Andy's Glasses

“Sacked in the morning, you’re getting sacked in the morning…”, so sang the Spurs fans to their manager yesterday in a what transpired was an attack of wishful thinking. As ‘this morning’ arrived and Thomas Frank was still gainfully employed by Tottenham Hotspur plc. Had he been sacked, it’s not like the geezer in the chip shop getting sacked, when he loses his income and has to go scurrying around to find alternative employment. No. When football managers get sacked, they get paid the same as when they weren’t sacked. But only for the… 3 years? maybe 5, left on their contract. Work for 6 months, get paid for 3 years. That’s the way we do it at Spurs. And to be fair, at all other clubs. We just do it more often.

But really, as much as I truly, madly, deeply HATE the culture of a manager turnstile rotating with horrible frequency, THIS CAN’T FUCKING GO ON. We’ve won 1 out of our last 8 matches. Won 4 home games in 24 months. It’s simply abysmal. Something must be done.

We need to get Kemi Badenoch in charge down the Lane. She knows how to get someone ‘sacked in the morning’.

On Thursday we awoke, confident in the knowledge that the great Robert Jenrick was making our lives better and protected in his role as Shadow Justice Minister. A role carrying as much political power as Joey’s as ‘schoolboy/hooligan’. 10 minutes later we learned Kemi had sacked the lying, cheating, duplicitous bastard, after learning of his intention to abandon his Conservative Party to join the Fascist Farages. Ok, to join ‘Reform’, if you must. The little snake had been a’plotting and a’planning to leave his party, his ‘life’s mission’ and pretty much every value he’s been spouting his entire political career, for, basically, his own personal and professional expediency. Because the Tories are unlikely to win the next election and he does. And wants to be ‘leader’. Of something. Anything. And thus became the leader of the turncoats.

Which last week was Jenrick and Nadhim Zahawi. So you can see the quality of candidates that Reform are focussing on. You basically need the letters ‘MP’ after your name and Nige will welcome you with open arms and rotten teeth. (He needs some cosmetic dentistry if he’s ever to stand next to Donald Trump again). Nige can’t be fussy. Needs ‘boots on the ground’ in Westminster. And so ‘welcomed’ Zahawi. The most ironic person ever to set foot in Parliament. He was a chancellor of the Exchequer, the man in charge of the nation’s finances. Ok, briefly. Because for ‘finances’ on that scale, read ‘taxes’. And he didn’t pay his own. Which ‘compromised’ his position somewhat. He ‘begged’ Kemi for a peerage, because you need more scumbags in the Lords, but she refused.

So I’d like to welcome to the Reform Party, where morals have always been questionable, Jenrick the Snake and Zahawi the tax-dodger. Another whose personal aggrandisement outweighs any kind of political affiliation or sense of loyalty.

Perhaps Thomas Frank could join Nigel??? Please? Like, today??

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

Here’s how stupid I am. Well, one (of oh so many) example. And also an insight into the human mind (there’s an assumption, possibly 2: that I’m human and have a mind, as we know it).

We all know Timothee Chalemet. The pretentiously named darling of Hollywood. Following his foray as Bob Dylan, which I must say was pretty darned good, he’s now winning awards for Marty Supreme, which I’ve yet to see but read nothing but ‘glowing’ about it.

And I thought: scrawny little creep. Then I saw him on Graham Norton and thought he was funny, and nice. But still scrawny with a residual creepiness, despite his Golden Globe this week. Obviously punching well above his weight being with Kylie Jenner.

Then I learned that he’s Jewish.

And my entire view of him changed. With just one headline in the Jewish Chronicle which ‘claimed him’. We don’t claim big-time frausters of the faith, certainly want less than nothing to do with the Jeffrey Epsteins and Harvey Weinsteins. But you win a Golden Globe and we all want to wallow in that reflected glory. HE’S OURS!!!! (I learned this attitude from my grandmother, who lived with us through most of my childhood. Born in a Polish ‘shtetl’ in 1900, moved here in 1901 but never changed her views, or learned what ‘offside’ meant, even after watching every football match on tv).

