Andy's Glasses

So mum and Kev are fine, but still in hospital. Having found (2 days it took) that he doesn’t have an infection, which they suspected, the poor fella is in fact a little jaundiced, as are loads of babies, so they’re keeping him (and mum, obvs) there longer to check. Which is not pleasing mum much cos she misses Lila, but Kev really doesn’t seem that bothered at all about it. Boys! So we borrowed Lila for the day yesterday.

And we went to a Garden Centre. To address the terrible problem of ‘box hedge caterpillars’. A blight on the entire landscape of fancy-schmancy London garden designs. Because everyone put in little ‘box hedges’ a few years back, it was almost compulsory, and this year they’re all being, quite literally, eaten alive by farkin’ caterpillars. They’re moth caterpillars, rather than butterfly ones. Which you can easily tell because… the gardener told me. Which makes the prospect of instigating their collective deaths a little more palatable. Not that I want to eat them. Though people do.

The Garden Centre is a massive one. With lots and lots of garden ‘toys’ and ornaments and… shit. And Lila loved it, running around playing with all this fantastically bright and lovely stuff. But not once did she ask for anything. To keep. To take home. She played with it, ok, sometimes she destroyed it, but she put it back and moved on. I was impressed. When I was a kid I wanted everything and made loads of noise when told that I couldn’t keep the extendable, 25 horse-power hedge trimmer, or the set of 12 carving knives for just £19.99!!! that they were judged by adults to be ‘inappropriate for a 2 year old’. But Lila was content to look, certainly touch, but then put the insecticide bottles and garden shears back from where she’d taken them. I was impressed.

But then, by the check-out, there were a few ‘items’. And Lila picked up a little cylinder of transparent plastic (we all love plastic in our family) filled with ‘flying saucer’ sweets. Those disgusting rice-paper shells filled with ‘sherbet’ (sugar), which we all loved as kids (and some of us still do). But Lila has never seen one. No idea what they are. Yet she ‘knew’. She held it up to me and said ‘want dat’. WELL YOU AIN’T GETTIN ‘DAT’!! I decided in an uncharacteristic moment of good-grand parenting sensibility. Though mainly because her mother would have killed me. I did have a momentary vision of a lovely ‘bonding moment’ with me and my babe at the kitchen table working our way systematically through the entire tub… but NO!!! I can be the tough sensible one at times, ya know. Just not very often. But how did Lila ‘know’?

Saw Rocketman last night, the Elton John biopic. Amazing. Truly outstanding production done in a fantastically different way. Quite brilliant. Even stayed awake all the way through. Which, after a day of Lila mania, is something.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

Why is my brother in a fish tank? Lila possibly would have asked. And its a good question. I think they put them in those as a quick trip down evolutionary lane, to show the young (can’t really get too much younger) Kev, where it all began for humanity. When fishes first walked… errrr… flapped… anyway, when they came onto the land so that just around a billion years later, humans would walk the planet. Or, in Kev’s case, lie the planet for a while, til he finds his feet. And I’m sure both Lila and Kev, being exceptionally bright and gifted, took this onboard totally.

But the world Kevin has entered is one in turmoil. In the Euro elections, (we have not a care what happened in Germany, France or the fucking Netherlands), Nigel Farage won. For a ‘political party’ that only came about approximately 2 weeks ago, claiming a landslide in an election is a pretty good, if predictable, start. But its not really a ‘political party’ in the usual sense. It’s just a ‘political statement’ about one, solitary, horrible issue. That of Brexit. That’s its sole purpose. And I kind of admire the honesty which I always felt UKIP lacked. UKIP pretended to be a ‘real party’ even though they only initially had ten members and nine of them were borrowed from the National Front. UKIP made noises about ‘the NHS’ and ‘policing’ and ‘schools’ but really with no conviction. They were about LEAVING EUROPE. And pretty much nothing else. And once they vanished up their own white robes with pointed hoods, Brexit has taken over. One message and one message only GET THE F*** OUT OF EUROPE AND NOW!!

Initially you might think that the nation has gone ‘heavily Brexit’, just by looking at the outstanding victory for the Brexit party and the massive losses for the ‘big 2’. I mean not one conservative MEP from London, not one. But I think the national divide is still 50/50 but the remainers didn’t bother to vote. And because Brexiteers always make more noise. On the radio shows the Europhiles are quietly spoken and rational whereas the leave supporters are more ‘DEY FUCKIN LIED TO US; WE VOTED AAAARRRRTT AND WE WAN AAAARRRRTT!!!’ kind’a thing. I make no judgments nor stereotypes. Ish.

