Andy's Glasses

It was exciting. For something involving Brexit it was very exciting. I watched it ‘live’. On the news channel. It showed an empty room. Called ‘the House of Commons’. Its always empty, you get a few bods lolling around in the back, half asleep, often someone talking at the front, but no-ones listening. Its just a sea of green seats. Then suddenly, every seat is filled, standing room only, bods in suits (and skirts; that’s the Lib-dems and other women) piled 3 high in the gangways. All for one little vote. Do we accept Theresa May’s revised-but-not-very deal plan with which we shall LEAVE EUROPE (well some of it, and not the Irish really, they’ll hardly be leaving at all) ON MARCH 29TH!!!! BREXIT MEANS BREXIT!!!

It lost. By a margin that before this whole saga began would have been called a ‘catastrophic’ defeat, a ‘truly massive’ thumping. Lost by 149 votes. Which for a government, albeit one with no overall minority, is horrendous. But last night it felt like a victory. Because the defeat was so much better than the last one. Then Theresa rose in her chair, bravely, sadly, and opened her mouth to speak. And her voice had been hijacked by the monster from The Exorcist. She’s spent so much of the last week shouting at Messrs Barnier and Junkers that what was left of her voice was was donated by a serial murderer when he’d finished using it for making threats from old phone boxes. Very scary. Our PM is possessed!!

Today they’ll vote on whether we can leave with no deal. Which will be a resounding ‘non!’ as no-one wants that, not even Corbyn because there’s no political mileage in it for him. Otherwise he would. And so we’re left with… errrr… well… there’s always… how ’bout… errrr…

We’ll delay. The next vote. To delay or re-vote.

Main problem: just over half the people in the country (who I’ll call for purposes of differentiation: THE STUPID HALF) want Brexit, whereas 3/4s of MPs are remainers. And they have to represent all of us. You do da maffs.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

The ‘backstop’. The fucking Irish backstop. It’ll be the death of us all. Death by boredom. Death by endless repetition. Death by… death. And certainly the death of Theresa May’s political career (doomed from day 1 anyway, even she could have been under no illusions otherwise). And tonight its ‘The Vote’ redo. The first one was lost by over 200 votes, so ‘success’ could be seen as losing this one by just 199, or 187 votes. Either way, it ain’t gonna win. Half her party are opposed, Labour is opposed, the Irish probably won’t accept the revised, re-worked, re-done, latest, beta-test version of the backstop, so its all doomed. And Brexit day is just over 2 weeks away. Or ‘not-Brexit Day’ as it may come to be known if the inevitable happens.

May can’t possibly get her ‘deal’ through, however much tweakage she’s managed with the immovable Euro-trash (Barnier, Junkers et al) but it won’t be enough. It’s never enough. Though apparently they have time-limited the backstop. Which is a start. If that had happened a year ago it would be grounds for possible optimism. But now, as a last-gasp, desperate measure, it will be pitifully insufficient.

And then we enter, as from tomorrow, new, uncharted levels of uncertainty. Because we’d have to leave without a deal. Which, depending on who you speak to, is either “ECONOMIC SUICIDE FOR THE ENTIRE NATION”, or, ‘the best possible outcome’ for Nigel Farage, Rees Mogg and the merry band of outers. Or we could opt for a ‘delay’, a postponement, an extension to article 50, and spend the next 6 months going round and round in the same old circles and ending up in the same place, which is basically in a river of shit with the Eiffel Tower up our collective arse.

Theresa May’s selling point is that voting for her ‘deal’ is the only way to actually leave Europe NOW. Unless we leave without the deal which nobody wants. Or we have another vote which has merits but is essentially morally and democratically wrong. Insultingly so. Because it says: ‘you had no idea what you were thinking the last time so we’ll give you one last chance to do it properly’. It leads to a kind of “Ok; how about best of 5?” ethos of cheating.

May’s hoping that if the deal is rejected Europe will be forced into more dramatic changes than just kind of putting an extra P on the word ‘backstopp’. Or that in the panic to avoid ‘no deal’ all the MPs will rally round.

It’s all shit.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

Yesterday, in two separate incidents, so-called ‘football fans’ ran onto the pitch, mid-game, and attacked players. Obviously players of the teams those fans didn’t support. In the first one, some Brummy scumbag ran onto the pitch at St Andrews, where his ‘beloved’ Birmingham City were playing local rivals Aston Villa, and punched the Villa captain, Jack Grealish, on the head from behind. In the other incident, an Arsenal fan ran onto the Emirates pitch and pushed Manchester United’s Chris Smalling. Only pushed, not punched, because it was Arsenal and the fan was being true to the general ‘softness’ ethos prevalent on the Holloway Road. The fan probably wanted to spend 20 minutes espousing the full Wenger/Emrai philosophy of superiority and smugness but realised he wouldn’t have time, so encapsulated the complete theoretical framework into a single push. Either way he’s a tosser.

Both fans will be charged with pitch invasion and assault and banned from their grounds, probably for ‘life’. But that’s not enough. This season is turning into something of a disaster for the game. We had 1970s style ‘aggro’ at Millwall, with hundreds of the locals attacking away fans before a cup match. Now this. It must be stopped.

