Andy's Glasses

Volvo cars are to be speed capped at 112mph (180kph). Which is nothing to do with Volvo forever being the ‘dull-as-dishwater’ brand of ultra-‘safe’ Scandi motoring, but more to do with Volvo being… errrr… dull-as-dishwater and safe and… errrr…

I know about road safety. All about it. Because I did a SPEED AWARENESS COURSE last week during which I spent 4 hours being bombarded with scary but pretty meaningless statistics about driving speeds and driving safety in general. I know, f’rinstance that if I’m traveling at 30 mph it takes me, say (can’t remember the exact numbers) 50 yards to stop. But if I’m traveling at just 31 (as if) I reach that previous ‘stop point’, 50 yards away, at a speed of 8mph. Which is not good. But its true once you consider reaction time and the increased distance that takes. So every time I see someone about to step blindly into the road 50 yards away, I make sure I’m only doing 30. If they’re only 20 yards away we all have a problem. Because before I start breaking I’d need to do a lengthy calculation to work out how long, in seconds and metres, it takes to shout ‘SHIIIIIIIIITTTTT!!!!!’

I also learned, again these figures are representative rather than absolute because how many numbers can you remember after 4 hours of mind numbing, interesting though some of it was? So I learned that if you hit a person at 20mph they have a 25% chance of being killed. At 30 it goes up to about 60% and by 40mph they’re a gonner. I found that quite useful if I ever wanted to commit a murder using a moving vehicle. But precious little use otherwise. Because if someone does jump in front of a car, the driver is only driving at something like the speed of the road, be that 30, 40, whatever. Or are they suggesting that even on motorways we slow down to 20mph, ‘just in case’?

And so Volvo. Unable to respect the intelligence or common sense of their buyers, they feel they need to ‘nanny’ the world by imposing a blanket top speed on all their cars. Ok, its a speed in excess of any country’s maximum limit, other than Germany and some of their Auto-baah-baah-baahns, but still. It’s the principle. It’s the memory of when driving was fun as well as function.

I can’t remember the last time I drove above 112mph. But I’ll bet I enjoyed it. To really appreciate ‘speed awareness’, you surely have to be travelling at speed? No??

Happy slow-down Tuesday

A xxxx

I like to cook. It’s a boy thing. All the best chefs are men. We hunt, we gather, we sauté. And although I let Mel take her turn on the hob, when I’m home I do like to Fanny Craddock up and get all foody. Though I must confess, I specialise. And my obsessions are bread-and-butter puddings, because I love them, and (vegan alert: look away now) minted lamb burgers, because I love them. No point cooking stuff you hate.

And so yesterday I decided to make a heap/pile/batch of lamb burgers. So I went to the forest where the mint grows, picked an armful and waited for a lamb to walk by as I sat there sharpening my knife. OK I bought a bouquet of mint from the supermarket and 2 pound of lamb mince from the butcher. And I can’t tell you much more because its a secret recipe. So secret that I barely know it myself. Keeps it safer that way. But that’s how I found myself on a Sunday morning, tennis having been rained off, cutting the major, central veins of mint leaves out with a very big knife. A labour of love, very time consuming and labour intensive. Thinking: ‘how did it come to this?’

The secret ingredients, like onion, garlic, mint, have to get blitzed in the little Kenwood thingy. Not the big one, just the little one. And leaf veins don’t blitz. The remain… veiny and hard and upset the whole aesthetic of the mixture. No-one eating the end product, big and fat and juicy, dribbling down their chins, would ever notice the odd mint-leaf-vein. But I’d know they were there. If I was a proper chef I’d have minions to do the splicing. Gordon Ramsey would just shout: OYY!! YOU WITH A FACE LIKE A DEAD PARROT’S ARSE-HOLE, TAKE A BUNCH OF MINT AND CUT THE FUCKING VEINS OUT’A THE FUCKING LEAVES, YOU WORTHLESS PIECE OF SHIT!!! But unfortunately I lack the resources in terms of staff, and I lack the charm.

When all the mixing is complete and mixed, the egg, breadcrumbs and- NO! That’s enough. Issa secret. I form the patties. And I made 3. Then realised that from 2 pound of mince, I’d probably over-sized my burgers a bit and re-sized them to get about 8. Still big, just not supersize and humongous. They became meals rather than challenges. Though I love a challenge.

I hope to inspire a generation to appreciate the wonders of the culinary arts. It’s a start.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

Sent from my iPad

One point. We accrued one entire, sole, solitary, delicious point from a week of otherwise disastrous, disappointing and depressing football. I wish there was a ‘d’ word to say FUCK SHIT BOLLOCKS PISS but alas our simple language lacks such riches.

