had the story first, and b. Fucking hate Boris and all other Tories.

Yet the Guardian is right (never written before, nor will be again). This is a complete ‘un-story’. It is nothing. A domestic squabble. And unless we are privy to the cause of the ruckus, which we’re not and we won’t be, it has to be relegated to a completely irrelevant day in the life of Boris. We can’t judge him on it, we won’t vote for him because of it and we won’t banish him from Prime Ministership due to it. Cos we don’t know what ‘it’ might have been. And thus all the Tory papers have said, basically, ‘so what?’ and all the Labour papers have been calling him ‘unfit to lead the country!!!’.

Similarly politicised is Mansion House Gate where Foreign Office Minister Mark Field was having his tuxedo dinner waiting to hear our esteemed chancellor speak, when a group of climate protesters ran in, screaming, even though they were dressed quite smartly in their red dresses. They were women, I’m guessing. Mark Field sprang to his feet, grabbed the nearest red dress, with its contents, and frog-marched it out of the room to the waiting security. For which he may now face charges of assault. And again, all the climate changers and other tree-hugging types are accusing him of most charges short of rape and child abuse. And most Conservatives are asking what he should have done to disrupting hoarders of trouble-makers. The decision as to what’s ‘right and wrong’ in this is once again merely a reflection of your political position before the ‘attack’. If you change ‘tree huggers’ to any cause you are personally sympathetic with, and ‘business leaders’ to a nice group, like ‘Spurs fans’, your perspective changes too.

Whereas the cyclist who knocked a pedestrian over is a bit different. He was, by all accounts, a considerate and careful rider, using his voice and a loud Claxon horn to warn pedestrians of his presence. He tried to avoid the pedestrian. But they ‘met’ in a heap. Mainly because said pedestrian was staring at her fucking phone at the time. The court found it an equal cause accident but, for some reason, awarded her costs against the cyclist, of 100 grand. And here there is no ambiguity, no preconceptions applied, this is really simple. Anyone walking along, crossing roads, staring at their phone is a tosser beyond the norm and everyone else has the right to murder them if they see fit, without facing any charges. Rather, rightful death of a zombie should bring a reward.

I make no judgments.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

We’ve all heard about ‘tactical voting’. So you vote in an election for party you don’t want just to prevent a party you hate even more winning the seat. We’ve all done that. Personally, I’d vote for the Ayatollah tomorrow if it meant Corbyn would never achieve power. Though, and this is kind of important, that would be MY CHOICE. And as long as you are exercising your democratic right on those terms, that’s fine. There’s a big difference between voting for someone you hate and being forced to vote in any direction, whether you want to or not.

And this is the line that, allegedly, Team Boris crossed yesterday. Not content with a winning margin so big it could even fit round his waist (not a lot can, these days), Boris was, as always, thinking of ‘the big picture’. So as his colleagues and competitors were concerned with who would make that final cut to accompany the Blonde to the Members’ Vote, Boris was more concerned with which of his competitors would be present him with an easier task for the endgame. He decided that Michael Gove would be more difficult that Jeremy Hunt and thus did all in his not insignificant power to arrange it thus.

Gove is an intellectual heavyweight, a remarkably agile speaker, has a fierce knowledge and understanding of virtually everything and is very slippery in debate. Hunt… seems like a nice guy. Oh, and, according to sources, is a qualified football linesman. Which would win my vote but possibly is not a stand-alone essential for the highest office in the land.

So Boris, or rather, Team Boris, employed all manner of tactics to ensure that it was Hunt who would finally stand against him, rather than the far trickier Gove. They bullied, they applied ‘tactical voting’ to others, because Boris’s lead was so great he could afford to sacrifice a few of his own votes to ensure the challenger of his choice. His team then enforced Boris’s will by in some cases, actual threats. ‘Do you like your job? Do you want to keep it???’ type threats. And worse.

This is all legal, ish. It’s within some grey and woolly democratic lines. It’s ‘always been like that’. None of which makes it right. If the Tories wanted a squeaky clean leader for them and for the country, Boris wouldn’t have been allowed in the building when they started the process. His ‘fallibility’ is part of his charm. Arguably he’s spent more of his political life falling than he has standing.

I just don’t trust him. Whether that will make him a better leader (having no morals whatsoever never stopped Putin leading, nor Trump) I don’t know. But whatever, the Boris show rolls on.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

Abdullah Patel was one of those lucky selected few who enjoyed about 2 of their allotted 15 minutes of fame to ask a question to the Tory leadership hopefuls on Tuesday night, ‘live’ on the BBC. His question to Boris was, essentially, about the power of words to cause hurt and enduring consequences. He was talking, specifically, about BoJo’s infamous comments about women in burqas resembling ‘letter boxes’. And the implication was that such comments fuel, enable or at least provide an acceptable context for Islamaphobia. Good question. You’d’a thought.