And immediately, Timothee grew. In stature. Became much bigger, less scrawny, lost the ‘creepy’ altogether. He became… a Mensch!!!

Otherwise, I’ve spent an entire fucking morning speaking to morons. Ok, officially they’re called ‘customer services of any significantly sized company’, but ‘morons’ is much more succinct. And accurate.

I won’t go into my aggro with Santander but basically, when trying to transfer just one bank account to a different company (don’t ask), filling in the forms, sending ID, fingerprinting, exhuming my mother for DNA, full rectal examinations, usual ‘security’ shit, and the same from the intended recipient, after 3 months we’ve reached the situation where no-one can access the account at all. Blocked for both sides. Money comes into the account but no-one can access it. I screamed at them. That should make it better. Yeah. Right.

Then the phones. Yes, we still have a ‘landline’. No idea why, probably just because we’re old. We certainly don’t use it much. So we signed a new contract for ‘full digital’ because it’s all you can get. But we only received one phone. Oh. So I had to speak to their moron. Who told me firstly that we were paying 16 quid a month too much, we had in fact ordered the second phone, but… errrr… Ok, so we’ll get a second phone, start paying the lower rate than we had on one phone and get a credit on the account for overpayments. Fab. Can you send me an email confirming all that, please. ‘Oh, we can’t send emails’. Really? But REALLY???? FFS.

Now I’m in a really happy place, having pissed away about 4 hours banging my head against any hard corner I could find. Who can I punch? “MEL????” “WHERE ARE YOU???”…

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

I’m reading a book. Nothing unusual in that. Except it’s non-fiction!!! And, NOT a sporting biography!!! I’m breaking all the rules. It’s called ‘Forty Autumns’ and, to be honest, Mel thought it was a novel when we downloaded it. But it ain’t. It’s the story of a woman in 1945 in Germany who ‘fled to the West’ as the Russians took over the east of her country. Left her big family (9 siblings) and, at 19, she ‘escaped’. At the time of reading (about 1979, the book follows all the unfolding events in her former home and compares them to her life in, eventually, America), East Germany was simply fucking hell. Never mind the lack of absolutely everything, from food to cars to, in many homes, running water, the worst of all was the state’s total domination of thought. Because no totalitarian state wants ‘free thinking’. It doesn’t want ‘opposition’, be it political or even philosophical. You simply don’t ‘question’. It’s Marxism or die. And it was the non-Marxists who died. In vast numbers. Because such places are great at ‘disappearing’ people who they don’t like. Rewards in such an horrendous society come from adherence to ‘the Party’, nothing else. Total repression. Encouraging kids to report their own parents for saying something against the rule. There’s no trust, no debating allowed, there is absolutely no freedom whatsoever. And for that reason, Jeremy Corbyn would fucking love it there.

Pretty much like Iran under the Ayatollahs. Another fave of Corbyn’s. Ok, there was also Russia after their revolution and China during their ‘cultural revolution’, possibly the greatest misnomer of all time.

But Iran is not a proclaimed ‘communist state’. It’s an Islamic Republic. But it runs in exactly the same manner. Repression. Compliance or death. Removal of all freedoms; travel, political opposition, listening to music, (The Clash classic 1982 song was their protest about that), even saying ‘bad things’ about the rulers. You wear a headscarf (compulsory) the wrong way and you’re dead. No trial. No jury. The ‘cultural police’ just end you; BOOM! Because totalitarian rule means no accountability whatsoever. The rulers, and their ‘dedicated followers’, do precisely what they please. And answer to no-one. The irony of a ‘religious state’ condoning murder and torture is just lost in Ayatollah-land.

