Andy's Glasses

Man cannot live by football alone. He can try but his wife will get royally pissed off. Ok, some leeway is given at this time of the year, when EVERY match is important, when Mel knows that Brighton playing Wolves has a massive impact on my life. When Liverpool at Cardiff is existentially critical to me and Arsenal hosting Crystal Palace is crucial.

Which is why we went to the V&A to see the Christian Dior. The clothes, not the man, he’s long dead. Because I needed a rest from football (NOOOOOOO; DON’T TURN OFF THE TVEEEEEEE!!!), I wanted to expand my sphere of cultural diversity (which normally means watching Championship matches or the Bundesliga) and as tickets had been acquired (its virtually a sell out exhibition) back in about February, we thought it best to leave Everton to their own devices, which they seemed to do pretty well, and venture to South Ken. On the tube, on the most gorgeous Sunday of the year, to wander round lightless basements looking at old frocks. It doesn’t get better than that.

When you enter the exhibition area, in the initial atrium there’s just a few ‘things’ to show you what you’re about to encounter. And today’s photo is one of them. Not just one of them but the most wonderful, exquisite gown/coat (we couldn’t tell, it was rather high up, hence the seeming ‘upskirtiness’ of the pic) which, even to a Neanderthal football thug like me, simply epitomised the beauty and style of ultimate haute couture and French chic. Not the ‘ultimate French chick’, that was Bardot, or Lea Seydoux, but French chic. And as Dior (died in 1957! Who knew? Made a lot of clothes post-mortem) had a mission statement that his clothes were made to enhance and accentuate the beauty and shape of women, this item of clothing exemplified that aim. (Note, I think Dior meant ‘shape of women’ as that lovely hourglass shape, rather than the more Americanised ‘amphibious landing craft’ shape of many of their women).

Unfortunately, for me (ignorant, impatient, gonad-driven) that opening thing of beauty wasn’t matched by any of the following 22,000 dresses, coats, bags or hats. He’d peaked too soon, but there ya go. So we whizzed home in time for most of the Liverpool match.

And I only watched that reluctantly because I really really really wanted to watch Arsenal. Because Liverpool are ‘gone’ for Spurs. That very top bit of the league is over and done with for me. It’s the next two slots that will dominate my life for the next four weeks. And Arsenal are ‘involved’.

Having lost to Man City on Saturday, Spurs looked vulnerable in third place, with Manchester United yet to play and, worse still, Arsenal faced with a seemingly ‘easy’ home match against Crystal Palace.

But Issa funny ole game, is football, and the humour was rich yesterday. First Man United didn’t merely lose but were truly hammered to a pulp at Everton. My only concern about that being that the instant-success-demanding powers at Old Trafford may rue their appointment of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and come after Pochettino again.

Then Arsenal. Who would have overtaken us with that ‘simplest of wins’ (to be uncharacteristically fair to Arsenal; there is no such thing as a ‘simple win’) but managed to lose. Leaving Spurs in third place. At least for a few more hours until bipolar Chelsea play Burnley tonight.

So to Johnny the Gunner (the lawyer one, not the banker one) who wondered if I was ‘panicking’ after Saturday’s result, I’d just like to state, in a calm, adult and intellectual way: ‘NYEH, NYEH, NYEH!!!!!’

Very happy, gloriously sunny, bank holiday Monday.

A xxxx

I’m not into sequels. If something’s great; leave it alone to stand as that, don’t try and repeat it. Otherwise you end up with Fast & Furious 7 and Death Wish 4 and Friday the 13th part 14. And they’re all shit. The obvious exceptions (and I can make these without any risk of being hypocritical, stupid or abusing generalisations because I can write what I fucking want!) are Kill Bill 1 and 2, because it was one movie in two parts, and Terminator 1 and 2 because I love them. There’s the rules then.

So Spurs returning to the Etihad stadium yesterday for a repeat of Wednesday night’s match there had ‘disappointing anti-climax’ written all over it. Mainly because Wednesday night’s game was the most exciting game of football ever seen by anybody (though I feel that once VAR becomes a more integrated part of the game, rather than the novelty status it currently enjoys, such turnarounds will become more commonplace) but also because you can’t just carry on in the same vein. It was a sequel of a match and, quite frankly, it felt like one. Even though it had many moments of excitement. But Spurs lost. I think every Spurs fan had accepted that we would lose this game, accepted that quite early on Thursday morning. And were quite relieved that it didn’t end 5-nil or worse. We can’t afford to lose any more games. We have to win them all. But that one we were under no illusions about.