But Mr Patel, a schoolteacher and Imam, was possibly not the man to be live on the BBC. Because research has shown that… research needs to be done. Before allowing anyone on prime time (or otherwise) tv. And even with the extra money that the BBC are getting from those poor, starving over 75s, they fucked it up.

Because our Abdullah is no ‘mere Imam, nicey-nicey teacher’. In fact he has a long and distinguished history of posting comments on social media that neither you nor I would really agree with or deem ‘fit for any kind of publication’.

‘You’ wouldn’t like the comments about women, basically, white women are all sluts; nor the acceptance of the random murder of a British policeman by a Muslim as being the fault of British Foreign policy. And ‘I’ wouldn’t like the ending of that which says; ‘the real problem is Israel’.

The program’s producer has claimed simply that Patel suspended his Twitter account and thus none of the highly inflammatory, nasty or evil postings could be seen. Then he fired it up again, after the debate, for the whole world to see the radical within, once more.

But the school at which he worked, contentiously installing a segregation policy even on the parents attending assemblies and meetings, would have had access for years to his poisonous, radical outpourings. And if he’s been spouting his bullshit at least since 2003, when PC Stephen Oake was murdered, his online profile must extend way beyond the Twittersphere and onto articles and forums all over the web. Which you’d kind’a think the BBC might find without too much trouble during their ‘extensive’ research. Although there was another questioner who actually works for the Labour Party. Which is very different from being a Labour member or voter, who have every right to question our future PM.

Abdullah Patel is piece of shit. An assessment I make based on… the fact that he is. But a question to the BBC: HOW FUCKING HARD CAN IT BE TO FIND NORMAL PEOPLE TO ASK THE BLEEDIN QUESTIONS???? There’s only 60 million candidates out there for that job.

Happy Thursday. Mine started at 4.55am. Other than Spurs Paul, what time did yours start?

A xxxx

It’s all a load of rubbish. Waste disposal, iss’all rubbish! Which its always been. But the collection of our waste was never a stressful thing. It was just ‘a thing that happened’. Every week. Rubbish bins out, bunch’a dudes come along, sling them over their shoulders, tip ‘em into a truck, bish, bosh, job done, see ya next week. Ok, half the rubbish ended up in the garden, on the street, strewn around generally but as a concept, it worked.

But then they started over-thinking it. They invented two things. Hi-viz jackets (the sure sign that ‘elf-n-safety is at work) and ‘Wheelie Bins’! And the world changed. And ‘segregated waste’ further complicated something that ain’t that difficult.

So we have ‘general waste’ and we have ‘recyclable waste’, both collected on Wednesdays. The ‘food waste’ we stopped doing because every week foxes managed to wrestle the containers open and drag slops all over everything. I had to get permission from the council to cease and desist which was really complex due to the difficulties in proper waste processing. But I thought they might send me to prison if I put a used tea bag in with the discarded tennis shoes. Or worse, get a fine.

“I don’t want to put the food waste out because the fucking foxes get to it and make an unholy mess”.

Barnet Council Man: “Don’t then”.

“Oh, should I put the food waste in the ‘general’, the ‘recycle’ or the ‘green; organic’ bin then?”

BCM: “Don’t matter. Whatever ya want”.

Which immediately told me what everyone pretty much suspects, which is that although the councils obsess about colour coded and waste-specific bins, it all ends up in the same land-fill, somewhere near Loughboro’, or even in Your garden. I don’t care, long as they take it away from me.

But last year due to ‘cuts’ in budget, Barnet council said that the ‘green’ bins, for garden waste ONLY!!!! would only be collected every 2 weeks. And its not just a matter that when our hedges are cut it could fill 9 bins (not a big garden but humongous hedges so I can run around naked), but more that you can’t remember which is the week for the green waste. And if you miss it and don’t put the bins where the men trip over them, they don’t get emptied. So by the next 2 week collection, its all composted itself and is spot welded to the inside of the bin in one solid, horrible, smelly lump which doesn’t budge when tipped over a lorry.

I was just sitting here when I heard the gentle tones of the rubbish lorry(s) and in ‘green bin panic’ just caught them in time.

Getting my bins emptied. I feel like I’ve conquered Everest. Or booked an Air Miles return ticket. Shouldn’t be that stressful.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

There was a big crowd gathered in Embankment Gardens as I limberly (after my physio) ambled to work. Big crowd. Saw a few big furry microphone things, cameras and a lot of milling. And there, in the midst of all this, was the little black-n-white character that is our mayor of London. Sadiq Kahn. Black suit, white shirt, no tie. He either has 20 black suits and 100 white shirts, or he has one of each and a washing machine.