Obviously life under the Shah, pre-1979, was no bed of roses. He was a dictator too. But one who wanted progress for his country. Not saying that in the building his nation into a quasi-USA there wasn’t corruption and problems for the masses, but free speech was allowed. Women had rights. Yet the majority of Iranians backed the revolution. A serious case of ‘careful what you wish for’.

Totalitarianism is a closed society. They prevent any external influence. Particularly from… ‘The West’!!! Mainly because such societies are always economic failures and they don’t want you to see how well others outside live by comparison. But it also allows better ‘control’ of the people. Religion, according to Marx, is the opiate of the masses. Presumably in 1979 Iranians became addicts.

So from the totally repressive Soviet-era East Germany to modern day Tehran; all the same shit. But what amazes me is that people here, like Corbyn and many others, in their toxic anti-American, anti-capitalism bubble, see both of those as aspirational. Whereas normal people simply shudder in horror.

We need to sort out that fucking Ayatollah. For the sake of his people.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

When ‘we’ got the electric vehicle, in 2023, it was amazing. (For reference, ‘we’ have an EV and ‘I’ have a racing car; that’s the official ownership schedule). A computer with wheels. Did everything. Not that we ever got to use approximately 92% of its potential because its just too many ‘menus’, too many options, who fucking needs it? Voice control, FFS? Gimme a break. Its just a brilliant vehicle, fast as f-… anything and brilliant at everything else. Until you’re at Gatwick airport at midnight with 95 miles on the charge which you know will never get you the 60 actual miles to home. Then you’re fucked.

The first winter we had the car we discovered what is technically known as ‘the best thing ever’. Although they call it ‘pre-entry climate control’. Where you lie in bed, all warm and snuggly, and its -5 outside and Mel’s going swimming at 6.45 in the morning and there’s 3 inches of frost on your freezing car. So (for a bribe), you press that ‘pre-entry’ button on the app and 10 minutes later your wife enters a warm, de-frosted, seat-heated, cleared-windscreened vehicle and whizzes round to the David Lloyd, in lovely comfort. (We’re not here to discuss her sanity; this is about cars).

In March the car’s going back to the leasing company wot spawned it. The government very kindly paid for it completely, for which we’re grateful, but now we’re going to buy another car. And one thing’s for sure; it ain’t gonna be fully electric. The world is just not ready for that yet. I’m not ready for that yet. So Mel wants a hybrid. Saving half the polar bears.

And, having spent a couple of weekends in car showrooms in Colindale (car central. If it ain’t in Colindale; it ain’t a car), we’ve worked out one little thing. A ‘primary criteria’, if you like. It MUST have pre-entry climate control.

I thought such a thing was exclusive to EVs. My mate has Mel’s car, same in every detail, other than its the petrol version. Same year, same model, but no pre-entry thing. Oh. Its just electrics then.

Then we went to Canada. Where its sub-zero for most of the year. And me mate Dave, who has a fabulous and excessive collection of cars, told me they’ve had pre-entry climate control on ALL vehicles for years. Button on the key-fob. Starts the car, puts the heat on. But not available here. Third world mentality.

We found a lovely car on Saturday, perfect in every way, it was even bright yellow (she loves a bit’a colour). But NO climate control. Therefore; no test-drive, no deal.

Well, it reduces the choice and that’s no bad thing. But I love ‘car shopping’.

Happy Monday
A xxxx

You’ve crossed a line!!!

I’ve put a line in the sand!!!

The addition of all those exclamation marks tells you that those metaphors are ser-i-ous!!! Not to be trifled with. You generally cross any ‘line’ after due consideration or at your own peril. It’s the nature of lines.

None more important offside ‘line’. Yes, it’s a line. Well it should be. If you draw a line across the pitch at the precise point of the last defender’s heal, possibly his arse, if its sticking out, or just very big, maybe even his head if he’s flat out on his back. But the very most ‘rear’ point of the very last defender is the offside line. Any part of any attacker which is nearer to that defender’s goal than that line when the ball is moved forwards, is offside. Be that part a boot, a toe-nail, a head or one single hair. Simple.

