Andy's Glasses

Watched Anora on the weekend. The movie which won Mikey Maddison the Oscar for best actress. Nothing trans-ish there, she’s a she-Mikey, don’t get your placards out and cancel me. Not for that anyway.

I did a(nother) thing that I swore I’d never do. Like reading from a Kindle, like looking at my phone at dinner, like breaking the speeding laws on the road; I watched a movie on the tv. Like, a new movie. Paid for it an’ everything. And… I didn’t die. The world didn’t end. But it (obviously) lacked the cinema-experience, which I love. To make it into more of an ‘event’, like going out to a movie, we drove round the block 3 times first, then spent 10 minutes looking for a parking space, even though we have a driveway, queued up for 20 minutes to get a coke from Mel (£12.75) and a cup of popcorn (£22.50), then turned all the lights off, tripped over the coffee table and sat on the sofa making loud apologies. We even turned our phones onto silent. It was like ‘being there’, but only cost 4.99 from Amazon Prime.

Anora is just my kind of girl. (When I was young enough to have ‘my kind of girl’). She’s quirky, gobby, swears all the time, smokes like a chimney and rents by the hour. The ‘perfect woman’. And that’s before she gets on the pole. Because Anora is a sex worker. Most of the other… dancers? escorts? hookers?? are ‘real life’ sex workers because Anora was made on a budget of just $6mil. The same amount that Tom Cruise spends on botox, fillers and hair dye during the shooting of Mission Impossible.

The film starts off as a kind’a Pretty Woman for Generation X or possibly Z or possibly ‘millenials’, I lose track and don’t give a shit. And as Pretty Woman was just a re-make of My Fair Lady, itself a re-make of Pygmalion, its not new. But it feels it. And its funny. By the middle of the movie it is no longer anything Richard Gere would recognise and it is really REALLY funny. Then it ends and if anything, the ending possibly lets it down a bit.

But not our Mikey. She doesn’t let you down at all. She’s fierce, funny and pretty gorgeous all the way through, spending most of the movie in her underwear. For that alone she could have won an Oscar. The acting was a bonus.

So (almost) full marks for Anora, but not sure I’d repeat the ‘home cinema’ thing because… its not the cinema. Fine for old flims. Ok, fine for: Blazing Saddles, The Producers, Die Hard, Terminator, The Fast and the Furious, The Great Escape, but for a new, pristine, out-the-box movie, I’d rather have the real deal. And the popcorn’s cheaper there.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

Everyone will always remember exactly where they were when Pope Francis died.

I was in the kitchen, making my porridge, and thinking of a blog post inspired by that very same Pope, on last night’s news, as he choked out a few words, all he could manage, from his wheelchair, over Vatican square, yesterday. Saw it on the news. And I thought: what fucking use is a Pope who can no longer pope? I’m not trying to be cruel or meritocratic, but if you can’t bless the half million misguided standing in front of you, it’s time to move on. And as there is literally nowhere to move on to, other than heaven, if you’re a Pope. I’m glad he’s taken that affirmative action and career move.

I can’t speak of his tenure as the pontiff as to whether he was stellar in the role or whether he was the sort of ‘Southampton’ of papals. I’m not a Catholic so really had very few dealings with the man. All I know is, the religion hasn’t significantly changed under his stewardship. The choir boys are still abused, they still have completely unworkable vows of celibacy, they still encourage guilt, superstition and flagellation (real or metaphorical) and it’s still a load of bollocks. So, no different from any religion then.

We go through the same ‘the Pope is dead, long live the Pope’ stuff every few years. We’ll wait a few weeks then start a ‘conclave’, like the Robert Harris book/film, then a few puffs of black and white smoke later, they’ll announce the next Holy Leader. And you can bet your cassock that it’ll be an octogenarian or older.

