Andy's Glasses

In the last year ‘overcrowding’ on the tubes has doubled. By their definition of ‘overcrowding’. Which is when they actually close the station to stop more people coming onto the platforms because they’re gonna get pushed onto the tracks by sheer domino effect. They closed stations nearly 500 times. I bet mostly it was London Bridge which was being rebuilt. Probably with bigger platforms. Oddly, most travellers would define ‘overcrowding’ as ‘any tube train in rush hour’. Ridiculously hot, horribly sweaty, rammed, jammed, crammed with people who seem to possess 4 elbows each. But London Underground view things differently. In fact Transport for London do too. Because now they’ve realised that the tube is too busy, they kind’a need to think of alternative modes of commuter transport.

If only there was some kind of vehicle capable of riding along the roads carrying honest folk to work. Something like… a car! But no, we don’t want them in London. So they’re effectively banned. If the congestion charge and Ultra Low Emission Charge doesn’t scare you off, there’s parking at about 8 quid an hour, not that you can find any, and the fact that they’ve ruined any possible journey with speed bumps and traffic light sequences that are horrendously driver-unfriendly. Bikes are dangerous, motor bikes more so and buses much too slow. They’ve invented electric scooters which tick virtually every box (when its not raining) in ease, lack of congestion, environmental friendliness. Which is so brilliant they’ve been instantly banned. Wouldn’t want them around, would upset the unions.

I don’t know what the answer is.

So instead, I’ll show you a photo. Taken in, I reckon, 1984, in Portugal. Because that’s when I went on holiday with Dom, for a tennis week in the Algarve. And no-one ever has 2 holidays with Dom. Only the very foolish. Or Mrs Dom. She has no choice. I did. And I’ve always loved this photo. A guy we were talking to just picked up my camera and snapped as we were in post-match refreshment mode. He didn’t think ‘back light!’ nor ‘need to over-expose the fore-ground’ (all of which is meaningless to an entire generation who’ve never picked up a camera in their lives). And so its dark. And mysterious. And… dark.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

I’m an Essex boy. Well, I moved there (probably in fact ‘was moved’) when I was 1. From da East End. In those days the East End was the domain of the Krays, of everything dodgy, of slums and workhouses (ok, bit Dickensian but I’m allowed to exaggerate for effect). Nowadays the East End is so hip, trendy and over-developed that I couldn’t afford to live there. And when I meet ‘old mates’, from school, from growing up, from… ‘over there’ it always makes me happy. Generally, Essex people are good people. Funny people. GSOH. But there are two types. Those who speak ‘Essex’ and those wot don’t. A few can oscillate, depending on to whom they is spoken wiv. Generally, those who embrace their inner Essex Boy (whether they live there or not any longer) and like sounding like a barmaid in Eastenders, and those who perhaps never really did fall into that linguistic rabbit hole and decided at some stage to polish a few vowels, strengthen a consonant or two, who basically ‘learned posh’.

The journalist Amol Rajan from the BBC made a programme about it. Being a ‘poor kid’ who managed to get into Cambridge (them’s rare) and move into top journalism jobs on tv and print, he doesn’t sound very BBC. He doesn’t sound Dirty Den exactly either, but almost like a posh bloke who has reversed the aforementioned polishing process and filed away a few spoken edges to sound more… more.. edgy. But his point is that posh kids are more successful. More employable, even with less qualifications, than poor kids. It’s a ‘class’ thing. Which is a British as the Queen, as roast beef, as chicken tikka masala.

The thing is that we all judge books by covers or humans by sounds. Perhaps more so in the UK where speech and accents are so distinctive and carry a world of socio-economic as well as geographical baggage.

And all because my barbecue is running out of gas. Or may be. Or should be. But you just don’t know with those things, until you find yourself eating a raw sausage. So there I was shlepping round a fucking great, 15kg cylinder of Butane, also known as ‘a bomb’ if someone should hit the car, looking for a replacement. The garage where I acquired it informed me that they haven’t sold them for 4 years. Telling me I haven’t barbecued enough. Homebase do them. But the low-class, scummy, unhelpful, quite rude and unfriendly, ‘Estuary’-speaker told me (shouted at me) that they don’t do ‘THAT’ one and a new one would cost 100 quid. I told him, in a much nicer, more genteel accent, that he could just FUCK OFF. So we called a lovely little garden centre in Muswell Hill. And a very posh young lady (not a mere ‘gel’ this one) informed me very politely that they DID sell such things, and they EVEN took my exact one back too.