So you’d think.

Yet, with all that modern technology can offer, those imbeciles at the VAR central office, those neo-zombies, hopefully soon the first casualties of AI, take 10 minutes to decide whether this was the case or not. You could ‘draw’ 25 million ‘lines’ in that time. And you only need one. It is, quite frankly, ruining the game. Goals are celebrated with the usual mass hysteria (the reason we go to football matches) and then removed. It takes one tenth of a second to take that ‘1’ off the scoreboard. But up to a lifetime to lose the upset resulting from it. You can’t ‘uncelebrate’.

But wait! There’s a solution!! Because too many goals are disallowed because someone is offside by less than half a millimetre. And that’s not what the offside rule was ever about.

So Gianni Infantini, boss of FIFA, sucker up to Trump, worthless slap-head and yet-to-be-convicted-of-corruption head of all football, has an idea. Actually, it’s an idea we must all thank Arsene Wenger for. He calls it the ‘clear daylight rule’. And claims that the purpose of offside is to prevent ‘goal-hanging’, even though Gary Lineker got away with it for a decade or more. What we need is a new interpretation of the rule. One in which you’re offside if there is ‘clear daylight’ between the striker and defender when the ball is put through to him.

In other words, we need a new line. The last part of the last defender remains the same, BUT, this time, its the attackers heal or elbow or maybe back of his head, which needs to be at least in line with that defender’s ’bit’. Same as when a ball crosses the line. As in tennis, if any part of the ball is on the line, it’s ‘in’.

So this indeed changes a lot. Ish. It puts the attacker higher up the field. Which is… errr… well, higher up the field.

But a line’s a line. And those tossers at Stockley Park aren’t very good at lines. And all it really does is shift the inevitable rows from the front of the attacker to his back. Which basically; won’t change a thing. It’ll just move it a bit.

What we all really want is a bit of ‘latitude’. A bit of understanding. Lose the purely scientific and apply some human emotion to it all. Basically; if it’s my team, that was never offside. If it’s the other team; he was a mile offside. Wherever you draw your fucking lines.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

I think I may be over-reacting but the world seems to be in the control of mad men. Not necessarily because of their actions, but because of their justifications. Maybe its simply a perspective issue on my part. Something I’ve always struggled with. As you’ll know if you’re a regular reader.

Putin invades Ukraine. Spent months building up an army of 200,000 Cossaks on the border before crossing the line and ‘going in’. Yet Putin has only ever spoken of ‘defending’, of being the victim. As do all his state-run tv channels and all his horrible Russian lackeys, like Sergey Lavrov. Perhaps I’ve missed something?

Then there’s the mad-man’s mad man, currently sitting in the White House. Who looks at an innocent woman being murdered by a bunch of uniformed thugs, and blames her, defending their actions as ‘self defence’. Which then becomes the battle cry of his entire team. As the poor victim becomes vilified as a ‘communist’ and a ‘terrorist’ just because she was part of a protest.

At which point I can’t help but think: ‘this is what dictators do’. They alter the ‘truth’, they shift the perspective. Tragically, because I really hate to drop the ‘H-bomb’, its how the Germans acted and reacted to Hitler’s nonsense. As the brown shirts went round committing murder unsanctioned. With complete impunity. Like those lovely guys from ICE. The spin guys and gels then come in to mop up the mess. By telling everyone that they didn’t in fact see what they saw with their own eyes.

The fact is: I don’t mind what Trump does. Its his country. If he wants to ’round up the immigrants’, that ain’t my business. I disagree with his methods, but he’s the Prez and I don’t even get a vote. But when he tells us to disbelieve what we’ve all seen, I get a bit scared.