Kev will also come into a footballing world riven by aggro. On the day after the head of the Spanish league accused the Gulf states of ruining football with their excessive spending, in particular Manchester City, which is effectively owned by Abu Dhabi, and Paris St German, which is owned by the State of Qatar, that well known seat of a great love for football and a greater love for money and corruption. And terrorism. Better stop now. On the very next day Mike Ashley signs over Newcastle United to a billionaire from Dubai. As the ink dried offers went out for Messi, Hazard, Harry Kane and seventeen others.

Happy day 3, Kev

A xxxx

This is Kevin.

Ok, he won’t actually be known as Kevin, probably, that was just the kind of ‘working name’ I gave him when I learned he was due and due to be a boy. I didn’t want to know his gender, but lacked the ability to ‘unknow’ it once I learned. Logically its ‘a surprise’ whenever you learn the gender of the unborn child (notice the use of ‘child’ here in deference to the state of Alabama) but always seemed to me to be a surprise after the birth. But times change. Like, I used to be a carefree handsome young stud (ok, a thug) and now I am a grandparent of 2. Anyway, the Kevin thing was handy in that it stopped us referring to him as ‘da baby’ or ‘da unborn’ or ‘da thing’ or whatever vague and generic terms one usually uses in such delightful situations. Kev. The picture that paints a thousand nappies. Just not sure its as good a picture as the one above.

Important things first. Kevin’s first Spurs match will be the Champions League Final. As daughter said yesterday: ‘he has to know this is NOT normal’. He has time to learn that. Time to suffer. For now let’s just keep him warm and fed and comfortable and happy. Even though he’s not aware what ‘happy’ means. Because I was telling him some really funny things last night and he barely smiled. Perhaps mocking Arsenal’s upcoming trip to Azerbaijan is a bit subtle for someone 3 hours old. I’ll try again today.

Kev refused to start the birth process until Theresa May made her resignation official. Then ‘our’ waters broke, in celebration. Like everyone else in the country he also holds her ‘exit plan’ in complete contempt. And although he decided to be born in the limbo-land of not really having a Prime Minister, at least he can ‘enjoy’ the process of selecting a new one. From the merry band of tossers, self-servers, free-loaders, Europhobes, Europhiles and egomaniacs. Oh, and Michael Gove. Who, in my mind fits into none of the above categories. But who probably will lose out to arch-nemesis BoJo.

So that’s the excitement of the day. A new baby. A new thing to be obsessed about. A new toy. Which is pretty much how Lila will view her new brother too, for a while. Which, having seen what she does to some of her old toys, doesn’t bode too well for Kev at the moment. But he’s a little superstar.

Deliriously happy Sunday

A xxxx

You know when you read something and you think: “no”. Then you think: NO!. Then you think: “are you fucking radio rental???” Well such an experience befell me yesterday when I got bored with Theresa May’s tearful farewell to the nation. Which she loves. So much that she has single-handedly managed to fuck it up almost beyond salvation. But that’s for another time.

I read that Heathrow airport is going to impose its own ULEZ. Ultra Low Emission Zone, like they’re having in London soon. They will levy a charge, probably 15 quid, on every car that delivers a person to a flight, unless the car is electric or exempt from ULEZ criteria.

And they’re doing this because ‘of the terrible air quality in the area’. And NOT, I repeat NOT, just because they have the power to make ever such a lot of extra money for absolutely nothing whilst standing on the ‘environmental protection’ pedestal which will protect them from any possible accusations of profiteering. ‘We need to clean up the air, so we’ll tax cars with poor emission quality and save the planet’. Holier than fucking God, that is.

Heathrow must now be run by Americans. From Kansas. Because no-one else in the world could miss the tragic irony of charging a 2017 diesel Golf for emissions whilst, in the same time period, release 17 FUCKING MASSIVE, JET-PROPELLED AIRCRAFT into the atmosphere.

Loosely speaking (as opposed to… something much more accurate and exact) a plane emits approximately 10,000 times the emissions of a car. Especially during take-off. So the moralistic, green argument is in line with a great fat bastard ordering the most supersized meal McDonalds can produce, adding an extra-family sized pepperoni pizza from Dominos and saying that for his diet he’s gonna leave the crusts. Well, leave one crust.

