Andy's Glasses

I call this picture: New Zealander And Wife. Over here it probably has a different name. I didn’t say mine too loudly. Not because its offensive but because sleeping with sheep is against the laws of the Bible and that is one of my favourite works of fiction, just after The World According to Garp and The Shining.

I’ve found the sheep. You can stop fretting as to their whereabouts. I found all of them. Must have driven past 13 million of the fuckers today and I’m definitely having lamb for dinner. Which, for any vegans reading this (yeah; that’s gonna happen), I can do with clear conscience and a total lack of guilt. Because I have a God-given ‘disconnect’ which protects me from any form of hypocrisy. Exemplified today when I pointed out in the car a ‘baby sheep’. To which I was quite rightly corrected (fucking pedantics) that it was a ‘lamb’. And I realised that the ‘baby sheep’ which are sweet, gorgeous and cuter than cute, I would cuddle and stroke and ‘ahhhhh’ all day long. A ‘lamb’ is another story. One normally written on menus. Same as veals. I’ve never seen one in the wild hence its no problem. Baby cows are itsy bitsy cutesy things, bit like baby sheeps but need horseradish.

New Zealand is quite wonderful. The South bit anyway, can’t speak for the rest, got no idea. But you drive south and it becomes very alpine. Typical mountains, lovely lakes, gorgeous trees. Could be Canada, could be Scotland, could be mid-Europe. Then you travel further down and it starts to look a bit different, but still geographically/geologically quite familiar. By the time you reach Te Anau, as we did today; ‘the gateway to Fiordland’, you must be in New Zealand because it no longer looks anything like anywhere you’ve ever seen. Te Anau is a Mauri name meaning ‘gorgeous lake in the middle of fucking nowhere’, or something like that. There is ‘the official legend’ but mine’s much shorter, more concise.

And we’re here because tomorrow morning we board a boat. And stay on it for 28 hours. On lake Manapouri (‘gorgeous lake in the middle of fucking nowhere), cruising round like… probably like Sid James in Carry On Cruising. Only there just 12 passengers on this boat. It’s a little boat. So you may not hear from me in a while. If ever!!!!

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

I’m concerned. What is New Zealand famous for? What is here in greater number than people? What is it that provides the ‘comfort’ for so many solitary, distant farmers? And what tastes really nice with mint sauce and new potatoes?

Of course; sheep. And yet all you see is cows. Not in groups of a dozen like we see them at home, but massive herds of hundreds and hundreds. Then you see a few sheep, couple of dozen, then another 20,000 cows.

Is this an ecological problem? Is the balance of numerical power shifting from the sheepish to the bovine? Are these new, possibly ‘supercows’ eating all the sheep? I’d really want to taste that steak but have my doubts about that particular theory.

Then I learned that it may be to do with the sheep occupying the high ground. Not that they fear invasion, like the Normans, but that they keep the sheep in the mountains so that their wool becomes longer, thicker, stronger. Like the Merino sheep. Nothing to do with Jose, I learned, even though he’s pretty thick-skinned himself. But the sheep who make famous sweaters live high up where temperatures reach -25 in the winter.

I learned this in a place called Tarras. On the 247km trek from Mount Cook to Queenstown. The scenery is simply sublime. It’s like a Christian Eriksen pass that lasts for 4 hours. Quite magnificent. But the ‘towns’ aren’t really towns as such. They’re just like a petrol station, a bar/restaurant a coffee shop and a store that sells Merino Wool stuff at 200 quid a scarf. It’s not like driving through Sheffield. It’s more like driving through a motorway service station that’s really cute and pretty and nice. Unlike any motorway service station ever. And this one announced sheep-shearing events and ram-shackling and all sorts of local, Kiwi-type shit that no-one in the world understands. Nor cares about really but that makes it all the sweeter.

When you arrive in Queenstown it looks like the pic. And is bigger than the above mentioned, kind’a ‘1 horse town’. This is at least a 2-sheep town. But with better restaurants.

Loving it here. The more souther-er… you go, the more better-er… it gets. Amazing place.

Baaaah

A xxxx

Just because.

A xxxx

So you go to the top of the walkway at Mount Cook, or the tulip gardens of Amsterdam, or the Eiffel Tower, Machu Pichu, the Great Barrier Reef, even Trafalgar Square, and what do you find? You find the universal curse of worldwide tourism: The Japanese! In droves, all following their team leader, who carries a Rising Sun flag on top of a stick. And shouts at them constantly, really loudly, quite aggressively. Sounds like he’s calling them to war against an ancient foe, in reality he’s describing the cross-pollination of mountain daisies.

And wherever you stop to take a photo, three of them step in front of you. You think you’re alone for a minute because you can hear the bellow of the tour guide 20 metres below you, but 7 escape to fuck up your shot.

