Andy's Glasses

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

The deal’s done, the Euros have been conquered by the sheer charm, the amazing wit, the scintillating charisma and analytical sharpness of the fat blond geezer wot runs our country. I hope they locked their wives and daughters up for the duration of his stay.

There was lots of bonhomie and back-slapping and congratulations and even little snakes like Macron and Teutonic lumps like Merkel were drawn into the sphere of apparent loving camaraderie that exists around Boris-in-full-flight. Brussels was positively awash with ‘gush’.

And Boris came away with an agreement for a deal. Holy shit. The holy grail… almost. He came away with a ‘deal’ approved by the EU. Yet that remains (no relation) the easy task, just the first step. The big task, the big ask, the mountain yet to climb, the living of the impossible dream, is to get parliament to approve it. Which is much harder.

With Europe you’re dealing with 27 countries who all, basically, want the same thing. Whereas our parliament is comprised of Leavers, Remainers, Second Referendumers (in two flavours, another leave/stay one or a ‘choose the deal’ one), all of whom are again divided along party lines and national divisions. Cross referenced by colour, creed, religion and shoe size. It’s not easy to get ‘accord’.

Corbyn is in lots of trouble. Damned whatever he does, so it would seem. He was almost violently opposed to ‘leaving with no deal’ and yet simply cannot agree with this (or any) deal. And however he and his party choose to vote on Saturday, he knows it will probably ruin any chances for them to win, or possibly even come second, in the general election that will follow.

Corbyn’s problem is that leaving the European trading block, which is the ‘taking back control’ bit, opens Britain up to do its own trade deals with other countries, on our own. Most see this as a positive. But in that weirdly distorted lack of a brain, which supports Arsenal, inside Jezza’s head, ‘doing trade deals’ means ‘selling out to America!’ Who, he seems to think, will privatise the NHS!!!! He thinks this because he’s stuck somewhere between the Russian revolution and the Vietnam War and can’t seem to get out. He’d rather do trade deals with Venezuela (socialist but bankrupt) as did Ken Livingstone, with Putin (nice man all round) and with Cuba and North Korea. They may have nothing to sell, can’t afford to buy and have the worst economies on the planet, but at least they’re his mates. He’d rather have Hamas and Hezbollah on board that any nation who might actually have something to offer.

The vote is on Saturday. After the rugby. Let’s hope something positive comes or we’ll still be agonising over fucking Brexit at the next rugby World Cup. God help us.

Happy pre-Saturday-day

A xxxx

It’s a marmite issue.

Brexit. Football. Strictly Come Prancing. Coronation Street. And marmite.

Things that people love or hate. Yes or no. On or off. There’s no middle ground, there’s no ‘grey’, its totally divisive. And nothing more so than marmite, hence it wins the rights to claim metaphorical status for all things in that class. People either love it or absolutely hate it. Very few are ambivalent (Jeremy Corbyn thinks it should be on the table, in case some workers may like it on their white, working-class bread, but he’d rather not commit personally to either having it removed nor having a vote as to whether it should be removed from the table).

I love Marmite. Always have done. Don’t eat it much but I still love that amazing, salty ‘hit’ you get when tasted.

And now they’ve gone and mixed it with peanut butter. Holy shit.

Now peanut butter I do consume. In vast quantities. I’ll eat it on toast, bread, crackers, bananas, or just off the spoon in times of real ‘need’. Because I love peanuts (never mind the ‘mammalian eye’, if anti-evolutionists want the pinnacle of God’s creationism, it must surely be the humble yet totally perfect peanut) and when mixed with the best ingredients the world has ever produced; sugar and salt, and mushed up with oil, there is just nothing better.

But mixing it with marmite? Eeeeuuuwwww, surely not? I mean; really???

Yeah, that’s what I thought. I winced at the very concept. Turned my nose up at the offence to my purist’s perspective. I internally gagged at the idea of mixing two wonderful things which just simply ‘don’t go together’. It’s like making a donner kebab with bread-and-butter pudding with custard. Two wonderful things, the total of which is way less than the sum of its parts.