It’s pathetic. I don’t ride high on the whole cleaner planet thing, unlike my mate who won’t play tennis if any one of his 3 air quality widgets tells him that purity has been compromised. For me, I don’t care. Should do but it falls into the ‘what can ya do?’ category so far outside my control that it might as well be my bladder. But if Heathrow want to impose a restrictive, nasty, evil, fascistic ‘bastard-tax’ on normal folks just ‘because they can’ then fuck ‘em. And the plane they rode in on. I’m not going to fly from there… for this week, possibly the next one as well.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

People always say to me: ‘how do you find the time to write a blog?’, along with ‘why do you bother?’ and ‘how much time have you spent in prison/rehab/offenders units?’

And the answer to the first question is; I make time. Cos it don’t take that long. Once I’ve ‘engaged’ in a topic, which normally happens somewhere between a bottle of shower gel and a banana, the words are just eager to fly forth, from my brain to my fingertips, in a whirl, a whizz a… something else very quick beginning with a ‘w’. Maybe a ‘wankel rotary engine’. Anyway. The words have to be liberated into the world because they are generally too toxic to keep in my head and may lead to injury. So I blog for health & safety reasons. How long does it take? Sometimes 20 min, maximum half an hour. Then I’m done and at work.

And today I had to be in early. Which happens. And I might still have had time before leaving for the big City but…

But Lila had us up at 4.20 yesterday morning. Not, like, woke up for a bit, or even, disturbed our sleep, but was up, up UP! At 4.20. For the day. So this morning I just couldn’t drag myself out of bed for any kind of ‘early start’. Just weren’t gonna happen.

By the time I was up Theresa May had announced the date of her retirement party if not the actual venue. June 7th. Lila’s mum’s birthday. PM’s gone. And I’d like to apply for the job. Qualifications? Jesus, we’re talking about Boris fucking Johnson for the job and you’re asking ME about qualifications??? I’m alive, I’m a person and not a stupid blond tosser. That qualified enough for you? And I’d be a good PM; a bit of a remainer, like the last one, but no stiletto heels. I’d sort out Europe, particularly the Champions League bit, and I’d get up early when Lila stays. I also have no objections to driving round in a very powerful Jag, spewing out pollution and emissions, accompanied by a fleet of ‘security’ in Range Rovers who are (environmentally) much worse. That would bother many. Not me.

Anyway, my daughter’s in Labour (the child-birthing version, definitely not the political party) so I better go and get involved. With something.

Very happy Friday

A xxxx

Theresa May is ‘dead’. Career-wise, political-wise, credibility-wise and basically, not very wise. Because if she was she wouldn’t have taken the job in the first place. Her brief, bequeathed to her by the squirming coward David Cameron, was to ‘take the nation out of Europe in accordance with their referendum wishes’. He was a tosser (possibly still is; he’s been pretty quiet for fear of milkshakes which he deserves even more than Farage) and she was seduced by the ‘power’ that in reality she was never likely to enjoy. And with half the public (let’s not bicker over 2%) wanting in and half out, with a majority of politicians wanting ‘in’ rather than the promised ‘out’, let’s just say: the simplicity of the job had certain constraints.

And now, having lost 35 ministers who’ve retired during her brief tenure, she yesterday lost the 36th. Generals have lost wars with a greater casualty toll than that, but prime ministers generally can’t. The few remaining cabinet members she can call upon have now virtually all refused to back her ‘plan’. The same plan that’s been rejected on 3 previous occasions. Because its a shit plan and always was. Tweaking it just shifts it temporarily along the in/out line of acceptability but in doing so just upsets a different group of parliamentarians.

I now feel that I want to go to the polling station. Take Lila. She’s never been before. She can have a go. She can have my ballot. I don’t really need it. And I can’t think how amusing it would be to take a photo of the daughter of Mr & Mrs Tory randomly scribbling a cross in the ‘Labour’ box. Though in this instance it matters not a jot. Farage will probably win. Creating an ironic stupidity of electing people to the European parliament, however temporarily, whose aim is to lose their jobs. But half (or thereabouts) of the ‘general public’ will vote for anything with the word ‘Brexit’ in it. Even staunch remainers like me are now prepared to do ‘anything to make it go away’.

Doomsday scenario: Boris wins the leadership contest after Theresa bows out (and he will, there’s virtually no doubt once you’ve looked at the charisma-free zone that are his opponents) and will have to scrap ‘the deal’ as it stands. The ‘only one’ the Europeans can ever consider. And then start again. Or just take us out ‘deal-less’. And THEN start again.

The Brexit deal is dead; long live the Brexit deal. God help us all.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

The new Tarantino movie, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, now previewing at Cannes, excites me. Apparently it is ‘brilliant’ and 5 ****** and all the usual stuff from the critics which generally means f-all once you’re sitting there with your popcorn. But in Tarantino, we believe.