Yet that point is enough. Dayenu as they say in Hebrew: it is enough. Because it was a point gained against Arsenal. Not two points lost because I don’t think we were ever in that position, but to steal their win was more than sufficient to enter the realms of the spiritual, the holy, the divine interventions. Especially as Arsenal were given a last-minute penalty, which they didn’t deserve, and managed to fuck it up. Praise the Lord for his assistance in that fuckage.

Because to lose to Chelsea is horrible, is bad and has consequences because they are a mean, nasty, demonic club with no soul and evil intent. But to lose to Arsenal is even worse. I like Arsenal as a football team, they play ‘proper’. Yet that has instilled in their fans a sense of moral superiority and totally unwarranted intellectualism that most simply lack the fire-power to pull off. So whereas a Chelsea fan will kick you in the bollocks, an Arsenal fan will lecture you for 2 hours on the correct way to play football, according to the Lord Wenger, blessed be he. I’ll take the kick any day.

1 all was a great result. For Spurs fans. After that match. And I’m happy to accept our one point from the last 9. Amazing how quickly we forget those last 8 and move onwards and (hopefully) upwards.

And I may have to rethink this whole Romelu Lukaku thing. Having written him off as an industrial strength lummox with all the finesse of a combine harvester, I’m starting to finally ‘get’ him. Yes, he’s scored 4 goals in his last 2 games, all really well taken and yes, he’s automatic first choice in a rather spectacular Belgium team not short of options in all positions. But what really impressed me yesterday (other than his physique when he stupidly pulled his shirt off in goal celebration) was his run down the right wing. The Southampton defender pushed him, shoved him and finally, finding him unmoved by previous efforts, took a massive swipe at his legs. Which just bounced off the Belgium. Who kept on going seemingly oblivious to the physical abuse he had withstood. And in the days when half his teammates will go to ground at the merest contact with any hairs on their legs, imploring the referee for the assault they’ve just experienced, Lukaku shames them all.

Happy Sunday, even though its pissing down and windy as fuck out there.

A xxxx

Now this is just plain weird. The world’s number 1 bridge player, Geir Helgemo, has had sanctions against him by the Word Bridge Federation. For failing a drug test. A bridge player. Not only that but the ‘banned substances’ were in fact testosterone and a female fertility drug. Testosterone is great if you’re a weight lifter or boxer, but bridge? As for the fertility drug: firstly why would a man take that? And secondly, why is it even banned? Would either drug enhance the ability to finesse? Could they help you keep track of the cards? Even odder still is that bridge players are more drugged up than participants in any other sport. If you can call it a ‘sport’. Which makes you wonder why they drug test in the first place. More useful ‘banned substances’ for my type of ‘kitchen bridge’ would be salt (crisps, nuts), sugar (sweets, cakes) and whiskey (whiskey). But fortunately we’re not under WBF rules in my house.

Meanwhile, what’s happening in Trump-world? His love affair with Kim Jong-Un, the rather silly looking tubby little leader of North Korea, seems to be over. After ‘the deal’ went sour and Trump stated, in his wonderfully simplistic way of never saying anything of any substance, sometimes ya just gotta walk away. So they consciously uncoupled. They un-hugged. A slight difference of opinion over what constitutes ‘disarmament’. Trump uses the more common definition of divesting yourself once and forever of all militaristic nuclear potential. Kim goes for the somewhat more ‘North Korean’ version in which it means getting rid of one warhead. An old one. That didn’t really work anyway. And for that he wanted all sanctions lifted, wanted US aid, marketing support, a seat on the UN and to be made governor of South Dakota. Whilst retaining 99% of the nuclear threat to the region.

The only puzzling bit really is how they arrived at a crossroads on such completely different roads after 6 months of constant negotiation and supposed ‘agreement’.

I use this photoshot of this horrendous scoreline in the hope that I may later be able to laugh at how funny that was to become. Oh please. Please. PLEEEAAASSSSE!!!!!

… Saturday. To be decided. In the second half.

A xxxx

Why does it hurt so much? But like really hurt? For a male Spurs fan, losing at Chelsea hurts more than childbirth. More than toothache. More than having your spleen removed without anaesthetic. Because the pain doesn’t end with ‘a procedure’, it essentially starts when the procedure is finished. That moment when hope is extinguished, when joy is suppressed, when LIFE IS EFFECTIVELY OVER!!! for at least 3 or 4 days anyway.