The only way to send the correct message is to abandon the rest of the season. Stop it now! (My new campaign slogan). Just call time on the rest of the term. Play out a few cup finals, if ya like, maybe the Champions League, but as for the domestic games, cancel the lot.

And so the league tables published today will be the last. I’m sorry but that’s the way it must be. We can’t let ‘the beautiful game’ become destabilised and wrecked by thugs, morons and those with violent intent. We need to impose a social morality on the game to prevent further descent into horror.

What? Oh, yeah, I suppose you’re right. That would mean Spurs would finish third in the league, qualify for Europe and be ready and rested for next season. Yeah, that’s true. Hadn’t realised…

STOP IT NOW! (Please!!!!!)

Happy Monday

A xxxx

…and God laughs. Ain’t that what they say? So this morning I planned tennis. As I do every Sunday. And woke up to pouring rain and gale force winds. But did I panic? No. I remained calm and had my pre-tennis bath. To soothe the aches and pains before the next physical onslaught my ageing body is subjected to. And I lay there listening to the 50mph winds (guessing) howling through the window frames, hearing the rain slamming against the house, ever confidant that everything would be fine. Why? Because the BBC weather app had told me it would be. And I’m such a schmuck that I believe it. They forecast rain, but ONLY til 9, maybe 9.30. And I play at 10. So just chill, dude, it’ll be fine.

At 9.30 it stopped raining. 10 minutes later the sun came out and 10 minutes after that I walked to tennis. Ok, maybe ‘walked’ doesn’t go far enough to represent the amazing Marcel Marceau type struggle against the wind which was intent on blowing me to Highgate. We played. It was… ‘interesting’. But I didn’t lose any balls. Amazingly. Just spent a lot of time retrieving them from other courts. After an hour we packed up. And as we left the park it started raining. Really raining.

I feel blessed. People were giving me odd looks on the way home. Then I saw my reflection in a shop window and saw the above. I look like Darth Vader, when they took his mask off just before he died. But the force is strong.

We had friends over for dinner last night. Which is why me and all the other international women of mystery (Mel) spent half the day in the kitchen preparing. And because we have a zero tolerance to discrimination at home, the guests included a staunch Liverpool fan (she’s from that sad City so we forgive her, and she’s a ‘she’!!!) and a season ticket holding Manchester United fan. Who is that rarest of examples in that he is actually from Manchester. Even though he now lives just round the corner. And after 40 years down here, he still sounds way more Coronation Street than Received Pronunciation.

Did I want to be talking football with these 2? On ‘black Saturday’? If I was a nicer person I wouldn’t mind. But I’m not. I’m that horrible git who is only too happy to gloat at their teams’ misfortunes and mayhaps. So I just banned football talk completely. ITS MY FUCKING HOUSE I MAKE THE FUCKING RULES!!!! We just spent a rather productive 10 minutes annihilating Manchester City, who we can all hate equally, on grounds of morality, money-laundering and fraud.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

Yesterday was international Women’s Day. Errrr, 2019. Probably. Which is a massive day in the life of all… international women. Local ones can carry on ironing and cooking and getting pipes and slippers ready for when their ‘man’ comes home from work, whisky in her hand. I celebrated this day myself by living it as a woman. Not in any ‘trans’ kind of way, though that was my original idea but was vetoed when I broke six pairs of Mel’s kitten shoes with the extra-strength shoe-horn. But I’m such a rampant, re-constituted post-feminist that I simply had to show my support and love and understanding of my co-women’s plight in life.

So the first thing I did was to make a list. Of all the things Mel should be doing today. A long one. I then spent a lot of the day asking people to remove lids, change light bulbs and for help when the ‘computer’s gone wrong again’. Then I got on the phone for a few hours. On the tube I went to the ‘priority seat’ where some scruffy, 17 year-old urchin was superglued to his phone, tapped him on the shoulder and said: ‘oy! muthafucka! Show some respect and give up your chair for someone empathising with women or I’ll shove your phone where only Michael Jackson would try and reach it’. He moved, I sat, cross-legged, like a lady.

Then I was over it. It’s easy being a woman. But I wondered when ‘International Men’s Day’ was likely to be? Oh, (2 answers here): 1. There isn’t one!!! How discriminatory. Or 2. There are 364 Men’s Day’s; so fuck off!

In my mind International Women’s Day is the genderised version of Brexit. It’s divisive. It accentuates the differences, polarises the factions and creates a whole load of bollocks (in the non-gender context) about virtually nothing. And in all reality I am seriously a feminist. We have no glass ceilings in our house, which has only ever been filled with me and women. And now Lila. Also a woman-to-be. Which is probably why she creates so much mess. I didn’t mean that. And if we had any glass ceilings I’d have smashed them with a football decades ago, as I smash virtually anything of value, given sufficient time.

So as I prepare for our dinner guests tonight with my signature dessert, make the salads, set the table, all whilst keeping at least one eye on the football scores, have some sympathy for the poor, downtrodden men of this world. Who are so repressed that they don’t even get their own ‘day’.