But then I tried marmite peanut butter. Gingerly. Tentatively. Carefully. As if it might bite ME. And, ever prepared to rush to the sink and spit it out/vomit…

It was wonderful. Fabulous. Sensational. Incredible. Life-changing. Life affirming! And I love it. (Note to Rachie: ‘get yer own jar to take back to Berlin, this one’s mine/gone’).

But I’m not writing this about the food. I’m writing because people who love marmite and peanut butter are going to be totally divided on this new mix. But it can’t be a ‘marmite issue’ because its about marmite. People are going to really love it or really hate it (nut allergists probably best not enter this debate). So do we re-work the metaphor as being a ‘marmite peanut-butter’ issue? or just ignore it? Or come up with a new metaphor for things that divide people because they either really love it or really hate it? A ‘Corbyn’ issue. No, no-one loves him, not even his own party. A Trump issue? Similar problem. An Arsenal issue? An Extinction Rebellion issue?

See, you solve one problem and you get another in its place.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

Fantastic thing in the paper about people getting fat. OldER people. Middle aged. Which I almost remember. Though not getting fat. So a bunch of 40 year-old Scandinavians were monitored for 13 years. What they ate, what exercise they did, how many calories consumed. There were both men and women and for such a long study the results become extremely valid. It’s not like you followed a fat geezer into McDonalds and he ate 3 double bacon cheeseburgers then waddled out again, you can’t make any statistical claims about that. Obvious though they may be. There’s no ‘sampling’, there’s no ‘control group’ (fat people who walk into McDonalds and drink water), there’s nothing to analyse.

And it is known that around middle age our metabolism changes and we become less efficient at breaking down fat, choosing instead to store it, mainly around our middles but elsewhere too. So the study had lots of people changing their food intake significantly and another group which didn’t.

And the findings were simply amazing:

The more food you eat and the less exercise you do the more you become a fat bastard.

Who’d’a known that?

Holy shit. What a waste of 13 years. Whilst condemning the control group of lifestyle non-changers to an early death.

Boris is fat. But may yet get Brexit done. Whether by the end of the month or not remains to be seen. And I have one reason to wish it happens. Because if its done we’ll get a general election and I reckon Boris will win it easily. Because Corbyn is at peak unpopularity. The entire country hates him except Seamus Milne. So that’s one vote he’ll get. Corbyn himself will probably not vote because he’s not good at decision making. Though allegedly, the Labour Party is now completely controlled by John McDonnell after a ‘silent coup’. But he’s worse than Corbyn so let’s get the election sorted then we don’t have to worry about either of those vile and evil men intent on completely destroying the nation in the name of some dead Russian demigods for another 5 years.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

I’m still intrigued by the couple who won’t tell anyone, including their own parents, the gender of their baby. They want it to be ‘neutral’. Which is really nice and thoughtful. If you’re a vegan tree-hugger who likes seriously fucked up children who’ll need a lifetime’s therapy. Otherwise it is basically, using their child as an experiment. Testing some pseudo-socio-scientific hypotheses that if you DON’T gender stereotype your child then it will… errrrr… then as it grows… hmmmm… then by the time ‘it’ is 10…

It will be fucked up. Possibly not quite as much as its parents because they have a choice. And it will NEVER wear blue or pink. Only yellow. Like Ali-G.

The implication is that all gender characteristics are learned. That there is nothing innate, genetic, hereditary or ‘natural’. Therefore, deprived of the usual biased input (soldiers for boys, dollies for gels, etc), the child will ‘grow into its own person!’ It will ‘choose the gender it prefers from the 17 now available to it!’ Because it won’t be taught how to be a boy or a girl. Just a… a what? A person? A weirdo? A dog?

It’s true that a lot of child behaviour, producing the adult it will eventually become, is programmed. Learned. But you can’t learn a nob. It’s just kind’a there. Or not. You can’t learn a pair of tits.