The Champions League final excites me greatly. An incredible achievement to get to such a place, considering the ride to get there. ‘Bumpy’ barely covers the group stages. I won’t be there in Madrid, alas, I’ll either be with Lila, Lila and her new brother or Lila and her by then exceptionally pregnant mother, phone in hand, ambulance on speed-dial. And best of all; we’re underdogs. Like we were against Manchester City, Ajax and as we certainly were last Xmas with just 1 point from 3 games. Who knows? But we can dream, and we have to believe. I’ve spoken to Spurs fans from London who are flying to Valencia, Barcelona, Porto, Amsterdam and then getting trains/flights/buses to Madrid due to the m*th*f*ckers at EasyJet hiking the fare to the Spanish capital to 1500 quid as soon as Moura scored his last goal at Ajax. Stelios must be a Gooner, I reckon. Never flying with them again.

But tomorrow’s European elections don’t excite me at all. The best of all indicators of all that is bad with Europe. The rules say we have to have elections and that’s that. No give, no considerations, no possibility of a postponement, no slack for the fact that we may? we will?? we probably will not even be in Europe this time next week/month/year. No, we’re still in so we HAVE to elect representatives. And who wants to be elected to that? A job that may end in days/weeks… but certainly end in tears. All for just 148k a year plus about 3 million quid in ‘expenses’ and ‘benefits’, 2 ‘secretaries’, both former lingerie models from Lichtenstein, a house, car, driver, cook, personal trainer and masseuse. Who wants that for 3 months? Phah. So we have to waste all the time and effort and money in having an election.

And for the first time in my adult (loosely speaking) life, I don’t think I can be bothered to vote. I know, its some kind of ‘protest’, some type of ‘statement’, some show of disaffection for the government or hatred for Brexit or support for money-laundering, milkshake-absorbing Farage, or some such nonsense but its all bollocks and I’m not playing. If Corbyn’s not directly involved then I just don’t need to worry nor care.

Happy voting day

A xxxx

Just reading an article about poetry and verse
And how the words in order to rhyme you must nurse
Into shapes and patterns sometimes less than the norm
In order that your poetry indeed should take form.

It’s not all about rhyming, that’s for sure
Rhymes like wot I write are just a little cure
For the injustices of life, the injustices in football
And I make them rhyme because that is my call.

But poetry is not all about the phonics
It should transcend such things and reach histrionics
It’s about flow and rhythm and unbridled outpour
Giving your inner feelings and oh, so much more.

The passion, the emotions, the agony, the pain
Should sit there bold upon the paper’s plane!!!

And then I thought again and… and… naaaaah
It’s all a load of bollocks I thought of in the car.

I get emotions and agony and pain going to Spurs
Don’t need to read someone else’s second-hand verse
Inspired, doubtless, by the veins on the leaf of a cedar tree
Or the petals of a rose; that really ain’t me

I’ve never bought a poetry book, not in my life
Not even on Valentines as a gift for the wife
I like to read stories with beginning, middle and end
Not the random thoughts of some trans-gender architect going round the bend.

So even as I stare out at my rhododendron bush
In bloom as every year, in something of a rush
I don’t feel inner inspiration flowing up my sleeves,
Just minor despair at later clearing up the fucking leaves.

Poetry indeed does have its rightful place
On the shelves of a library, in its proper allocated space
So I can walk round it on the way to the section for ‘literary trash’
Someone else’s emotional masturbation might leave me with a rash.

As far as I’m concerned a poem should always rhyme
Otherwise you wouldn’t know it was a poem, half the bloody time
Heart-felt this and depths of the soul that
Anyone writing poetry must be a bit of a twat.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

I think its time for Gareth Bale to come ‘home’. Back to the club that created him. Ok, he was born in Wales, started as a kid at Southampton but it was at Tottenham that he changed from being a rather unfortunate left-back with a record for never having played in a winning match, to being the world’s most expensive, if not actually its best, player. Harry Redknapp did it. Waved his magic wand, shifted him a bit further upfield and the next thing he’s shaming the most elite defenders the European super clubs could find to try and tame him. But they all failed. He was, for long periods, ‘unplayable’. Which is a footballing euphemism for ‘just hack him down and take the yellow card’, because you won’t be able to stop him otherwise. He moved into a more central role, but often over to the right. So he could cut inside onto his amazing left foot. The mirror of the role Ronaldo played at Real Madrid. Hmmmmm…

Bale was fast, strong and incredibly gifted. When he picked up the ball, anywhere on the pitch, Spurs hearts beat faster. He created a frisson, a danger, that was simply wonderful to experience. Lots of players are great, but it takes a Ginola, a Hoddle, a Klinsman or a Bale to inject adrenaline straight into your eyeballs.