They are the terrorists of tourism. And now they dress like jihadis too. It must be a cultural thing but wearing a breathing mask in Tokyo’s polluted atmosphere is one thing. Wearing one on top of a mountain in deepest New Zealand is really something else. Something different. Something much more stupid. When you accompany that mask with a full-face covering, headscarf AND hat so that all you can see is their sunglasses, you have the full jihadi look.

Not that I have anything against Japanese, honest to goodness, but when they travel they morph into a multi-peopled single organism that is extremely harmful to your health. They get stuck in yer fucking teeth.

But even that couldn’t dispel the feeling of wonderful bonhomie I felt to all mankind this morning after Spurs latest, greatest win over Bournemouth yesterday. 5-nil. I mean… I mean… its just…

11 goals scored in four days. Southampton had to wait… I don’t think they’ve scored 11 yet this season, but who cares about them. And although I have a soft spot for Bournemouth, and may yet be forced to develop a full-blown crush on Eddie Howe, it was wonderful to beat them. Incredibly Man City lost (AGAIAIAIAINNNN!!!) and thus we jumped over them into second place.

OMG.

I mean mountains and lakes and the most beautiful places on the planet are one thing, but THIS IS FOOTBALL!!! THIS IS TOTTENHAM!!!!!

Happy Thursday… I think

A xxxx

We left Christchurch. We’d been there 10 hours and, even though 8 of those were sleeping, we’d seen everything. Not that its not lovely. Just small. Quaint. And we set off into the great unknown. Into the very heart of New Zealand’s South Island. We were entering… The Hobit!

Here’s the rules. Speed limits are 100kph on highways, which are all two lane. One in each direction And 50kph in town. I can walk faster than that. So it feels. And if you go more than 4kph faster than the limit, you go to jail for 10 years. Get fined 20,000 whatever the local currency is. They take speeding very seriously in NZ. A sure sign that no much crime happens here. Australia too, where you’d imagine far more crimes taking place, they have a thing about speed limits too.

We drove to Lake Tekapo. Big. Wet. Surrounded by mountains. Quite beautiful. So beautiful we left and went to the next one. Lake Pukaki. Even bigger. Wetter. More beautiful. They’re glacial lakes and thus, filled with glacial silica, show as turquoise in the sunshine. Which is impressive. If Paul Pogba is worth 300 grand a week, what would you pay for a lake that shines turquoise when the sun shines?

Then an oddity. The traffic stopped. But like totally. Unmoving. And its really not the kind of place you can just ‘turn round and pick up the B.839 via Droitwich’ instead. No. This is one road country. The traffic stops; you wait. Then a police car comes along and stops at every car to explain and ask for your continued patience.

Like you have any FUCKING CHOICE!!. And I really really DON’T HAVE ANY PATIENCE!!! But I just said ‘thank you, officer, can I clean your windshield for you, Sir?’
and left it at that.

There was a bush fire. Or a burning bush. Like Moses but without the God bit. Fortunately it rains quite a bit here so the extent was limited. And I’m sitting here as I write this (not driving, obvs) coming into our second hour. Though it has started moving very slowly past the problem.

We’ll be at Mount Cook soon. Ish.

Happy Wednesday (or whatever)

A xxxx

PS We’ve arrived and this place is amazing, spectacular and stunningly beautiful. Well worth… everything.

Another day another country. We’re in Christchurch, New Zealand. Which is, geographically speaking, 11,800 miles away from Lila. But sometimes you have to make sacrifices. It’s just 3 hours from Sydney and you’d have to say that it is ‘quaint’. A double edged adjective implying sweet and small and charming, which it most certainly is, but also reminiscent of how towns (probably a city; it does have what the 2011 earthquake left of its cathedral) used to be. ‘Back in the day’. Before… before all the modern stuff took over. Though being Christmas Day you have to give it some slack in that there was probably not one native on the streets today.

They’re all eating too much and drinking even more to celebrate the birth of baby Jesus. Even though Jesus wasn’t a Kiwi at all. Wasn’t even English, which will come as a shock to some. He was from Palestine. Bethlehem, to be precise. And they founded a religion based on a baby born in a barn to a woman who was a virgin. I make no comments. Not my place. The first and last ‘virgin birth’. But its true. John Wayne said it at the end of ‘the Greatest Story ever told’. He said: “Shurely this is the son of Gaad”. In that very John Wayney “the hell I will” drawl. Took him 10 minutes to say it.

Tomorrow morning we head off to Mount Cook. I’m guessing it a mountain. On the other side of the South Island. I’ve seen mountains before, but never that one. So I’m rather excited at the prospect. And I have to drive slowly. Like in Australia, they have an almost ‘zero tolerance’ on speeding. So even though speeding is one of my favourite hobbies, I’ll reign it in. Particularly as the roads where we’re going are not exactly ‘big’. The mountains will be but not the roads.