But life is a yin and yang kind of a deal. So as Spurs were losing, we had ‘our’ baby asleep upstairs. Waiting for the official start-of-the-day which yesterday was 04.50. Holy shit. Yet as I lay there listening to her calling out in my McEnroe moment (YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS!!) I pondered how the joy of seeing that little face, all excitement and energy and enthusiasm, almost makes you forget that Spurs had lost their second game in 4 days, this time to the most evil force on the planet, Chelsea. Almost.

I’ve said it before; if you essentially align your mental and emotional well-being to a bunch of overpaid divas who are loyal first and foremost to a pay-check, and accept the capricious nature of sport as your guiding light, then you’re gonna get fucked. Royally and often. Not that I have issues with my wonderful (normally) players because I love them all. It’s just the principle of football fandom that we love our clubs f’rever; they love our club as part of their careers.

So now, from sitting pretty, just last fucking week, enjoying the squabble beneath us for ‘4th place’, we’re now embroiled in it. Part of the rabble along with Chelsea, Arsenal (God help us all) and Manchester United. Four teams fighting for 2 spaces. Unless Liverpool and Manchester City get struck down collectively by the Lord Almighty who keeps a Spurs scarf under his long white beard. But must have had something important to do on Wednesday fucking night. Makes all that ‘faith’ shit a bit dubious.

We play Arsenal tomorrow. Last Saturday morning we were 10 points clear of them in the league. Today its four. If the forces of evil should conspire against us tomorrow then it’ll be just one point. At which time even the Lila effect could be hard pressed to raise me, and 40,000 like-mindeds, out of our collective funk. And I’m not talking Earth, Wind and Fire.

But just so’s you know, I currently FUCKING HATE FOOTBALL. And by tomorrow afternoon that anger, fear, hatred will have either coalesced into acts of unspeakable violence. Or lifted my very soul to the highest of spiritual planes. Where even Buddha feared to tread. Because he was an Aston Villa fan.

Reasonably unhappy Friday

A xxxx

BMW are big in electric cars. They’re right up there with all the major players, more so than normal rivals Mercedes and Audi who are only toying with the concept currently, which may affect their standing over the next 10 years of ‘the revolution’.

And from 2021, BMW are putting ‘gaze recognition’ in all their electric cars. The (fucking) car will be able to tell what you’re looking at outside the car. Three cameras triangulate the eyes of the driver to ‘see’ where he’s looking and upon a single word command, the car will produce the menu of the restaurant the driver is eying up, the reviews, book a table, if required, probably pour the wine. The amount of which will thus be dependent on the degree of autonomy to which the car is set. More autonomy, more wine. Presumably. The command required is just ‘open!’ Like that. Spoken with an exclamation mark. Like you speak to Alexa. Otherwise da bitch don’t listen.

But what if the drivers gaze happens to be on the lovely legs of a gorgeous woman? I’m aware that such distractions can occur in weak-minded individuals. Normally men, if I can still say such a thing without the world crashing down on my head. But if a mere photo of Eva Herzigova’s wonderbra had to be banned because it caused crashes, it must be deduced that some men do look at women. #metoo.

So you’re staring at the lovely legs and you shout: OPEN! What happens next? What does your wife say? Assuming you still have one and not replaced her with a robot with naughty bits. But if you have the sex-bot, standard on the M-models, she’s probably blue-toothed to the car anyway so she knows exactly what you’re looking at before you do and so one minute you’re driving and suddenly you get a slap. And this is going to be a proper slap. Arnie in Terminator kind’a slap. Send you through the car door and smashing through the wall of the very restaurant you were looking at before the legs came into view.

And they call this ‘progress’. Phah.

Not talking about football. Ever again.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

You gotta love Jeremy Corbyn. On Monday he says how he needs to rebuild trust and relationships with the Jewish community and on Tuesday he opposes the move to ban Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation. Though as Corbyn has previously described the Iranian-backed Shi’a group as ‘his friends’, you can’t fault him for consistency. Yet it would appear that to endear yourself to Jezza, the man ‘opposed to racism of all forms’, you only need to align yourself against Israel or Jews to receive that slightly grimy, leather-elbowed, old tweedy arm wrapped around your shoulders.

Hezbollah have 3 missions. To destroy Israel, to deny the holocaust and to eliminate the world of Jews, spreading wonderful conspiracy theories that would not be out of place in The National Enquirer. In Jezza-world there’s nothing antisemitic about any of that.