They should appoint someone younger. Someone with new ideas. Fresher. Different. They should make Andrew Tate the new Pope. For him it would be a punishment as he’d have to be celibate, and convert to Catholicism which is probably a prerequisite for the job. Other than that, his values of misogyny, abuse and S&M are all pretty aligned with any old, patriarchal religion. Apparently he’s good at lighting candles and looks great (according to him) in white.

But let’s not forget when, exactly, Pope Francis died. On… EASTER MONDAY!!! Resurrection day!!! That is just soooooo spooky.

Happy… errrr… happy dead Pope day

A xxxx

Leicester accepted relegation from the Premier League today. Not that it was ‘an invitation’ exactly, requiring an RSVP, more just a fact. “You’re down: fuck off”. And then I think two things. Firstly, when they won the league in 2016, against all conceivable odds. That was simply brilliant and an achievement which will never be repeated. Secondly, I think of Jamie Vardy and Gary Lineker. And I’m so pleased they’re ‘gone’. One who looks horrible and is married to vile, the other who really is a nasty piece of work. Who has now lost his job and his team’s status in one year. Shame…

So that’s two relegations confirmed, Southampton and Leicester. One place to go. Which looks odds on to be Ipswich buuuuuuuttt… in some freak world, could be West Ham. Which would really be brilliant. If a touch unlikely. The next team up from the Hammers are statistically ‘safe’. Oh, that’s us!!! Spurs!!! Right down there, where the shit meets the dross. Where the teams never win, the hopes never amount to anything, where the fans never come off the anti-depressants. That’s where we’re living. It’s like being evicted from your ‘rightful’ mansion in Kensington and made to live in Burnley. Or Stockport. Anywhere up north really. And we can shout ‘IT’S NOT WHERE WE BELONG!!!’ to our hearts content, but we have to accept reality. We can move up to 13th place tomorrow night if we beat Forest. That’s now an aspiration. 13th place. I would say ‘God help me’, but God is a Spurs fan too, so no good asking assistance there.

And Forest want a win. Not like anyone ever wants to lose, but this one is vital. Because they have Champions League aspirations. Way more lofty than ours. And to stay in contention for a 4th place finish, they need to beat us. And, let’s face it, probably will. Everyone else does.

Arsenal beat Ipswich today, rather convincingly. But Liverpool won too, leaving the Scousers with just one win needed to win the title. And who are they playing next? Oh, Spurs. Hmmm…

And here’s a funny thing. I went for a walk today with my sister-in-law. We strode boldly across Totteridge Green. And I said to her that the last time we walked there, with my lovely brother too, about 10 years ago, we bumped into Arsenal Wenger. Funny what you remember. He was either jogging across the common with his daughter, or chasing some poor 8 years old girl trying to catch her; the situation was ambiguous. And as we came off the Green today, who do we see but Arsenal Wenger. He’s fucking stalking me!!! He smiled and nodded. As I mouthed ‘I always hated you and everything you stood for!!!’ Alright, I didn’t even think it. Always had a lot of respect for the Frenchman. Other than when he was whingeing. Which was quite often.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

“A woman is… (drum roll)… (pause for suspense, like they do on X-factor and Bake Off)… IS A WOMAN!!!”

Oh, thank God for that, say the women, the feminists and JK Rowling.

Boo, say all those trans-people who spent at least some of their lives as men, other times as transvestites and part of it as full-fledged woman, apart from lacking a womb, or anything else which would be considered womanly. I don’t mean a handbag. They may possess a penis, but that’s optional.

The Supreme Court, no less, has finally decided that unless you were born a female, you are NOT allowed in a women’s prison, a women’s changing room, a women’s public toilet. And that’s IT! No exceptions. No stupid Scottish men putting on a wig and saying that they’re ’a woman’ when on a charge of rape and wishing to be sent to a woman’s prison. Which the Scots, because they’re inherently stupid, or so ‘woke’ that common sense was not given any consideration, agreed to.

As a feminist, which I am, and one with both daughters and granddaughter, I want safe spaces for them. In shops, in the gym, and in public toilets. I don’t want them followed in there by some burly Scottish pervert claiming he’s a woman.

