Andy's Glasses

When Joey gets tummy time, we ALL get tummy time! That’s a house rule. Some of the Barbies didn’t get the memo.

But in between tummy time, and Barbies, and tennis and all sorts of stuff, there was some sport played this weekend. You may have missed it. But it was just… one of those weekends.

The cricket was awesome. We (farkin) beat those Aussies in the 5th Test, tying the series, though not regaining the Ashes, which was a small mark on an otherwise outstanding display from England in the final match. Which basically came down to one event. If you can get Steve Smith out for 23 runs you’re probably going to win. And we did.

But the football. Oh my, the football. There was turmoil in the ‘top 6’. Even though half of the alleged ‘top 6’ were nowhere near at the time as the season’s only 5 matches old. So EVEN Spurs (top 4! If you fucking per-lease) were languishing midway through the dross at the start of Saturday.

Liverpool, predictably, inevitably, understandably, won easily against the same Newcastle team which Spurs had so struggled against just a couple of weeks ago. The result of the Liverpool match won’t please many people outside of the Mersey region but it opens up a 5-point gap at the top of the league. ALREADY!!!! Suffice to say, should Liverpool fail to win the Premiership this year there WILL be a public inquiry. If not more than one.

Then Spurs played. Against Crystal Palace, who had been, due solely to quirks in early season flukishness and nothing to do with being a ‘good team’, 4th in the table. But Spurs suddenly became Spurs again and scored 4 fab goals in the first half. Then took the rest of the match off to recover. But it had been more than enough.

The late game on Saturday was the expected Manchester City demolition of Norwich at Carrow Road. But it don’t always work out that way. Norwich were brilliant, City fazed by being forced onto the back foot for a lot of the game, and so the £400 million difference in squad value proved to be in fact worth less than a bag of chips as Norwich won.

Then yesterday came. And Arsenal visited Watford. Who are my 3rd favourite team in deference to Sir Elton and due to the fact that going to Watford’s ground reminds me of playing football at school.

The mighty Arsenal went 2-nil up in the first half, typically Arsenal, though Watford had come right at them early on and could easily been a goal or two up themselves, if they had anyone who could actually… kind’a… sort of… kick a ball into a fucking net. But they don’t, with Troy Deaney injured, so the Arse strutted off after 45 with their normal horrible arrogant complacency.

The second half, which I watched in its entirety, was the most entertaining football I’ve ever seen. It was entitled: Arsenal: the collapse into chaos and it was a thing of sublime beauty. Gifting Watford a quite ridiculous but wonderfully hilarious first goal due to the Gunners’ insistence on only EVER running the ball out of defence and NEVER just kicking it. And when you have ‘stars’ like Sokratis and David Luiz back there, it can be risky, and it was. The former giving away the first goal and the latter giving the penalty for the second. Watford forced Arsenal to defend with endless attacking play and defending is not really what the Arse do particularly well. And it broke their rhythm, they couldn’t pass, couldn’t play, it was simply: a thing of beauty.

Ahhhh, very happy Monday

A xxxx

I’ve started playing with my Barbie dolls once more. I’ve missed them. Forgotten what great fun it is to stretch a (plastic-)skin-tight t-shirt over unbending arms and immovable wrists, squeezing tiny shoes on feet permanently angled for 8 inch (to scale) stilettos, so that when you put ‘her’ in trainers or onto her snowboard, she either falls over or the footwear comes off. I love my Barbies.

It’s been probably about 20 years since we consigned our stock to the loft with a good riddance note, scattered the odd extra limbs we had knocking around into the box and bid it farewell. And then someone gave Lila a Barbie to play with.

So out they came once more. The next generation. And it is generational. Which I kind’a love.

When my girls were little Mel gave them her Barbie. From the ‘60s. It had hardly aged. NEITHER HAD MEL!!!! (he hastily adds). And yet it was different from the new ones we collected in the nineties. Because Barbie of old had been a little girl and the 90s one had, quite literally, ‘grown a pair’. They had breast-shaped plastic bits. They had little curves. They hadn’t so much ‘aged’ as been Beyonceed. Not completely because that would require much more plastic, but in that general direction.