This coming in the same week that he threatened to invade Iceland. Which wouldn’t be hard as it is completely undefended. Relying on its ‘mother country’, Denmark, and the rest of NATO to protect it, should any shit hit that arctic fan. Ah, but ‘NATO’ is pretty much ‘America’. Hmmmmm…

I get the strategic importance of Iceland. Its the bridge between Russia and the US. Which is why the US has a military base there. So put in another one. A bigger one. Put four new bases, 100 more aircraft, 300 ships. Big ones. But to invade an allied nation??? Who the fuck does that? Well, someone who is intent on security but who is perhaps also… ‘aware’ that Iceland contains a shitload of fabulously desirable natural resources just waiting to be dug out the ground.

That’s why I posted this cruel and heartless photo on a day which is dark, cold and horribly wet. Remembering the finer times. Ahhhh…

Happy Friday

A xxxx

The world is fucked; we’re heading to war, Trump is becoming ‘the great peacemaker’ he’s always wanted to be by attacking, invading, kidnapping and being aggressive and military towards anyone he can provoke.

The football is worse.

So I can’t be doing any of that now. Instead, my mind drifts. To ‘happier times’…

Funny; I hadn’t thought of Mr Byrite until I wrote the other day about Saturday jobs. Because they were all the rage last Sunday, now it’s all about Greenland. I never had a job in Greenland. Nor Iceland.

My Saturdays were fab. PLUS: we got, like, 30%, maybe 40% off clothes we bought. And that brought the stuff down to what is was just about worth. It looked great. Once.

One week, the word went round that David Bowie was playing gigs. In 1971 we all loved Hunky Dory and played it all the time. Bowie was not a big star. He was an ‘oddity’. And then Ziggy Stardust came out. And that was a massive ‘wow’. Probably because it was Bowie’s rock phase, so it was all much louder, less ballady that his previous. Personally, I hadn’t made up my mind about Le (or, as it sometimes was, La) Bowie. All that make-up? Dressin’ up silly? But what the hell, gig’s a gig, right? So we got tickets. About 20 us. And went to Romford Odeon to see the Ziggy set. Which is probably the best gig I ever saw. Then at the end of that tour, he ‘killed’ Ziggy, became the ‘Thin White Duke’ and it all went downhill.

I had a… friend. Called Jackie. She wasn’t a girlfriend, but a girl friend. And for about a year, we just kind’a hooked up every few weeks, with my dear, departed best mate, Stan and her mate Suzanne, and went wild. Jackie was a wild child. She was also 6 foot tall, stick thin and incredibly, stunningly beautiful. Olive skin, long dark wavy hair, she’d been a ‘Colgate girl’, on adverts as a kid, for toothpaste. She walked like a supermodel, even though they hadn’t been invented yet. Everywhere we went people stared at her. And therefore, they would see me too. The little guy next to her. And as ‘it’s all about me’, that was great.

Jackie had a Saturday job in Chelsea Girl, just down the high road from me. And in her lunch break, virtually every week, we had a ritual. She would saunter into Mr Byrite, which would be rammed with shoppers, as it was all day, and heads would turn. Because she had an air of both incredible confidence and fun about her. The crowds would part and she would find me, grab hold of my head and kiss me. But we’re not talking, ‘mwah’, how ya doin’?, kind’a kiss. We’re talking Bardot-movie, slow, passionate, grinding, 4-minute snogging. Then she’d just turn around and walk out with that killer smile on her face.

Ahhhh, the things you remember from the past when the present is so consistently horrible.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

I read this headline this morning and immediately thought: I totally believe that. And I reckon everyone who drives electric, to save the planet, like me, well, like Mel, would totally believe that such a claim is true. ‘The car did it!’ Because EVs have, quite literally, a mind of their own. You think you’ve shut the boot but, like Mel this morning who got paged after her swim, the car decided to open it a bit. One day it decides to lock itself up. Totally. I’m not saying all EVs are out to kill people but I think its time to re-visit the Terminator movies and make sure we’re not creating a class which can think for itself and take over totally, start a war against humanity, possibly take control of Venezuela and reduce the size of my pension!

Ahhhh, Venezuela. Trump doesn’t need AI. He probably can’t spell it. But he knows how to build an empire. Its easy. You just invade smaller countries, take them over, strip them of their assets and resources and then leave them lawless, defenceless and hopeless (Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam…). Or you can enslave the population, but that’s a bit ‘Caesar’ for modern times. And leaves you open to reparations claims 800 years later.

The Maduro kidnapping (what else would you call it?) was a militarily brilliant exercise. It was too slick for Americans really. Too ‘Mossad’. Sharp, concise, thorough and successful. Just a few dead, but they’re only Venezuelans so they’re probably linked to the drug trade somehow anyway. And Americans are familiar with killing Venezuelans as they’ve been using their small boats as target practice for the last year or so.

Our main concern is…

Well, according to our lacklustre, fence-sitting, terminally ambivalent Prime Minister, we don’t have any concerns we’re prepared to speak about. In case offence is taken by anyone at all. He can’t upset Trump; we have a ‘special relationship’, which means we have a decent trade deal. And he can’t upset the left of his party who are, as always, up in arms against everything America does, particularly against communist countries, with whom they sympathise. Hence Corbyn becoming the de facto spokesperson for ‘Maduro Venezuelans’. Not the vast majority of ‘non-Maduros’ who voted him out, but he cheated his way back in, who hate him and whose lives and livelihoods have been ruined by him. Corbyn doesn’t speak for them.

Trump did what he did to prevent the Chinese getting the oil and because he wanted it. And although the largest untapped oil resource in the world (!!!), Venezuelan oil is poor quality and hence will need much more expensive refining that the upmarket stuff pumped out of Arabia and Texas.

Does the US action create a ‘wild west’ type ‘grab it while you can’ world view, in which China feels free to storm into Taiwan? Or is China now in fear of the newfound American aggression?

I don’t know. And neither does Kier Starmer. Difference being: he’s paid to know. Or at least voice a fucking opinion.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

All I can say is: thank God for the ‘ammers.

Because otherwise I’d have absolutely nothing at all to be happy about in the entire world of football. Yet those ‘chirpy cockneys’ put a smile on my face with every game they lose, and every move they make downwards in the table.

I think when Donald Trump sends ‘the boys’ over to get Kier Starmer, I might ask him to take Thomas Frank as well. If there’s room on the plane with all those soldiers and guns and stuff. That way we won’t have to make yet another obscene payment for sacking yet another failed manager.

But I watched yesterday’s match through my analytical eyes. I studied the stats. I calculated every move, pass and run of my team. I performed several statistical tests on the results, then cross-checked them on a multiple chai-squared distribution matrix. And the result that the computer came out with was rather surprising. It was “15.9814”.

Oh, you’re not familiar with advanced multi-dimensional mathematics then. Well, a score of 15.9814 means… they were shit. That intersected on the vertical axis with ‘boring as fuck’. To be honest, you don’t have to be an actuary to know that. It was so plainly obvious. We lack… pretty much everything except defence. Our back four I’m quite happy with. At the moment they seem to score most of our goals as well. The rest? Ok, Bentancur is ‘solid’, Gray shows ‘promise’, Pahlinha is strong, but that really bolsters the defence. It does nothing to make us look ‘pretty’. Look ‘exiting’. Look even ‘good’. We’re just tragically mediocre in the attacking half of the field. Barely competent.

Ok, we have injuries. But we’ve bought a lot of players. All tragically underwhelming or, to be fair (something I try to avoid), ‘works in progress’. Like Lucas Bergvald and Archie Gray. Our most exiting player is Kudus, and he’s declined massively since he joined us not very long ago. Its called ‘Madison syndrome’. Though there are many symptoms in common with ‘Spurs syndrome’.

To make matters (much) worse, Arsenal undeservedly won against simply awesome Bournemouth. A team who never look ‘scared’, are never intimidated, who are always ‘up for it’. However all that’s great, but winning would have been possibly better. With Manchester City squandering 2 points at the death against Chelsea, that leaves the Arse sitting pretty. And no-one wants that. Let some horrible northern team sit at the crest of the league, let them give joy in areas where, quite frankly, they have NOTHING else going for them. Like Liverpool. And now they’ve lost their footballing glory too.