And after becoming pretty much the best player in Europe for a season, the rules of the game are such that Real Madrid HAVE to buy him. They’ve always got a new president, and/or a new manager, often both and although claiming poverty, can always manage to find just another 100 million Euros for the hottest prospect in the game. And thus did ‘umble young Gareth find himself in the world’s richest club environment (not counting Manchester City or PSG because they really have nothing to do with football in the proper sense… just that they win a lot…)

But rather than thrive there, our prince started developing frog-like tendencies. Ronaldo resented his presence and the fans never really took to him, even when he won them, single-handedly, four Champions League trophies.

So now, on the verge of his 30th birthday, with a manager who hates him, he sits on the bench, or in the stands, rarely gets a call and has to console himself with another 600,000 Euros going into his bank account for that, and every week. Which is a lot of consolation, I grant you.

Unless Real are prepared to sell him cheaply, which they might do, to save the salary, he will languish there as the highest paid ex-player in the game. To move, should a club be found to pay the transfer fee, he will not, and his agent certainly will not, want to take a cut in pay. And there’s maybe 4 clubs in the world that could match his 30 million a year pay packet, and none are short of world class players. And won’t pay that sort of money for basically a partial failure.

There are few people who could face the humility of sitting out the remaining three years on a contract, doing nothing, for 600 grand a week. Ok, I’d certainly be one of them, but its not on offer. OR, Gareth could decide that for his final years in the game, he could afford to take a significant pay cut (he can’t have spent it all) and actually start playing the game he loves once more. Somewhere he knows he’ll be loved and adored. Like he was last time. It’s not like he’s ‘down to his last 9 Bentleys’ or anything.

So he’s going to come back to Spurs. 50 grand a week. Free transfer. Lamella will donate his number 11 shirt for the cause.

Makes so much sense.

To me.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

I’ll confess right now: I have never watched a Eurovision anything. I fucking hate Eurovision and always have. When I were a lad it just represented the absolute worst of overly-commercialised plink-plonk Euro-bollox sounds. Whilst England was the absolute pinnacle of good music in the 60s and 70s, way above America even, the rest of Europe produced music only fit for lifts in the offices of the Society fo the Deaf. It produced chocolate box advert music, stupid music, silly music and generally music so poor that the guilty party (what we termed the producers of such sounds) had to use gimmicks in failed attempts to make it somehow more palatable. Like; if you dress up as a hedge-hog, the shit you’re singing will sound better. Obviously music has moved along considerably since then but Eurovision has always been about ‘the show’, verging on and merging with ‘the pantomime’. And unfortunately, as European ‘humour’ always lacked any subtlety or class, adding such a thing to ‘enhance’ music just made it even more pathetic.

And that is what Eurovision ‘celebrates’. But heh, if it makes people happy, let ‘em enjoy.

And enjoy they do. The whole thing, the whole razzmatazz, the whole spectacle, the whole competitive thing.

Until it arrived in Israel. Then everything changed. Not the abysmal music, nor the over-the-top show and the massive celebration of awful sounds, that went on as usual. But it was in Israel. The only country on the planet which cannot be named without some kind of qualifying adjective or accompanying political statement.

Thus the mighty BBC have been referring all week to ‘the controversial Eurovision song contest’ just because its in Tel Aviv. If it was in Damascus, where they’re still in the process of committing mass murder every day, no-one would care. If it was in Sanaa, there’d be no comment, despite the civil war causing death and immense suffering daily. Unlikely it would be in Caracas (though if Australia is part of ‘Euro’ anything, then why not Venezuela?) but if it was no-one would mention the country was in total economic collapse. But Israel cannot be mentioned, in any context whatsoever, however trivial, banal or superficial, and you can’t get beyond Eurovision to find more of those, there has to be a presumption of conflict, of outrage, of at least protest. Which no other country has to endure, regardless of the evils they perpetrate.

If people, institutions, even rock stars from Primal fucking Scream, adhere to the left-wing rhetoric against Israel and ISRAEL ONLY, it is not anti-Zionism. It is anti-semitism. If you deem Israel as ‘evil’, which they do and they’re allowed to do, the line is crossed when its the only country perceived as such.

Tossers from rock bands and Labour supporters don’t know any better. But the BBC should. It has a duty of impartiality yet flaunts it daily where Israel is concerned.

Otherwise, Happy post-Eurovision Sunday

A xxxx