And although I’m not quite on Trump’s level, I am not a fan of Sadiq. Ok, you can be worthless and ineffectual, but at least make the right noises. When I saw the interview, on the news later on, he was asked a question about whether he was ‘doing enough’ following the weekend when 4 ‘kids’ were killed. 3 knifed, one shot. His response was how sad he was for the families, devastating effects, blah, blah, blah. Ok, said the journo, but ARE YOU! THE FUCKING MAYOR!! DOING ENOUGH TO COMBAT THESE TYPES OF CONSTANT CRIMES?!?!?! Well, to lose a child, or a brother, in these circumstances… I can only offer my deepest sympathy… blah, blah, fucking blah.

I love the idea of having a muslim mayor of London, but not that one. Nothing to do with him being a muslim, everything to do with him being a plonker.

And to represent London means you represent one of the most culturally diverse cities in the world. If I ever remake Mary Poppins, I’d make ‘Burt’, Dick van Dyck’s chimney sweep character, Polish or Croatian. Yet its really that ‘changing face’ of London that really upsets, I feel, the Donald Trumps and Katie Hopkins of this world. But we can laugh at this ‘spat’ between Trump and Kahn as childish, stupid or more sinister as we please. Kahn feels politically pressurised by his Party to be as anti-American as decency (if not stupidity) allows and Trump has odd views about Muslims as he does about most things. So a right wing Islamaphobic President and a left-wing Mayor of Pakistani origins are never gonna be BFFs.

Like it or not, England is now multi-cultural. But the Conservative Party isn’t. As one wit said ‘diversity in the Tories means Magdalen and Charterhouse’. So whilst the rest of the country and mostly the capital increases its racial diversity profile, the Conservative party doesn’t. It remains the party for rich old white men. And really, even though I would vote for them tomorrow (ABC rule: ‘Anyone But Corbyn’) I feel they really need to address this. To avoid being seen as even more ‘out of touch’ than they currently are.

On Sunday I spent some time telling Joey all about Brexit.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

So where was the elephant? Last night? On Channel 4 when they had the ‘next prime minister’ debate, where was the great lumbering cuddly blonde elephant? There was a pedestal, empty. It had a photo of Boris upon it. But no show from (probably) the next PM of our fine nation. But he’ll only be (probably) the next PM if he doesn’t screw it up by saying something stupid (like ‘I love you’.) And if he’s not there he can’t upset anyone. So that’s one debate down and no massive foot-in-mouth faux pas from President Boris. Instead there were the five also-rans. Geeky, Creepy, Squeaky, Cheeky and Dominic Raab. And much as they need to slag off Boris as much as possible, to enhance their own chances, they are all painfully aware that the Big One will in all likelihood be the winner and thus they all want to be in line for the good jobs when Boris takes over. So calling him ‘untrustworthy’, ‘unpredictable’, ‘stupid’, ‘shag anything with a pulse’, or ‘tosser’, might likely be prejudicial to becoming the next Home Secretary. Even though they apparently implied such things at every opportunity.

I didn’t watch it. Because I can’t see the point. It won’t affect ‘my vote’ whatever they say, because I don’t get one. And yeah, its of some marginal, peripheral interest to see what these people have to say, but other than the 150,000 Conservative Party members, for the rest of us it was just a new, media-inspired form of political masturbation. With no happy ending. And it became a shout-fest of five guys who are all very familiar and comfortable with each other, all yelling at the same time about Brexit. Inevitably. And its not like we ‘don’t know’ these characters. We see them most every day on the news, in chat shows, in interviews. To hear them all say the same things they’ve been saying for weeks, but this time, all saying it simultaneously, really holds no great appeal.

Though I may watch Tuesday’s on the BBC just for… just for… well, just for nothing really.

But first, its time for some physiotherapy. The quasi-medical sadism that we all love to hate. My shoulder’s been getting worse (for about 40 years in fact) over the last months and I have some hip issues which a long beard won’t cure. So its time for some Physio. To try and hold together what, at 63 (yeah, funny, it was all fine on Saturday when I was only 62… as if), nature tries to cast asunder.

Hips, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes…

Happy Monday

A xxxx

Its my birthday today. June 16th. Same as last year. Thanks for the (fucking) card!! And its the day after our wedding anniversary (so I’d ‘never forget’ even though I did and only bought the card half way through yesterday) and its also father’s day. Which personally, you can keep. If you need Hallmark to tell you to love your dad then either he or you is doing something seriously wrong. So we have lots to celebrate.