Israel is depicted as this ‘apartheid state’, this bullying, tortuous, divisive hell. Even though millions of Palestinian Arabs live there happily and peacefully. The conspiracy theories are nothing new, they go way back. Blood libels, the Spanish Inquisition, anything to taint and vilify, right up to the now famous mural that Corbyn argued shouldn’t have been removed, depicting caricature Jews playing cards on the backs of ‘the poor’.

But holocaust denial gets me. Obviously on an emotional level, to a massive extent, but that aside, on a logical level. People deny the holocaust for one reason. Which is to deny the right of Israel to have been declared a state in 1948. Because if it hadn’t been for the holocaust, in all likelihood, Israel would not have been born. So if these people deny that event, it removes the justification for Israel. In the minds of the sick.

But you can’t just re-write documented history to conform to a present political agenda. You can’t deny the racism that occurred during the 19th and 20th centuries, you can’t deny apartheid in South Africa or the Slave Trade in America. Similarly you shouldn’t remove statues of Cecil Rhodes. He was a man of his time, both good and bad.

The Germans don’t deny the holocaust. And they were there. Not only were they there but they were obsessively efficient, both in the murders and in the documentation of them. It’s what Germans do. And it wasn’t just Jews that were murdered. Gays, gypsies and hundreds of thousands of disabled people. Who were German and ‘pure’ but lacked that Aryan ideal of perfection. Bit odd that the propaganda minister for Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, was himself disabled, but was exempt because… well, whatever.

So Hezbollah can hate Israel, can wish the Jews dead, that’s their right. But to deny the holocaust has always struck me as so childishly stupid (putting your hands over your eyes and shouting ‘NYEEEH NYEEEH NYEEEEH’) that it loses you all credibility.

Other than with Corbyn, who seems to attract holocaust deniers like flies round shit. Such a wonderfully appropriate parallel.

Happy Wednesday. Spurs are playing Chelsea tonight. Which is not only massive but somehow relates to all of the above.

A xxxx

We all love The Oscars. Don’t we? We all stay up all night long to enjoy the wonderful spectacle and razzmatazz, see the dresses, hear the speeches, roll around in hysterics at the compare for the night. If they can find one.

Actually, we don’t. Well I don’t. I love movies but have never found the Academy Awards worthy staying up for. To me its always been a bit irrelevant. Mainly because I have no idea what ‘The Academy’ does the rest of the year. If it does anything. And the whole, let’s face it, really American event is a touch too saccharine for this British palate.

Yet it has a power. ‘ACADEMY AWARD WINNNING…’ is a guarantee of more people seeing the film, the star, the director, the cinematographer’s 3rd assistant’s nanny, because historically its the ultimate accolade. And more people means more money. And that’s how the world goes round.

But I’m not alone in finding the whole thing a bit ‘irrelevant’. And because relevance is the Academy’s sole purpose to the entire movie industry, that is a big danger for its existence. If the potency of ‘AWARD WINNING!!!’ is reduced to ‘yeah, so what?’ then the role of the academy is reduced to nothing.

So we had the ‘too white’ years in which any actor, director or writer of any colour whatsoever was almost institutionally ignored, and now we have the reversal. Because the Academy just has to stay relevant, it can’t just pick massive and pure white blockbusters each and every year. And pick it does. Let’s face it ‘best movie’ is a rather subjective judgment, as is best anything, so it becomes a bit political.

This year Green Book won the best movie award. I didn’t see it. Because in trailers it looked a bit clicheed, a bit stereotypy, a rather predictable culture clash reversal with an urbane, sophisticated black dude and a ‘talian New York wise guy goodfella on a road trip in the still segregated South in 1963. It shows the bigotry, the hypocrisy, the stupidity of segregation and how a Northern virtual dim-wit was oblivious to it, having had no experience of such in NY City.

Yet Spike Lee decided it was a movie about racism too much from the white perspective and went to storm out when Green Book won its award. Whereas Black Klansman, for which Lee won best director Oscar, a great movie which depicts the horrible racism, bigotry and hypocrisy in the South, is presumably fine.

But Lee had to win an award, because the politics demand that he do so, and quite deservedly, if not for Black Klansman, which was an ok movie, but for his vast work over decades. Which is always how the Oscars have worked.

So I’ll continue to ignore the Oscar Ceremony, the babes in 50,000 dollar dresses, the bling, the often embarrassing and seemingly endless speeches, but reserve the right to be influenced by the ‘ACADEMY AWARD WINNING’ banners on movie posters.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

Have you ever done a ‘speed awareness course’? If you answer ‘no’ then you’re either an overseas person or not a real person. I don’ think they have such things in foreign lands. In America you get fined for speeding. There’s never a question there of taking away the right to drive any more than there is taking away your gun(s). In Russia the rich people speed all the time; race up and down the boulevards in their Ferraris and hot Mercs. If the poor speed in their 1973 Ladas (almost an impossibility) they just go to Siberia for a few years, then a few more.