How this impacts on ‘fully’ trans women I don’t know, and I feel for them. If they’re no longer in possession of their natal ‘meat and two veg’, they still won’t be allowed into the ladies loos. And a urinal may cause difficulties.

On the way home from the Cotswolds yesterday we visited the Boat Man. Because he’s on the Thames. And we were on the A40 which, basically, follows the River all the way from deepest Gloucestershire, back to London. So at the appointed spot, I turned off towards that river and met up with ‘the boat’ moored near Wallingford. That’s in the countryside. Bit like a Cotswold, but flatter. And he’s on his way to Reading to get solar panels fitted to the top of the boat. Not much use if they’re on the underside really. So that he can welcome Greta Thunberg if she ever gets lost and ends up by the river. Once he has the panels, he’ll be perfectly, greenly, save-the-planet-ly, self sufficient in renewable, non-carbon, un-fossilised electricity!!! Shame that the boat still needs diesel to go anywhere but what can ya do? Float there?

There’s only one toilet on the boat so we resolved the gender issue by letting Mel use the loo whilst we pissed over the side into the river. We’re totally ‘on message’.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

We’ve just returned from a fab little stay in a Cotswold. Not sure which one, they all look so similar. It wasn’t Clarkson’s one, that’s for sure. Though there were plenty of cars there, but during Easter hols, that’s to be expected.

We went on Thursday because I needed to drive very fast and there is, quite literally, nowhere in the whole of Greater London where such a thing can be done, even just marginally illegally. Only very VERY illegally. So we needed open roads, some Motorways, and lots of fab, windy little race-tracks. Ok, not race tracks by any normal definition but country lanes where, if you’re driving above 90, the odd little ‘20mph bits of some tiny village or other’ you pass within 3 seconds. How much damage could you in that time?

We stopped in the fabulous town of Burford. Oh, you MUST know Burford? Surely? It’s a Cotswold, but a bit different. Achingly sweet, twee, almost smug high street, filled with loads of independent stores, cutely named, run by locals, selling bottles of 2-quid liquid soap for £2, plus £22.99 for the ‘Cotswolds’ label. Which is actually made in China. The high road is 100 yards long and then goes off into a beautiful vista of rolling hills covered in green stuff. With trees on. It really is sweet. And the local people are all Japanese. Amazing. Such diversity in such a ‘WASPy’ area of the country, but that’s what we found. Japanese in their national costume of jeans, Uniqlo, Nikon camera, selfie stick with go-pro.

Then, in the evening, we went to a wedding. NOT a ‘destination wedding’ because you have to get on a plane for one of those. More and ‘in-our-nation’ wedding. In another Cotswold just 10 minutes from our one. There’s hundreds of them out there where Oxfordshire meets Gloucestershire. Whereas in London, there’s hardly any.

I suppose, for Mel, we went to a wedding and drove there. For me, we went for a drive and took in a wedding. To kill a few hours. Let the car cool down.

It was fantastic. In a place call ‘the Stone Barn’. I never said they were imaginative, but what a place. Just wonderful. There was a bride there. Who looked almost as fabulous as I did. AND even a groom. And we through confetti over them. But being the Cotswolds, this was not yesterday’s Daily Mail run through a shredder (as all copies should be, preferably before reading) but real, genuine rose petals. Because it’s in the countryside, innit? The whole event was simply brilliant. Wonderful atmosphere in our ‘barn’. Sort of ‘barn’ the King would would have, if he hosted corporate events, weddings and barmitzvahs. And we ate, we certainly drank and then we danced the night away under the Cotswoldian stars. Which are different from the ones in London. Mainly because they’re not shrouded in smog.

Anyway, that was done. Today we got back in the car and drove like mad things!!! Ok, mad thing.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

I hate what that man is saying (could be a woman… especially if its a woman) but would defend with my life (!!!) his/her/their right to say it.

That’s what… errrr… Winston Churchill said. Possibly George Bernard Shaw… Emily Pankhurst… Groucho Marx… someone said it. And I agree. I agree totally with everyone’s ‘first amendment rights’, especially my own. Even though in the UK we don’t have a constitution to amend.

But when people say things you don’t like, you are mildly conflicted between the ‘freedom of speech’ thing and the ‘he’s a total scumbag tosser’ kind’a thing. Should these people be allowed to spout opinions which are contradictory to your own? Of course they are. Even if offensive? Hmmmmm. Inflamatory? What about when that freedom of expression (protests, sit-ins, rallies) ostracises completely a section of society, a minority class, to the point of persecution?

Donald Trump, everyone’s favourite presidential chaos machine, is having words with Harvard, possibly the greatest (once, at least) university in the whole of America. Certainly the only one everyone’s heard of. And Harvard, unsurprisingly, like Zelensky, like the UK, like China, appears to be coming off second best in their discussion.

Trump is demanding that they stop the antisemitism they encourage by pro-Palestinian activity which rapidly rendered half the campus a no-go zone for any Israeli or Jew. Harvard is defending its right to ‘freedom of expression’ for all students. Encouraging bilateral political debate. Even if one half of the debate are completely wrong, totally moronic and are supporting terrorism, whilst not knowing the River, the Sea, or where to find their own navels.

We all agree that Trump is correct in this. Ok, I agree that Trump is correct in this. But then, being Trump, he takes it further. No more Equality, Diversity and Inclusion policy for hiring staff. No more ‘quotas’, no more ‘box-ticking’ in that, “well this person can barely read joined up but we’ll give ‘them’ the post of associate professor because ‘they’ are bisexual, non-binary, multi-racial with multi-disabilities, mostly mental, and we haven’t got one of them”.

Furthermore, being Trump, he’s backing it up with removal of grants and tax exemptions which add up to over $2billion a year for Harvard.

What do I think? I know you’re dying to know. Well, if they’re so fucking clever at Harvard, how did they ever get tied up in all that ridiculous woke-shit in the first place? Which, as a direct consequence and extrapolation thereof, allowed freedom of speech to become an encampment spouting antisemitic nonsense.

Keep their money, Don. Freedom of speech only applies to those who agree with you. Don’t have to tell you that.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

Its all about power. Bit like rugby. But more… electrical. Because it seems that whoever rules the power supply rules the whole fucking world. And not just rules it, but can supply it, consistently and, if possible, cheaply.

The world is a massive consumer of power, I get that. I would say I had a ‘lightbulb moment’ but I simply can’t afford it in today’s post-April, no-government help, hyper-inflated electricity prices. So instead, I just had ‘a moment’.

A.I. is the future, right? You want to do your ‘personal statement’ to apply for uni? You want to improve your cv? You need to send a letter? Chatgpt will do it for you. Better than you ever could. In 92 seconds. Barely needs an edit. And I read yesterday that if you get that AI system to write you 5,000 words on anything, that uses enough electricity to power a microwave for an hour. Your broccoli would be cooked before AI has written “Dear Sir…” . AI is massively consumptive. That’s the point.

Not as consumptive as those who ‘mine’ for Bitcoin. A little dig around that area uses sufficient energy to power a city for a week.

And then there’s our steel industry. What’s left of it. Because we use blast furnaces whereas those pesky Chinese use electric ark ones, which are much cheaper to run and more energy efficient. But even if we get the ark furnaces here, as we will in Port Talbot, they run on electricity and we pay… shitloads more for it than the Chinese do.

So the answer to all the questions is: power. Preferably cheap power. And, obviously, to appease the Gretas, renewable power. Green power. Like in Wales. Massive wind farms out there; brilliant. They’re building a series of fucking great pylons across the beautiful, virgin countryside, to shift that power to a storage station. And the Welsh don’t like it one bit. ‘Dig the cables underground!’, they yell, in Welsh. But that costs 5 times what pylons do.