And with sexual characteristics comes responsibility. Or lack of it, if its the nob option.

So whilst we’re using children as case studies, I’ll mention my little Joey. Who is (dare I say?) a boy!! And he IS a boy. He’s more physical than Lila was. Perhaps that’s due more to being a second child and hence being loved to the point of bruising by the first child. By being dragged around the floor. Or maybe, even though I haven’t bought him his first gun yet (only a matter of time) he is just ‘a boy’. Possibly the genes that have evolved since homo erectus had his first erection predispose boys to be proto-hunter/gatherer/protectors and girls to be nurturing/maternalistic to better mother the children they might one day have. Who knows?

Bulgarians have a different way of learning. They learn to be hateful, spiteful, nasty, nazi and racist. So for the England match last night in Sofia FIFA had decided that in punishment for their previous obnoxious behaviour, they’d leave half the stadium empty. And I think what happened was that they shut the wrong half. So all the nice, decent, pleasant, liberal-minded and tolerant Bulgarians (an assumption that is proving a ‘big ask’) were the ones they shut out by mistake. Leaving just all the horrible, vile thugs who shouted racist abuse at the England players from the first minute. And without wishing to be seen as too reactionary, the answer is simple. Any country in which racist abuse, or any other, is heard, endured, exhibited, is just banned from the tournament with immediate effect. That would either shut the muthafuckas up or ensure that there is no Eastern European representation in any major sporting event.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

Real men play tennis in the rain. FACT. Ok, maybe ‘in the drizzle’ because if balls get soggy, heavy, nasty, that ain’t no fun and the ground gets slippery so even my super K-Swiss, cross-tread, super-grip, climb-up-a-fucking-wall-like-Spiderman!!!! tennis shoes can’t really cope and that could spell disaster. At my age.

But what about rugby? Holy shit, that’s the most manly of manliest games. They play in ANYTHING. Those boys are superhuman. Bullets bounce off them. Meteorites turn round and go back when they see a flanker in the way. Rain???

But a typhoon is a bit different. In fact Typhoon Hagibis is a bit nasty and 30 people have already been killed during its tenure at the Rugby World Cup. So the England game was cancelled. Against France. Which, in terms of affecting any of the group positions or qualifications, was academic. But obviously way less ‘academic’ for the thousands of fans who managed to get a ticket for ‘last group game!!!!!’ at great expense, took time off work, booked an exorbitant flight, checked into a Love Hotel, had a row with the wife, abandoned the kids and has already blown the monthly nappy budget on beer and chicken yakatori.

Then came the Scotland game. Or not. Depending on typhoons (no-one mentions the earthquakes enjoyed in Tokyo on Thursday, they’re nothing). And this was a different kettle of haggis altogether. Because Scotland needed a win to progress to the quarter finals. And if abandoned, the rule is ‘2 points each’. Enough for the victorious Japs to move onwards in the tournament, but pitifully insufficient for the Scots for whom victory and only victory would prevent them from flying home. In shame.

They spoke of abandoning the game, the Scots said ‘they’d sue!!’ Who, exactly, and on what grounds, I’m not sure. Above my pay-grade. But sue they would. Probably sue God as it was one of his ‘acts’. But amazingly, the game was played. Safely and securely and it even looked quite pleasant out there.

But the Japs hadn’t read the script, which was written in Scottish, so pretty much no-one could understand it. And the Japanese, ever more impressive with each game they battle with every grain of rice in their very souls. They fight like the Samurai, they compete like Ninjas, they scrimmage like Sumo and eat, like, sushi.

I can never forget Andy Murray, the ‘typical Scotsman’, when he said: “whoever is playing against England I will support”. And thus I was thrilled with a win for Japan. Mel was upset, not that she loves rugby but because her father was born in Edinburgh. Enough that she could qualify for playing rugby for Scotland, like Michael Leitch is ‘Japanse’. And I just love the spirit in which the Japs play the game. It is heart-warming and admirable. Until they play England, then I may change my views.

Happy stormy Monday

A xxxx