But here, if you get caught speeding, you either take the ‘points’, on your driving licence, which don’t make prizes, and a fine, OR, you can do a ‘speed awareness course’. Which costs about the same as the fine, but you get no points on your licence. Though the insurance companies are aware (all data is public) and reserve the right to SCREW YOU OVER at any/every opportunity. Because they’re bastards.

Speeding is what normal, sensible people call ‘driving’. It’s called ‘getting where you’re going’, rather than dithering around polluting the fucking atmosphere with no apparent goals or aims or desire to ever get anywhere, as most seem to do. Generally in the ‘fast lane’, with their lights permanently on hi-beam.

I know every speed camera on the North Circular Road. Intimately. I drive my dad home every Friday night and have done for years. But they must have put a mobile or temporary one and apparently I was going a bit faster than the limit. I didn’t even try to deny it because if I don’t know there’s a camera there then I will be speeding. I can’t help it.

I’ve done a speed awareness course before. Big surprise there. You can only do one every 5 years so I have to be careful now. But the idea behind them is simple. To make people aware of the increased danger of driving too fast. Not the danger of getting caught, that’s pretty obvious, but danger to ‘others’. And rather than just say that, they spend 4 fucking hours (which you never get back) showing you graphs and charts and scenarios and death statistics and horror photos and engage in a brainwashing process to pre-condition you that every time the speedo goes over 30 you start involuntarily sweating. And it works. Generally until you get in the car to come home. At which point ‘the race is on’ once more. It’s a pantomime. But you have no choice.

And the Oscar for ‘an actor looking engaged and interested when HE’S BORED FUCKING SHITLESS!!!’ goes to…

Me.

Happy monday, drive carefully.

A xxxx

The political spectrum is changing. Well, not changing, it can’t really change, just the whereabouts of the various party positions upon it. Labour shifted to the left. The process started with ‘Little Tosser’, who used the professional name of ‘Ed Milliband’. Who took Blair’s 40% to the left, and Brown’s 50%, and moved it to about 60% to the left. As he had to. Part of the deal he did with the trade unions when they sharpened the knife he used to stab his brother in the back to win the leadership. Then along comes Corbyn who says ‘fuck dat!’ and moves the party to about 95% to the left. Not quite 100% because at that point the spectrum becomes a loop and looks exactly the same as 100% to the right. Outward fascism, dictatorships, end of democracy. Call it ‘Hitler’s Germany’ or ‘Stalin’s Russia’, even ‘Putin’s Russia’, ‘Franco’s Spain’ or Mao’s China, its all the same. Failed models in which the people get totally shafted, regardless of the stated ideology behind that shafting.

The Tories have shifted to the right. Cameron was about 60% to the right (about the same as Blair, note), but May, much more the social reformer, took it originally back to about 55%, just slightly right of centre.

And then came Brexit.

Which has divided all parties, except the Lib Dems but only because they’re too small to ‘divide’; it’d be like splitting the atom. And the Tory divisions have resulted in a strong, hard right element, driven by the ERG (European Research Group), which is another name for those few UKIP people who haven’t yet been revealed to be neo-nazis but fucking hate foreigners of all sorts nonetheless. And hate Europe most of all. So some have nick-named the Tory party ‘blueKIP’. Which in my (facile and childish) mind, puts the Tories up to about 70% to the right. Too far for me.

11 MPs have left their parties this week. Probably because of these relative shifts in party positions more than even antisemitism or Brexit. Though all are pretty much a consequence of the polarising effect of Brexit.

Should these ‘traitors!’ stand in bye-elections? As they are no longer representative of the party they belonged to when voted? Great question. Strictly, the answer is ‘no’. Because the electorate voted for their specific name. And that’s what they got and still have. But really that’s never the case. If you ask people who they voted for in a general election they don’t say Luciana Berger or Mike Freer or Chukka Umana, they say ‘I voted for Corbyn’ or ‘I voted for May’. We elect individuals but we’re voting in a government and a prime minister. In which case they should stand for re-elections to see whether the people they represent want them or the party they just left.

The main case against bye-elections though is that they are what Corbyn wants. And therefore any right-minded, free-thinking, non-racist person should want the opposite.

And I really like the idea of new, modern, properly centrist party run by decent individuals. And if they’re all remainers? So be it.

Happy sunny Sunday

A xxxx