Build nuclear. It’s clean, cheap, easy. But has a bad rep. Solar panels, they look nice, but across 4 acres of farmland, not so nice, especially if the farmland was yours and was compulsory purchased.

Here’s the killer irony. Yes IRONY. We need to make steel at a competitive price to China. So we need cheap power. The power companies here are all owned, in part, by Chinese finance. The wind farms use Chinese parts. The solar panels are all made from Chinese components. To reduce the cost of these items we have to implore the Chinese to use younger children in their production. You only have to pay an 8 year old about a third what they currently pay 12 year olds.

Because as we move forwards, power demand increases exponentially.

Essentially, we’re either fucked, or we just accept the reality and all learn Mandarin.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

We should be talking about steel. Everyone else is. Especially those lucky enough to live in Scunthorpe. The little town, somewhere ‘up north’, where they have a football team, who play in the ‘lower leagues’, lots of tattoo parlours, judging by the protesters you see on tv, easy availability of beer, and a steel works. In fact, Britain’s last remaining steel works. So British, it’s owned by the Chinese. Who choose to export China-made steel to Britain at about a third the price of the stuff they make here. We need some Trumpian tariffs. But instead, ‘we’ bought the business. Yesterday. In a weird and unusual recall of parliament on a Saturday during what would be their Easter recess, a new law was passed in just that one day, taking back control of the steel works. Yes, the good people of Britain now have the rights to pay the £700,000 a day it takes to keep the works going. Lucky us. Well, lucky 2,800 workers in Scunthorpe. Who would all be out of work if the works shut down. Which would financially ruin the entire town. Except the tattooists, obviously. When you see unemployed people, they always have loads of ink.

But we’re not going to talk about steel. Because I read a headline about ‘the irony of the steel industry’, and quite frankly, that sentence should not be allowed. It’s just wrong, on so many levels.

So we’ll talk about football instead. And the game everyone’s talking about. That amazing ‘battle for 15th place’ between Spurs and Wolves this afternoon. The footballing world is riveted to this amazing event where the fixture program actually brings together the two teams involved on precisely the right day. A game of as much importance as any steel debates.

And then there’s The Tuchel Conundrum. Not an uncommon one for managers of the English football team. Sorting out the glut of midfielders, all worthy of inclusion. In particular, the role of ‘attacking midfielder’ which, as a nation, we seem to breed copiously. We lived through the Gerard/Lampard years, in which our two undoubted best midfielders couldn’t work on the pitch together. And now we have The Elevation of Declan Rice to a Demi God.

Obviously I can’t stand the man. From hateful West Ham to Arsenal is not the path followed by decent people. But in one week, the man has become the best midfielder in the land. A declaration (no pun intended, but I quite like it anyway) in 2 amazing free kicks followed by creating a wonderful ‘goal out of nothing’ yesterday against Brentford. If I was Thomas Teuchel, which I’m not because unlike our England manager, I’M FUCKING ENGLISH!!!, would I put Rice’s name down first on the team sheet? But then you’d have to create a space. Phil Foden maybe? Put him on the wing? But the real contender for the very position Rice excels in is Jude Bellingham. And to push him down the pitch into a more defensive role is to waste the incredible talent which can so damage opposing teams. Furthermore, Bellingham offers more. He can beat people. Does so effortlessly. When he boldly chose the number 5 shirt at Real Madrid, I took a sharp intake of breath. That is a shirt with a history. ‘His’ shirt. Zidane!!! But then I watched Bellingham. And decided (fortunately I can make such decisions alone and unilaterally), that Jude is worthy. Totally. He plays like Zizu. Strong and muscly, fast and skilful. You simply can’t drop him out of the team or around into an alternative role.

There you are Thomas, problem solved. Bellingham stays in the number 10 role, Rice moves.

If only the steel problem was so easy. Less ‘ironic’.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

This lovely young woman is Lily Phillips. Would you like to have sex with her? Well join the queue mate, there’s 99 in front of you.