Man United sacked their manager today. Be Liverpool next. Well, he’s only won ONE league title in… well, a year, but is that good enough? Really?

Sam Allardyce can only be in one place at one time.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

The youth of today…

Well, let’s face it, they’re fucked. If AI doesn’t get them, they’ve suffered covid and are all addicted to ‘devices’. Most are more ‘hardware’ than human. But apparently the problem is because they don’t take ‘Saturday jobs’. So they get no experience of the discipline and basic interactional skills which work entails and engenders. Otherwise you get sacked.

My brother got himself a Saturday job when he was about 14. He went into a local electrical repair shop to buy components to build a nuclear launch facility or a new amplifier or something no-one else had a clue about, and they offered him a job there and then, which he took. And loved it. Because he could spend all day Saturday being much cleverer than everyone else and getting paid for it.

So I wanted a job. Even though I had no skills off the football pitch. But at 14 my dad’s mate, a bespoke tailor, needed a ‘gofer’ on Saturdays, at his shop in Soho. This was 1970. Soho didn’t look like it does today, all poncey and corporate and filled with generic stores. Back then there were no ‘multiples’ in Soho. There were fantastic music shops, clothes shops, Carnaby Street was for shopping, not the horrible ‘tourist attraction’ it has evolved into. And there was sex. Sleazy ‘sex shops’ selling all manner of deviant stuff. Above half the stores were brothels. Hookers were everywhere, along with other valuable society members like pimps and drug dealers. It was something of an ‘eye opener’ for me. As I walked around picking up cloth and buttons and tailory stuff, as that was another big thing in Soho. I had my first ever cappuccino, as the Italian cafes there were the only places where such things existed.

But I’d have to meet Paul, da boss, very early on Saturday, to whizz up to the West End in his Lotus (loved that), so after a year or so I quit. And moved more locally. To a clothes store in Ilford High Street (I avoided ‘upmarket’ wherever possible, on principle) called Mr Byrite. They had about 30 stores in and around London. Owned by ‘the Levy brothers’, one of whom was the daddy of Daniel Levy, the recently retired chairman of Spurs.

Mr Byrite sold shit. Cheap shit. You bought a shirt, wore it that night to go out, then threw it away. Washing their clothing was never really recommended. But no-one minded, they just bought another one next week. It was so busy, in addition to the full-time staff, there were at least 10 Saturday-boys. Standing around, smoking, (we all smoked, it was a job requirement), messing around, looking for any stray girls who were brave enough to enter what was probably a rather forbidding environment. But selling shit-loads of clothes. Every week we all put in a few bob (small amount of money, ffs) to buy any new albums that appealed. No rubbish. No ‘pop’. Just great music. Played all day at volume 11. Whilst we smoked, lolled around, attacked girls and sold a truck load of crappy clothing. A win-win.

Because this was a very ‘cash purchase’ time, and the eastern parts of our fair City have always favoured bundles of the stuff passed down alleyways to avoid the prying eyes of HMRC, at the end of a Saturday we’d have thousands of pounds in cash. Which we took the bank in a little leather pouch-thing and deposited into the ‘night safe’, attached to the bank’s wall. Obviously, with gangsters and robbers and armed thieves all over the High Street, you have two options. Bury the pouch in a bag and take it discreetly to the bank with all due nonchalance. Or get a gang of 12 and march down to the bank singing, screaming and pushing innocent bystanders out of the way (especially old and infirm ones), normally whilst carrying large blunt instruments. Due to a lack of subtlety in my youth, we opted for the second.

So go now; get a Saturday job. You could become a proper thug.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

PS. If I drop Donald Trump a fifty, do you think he’d come for Kier Starmer, like he did Maduro?