Which started today with the card ceremony (all 3) which took hours of waste paper production. And then moved to the tennis court. Where it only rained three significant times during the hour. Drizzled lots more. But real men, even at sixty-fucking-three (!!! How did that happen???), play tennis because they’re manly. And stupid. And know no better.

Last night we celebrated our anniversary. In style. Well, in our style. Which basically means that whatever we do we need to be on the couch in dressing gowns by 10 at the latest, possibly stretching to 10.30 if absolutely essential. Even though there’s no Match of the Day. It’s just how we like to end Saturdays.

So we booked dinner. And we thought: Zuma? (About 400 quid plus Ubers), or Roka (300 quid plus Ubers), it had to be ‘Asian’ but I’m not sure why, possibly the Japan hangover. I voted for fish’n’chips (change out of 20 quid but apparently ‘lacks romance’; phah!) So then I considered Gokyuzu, our new, mega-Turkish. And because its our anniversary we’d get a ‘meat platter for 4’ just for the 2 of us. Now THAT would be a celebration. Not necessarily of a wedding anniversary but certainly a celebration of gluttony, piggishness and greed beyond any sensibility.

But we ended up at Oka. Mel’s absolute favourite little ‘Asian’ in Primrose Hill. And its very ‘little’ and even though it was booked ages ago they’d managed to lose the booking, but with just about 7 tables we dined, we didn’t wait, we celebrated. And although its a glorified cafe, the food is wonderful, the sushi quite outstanding, yes, I know I swore ‘never again’ but I lied. And its cheap as chips. Ok, not as chips, which I wouldn’t have minded, but great value for really great food. And drink.

Home at 10, celebratory whisky and episode 3 of Killing Eve (series 2), on the couch. The perfect end to a perfect day.

Happy Birthday

A xxxx

Jo Brand caused a shit-storm this week and was one, little, pathetic, nanny-stated, overly-concerned, politically-correct moment away from police prosecution. For a joke. The comedienne (if you can still call them that, because there’s been no such thing as an ‘actress’ since 1974) said, on a radio show called ‘Heresy’ (ffs; in case anyone thought it was biblical readings or children’s hour), that people shouldn’t waste time throwing milkshakes over politicians when you can buy battery acid instead. The BBC edited the show (it wasn’t live even though it sounds like it; the Beeb aren’t quite that stupid) and passed the comment. On the basis that ITS A FUCKING COMEDY SHOW and a fairly ‘on the edge’ one, as its name might imply. It was not a ‘how to do violence better’ show, nor a ‘teach your children useful tips’ show. It is satirical comedy. Of the ‘humorous’ variety.

So why was Jo Brand’s commented investigated by the police. Who, because of their vast numbers and our total, national lack of any terrorist threats or knife crime, have so much time on their collective hands to waste vital resources on the hurumphing of a bunch of twin-setted, Home Counties retirees? (The single demographic of those ‘complaining about BBC radio’, in my mind.)

Because ‘she was inciting people to acts of violence!!!’. Bollocks.

In reality its because Jo Brand is very very dead-pan and dry and thus doesn’t give her punchlines with a BANG!!!!!! She’s subtle. Challenging. Saying ‘am I joking or is this real?’ And I love her for that. If not for the incessant left-wing politics, verging on actual Corbynism (the ultimate sin and unfunniest thing ever). So her comments need to be taken in context. That context being a comedy program called ‘Heresy’. Bit of a giveaway really. But not in the Home Counties. Where humour requires red noses and banana skins to remove any ambiguity between ‘funny’ and ‘real life’.

So did Jo Brand simply misjudge her audience? Who she possibly imagined were the midnight crowd above a pub in Shoreditch? Whereas in fact they were a mid-day radio 4 listening group who only tend to use the word ‘hip’ in conjunction with ‘replacement’.

I had a Jo Brand moment myself this week. Misjudging the tone of our little WhatsApp ‘group’, when a late night ‘chat’ got a bit boisterous and what some of us perceived as hilarious was viewed by others in a more personal and insulting way. Again, misjudging one’s audience.

Therefore you shouldn’t assume that everyone’s sense of humour is ‘on the same page’. Nor that everyone really likes insults and abuse in the same way that bizarre individuals like me do. Hard to take but some people actually have limits! Who’d’a thought? Though this should be easier to control or understand on a group chat than with a national radio show, I grant you.

Basically; LIGHTEN UP!!! Do as I do; treat EVERYTHING as a joke, except parking tickets and you won’t go far wrong. Won’t necessarily go far right either but that’s not he point.

Happy Anniversary Mel, you’ve put up with me for 33 years. Medals don’t suffice. Only medication.

A xxxx