The process was so smooth, so slick, so easy (just drive over to the ‘collection point’ where Igor will manhandle the monster bastard things in and out of Sir’s car) and just so wonderful that I thought… gimme posh kids any day of the week. Not just because they gave me exactly what I wanted, which The Artful Dodger at Homebase couldn’t, but because the whole process was nicer, easier and filled me with more confidence that they knew what they were doing.

Therefore, I have degenerated from East End scumbag to The World’s Biggest Snob. In just one change of a Butane canister. Cor bloody blimey.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

Football’s back on again. It stopped. In May. I hated that. Now its on again, and that marks the end of the 10 WEEKS OF HELL!!! which is now over for another year. So on the first weekend, the ‘big teams’ get staggered over the whole weekend. To maximise tv potential. And the ‘top 4’, which is all anyone’s really ever concerned about, had its first representation on Friday night when Liverpool beat newcomers Norwich City 4-1 to ‘welcome’ them to the Premier league. You can run away with all the Championships you like, this is what the top flight feels like. Put that in your Kenwood, Delia.

Next up was Manchester City. The ‘team to beat’ (except you can’t). The current, twice-running, champions of the world. (Well if this was America the Premiership winners would be known as ‘World Champions’, so why not? Oh, because this is Europe and we realise the existence of other nations. On some peripheral level). City went to West Ham. To the Stolen Stadium. As they nicked it from the government, the council, from all of LONDON in the dodgiest deal of all time. And it wasn’t so much a massive win for City (even though Pep thought them ‘underperforming’) at 0-5, but more a statement from the Hammers that they’re wasting no time this season with any aspirations of greatness (finishing 11th) but are heading straight to the relegation zone directly.

They played some other matches at the sacred and holy ‘3 o’clock Saturday’ slot’ but that holiness has gone because neither Sky nor BT nor even the Church of England are allowed to show those matches live, so they tend to be the games of ‘less interest’.

Then at 5.30 was ‘the big one’. Spurs. The nation’s favourite team. God’s favourite team. My favourite team. And Joey’s favourite team. Lila was busy. And we played another just-promoted club, Aston Villa. A team I really don’t like for the sole reason that they play in claret-and-blue and it bothers me. It wasn’t an easy win by any stretch. In fact, for most of the first half, we looked doomed. But you never say ‘never’ when Harry Kane (probably had 3 touches in the entire first half, none of them memorable) is playing. Because, if I’m honest, he is just the best striker in the world. Thought the win wasn’t down solely to Harry. The game changed for my boys when Eriksen came on. The player who wants away to Spain gave three good reasons why we simply can’t afford to let him go as we won 3-1. Ok, if Alli and Son were playing maybe we wouldn’t have missed him so much. But they weren’t. And we did. He makes the team tick in a way others just don’t. We should swap him for Modric. No-one else is good enough to replace him.

Today Chelsea (top 4) are playing so that’s of vague interest, especially as they’re playing Manchester United who, in the transfer window, have managed to swap 3 awesome attacking players for one lumbering and over-priced defender. That’s good business.

The other games don’t involve top 4 teams and therefore are of no interest whatsoever. Though I hope Newcastle win.

Happy First Sunday of the rest of our Lives.

A xxxx

There’s a new byword in Westminster. A trump card. The ‘joker’. To be deployed by anyone reaching any kind of sticky situation, anyone ‘cornered’, anyone running out of cogent, logical argument. Just throw in the ‘DEMOCRATIC’ card and it reduces the opponents to mere dust. It’s like the smart button on a video game. When all the enemies are lined up to kill you and there’s no-where left to go, hit that button and they all blow up. But in a video game you can only use it once. In Westminster you use it pretty much all the time.

To do anything but leave Europe on 31st October is, according to Boris, ‘undemocratic’. And strictly speaking that is correct. We had a referendum. A pinnacle of democracy. Which told us to leave Europe. So to not do so would be to basically shit on the head of democratic process. To render it useless. Or ‘undemocratic’.

So we have to leave. On Hallowe’en. Oooooohhhh!!