But heh, I’m in the home of the All Blacks so I kind of ‘need’ to do the Haka. Do I do one when I fill up the car with petrol? In a cafe?? Not sure what the protocols are but I’m keen to remain culturally sensitive. Whilst effectively performing a war-dance to a waiter bringing me m lunch.

Happy Christmas Everybody

A xxxx

So the deal was, we play tennis at 9 this morning. That’s me, the Woolf Man, Me Mate Dave and Bulawayo Boy (aka: the father of the bride). We got back from the wedding at about 1 o’clock last night, Bulawayo Boy, much later, but them’s the breaks.

So from Bondi to the Woolara Tennis Club; how far can it be? Phah, 3k, I’ll take a hotel bike. They’re a bit ‘Mary Poppins’ but I can take the flak from Aussie van drivers who still live in fucking caves, never mind any kind of ‘non-binary’, anti-presumption social environment. And thus I pedalled up the road, gorgeous morning, even wearing a helmet (its a law here so they give you one), whistling with the joys of loveliness. Then I hit Old South Head Road and turned left. Up a fucking mountain.

Google maps doesn’t do topography. Doesn’t do ‘relief’ maps. And up this hill there was no relief. Just a sheer rockface paved for cars. And bikes. Yes, I had to get off and push at one (several really) point but after getting just a bit lost, I arrived.

Unfortunately, after the tennis which was fun (I never usually play doubles; more people to abuse) and coffee, I got back on the bike only to realise that someone must have turned the mountains around whilst we were playing. Because it seemed to be uphill all the way home as well.

Note to self: NEVER bike in Bondi. It is quite literally uphill all the way.

But who cares. As I stirred to awkedness first thing, my phone kept pinging. I checked. 63 messages. Holy shit. Because Spurs had played Everton whilst I slept. And from. 1-0 down (all doom and gloom on the chat) it went to 1-1, 1-2, 1-3, 1-4… all the way to 2-6. A truly massive win for my absolute heroes. Totally emphatic. Putting us within 2 points of flagging Man City and just a bit further from Liverpool. Filling me with that belief which, I’ll admit, normally brings immense disappointment and shattered dreams, but this year; I BELIEVE!

Eriksen’s goal; a modern day wonder. Son’s second; his first touch so breathtakingly exquisite that apparently when Lionel Messi saw it he said “I wish I could do that”, but in Spanish.

Happy days

A xxx

Now look, there’s only so much credit I can take for this, but having come ‘down under’ I seem to have, personally and uniquely and all by myself-ly, turned the entire footballing world upside down. I awoke this morning (local time; everywhere else; who fucking knows) and before even checking Mel’s pulse, reached for the football scores from yesterday (all terms of a temporal nature strictly relative). And I couldn’t have been more shocked if I’d found a MP had been telling the truth about Brexit. The scores were simply weird. Unaccountable. Upside Down. At which point I decided to take all the responsibility myself. Being the upside down factor in all this.

Manchester United won a game!!! They played for 90 minutes and came off with smiles on their faces??? That must be the first time since Bobby Charlton was sweeping his comb-over across his head in goal celebration. Get this: PAUL POGBA WAS MAN OF THE MATCH!!!! Jesus, I’d forgotten the he played for Man United and then Morinho goes (just coincidence) and they win 5-1 at Cardiff. Ok, its Cardiff. What d’ya expect? But Man United under Jose would not have done that.

Arsenal won a game!!!! What a day it was turning out to be with all these habitual losers and groups of overpaid tossers actually winning games. Remember Ozil? Who demanded, in his last contract negotiations, ‘parity with Pogba’ for 300k a week. Well the ‘parity’ thing, probably in the small print, must also have said ‘minor role in a walk-on part every third game, (non-physical teams only)’. Apparently played like a fucking demon. Albeit a wimpy kind of demon.

But then the big ones. The ‘major upsets!!!’ Chelsea lost at home (always a fantastic sentence to be able to write, better still if the ‘Spurs’ word is included) to Leicester. The ‘high flying’ Blues lost to the other, more kind’a ‘drone-like’ blues and that is good for mankind as well as football.

And the best til last: Manchester City lost a game. At home! To… Crystal Palace!!! I mean, in what world? How could it? Is the planet off its axis?? Andros Townsend scores the goal of the century (and will now do absolutely NOTHING for the next 7 games, its in his contract) and Fortress Etihad crumbles to the South London invaders. Which is as poetic as it is lovely.

And resurgent West Ham, sort of stopped resurging to allow Watford (everyone loves Watford, right?) to beat them at the London/Olympic/Disaster/Rip-off Stadium.