In the box was also a pair of black shoes. Men’s shoes. Yet no sign of the Ken wot once owned them. As Lila said: ‘where Ken don?’ (Lila don’t do ‘g’). And that’s is a key question. Where the fuck is Ken??? I’m sure he was there when we left him in the loft locked up with 15 gorgeous, plastic women. Did they eat him??? Or did he do the proverbial runner?? Typical mannnn! He’s don.

But then I thought that this whole Barbie and Ken thing is a bit ‘binary’ for the end of this particular decade, its a bit stereotypical of the 60s to 80s mindset. And really, Mattel should be upping their game, modernising, upping their options and coming up with something in between Barbie and Ken on the gender scale. We didn’t have a gender scale back then, but we do now. We need a trans-Barbie/Ken. Barken. We need gay Barbie, camp Ken (though he’s always been a bit camp really) and we need a gender neutral version. Otherwise WHAT ARE WE TEACHING OUR CHILDREN!!! What terrible messages are we giving them about a boy and a girl falling in love, getting married and having children!!! WE MIGHT AS WELL GIVE THEM AK47S!!!!!

And that was all very funny, until I googled Barbies and came up with the above picture. The Ken Merman. Honest to god, I didn’t make it up. But its the answer to all the dreams of anyone into satire. A man without a nob. The feminist’s dream.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

I love a survey, as you may know. The general rule is: all surveys are bollocks, all statistics is bollocks and if you combine the two you end up with a level of bollocks that is significant to a statistical degree of bollocks-squared. Which doesn’t occur anywhere in nature.

But YouGov surveyed 2000 adults to find out how they felt about themselves. 1% of women thought themselves to be ‘beautiful’. Vain, deluded, arrogant… whatever. 2% considered themselves ‘good looking’.

There was no objective comparison. You can’t. Because beauty is quite literally in the eye of the beholder. But the interest comes with the men. 9% of them thought themselves ‘handsome’ and 7% ‘good looking’.

Which either means that men are 5 times better looking than women, or are 5 times better at overestimating their looks and at self-delusionment in general. Or that women are less forgiving when analysing themselves physically. Whereas men are actually much better at analysing women physically because we get so much practice and learn to make objective judgments in the time it takes to yell ‘fwoaoaoaoaoarrrrr; get’cha tits aaaart, darlin’!!!’ from a van window.

The issue in question really is self-image, which relates directly to self-confidence, which is so important in every facet of life.

So when my lovely mother, may her wonderful soul rest in peace, told me, at about 4 years old, that I was ‘handsome’ and ‘beautiful’, I took that on board totally and made it my mission statement for life. I didn’t know that all mothers tell all their children such fictions about themselves. How could I, I was 4, FFS. So when I was a gauky, skinny, clumsy teenager, with glasses and a school blazer in shit-brown, in my mind people simply didn’t come any cooler. Ok, I was cocky. Because I knew I could generally make people laugh. And for the ones I couldn’t, I could run quite fast. But even though (according to Mel looking at old photos), I was a creep, (and remember, she fucking married me not much later), I always managed to date the best looking girls around. Though stalking played a part, probably. ‘Punching half a mile above my weight’, I believe its probably known. Because I never doubted my mum’s white lies about how gorgeous I was.

I’m still gorgeous. I have no doubts. Though apparently all people feel better about themselves as they get older. Even women!!! Go figure that one.

Guess what Lila started today? Her teacher said she is undoubtedly the most gifted future ballerina since Darcey Bussell. Ok, maybe she didn’t but she thought it. Well, I thought it. Same difference.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

My Prime Minister is a good man. He’s a Con-serrrrrrr-va-tiiiiiiiiive, inn’he? Like Churchill. Like Maggie, Go’rest’er’soul. And therefore, as the man on the street, whoever is the current Prime Minister, I willl love him. Or her. Long as issa Conservative.

Ahhhh, those heady days of Alf Garnet-like complete support for any head of our government just because they held that role. The Queen was deified and the PM seen as her spokesperson ‘on earth’. But no more. Possibly because when the art of ‘spin’ came along it redefined lying and cheating in a way that it was almost sanitised. Before that politicians generally told… The Truth!!! I know, it seems hard to believe, but that’s how it was. A group of ‘gentlemen’ (because there were very few ladies), on opposite sides but, just like in the cricket games of old, they deported themselves with dignity, with grace and with trust that each and all would ‘do the right thing’. According to the Marquis of Queensbury rules. Different sport, same idea.

Then along struts Boris. The end-point of a rather darker and more sinister political evolutionary line. And at the time I did warn you. I said to you ‘YOU CAN’T TRUST BORIS!!!!’ Mainly because he’s so terribly unpredictable but also because he’s basically a liar and a cheat. Though not necessarily in that order. As he in fact cheated first. But did you listen???

He tried to shut parliament down so it couldn’t vote down the ‘without-a-deal’ departure from the EU on October 31st. That’s cheating. But not necessarily illegal, depending on which side of Hadrian’s Wall you stand. Because a Scottish court, having initially judged the shut-down to be legal, on appeal has decided that it is illegal because Boris lied to the Queen to make her do it. The English courts decided that although such an act was pretty rotten, it was a POLITICAL rotten act and nothing really to do with the law. So now it goes to the Supreme Court for final judgment.

But either way, having lost his first 6 votes in parliament, sacking half his own MPs for dissent and if nothing else, saving Theresa May from being remembered as the biggest fuck-up ever to reside at Number 10, Boris now stands accused of lying to Her Majesty, the Queen of England, some other small countries of little merit, what’s left of the Commonwealth and 3 little towns in Australia’s Northern Territories who never got the news of their independence.

Is that worse than lying to your wife? Something, we must assume, Boris has done on numerous occasions. But for a Prime Minister, should it be deemed the case, to basically con the Queen into shutting parliament down, that’s not great.

However…

I would much rather have a megalomaniacal liar, cheat, philanderer and (at times) imbecile running the country that Jeremy Corbyn and his band of Trotskyists. Though not such a merry band as there is great Branxiety in their ranks and Brindecision about another Breferendum. And praise the lord for that.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

I’ve never been to Iran. I never will. It will be the stamp missing
from my passport when my final travelogue is compiled. Ok, there’ll be
others. Probably won’t make the Congo. North Korea. Afghanistan is
unlikely and I don’t think I’ll have time for Oldham. But Iran is a
place I’d be scared to go. Especially now that relations between that
fine nation and mine have, kind’a plummeted to new depths of distrust
and aggression. Add to that the Tel Aviv security stickers on the back
on my passport (Israeli glue is made by God himself and thus is
eternal) and Iran is probably not my best thought for a ‘nice relaxing
holiday’.

Yet other people go there. British people. And generally, they get
arrested, thrown into prison and left. Like Nazanin Zahari-Radcliffe,
in her third year. Though her case wasn’t exactly ‘helped’ by then
foreign secretary… errrr… blond feller… bumbling twit… oh
yeah, Boris Johnson, when he made incorrect statements about her at
which point Tehran basically ‘threw away her key’.

Yesterday we learned that two more women were arrested and jailed upon
entering that fair city. Both have ‘Ashes’ passports; dual British and
Australian. And I’m guessing here but reckon neither is likely to be a
‘spy’. Though we don’t know why they’ve been arrested yet. One is a
backpacking blogger, the other a Cambridge educated academic who was
there to lecture and has been given a 10 year sentence. Without
stating why. They don’t need to. It’s their country, they can do what
they like. And 10 years is pretty much the standard there for
anything. Jaywalking. Having a broken brake-light cover.

Another woman has died in Tehran, but died at her own hands. She used
them to set fire to herself. In protest that she can’t go and watch
her favourite football team. Iranian law forbids women from football.
Nothing to do with the offside law or anything technical. Its just
total, Isalm-inspired sexism. Women are repressed, controlled,
subjugated, imprisoned and all those great things that we’re not
allowed any longer.

So here’s my advice to anyone thinking of traveling to Iran. DON’T
FUCKING DO IT!! WHAT ARE YOU THINKING???

Lila comes home tonight. Tomorrow: SHE’S MINE AGAIN!!!!! And Joey. But
obviously he’s little and attached to his mother in the literal sense
most of the time. So less exposure. In some ways.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

So now we know. Why we’re here. How humans made it as the only species sufficiently sophisticated, evolved and successful to be able to fuck up the entire planet all by ourselves. But don’t forget, on the ‘path’ to this hi-tech, super-hi-fi, amazingly hi-everything world we now inhabit, we introduced art, we introduced morals and we introduced McDonalds. And war. Murder. Life insurance. And Arsenal football club.

Because ‘back in the day’ (oyyyy, really ‘back’) in the Cretaceous period, the dinosaurs undoubtedly ruled the world. Whose gonna argue with 25 tons of whatever-a-don? But they suffered a mass extinction. Which allowed small mammals to come out of hiding and eventually evolve into hominids of which we may count ourselves. In just 66 million years. Unless you prefer a more biblical interpretation, in which case; God dunnit, about 3 weeks ago, put everything there just as we see it now, fossils and everything, DNA, the lot, just for a laugh. Ooooh, that God, He’s a one…

They examined the crater off the Mexican coast where it has long been known to be the site of a massive meteorite strike. But this time they really examined it. And came up with some incredible results. The meteor was 9 miles wide, about the same size of London (up to zone 3 at least) and it crashed into the Mexican sea at a speed of 12 miles per second, which is 20 times the speed of a bullet.

Now that’s gonna make a splash. In fact, just a bit more than a ‘splash’. Because the explosion was reckoned to be the equivalent of 10 million Hiroshima bombs. I been to Hiroshima, one was enough. The sulphur in the rocks immediately vaporised into a massive cloud which blocked out the sunshine. And dinosaurs loved to sunbathe. They reckon the temperature dropped 26 degrees on the planet. And coupled with the darkness stopping the plants from growing, that was the end of the dinosaurs. Because if you eat 46 tons of vegetation a day and there’s no veg, bit of a problem. And if the herbivores die then what are the carnivores gonna eat? Mud??

The geologists who bored down into the crater reckon usual rock deposition is about one centimetre a year. In the crater the deposition was 130 metres in one day. That, in scientific parlance, is fucking massive.

I’ve now put in an order for a meteor strike on Westminster. Amazon sell them. Amazon sell everything. Though I’ve put it on delay because parliament is currently suspended. Along with the rest of political life in this nation.

If fucking only.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

It was Saturday afternoon before I even had a thought that England were playing a football match on that very day. I had no idea against whom nor when the festivities would start. Didn’t care. The ‘international break’ had robbed me of my weekly fix of ‘proper’ football and my love of watching my national team has declined significantly. In fact I no longer seem to have one. The love, not the national team, I still have them otherwise where would I get all my disappointment once ever 2 years when the World Cup/European Championships are played?

The cricket was very exiting and stepped up its game in the ‘national disappointment’ stakes yesterday as we lost the Ashes series to the (farkin’) Aussies. There’s one test yet to play but that’s become meaningless. Other than ‘pride’. We don’t mind being beaten by a really good side, we just don’t wanna get humiliated by the progeny of our old criminal stock.

I kind’a noticed that Serena had lost the final of the US Open, something of a pattern at this end of her unbelievably outstanding career, but didn’t think to look who beat her. On the grounds that: if it ain’t Wimbledon, it ain’t proper tennis, ergo: I don’t watch it. And I saw in the paper, en passant, that she was beaten by Bianca Andreescu. Thus I assumed that here’s another Bulgarian/Rumanian/Eastern Euro pony-tail to join the tennis ranks of the generic and totally forgettable. But I was wrong. Because my Canadian friend (everyone has one; possibly two counting wives, but never more because their aren’t enough people there to go round) was positively screaming out with joy (email type SCREAMING!!!!) that she was one of his own. A Canadian. From Canada. That nation’s first grand slam winner. And they had to steal her from Bulgaria/Romania to achieve that. Ok, she was actually born in the great frozen north, I checked on Wikipedia, thinking that I should ‘gen up’ before insulting anyone. But well done Bianca. You did it for all us Canucks (well Mel has a Canadian passport so that makes me… well, according to Canadian authorities; Nothing!).

Tomorrow night England play Kosovo. Who, in my mind, are ‘dark and dirty’, in the way they play. Based on… absolutely nothing. I just hope Harry Kane scores another hat-trick, because I love the man. But more importantly, I hope he doesn’t get injured.

Well have a super Monday

A xxxx

When I studied psychology (yeah! Well there’s lots you don’t know about me!) just a few things, out of a four year degree, actually stuck in my mind. Most has long been washed out with each shampooing. Mainly because a lot of what we studied was a bit detached from reality or was just too academic to be of any use. But one experiment was great. Because it was instructive.

A group of students were going to be lectured by a new Professor. They were given a brief outline of the guy and among the qualifications and achievements and publications, they slipped in that ‘he’s quite a cold person’. In the other group, everything was the same except the ‘cold’ was replaced with ‘warm’. One word difference. After the lectures (both exactly the same) the students were given questionnaires to rate the new guy. And guess what? Can ya?? The ‘warm’ group rated him massively higher than the ‘cold’ group. But not just on his personality. On his clarity, his intelligence, fucking everything. One word.

This is the ultimate ‘judging books by covers’ issue. We make judgments based on absolutely no evidence whatsoever because we encounter so many people we just have to do that. And any snipped we can glean beforehand will affect those judgments more than any of us care to admit. Which is why I hate you. Just joking.

And all this because of Quentin Tarantino.

Everybody (well, everybody who cares deeply, as I do) knew about ‘once upon a time in Hollywood’ before they saw it. We all knew that ‘it’s very long and the last 10/15/20 minutes are serious hard-core violence’.

When the violence got too much, I averted my gaze. Some of it was horrible. Mel thought it was funny. In a cartoony way, bit like in Kill Bill. Tough my wife. My brother went alone because his partner don’t like violence and refused. And mon ami qui habite en France, I learned, walked out 20 minutes before the end. Because they liked the film but didn’t want to do the horrible bit. Which also happened the be, pretty much, the entire point of a very long and very brilliant film.

But its what we do. We make judgments based on little, no or very poor information and act accordingly. And miss the end AFTER the violence which is the denouement of the whole preceding madness.

Anyway, who cares. Monty Python’s 50 years old and that’s all that really matters.

Have a non-judgmental Sunday

A xxxx

What a week for Boris Johnson. Our Prime Minister. The most unbelievable failure of weeks since Bury football club thought they’d found a buyer. Since Hitler thought picking a fight with Russia was the path to success. Since the banks decided to sell Payment Protection Insurance as a way to scam its customers.

Boris had his first three votes in parliament and lost them all. What’s the opposite of a ‘hat-trick’? that was Boris. Then he sacked 20 or 21 (depends when and how you count) of his party’s MPs. Just before his own brother and fellow MP, Joe, resigned from government because he can no longer work with big bwuvva Bowis. On Monday he will once again try and get a general election and that will make it 0/4 because the opposition parties are already aligned against him.

So he’s left with choices. He can… errrrr… well, he could… hmmmm… or… ok, he can’t do anything. He’s fucked. Last resort, he can wait for the law to be passed that we can’t leave the EU without a deal and then break that law and leave. Not sure how that will pan out, but I’m guessing it won’t be good. Won’t be his ‘Churchill moment’. I’ll be more a ‘Prince Andrew moment’.

I have one over-riding worry in all this. That when the shit has settled from the fan, Jeremy Corbyn may be the country’s leader. I know that Corbyn is not the most popular leader of the opposition, nor has he endeared himself to either leavers or remainers. But you just don’t know. No-one knows.

What we do know is that if Corbyn should achieve that aim, then John McDonnell would be our chancellor. And as a proud and proclaimed ‘Marxist’, he has some rather radical ideas. Safe to say, these are ideas that have never worked in any country that they’ve ever been tried in. Russia, China, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea. All embraced Marxism, not as any kind of social ideology, because all their people were repressed, abused and pretty much starved, but as an economic model. Which led to the downfall of the common people that they were allegedly acting for.

McDonnell wants to ‘reduce inequality’. A noble aim. Unfortunately, not by creating a more equal environment for perhaps education and early opportunity, that’s too ‘fundamental’ for John, who is not ever a fun kind’a guy. So he’ll address the issue later. By basically stealing money from whoever may have it, or want to have it, or aspire to have it, and he’ll give it to some people. Because, according to him; ‘big bonuses cause upset to others’. So he’ll ban them/ reduce them/ tax them to shit. But bonuses won’t be such a big issue anyway as he plans to rob companies of billions of pounds worth of their shares and give them to the company’s workers.

And with all these extra billions coming into the country, he can start renationalising everything once more. Trains, utilities, phones, everything. It’ll be brilliant. As long as none of those companies relocate or use their international status to restructure their liabilities. In which case we (the nation) are fucked. Because the deficit would be humongous.

And on that happy note; have a super Saturday

A xxxx

So what do you do when its Liladay without Lila? How is that possible? It’s like Brexit; makes no sense on any level and there’s no solution. But she’s in Greece and we’re not, so something’s gotta give. So we went to the countryside where, allegedly, most of the country lives, but in reality there’s no-one there. It’s empty.

We set off first to get bulbs. Of the garden variety. Because some bastard just dumped 4 tons of earth on my fucking garden! Oh, it was the gardener. Apparently we ‘needed’ it. As you do. So we need bulbs. That’s some kind of gardener’s rule. Dump earth; plant bulbs. Flowers die in a few weeks but bulbs… do nothing for months, then BURST into flower… then die in a few weeks. It’s like a deferred death, and we’d all take that.

We went to Cruz Hill, where God planted all the best (read: cheapest by miles) garden centres. And we were headed in that ‘general direction’ at the junction of the A10 and the M25, Essex/Hertfordshire borderland. Where also lives, another act of God, the Tottenham Hotspur training ground. But they don’t sell bulbs.

So fully bulbed up, we headed off to the main event, heading yet further in the wilderness down lovely little windy roads. What a pleasure driving can be on a sunny day when you’re not doing it in London. Couldn’t live in such a place if my life depended on it, but its great for spinning wheels.

And thus a while later we arrived at the house of the late, great, Henry Moore. Britain’s finest 20th century sculptor. See if you name one of his competitors without google. It lives (unlike Henry, alas) in a titchy Hamlet, near a minute village, close to the thriving metropolis of Bishops Stortford. And there our Henry didst his sculpting. Well, from 1940. Before that he did it London when the Luftwaffe bombed his house which affected its viability as a studio.

It’s a lovely house, but a fantabulous studio. 72 acre garden that’s, unsurprisingly, filled with Henry Moore sculptures. Yet not ‘filled’. Spaced out. Relaxed. You stroll, you wander, you stumble across ‘reclining lady’ even though it looks like a crab with a tennis racquet. The biggest fucking crab with a tennis racquet you’ve ever seen. Or ‘pair of ovals’ as you see here. And they are without question ovals.

Mel and I love sculptures. But only if they’re really big and preferably metal. So Henry Moore is the man for us. In fact we suffer from sculpture garden envy as we only have a couple and they’re not that big.

Its a really great place. Little cafe, nice toilets (very important when you travel with my wife, though if you do I WANNA KNOW WHY????) and just a wonderful setting with lots of sheep. And just an hour away from civilisation. As we know it.

Happy Friday

A xxxx