But if we leave without a deal then, according to most remainers and half of everybody else, that is ‘not what “we” voted for’ and hence is undemocratic. Although I reckon a high proportion of ‘leavers’ would take anything to just be out. Because they’re stupid. But I’m not making judgments. Just the ones I have to.

So perhaps we should have a re-vote. The Labour Party option now that Corbyn has finally managed to say something about Brexit, having previously been the only person in the entire country, let alone Westminster, who has consciously avoided all mention of the B-word for the past 2 years.

And a second referendum represents the hyperspace option. In that it is so democratic it becomes totally undemocratic. Hyperspace is the button you push in a total and absolute emergency. It gets you out of trouble but you have no idea which world you come out into.

Donald Trump is democratic. Even though it means something a bit different over there. But he has actually questioned the issue of gun control. Publicly. Though how he can figure out any gun applicant’s mental health status on a 2 page questionnaire, particularly their future status, is a bit beyond a mere mortal like me to understand. However, whatever tiny little suggestion he has made is firstly more than any other such noise made by any other Republican president ever. And secondly is sufficient to have the hateful NRA screaming at him already. Someone in that country must realise that there needs to be a disconnect between the government and the people who make all the guns, in the debate about why thousands of Americans are getting killed by guns every year. Otherwise its just, kind’a, plain stupid.

Tennis in 50 mile-an-hour winds separates the men from… from… from the people with any commons sense.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

It was 50 years ago (yes-)today
Sergeant Pepper sold his soul to lay
The roots for all that afterwards came
Even though most of it was pretty lame
So even though I’m not for bossing
I’m gonna curse you with a fucking zebra crossing

(Altogether!)

Sergeant Pepper’s lonely hearts club ba-a-a-and,

Trumpets, etc., etc., etc…

I’m so fucking old that I remember vividly when Abbey Road came out. Because the Beatles invented ‘hype’. Without ever doing anything. A Beatles album was just an event of massive world-wide excitement and significance. They were ‘hype’.

That was 1969.

Two years before, my brother was 14 and already something of a genius of the electronic variety. So he’d made a little amplifier which could play the new-tangled ‘thing’ which was called ‘stereo’. Music out of not one, but TWO channels. Before that we just had… music. But stereophonic sound gave you two different tracks played on either side which ‘made you feel like you were there’. And Brother made his little amp from egg cartons, empty washing-up bottles, discarded razor blades, some wire and a transistor. We didn’t even know if it would work because no albums had been recorded ‘in stereo’.

Then we bought Sergeant Pepper. Which was so recorded. And we put it on, plugged in (sellotape, sticking plaster and string) the headphones (we didn’t own TWO speakers) and I remember listening to ‘Lucy in the Sky’ with the sound swirling round my head magically and thinking ‘this is so good I need to get some serious mind-bending drugs for my barmitzvah’. The sound was just spectacular. Because if you make an album that is destined to sell 12 billion copies, you just don’t need to skimp on the technical or the innovations.

The cover for the Abbey Road album was shot outside their studios, in Abbey Road. And in fact yesterday was NOT the 50th anniversary of the album, which is next month, but of the (fucking) photo being taken. If you can believe how… fanny, fans can get. I’m not sure if its a more iconic album cover than Sergeant Pepper’s, but it is by far the most damaging. As it inspires ‘pilgrims’ (read: tossers) to walk across that crossing at all times of every day and every night, having their photo taken “right where John, Paul, George and Ringo did!!!!!” Tossers. The traffic tails back to the Euston Road as the crossers stop to pose, then the next, then the next, then… ad infinitum. And much as I love the right of anyone to be a total tosser (mobile phone users excepted) I just always see these people and think: GET A LIFE!! Though I’m normally thinking that inside my car creeping along at 3 metres an hour and late for whatever.

Zero tolerance. To anything. That’s what we need. All my troubles seemed so far away.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

Tottenham Hotspur Football Club (may the Lord bless them, keep them holy and healthy and bestow magical, mystical properties of wonder and awe upon them) have sent out a survey to all of its 150,000 members. Asking their opinions of the persistent use of ‘the Y word’ by Spurs fans.