Happy Not-Men’s Day

A xxxx

Scientists are working on nanobots. Why not? They’ve gotta do something. And these nanobots are like little doctors who will cure and make you all better, but from the inside. They are truly microscopic little robots, the width of a human hair, but have a million transistors in them, as many as a Nintendo 64, apparently, so there might be a whole new raft of video games made for the internal market. Though their main job will be to get injected into blood vessels and provide drugs or information, because even nanobots carry mobile phones. So they can film stuff, take selfies, like ‘ME AND A SPLEEN!!!! LOL!’ and deliver drugs, but not in a gang-related way.

The concept of a million of anything inside something way less than one millimetre is kind’a freaky. It enters the realms of ‘cannot compute!’ But only on a mechanical level. The problem, as I see it (I always see fucking problems; that’s just so ‘ME’), is power. The nanobots have a couple of solar cells, I’m guessing their not the ones you see on people’s roofs. Little ones. Because they’re tiny and don’t need much power. There again, unless they take a ‘nano-sun’ in there with them, I have no idea how they can recharge whilst on the job. Not like they can take a USB connector with them. Or find a charging point whilst at work.

They reckon they’ll be able to send them into the blood vessels of the brain, which is also freaky. But brilliant. There is apparently no limit to human ingenuity.

Less brilliant were Arsenal last night. As I read on one Spurs fan’s comment; “we went to Dortmund and beat the German champions; Arsenal went to Rennes and lost to heartburn medicine”. A very ‘Spursy’ comment. And that’s the good ‘Spursy’.

But undoubtedly the best news of the week was Manchester United’s amazing victory over PSG. In Paris, having been set the impossible task by starting the game not just 2 goals down but two away goals down. Yet they won. Brilliantly.

And why is this the best news? Because statements are now appearing that Ole Gunnar Solksjaer, their ‘interim’ manager, is very likely to now lose the ‘interim’ status from his job description. He’s done such an incredible job in his brief tenure thus far that they would not only be stupid to get rid of him but also incur the wrath of the fans, who see him as the saviour that he is. And therefore they will stop their pursuit of Mauricio Pochettino. A relief to all God-fearing souls and decent people.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

Spurs took just one point from their first three group matches in this years’ champions league campaign. That’s shit. Really shit. So much shit that you actually enter the uncharted realms of probability. ‘No team has EVER come back to qualify after scraping just one point from their first 3 matches’. But come back we did and qualify we did. Ok, we had a bit of help along the way with ‘surprising results elsewhere’ but to fight back, when half of that group consisted of Barcelona and Inter Milan, was a thing of brilliance, of beauty and, probably, the reason we will really really REALLY struggle to keep hold of our manager come August.

And we entered the ‘round of 16’. The first leg, 2 weeks ago, when we beat Dortmund at Wembley. Not just beat them but thrashed them. 3-nil. A big score considering we were underdogs and they are the current German league leaders. But we had to play them again. Them’s the rules. Last night. In the somewhat partisan atmosphere of the Westfalenstadion. Probably in Dortmund, I reckon. Where the local ‘anthem’ is ‘You’ll never walk alone’. In English. That’s like us singing Autobahn, which is not exactly rousing, or the Horst Wessel song, which I think is probably illegal.

I didn’t see the match. I endured the agony of following the text on the BBC website. And it weren’t pretty. ‘Spurs all over the place!’ ‘Shambolic’. ‘No attacking threat’. And as the first half wore on, surprisingly (and thank-God-fully) still 0-0, the possession numbers for Dortmund rose and rose until they peaked at 77%. Holy Moly. We were somewhat ‘on the back foot’, with just one shot on goal (off target, obvs) which, in my mind was by Toby Alderweireld from 73 yards; our highest attacking position so far. That’s the beauty of ‘live text’; YOU DON’T FUCKING KNOW ANYTHING AND ITS NOT FUCKING LIVE.

I remained calm. And then, a miracle occurred. Soon after half time. Spurs scored a goal. In a second half that ended up with Dortmund having just 67% possession, we created a chance, it fell to Harry Kane and our main man gave a big ‘FUCK YOU!!!’ to all who questioned his slightly off-par recent form. Because if you have him in your team, you don’t need to create 15 chances, just the one will do.

At which point Dortmund needed to score 5 goals to win. A draw, because of the ‘away goals’ rule was impossible and it was game over. They still persisted, for pride, for consolation, FOR GERMANY, but they didn’t score. So we go marching into the quarter finals of the Champions League.

Good luck to Arsenal tomorrow night when they play… I can’t remember, never heard of ‘em, in the UEFA. And Manchester United should be buoyed by Spurs when they go to Paris tonight. Because ‘no team has ever’ come back from losing a first leg 2-0 at home, before. Mainly because no-one has ever done anything until someone does it. Andy’s rule.

I’m loving football at the moment. Loving my team who are so capable, strong and resilient and can defend for three quarters of a match without giving away a penalty. Amazing.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

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