But in an uncharacteristic moment of schadenfreude… well, fairly uncharacteristic, I opened the newspaper on Friday morning, expecting to find a big spread about Arsenal’s victory the previous night, taking them to the semi-finals of the UEFA Cup (or whatever they call that thing). Yet instead, I found the most wonderful, magnificent, superlative-laden, two-page feature which could have been headlined: “HOW FUCKING BRILLIANT ARE SPURS??” It was a glowing account of our achievements (not our trophies, obvs, that would have been a much shorter article) and how well we’ve done in comparison to how much we’ve spent of late. Manchester United have spent 500 million over the last year and we’ve spent nothing. Liverpool have spent big. Manchester City spend bigger but keep it well hidden (court case pending). In fact the only team to have spent less (by selling players to create a ‘negative spend’) is Ajax of Amsterdam. Who we now play in the semi-finals of the CHAMPIONS LEAGUE.

And I thought that was so unfair on Arsenal… that it made me even more deliriously happy than I already was.

Ajax, oddly or coincidentally, or bizarrely or whatever, are another team who embrace their inner Jew. The predominantly non-Jewish fan base fly Israel flags, sing ‘hava nagilla’ and eat matzos during Passover. I may have added that last bit for effect. For the same reason that Spurs became ‘the Yids’. Because of abusive and anti-Semitic chants from other teams, back in the 70s, who called teams with Jewish fans (like Spurs) or Jewish owners (like Ajax had), Jewish names as being ‘a great insult’. But was then adopted. So when we meet, instead of the fans fighting in brawls and drinking excessively, they’ll be instead arguing philosophical points in the Torah.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

If you wanted to go to Hennes yesterday from, say, Carnaby Street, just across Oxford Circus, you’d have found your route blocked. By a massive pink boat. And about 2,000 of Britain’s great unwashed, sitting around, getting arrested, being released again, drinking tea, weaving yoghurt, picking nits out of their children’s heads and eating them, other than the vegans, obviously, and generally ‘protesting’ in a very peaceful but also very annoying way. If there were any trees on Oxford Street, they’d be hugged.

Extinction Rebellion is a nationwide movement trying to attract attention to the fact that climate change is ruining the planet and specifically that our government is doing precisely nothing about it. They’d recruited lots of kids. Which is good for the quotes, heart-warming that they care and easy because kids can be wonderfully naive. Like the one yesterday who was saying, beautifully and sweetly, as 11-year olds do, that ‘old people’ have fucked up the planet (my words, incidentally) but its their future that’s in jeopardy. As in ‘like 30 years time’ kind of thing. Rather than the 5,000 years time which is more when the problems would be.

It’s a noble cause indeed. Saving the very planet. But is that any reason to cause such a massive disturbance in London for 2 weeks? I mean, there’s loads of other planets. Billions of them. And in fact there’s loads of other cities too. Ok, there are protests in many of those cities too, so why target London for so long? As one man said, he works in the renewable fuel industry; how can he save the planet when he can’t get in to work?

The end often justifies the means. But not when strikes, protests and disruptions are concerned. And without wishing to sound too ‘London-centric’ about this, ITS THE MOST IMPORTANT CITY IN THE FUCKING WORLD; LEAVE IT ALONE!!! (And the only place to see Champions league football there this season is STILL at Tottenham, just FYI)

The photos of the ‘carbon reducer movement’ piling into 17 year-old diesel powered Transit vans did nothing to impress. Neither did Emma fucking Thompson arriving in a (metaphorical) limousine to join (read: patronise) the oiks.

Also worth noting a couple of salient facts. Britain currently produces 2% of the world’s carbon emissions, which are reducing, even though perhaps not quickly enough. China produces 30% and are building coal-fired power stations as if… as if… as if they had 1.5 billion people all needing heat and light or something. Surely these protests should be in Beijing? Problem is they won’t fly. Too much carbon. Better get peddling now then.

Happy Saturday (currently 1-nil down at the Etihad and I’m not panicking yet)

A xxxx

There’s only one God, all the major religions are agreed about that (if nothing else). Though the Hindus have about 12,000 gods, so we’ll ignore them for the purposes of this debate. And because I’m sure that the God who I don’t believe in was NOT a fucking elephant. Gorilla maybe, lemur, but an elephant??

And today is the start of Passover for us Jews. And is also Good Friday, for them Christians. Maybe its a Hindu festival too and they’re gonna eat bananas and sticky buns. Who knows. But if history is to be believed, on this day… so many thousand years ago, Moses led the Jews out of slavery in Egypt and into the ‘Promised Land’ which then became more ‘The Highly Contentious Land’ even though back then there were no Arabs of any description. Nor Christians for that matter. And then just 2000 years ago, on this very same day, that very same God (not the elephant, the lemur; do keep up!) arranged for his recently dead son to rise up in re-incarnation so he could eat Easter Eggs.

Which is a problem. Because ‘our’ God never had a son. But the Christian God did. Was God leading a double life? Was he ‘playing away’??? I think this needs investigating as about a half the world find this very important indeed.

On Passover we have to tell ‘the story’. It’s our job. And I take such things very seriously. In fact its the only religious-ish thing I really like because we get to eat a lot and drink wine. Fasting and praying can only take me so far. Tonight even Lila is coming round for the story (see above pic).

And this is the story.

Moses, a massive Spurs fan, was a slave in Egypt, under the wicked, cruel, pantomime-ish Pharoah (second cousin, 97-times removed from Sheikh Mansoor) and he (Moses) was pissed off. So he told his wife he was leaving. Not so much leaving her as leaving the whole place, f’rever. Holy shit, said his wife. Before we go we need to do something. We need to take all our plates, bowls, dishes, knives, forks and spoons, pots, pans and food, hide them away and replace them with another set that looks identical BUT which haven’t touched any bread, wheat, corn, nothing. Moses looked at her and said the immortal words: ‘bis tu meshuggah, a bissel sedrate?’ (‘Are you mad? A little insane??’) Don’t you realise that you are cursing the entire future of Jews forever and eternally to repeat this ridiculous thing??? If we do that we won’t even have time to let the bread rise before we run through the parting Sea!!! I won’t be able to watch the highlights from the Champions League Quarter Final!!!! But she was adamant. Maybe should have been ‘eve-a-ment’ but history distorts.

And thus we tell the tale, generation after generation. And, cynicism aside, its a great thing to do. I have no idea why, but it just is.

Happy Pesach/Easter/whatever

A xxxx

I was going to write a poem, an emotional and heart-felt outpouring of love and dedication to honour the most incredible football match EVER, won (errr, overall ‘won’, as opposed to ‘on the night’, necessarily) by the greatest team EVER, in what even the most hardened and cynical of Spurs-hating pundits (Paul Merson, Ian Wright, just pick yer Goon) have called ‘possibly the best game ever played’. And I got as far as this:

There is a new footballing superstar
The incredible phenomenon that is V.A.R…

And I thought better of it. Because VAR only tells you what is absolutely and totally ‘correct’, even if no-one had seen, noticed or appealed it on the pitch. It adds nothing and takes away nothing. And it misses nothing. So no-one appealed Llorente’s goal as a handball but VAR chose to examine it because it ‘might’ have been so. But there was insufficient evidence so the goal stood (THANK GODDDD!!!!) Similarly, when Sterling scored what appeared the injury-time ‘winner’, VAR checked for Aguero’s offside even though referees and players didn’t notice. He WAS offside (MERE THANKS BARELY ENOUGH THAT TIME) so all VAR did was correct an injustice. Hmmm.

What VAR doesn’t do is emotion. Passion. Excitement. Shattering disappointment, explosive joy, gut-wrenching agony.

But I also realised that to achieve what Spurs did last night, and last week too, just to keep the big picture in view, was so amazing, so incredible, so odds-contradicting, so seemingly impossible, so mind-numbingly brilliant, that however that had happened would have been a startling achievement. If we had parked a fleet of buses in front of goal and never ventured outside our box, the win would be sweet. Because winning was everything. And we won. Against one of the hardest teams in the world to beat. And we’re now going to play in the semi-finals of the Champions League. Which is massive and a first for Spurs.

But it weren’t like that at all. The result was the same but the journey… fuck me. What a journey.

Five goals in the first 21 minutes of the match. That’s never happened before in the C.League. But Spurs still ahead on ‘away goals’, even at 3-2 down on the night. Then the killer, Aguero scored, 4-2, or 4-3 on aggregate; we’re out. But then the Llorente goal and then, at the most heightened and tense time of the match, deep into injury time, the goal-that-never-was. But before it became that, for Man City, it was just ‘the goal’. And they went fucking ballistic. Every player, fan, coach, steward, tea-lady and cleaner just lost it totally. Similarly every Spurs fan, player, etc., etc., sunk into the deepest darkest depths of deepness and suicidal horrendous ness.

Only for that to be reversed at the flick of a ‘replay’ button on the VAR. Oh well, ya win some, ya lose some.

Lila can now say Son Heung Min. I mean; how many two year-olds can do that? (Answer: all the 2 year olds of Spurs fans).

Amazingly, floating on air, Thursday

A xxxx

So Nigel Farage has resurfaced, as sharks do, with his new, shiny ‘Brexit Party’. Firstly because he is all and only about leaving Europe and secondly because he is quite uncanny at harnessing the feelings of ‘the people’, particularly if those people are keen to leave Europe. So to all Brexiteers, Farage’s new shtick is the ‘second coming’. It’s like when Jurgen Klinsman came back to Spurs when we were in trouble. The new messiah. Be very interesting if there was a general election, Farage won, became PM, took us duly and immediately and democratically out of Europe and then…

Then what? Resign? Dissolve the party? Or move over to the Far Right like UKIP did when it got bored with ‘playing nice’ and didn’t have anything else to talk about.

But on the other ‘team’ we now have ‘Change UK’, the quasi-party that started life as a few disgruntled remainer MPs pissed off with Corbyn and May and forming The Independent Group. Which has since metamorphosised into ‘Change UK’, probably with an exclamation mark or two, just so you know its not same old same old but something new and revolutionary. Without the revolution. But to their credit, at least they are ‘centrist’ which is a good thing. And they’re all ‘remainers’, which is a bad thing for 52% of the voters.

And maybe we’re ready for something new. Because if the last decades haven’t dulled our keenness on the 2-party status quo, then the last 2 years have killed it off completely. The Tories, currently, are worse than useless and for any right-minded individual of a non-Trotskyist leaning, Corbyn represents the death of the nation, should he ever lead it. God for-fucking-bid.

So where goes one’s political allegiance? If you’re a natural Tory (you know who you are), then which of the 17 infighting factions therein do you currently ‘support’? You’ll need to choose which Tory party you want from within the disordered and murderous ranks. Which cheating, back-stabbing, self-serving nob do you fancy?

And if you’re a Labour person, does your leftist centrism go as far as the Corbyn/McDonnell vision of red flags, party berets and the bullying totalitarianism that they really want? Are you comfortable with a man whose hatred of Israel is so great that he has allowed rabid, unchecked anti-semitism to run through the entire party machine? A man whose idealistic ‘model’ of a fine nation is Venezuela. Currently on the verge of civil war with rabid inflation, no medicine and a starving population.

I’m ready for a change. Just not sure if I’m ready for a Change UK, but it’s possible. Anything would seem better than what we’re currently enduring.

Happy Wednesday, except for distraught Manchester United fans. Well, what d’ya expect from Messi & Co.?

For Spurs tonight is a ‘destiny match’. The biggest, almost ever.

A xxxx

A lot of people seem to get a great deal of pleasure from a thing called ‘golf’. English people in their millions play it, Americans in their zillions do it. The difference being that between a noun and a verb. But we won’t get pedantic here. Whether you chose to ‘play golf’ or whether you ‘golfed’ is a minor difference between those who know how to speak English and a bunch of foreigners who have abused, misused and hi-jacked a beautiful language to make it expedient and ugly. I make no judgments…

The fact of the matter is that, noun or verb, both leave me equally cold. I just can’t see the point. Much as (TOTALLY IGNORANT) people reduce football to a pointless exercise involving an inflated bladder (at one time), thus golf to me is only ever seen from the reductionist standpoint. I miss the ‘big picture’. You hit a ball with a stick. Big (faarkin) deal. I honestly do appreciate the amazing skill involved, the choice of bats, the amount of power, the line of the greens, I really do. But, like snooker or darts, its just a skill, not a sport. In my definition of a ‘sport’ you have to sweat properly. Not just because Pringle have sponsored you and thus you can’t take off your sweater even though its 97 degrees out there.

And on tv, golf must be the biggest of viewed sports. Everyone seems to watch it. Sky give about 5 of their sports channels over to the big events and won’t give me a penny back if I don’t watch them. I can’t.

But even I had to look in amazement at the incredible personal achievement of Tiger Woods. The Comeback King. Who yesterday won the Masters Tournament in Augusta. America. Somewhere. Somewhere sunny. And stormy.

Tiger last won the Masters 14 years ago, age 29 at what we’ll now call ‘the end of his first peak’. He won everything back in the day. Then came the downfall. The drink, the drugs, in fact all the good things that you can afford and have the time to enjoy them when you’re rich as George Soros at 25. He slumped further into decay as his wife attacked him with (what else?) a golf club after she’d found he’d been looking for balls in someone else’s bunker.

And four major back surgeries. And golf is a very ‘backy’ game. So to come back, looking so amazingly fit and strong, is somewhere way beyond merely ‘remarkable’.

Mohammed Ali had his comeback after being in prison for refusing to fight in Vietnam. Nicky Lauda had a miraculous comeback after nearly dying in his crashed racing car, burning half his face off in the process. Harry Kane came back after six weeks from an ankle sprain and scored a goal at Bournemouth.

But Tiger Woods really beats them all. Shame its golf he plays and not something good or interesting. But there ya go.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

We’re getting down to the pointed end of the football season now. The endgame. In which points definitely make prizes and new stadia are only as good as the last win they host. And thus did the mighty Tottenham Hotspur yesterday beat Huddersfield Town to record their third win there out of the 3 matches played there thus far. Which, quite frankly, amaaaaaazin’.

Ok, Crystal Palace, the first official visitors to the new Tottenham Hotspur Stadium (naming rights available; apply here in the first instance), are not very good, so were perfect to play in our first, rather edgy, little bit nervy game there. But then came Manchester City. The mighty, the invincible, the all-conquering. But in this case they might not, seemed rather more vincible and conquered no-one. Because they were intimidated by a new and proper stadium, the likes of which simply doesn’t exist anywhere up the M6. And then yesterday and Huddersfield. Who are already relegated, can’t beat an egg and came south to lose. And we ably assisted them in this quest. Even without our two ‘star names’, both injured, we managed to score 4 goals and keep our third clean sheet at Le Lane de Blanc Coer. Well, its much too posh to call it ‘white hart lane’ even if it is.

But that’s only half the battle. Because time, and games, are now at a minimum, we need to not only win our games but to wallow mercilessly in the misfortunes of those teams around us who might try to steal our rightful European place for next year. Vis a vis: Manchester (fucking) United, (fucking) Chelsea and (fucking) Arsenal. Because together, we are the four teams fighting for 2 Champions League places.

Manchester United won yesterday, which was horrible. They in fact won on penalties, even though it wasn’t that kind of game. And they remain 3 points behind us. The fact they beat West Ham would normally fill me with some degree of contentment, but not now. I wanted West Ham to win. But just like their own fans, they let me down too.

Chelsea’s failure to win (or draw) at Liverpool today means that they remain 1 point behind us but they’ve played one game more.

Arsenal play tomorrow. At Watford. If the form books are correct then Watford should win. Just because Arsenal can’t seem to play away from home and Watford are riding a wave which has taken them to the FA Cup final. But ya never know. Though you can hope and pray. Which I suggest you all do. Pray for Watford to win. And pray hard. As only real atheist football fans know how.

Happy Sunday. This is very late because we had a (very) little house guest last night so her parents could attend a wedding in Leicester. And house guests of that type and size mean you have NO TIME WHATSOEVER TO DO ANYTHING. Bless her.

A xxxx

The late great scientist and writer, my favourite evolutionist (including Darwin, I might add on the grounds that he was funnier), Stephen Jay Gould, was a wonderfully liberal and tolerant man. Rather than tell proponents of a strict biblical interpretation of the natural world to just fuck off and go pray, like… errrr, someone less tolerant (no names) might do. To those who claimed that ‘the world was built just like we see it just 5,500 years ago, with every mountain hand sculpted by God, every fossil just put there for His fun’, Gould said ‘fine, that’s your “belief”, but it ain’t science’. So he proposed his wonderful paradigm of NOMA. Non-overlapping Magisteria. In which religion could say precisely what it liked, in the world of the spirit, of blind belief, of biblical adherence, but science was entitled to the same consideration in things which are evidence based, empirical or borne out by study. Basically: you wanna believe in fairies, devils and miracles that’s fine and we won’t criticise, but don’t fucking quote them as ‘scientific fact’ cos they ain’t.