Because Spurs fans are known as ‘The Yids’. Or ‘The Yid Army’. Which is different from the Israel Defence League in that they don’t wear uniforms. But ‘yid’ is a horrible, inflammatory, nasty, divisive, derisive term. Everyone agrees about that. When its spat at other people. But when you use it upon yourself, as the Spurs fans do, even those who aren’t Jewish, can it still be seen as in any way ‘anti-semitic’?

The Police and the Crown Prosecution Service investigated this a few years ago and found that there were no grounds for… well, for anything. The Spurs fans, following years of abuse in the 1970s by other teams calling them ‘yids’, said, ok, that’s who we are. And they embraced it. It is NEVER used as an anti-Semitic term by Spurs fans. In fact its the exact opposite. It is unity between the fans. Jewish or not. ‘We’ are all ‘yids’.

And the survey asks the fans if they’re happy with this word? If they think it is inappropriate (which it kind’a, sort’a, definitely is). And also whether they should be allowed to continue using the word. Last time they asked, about 75% said they were happy for Spurs fans to continue using the word ‘yid’. That’s among both jews and non-jews.

But the problem, as always, is the question as to whether it invites or encourages anti-semitism, or apparent anti-semitism, from other fans. Which it emphatically does. Though it has to be said, way more from Chelsea and West Ham fans than virtually all others. I make no judgments about that fact, just kind’a put it out there. Not all scumbags are anti-semites.

And of course all London clubs have their Jewish followers. And it is they that really hate the ‘y-word’. David Baddeil (big Chelsea fan; well, keen fan, little bloke) and his brother have written between them about forteen volumes of Encyclopedia Britannica size just about Spurs fans and the yid word. Because football is a massively tribal thing. And Jewish Chelsea fans hate seeing their ‘tribe’ shouting apparent anti-semitic things. And not so ‘apparent’ things.

Coutinho? Dybala?? Sessingnon???

Happy Wednesday

The Yid
xxxx

As a football club Manchester United are just about as big as you can get. As successful, glamorous, rich, high profile and international as any team in the world. I’ve travelled to lots of seriously far-flung places and seen locals, not tourists, wearing the red shirt. Blind adherence to a fairly meaningless, far-distant concept embodied and personified by David Beckham and Christiano Ronaldo, back in the day. A bit of Cantona, a touch of Nobby Styles, a whisp of Bobby Charlton’s hair.

But as an economic model the club is a train wreck. The Glazers bought the club in 2003 using a ‘leveraged buy-out’. Which means they effectively used the club’s money to buy the club. Which is why the debt from that still stands on the team’s books at over half a billion quid. But who cares? It’s only money.

United have a history of ‘buying their way out of trouble’. And I suppose you have to define ‘trouble’. In this context. Which is pretty much: not winning stuff and not getting into the Champions League. And failure of all managers since Alex Ferguson took retirement.

And they saw how, to a great degree, the expensive acquisition of Virgil van Dyke, turned Liverpool from an aspirational team (reputations from the 1970s can only win you so many matches) into a serious contender and Champions of Europe. Fuck ‘em.

So there’s the answer. Buy a really expensive defender. And United did. Toby McGuire. From Leicester. £80mil. And according to Carling Opta, McGuire’s even better than Virgil. Wins more headers, makes more passes, scores goals from corners, and does ‘big things’ in a very ‘big’ way. Because he’s big. Of course, he’s an ‘old style’ centre back, so he’s as ‘fast’ as Jackie Charlton pulling a plough. But you can’t have everything. Even when you would appear to have paid for everything and a bit more.

Van Dyke is the ultimate modern day defender. Toby Alderweireild is on a par with the Dutchman. But United failed to get Alderweireild (praise the Lord) so instead paid Range Rover money for a Transit van. Which is solid, reliable… and slow.

United now want Christian Eriksen and apparently ‘are close to a deal’. Which is seriously bad news for Spurs. Because he’s our playmaker and, without Dele (injured) who has been a bit inconsistent of late anyway, we would lack that player with finesse. The purveyor of the killer through ball into the box. 60 million they reckon. But I’m fairly sure that Daniel Levy would not let the Dane go without having a replacement lined up. And its all got to be done and dusted by Thursday’s transfer window closure.

You should never sell great players to competitors. I’m sure Daniel knows that. If not I’ll remind him: “Daniel? Go tell Man United to FUCK OFFFFFFFF!!!!”