Tragically Liverpool had won on Friday night (I think) to top the league with a bit of a buffer. But Spurs play today (or tomorrow, possibly yesterday) in what has become a 17-pointer. For Spurs fans at least. And who else counts?

Happy Sunday (possibly)

A xxx

I must admit that I find it rather hard to believe that a few tossers with ‘drones’ have brought Gatwick Airport to a complete standstill. Though I find it quite reassuring to read that ‘police are looking for flying object in the sky’. At least they’re in the right ball park. Though they’re not sure if its one drone or many, whether its some random dickhead with a new toy, totally oblivious that his activities have so far ruined the Christmases of 115,000 people, or if its some bizarre statement by ‘eco-warriors’ intent on causing havoc in a place so blatantly guilty of ‘eco-crimes’. Like ‘flying in aeroplanes’. A terrible thing to do (he says from Bondi Beach) to our planet!

This is what you do. You shoot the things out of the sky. We have systems that can detect a single mosquito anywhere in the greater Harlow area, we have anti-missile mechanisms that can ‘take out’ a suspect ‘thing’ anywhere in the skies. A kid with an iPad could probably find seventeen ways to disrupt a drone’s signal and see it plummet to the ground. But instead, we send out two dozen policemen to ‘find one in the sky’. Presumably, once seen they would immediately… errrr… fly up to arrest it? Superman would. Or throw their truncheons at it? If you’re not the solution, then you’re part of the problem. Sometimes you just need fucking violence.

The oddest thing of all: last night I went to the synagogue. To put that in perspective: I never go to the synagogue. I never said I was a good Jew, I said I was a good Spurs fan. Slightly different. But last night, due to the upcoming nuptial event, synagogue was on the events list so I had no choice. But it was Australian synagogue, so not like a real one. It was nice, it was really friendly, it only lasted half an hour (JUST within my tolerance threshold), no-one cared if you spent your time talking with old friends rather than pretending to pray, and the rabbi insisted I drink a whisky with him before we started. And he’d already had a good head start on me. My kind’a rabbi. Numb the pain.

So its nine in the morning, I’ve been up forever, I’ve swum as many lengths as the shoulder would allow and its not too hot. Are you jealous? That I’m worried about being too hot dressed in shorts and flip-flops?? Good. Job done then.

Happy Saturday, as we call Friday night over here

A xxxx

I might be in Australia but I’m a Brit. Therefore am at liberty to discuss the weather at any opportunity. And its an odd thing here. ‘Here’ being wherever I am at the time. Which was the Hunter Valley for the last 2 days and now its Sydney, to where I’ve returned.

We’ve had a lot of rain, good for the grapes I’m sure, not so good for the tourists. But it was mainly at night. And its been cloudy, which is dull but ok. But yesterday we had some sun. Like, real, blue sky, cloudless, Southern Hemisphere summer sun. It was 37 degrees of Celsiusness and felt like 50. So we did what any sensible cold-climateers would and took some bikes out to explore the wineries. There’s no shade. No escape, just this sheer, intense heat. Quite like nothing I’ve experienced before, and I’ve done my share of ‘hot’. Maybe its the lack of Ozone layer, maybe its… just Aussie contrariness, I don’t know. But fuck me it was hot. But we survived it with various rests, just to get out of the heat on what was not a particularly taxing ride.

And we drank wine. Lovely wine. Shitty wine. Who cares? Whatever they put in front of you, you drink. Be rude not to.

Now we’re at Bondi. I like Bondi, its a cool place. Feels warm and muggy, because its in Australia, but its ‘cool’.

Unlike Jeremy Corbyn. Backing another lost fucking cause. Seen here with his ‘mates’ at the Emirates the other night. Enjoying watching the footballing wonders that are the Tottenham Hotspurs as they eliminated his own sad team from the Caribou Cup. Yes I do know what a Caribou is but not in that context.

So Jose’s gone from Old Trafford, no big surprise there. And the talk is not merely that United want Pochettino, but in today’s Times (yes, I get it way before you’re even awake) there talking about what Pochettino ‘will’ do once he ‘is’ at United. Nothing presumptuous there then. So to all Manchester United fans, to all greedy, cash-stripping Glazers, to anyone called Woodward, I have a message for you.

KEEP YOUR FUCKING HANDS AND YOUR HORRIBLY LAUNDERED CASH AWAY FROM OUR MANAGER. HE’S MUCH TOO GOOD FOR YOUR SAD AND SORRY ORGANISATION AND IF YOU MAKE ANY OFFERS I WILL KILL YOU ALL.

I don’t think that’s unreasonable.

Happy hot, sunny, cold, rainy, grey, blue, searingly intense Friday.

A xxxx