I always thought that a very elegant way round a problem, particularly in a nation (that’ll be America) where the teaching of evolutionary theory is still either banned or moderated by insistence of creationist (biblical) theory alongside, in some states.

And so to rugby.

????

Yeah, rugby. Because there’s a royal row going on. Heads are rolling. Because people are not sticking to their own magisteria but interfering with things about which they know precious little other than their own prejudices, borne, as are all prejudices, out of ignorance, and reinforced by some woolly and ambiguous sentence in some part of the bible. The same kind of sentences that justified (in the eyes of the Dutch Orthodox Church) the apartheid system, the stoning of women rape victims in strictly Muslim countries and the almost universal homophobia in the entire world of religion.

Israel Folau is possibly the best winger in world rugby. Fast, strong and a devastating finisher. Yet for some unaccountable reason chose to post a message on social media attacking gay people as being ungodly. Also threw in drunks, adulterers, fornicators (???), thieves, Arsenal fans (definitely ungodly) and estate agents. He had to ‘speak out’ because of his God. Blah, blah, fucking blah.

He has been suspended from Australian rugby. But not before several other rugby superstars had ‘liked’ or supported his comments. Most notably Billie Vunipola, the England Number 8 and, ironically, fairly renowned drunk (no evidence of fornication so far, other than his children). Who now faces sanctions for his own take on the ‘man was created to mate with woman’ biblically inspired bollocks.

I’m guessing that Israel Folau and Billy have a few million followers on Twitter. Who follow them because they are gods of their game. Not because anyone wants to hear their intolerant and antiquated discriminatory views. However much God might be on their side. It’s not their place to make such comments. Not their context. Save it for church.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

I don’t read many books on child psychology. Don’t need to. They all say the same thing: children are horrible. Rotten. More trouble than they’re worth. Which is all undeniably true. But oddly doesn’t apply to grandchildren.

However, were I to read such books, I dare say the virtually universal problem of ‘the terrible twos’ would be explained thus. That at 2 kids are partly verbal. And they’re just able to make decisions for themselves. Something adults encourage at every opportunity. And they do make decisions. Which result in the adults saying ‘NO’. And that’s when the problem starts. A problem entirely of big people’s making. Mixed messages. Basically ‘you decide and as long as its exactly what I want, then you’re fine. Otherwise forget it’. It’s called Theresa May-ing in adult context.

Lila’s first big decision yesterday morning came at about 6.40 when we came down for breakfast. Or, ‘for the first breakfast’ as the mornings are long so why impose arbitrary limits? And as I started to prepare her porridge, she went to the larder and found one of my Easter Eggs. She had no idea what it was, but it was bright, colourful, big and those designers at Cadburys know their shit. It probably stank of chocolate too, which may have had influence. And thus the first tantrum of the day began. Because I have red lines. NO CHOCOLATE BEORE 7.25!!! IS A GOLDEN RULE. Maybe 7.15 if you’re driving. It’s called ‘good (grand)parenting’.

The next issue was her daily one. We get her dressed. In her usual, shiny, spotless, pristine, perfectly matching designer outfit… but we had a refusal at the jeans. ‘No chousers’ she stated, calmly and matter-of-factly. Then she started rummaging through her little clothing bag, came up with a t-shirt that’s way too big (but it has a kiwi on it and that trumps any practical consideration) and stated: ‘wear dat’. There is no argument, no debate. This is not a democracy. Then she pulled out her spare pyjama bottoms and insisted they were the way of the catwalk. The sweater got an outright refusal. Coupled with her boots because due to a dogshit issue her shoes were binned, this is how Lila was presented to the public yesterday. I took this photo in Brent Cross where we went shoe shopping. Lila’s aunt in Berlin commented that she looks ‘homeless and lost’. But they just don’t understand ‘shabby chic’ in Germany. No concept of what ‘cool’ really looks like.

Lila and the Apple store. Uncommonly quiet. And what’s more, as well as having Lila to play with, I fulfilled my ‘one visit to Brent Cross every ten years’ quota. Which is brilliant.

Happy Friday

A xxxx