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

What’s French for ‘baguette’? I don’t know neither. Not that good at languages. Only Inglish. Fucking great at that I is. The rest? Don’t care. Don’t need ‘em. Cos really, Inglish is the only language you ever need, even when traveling the world. That and a bit of French- mime. I find that if you speak English to a foreigner and they obviously don’t speak the language, just speak it again but much louder and it’ll be fine. It’s a volume issue, not a linguistic one.

And that is actually true. That English is pretty much the only language you ever need. The only places where it becomes difficult are America and Australia, because they speak languages known only to their indigenous peoples. Airlines and flight controllers use English, The Queen uses English, I do, Lila does, kind’a, so that’s it really, the world is coming to the point where you really don’t need other languages.

Except in France. Quel surprise, non? Where they are really… really… ‘territorial’ about their language. They always have been. And yes, it is a beautiful language, never more beautiful than when flowing from the sumptuous lips of a Bardot (back then, obvs, wouldn’t listen to her tell me the time now) or a Leah Seydoux, all pout and pant. Such a beautiful language that from those lips it is something akin to aural copulation but I don’t wish to stress this too far.

The point is that the French passed a law in 1994 (they love a law over there, can never have too much bureaucracy or legislation for that nation) stating that all adverts, company names, anything vaguely ‘global’ (read: ‘English’) must have a French translation. Because words and phrases like ‘fast food’ had entered their vernacular in a most un-French way, ruining an entire generation!! Forever!!!! And now they’ve announced their new logo and phrase for the 2024 Olympics to be held in Paris and it reads: “Made for Sharing”. Which Macron, quite rightly, thought sounded like an ad for a pizza. A big one. And, like me, the little Napoleonic shit probably don’t share. So he’s annoyed that the phrase is in English as well as pretty stupid. But it has to be in English because the Olympics is International and as 98% of the world speaks English to some degree, why would it be in any other language. ‘Hon y soit qui mal y pense’ is just bollocks. ‘A la recherche du temps perdu’; good book (once translated) but you wouldn’t wanna use it as a name for the Olympics.

But the world is more and more globalised because the online bit of it, where most kids live, has no borders. Like Ireland. Currently. And is truly international and to the horror of Macron things like ‘BFF’ have entered France without a license.

Let them eat gateaux.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

It begins. After so long. The wait is over. The wilderness weeks of some golfer hitting a ball into a forest, of women’s netball, of trying to get really exited because Lewis Hamilton drove round a corner really really fast, of even being reduced to looking for cricket!!! It’s over. Today is the first day of the rest of our lives. And being thus must begin with a monumental moment to make us aware that life moves on and, more importantly, football comes back.

It’s the charity shield, the community shield, whatever they all the traditional season opener in which the league champions and the FA Cup winners of last year play at Wembley to remind everyone why we all hated them both so much last year. And it means that football proper starts next week. I know, the ‘football league’ started this weekend, but for Premiership snobs like me and princesses like Mezut Ozil, ‘football’ starts next weekend. Though I must admit that even though I’m a total meritocratic capitalist (bastard) believing that the Premiership warrants its totally ridiculous income, pay and obscene monetary structure, because its what people pay to watch, it would be worth remembering that the league is in fact related quite closely to it. And the sad and sorry fact is that the league is becoming unsustainable due to lack of income, lack of funding. Basically, one month’s salary of any Manchester City would keep Bolton Wanderers afloat for 3 years. And dat ain’t right. Just not sure what I can do about it, influential and powerful as I obviously am.

Fortunately, Spurs have already put some silverware in their cabinet in the shape of the Audi Cup. Which celebrates emissions figures that don’t add up, cheating generally and four-wheel drive. Football doesn’t get any better than that.

Meanwhile, over in El Paso, Texas, there’s been another ‘mass shooting’. That fine nation’s 246th such event of the year. Putting it, apparently, about 244 ahead of all other competitors. For which it must be really proud. However, I must stress, that these almost meaningless figures say NOTHING about gun control, ease of ownership, the ease with which psychopaths can buy machine guns, bullets or anything else to do with guns. Which are the inalienable right of every nutty fucking killer to own. I just want to stress that in case Donald Trump’s reading this. Or any other totally blinkered moron.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx