Andy's Glasses

Ok, so 70, for some reason, has become the latest… thing. Everyone’s turning 70, or thereabouts, so you get articles like this one, showing you what to do so that when you approach that terribly awful number of years, you’re not just still alive, like with a tube up your nose and a walking frame and a nursing home, but ALIVE and fit and well. The problem is, if you need to read the Times to work out that basically “eating shit will kill ya, whilst salads, vegetables and all the things you really don’t like, will keep you glossy and shiny, upright and mobile… f’rever!!!!”, unless your 30, its too late. You can’t just change from 20 Rothmans a day, 5 pints a night, pork scratchings, microwave dinners and deep fried spam, to ‘healthy living’ when you’re, like, 67, and expect to turn back the years of abuse. No. You’re good as dead, mate, might as well carry on and at least enjoy your last few years.

I’m miles from 70. Though that depends on how you measure a ‘mile’. Like Mel’s electric vehicle, I use a great degree of flexibility with the term, particularly when age is concerned. But when I get there, I’m not so much bothered about being ‘healthy’, but I really want to be ‘elite’!!!

Due to the old shoulder dislocating thing, I never became an ‘elite’ footballer. And when I substituted the footy for tennis, at 28 I could never become an elite tennis player. So I needed to go to Eton and get a title (other than ‘dickhead’), then I could become ‘elite’ that way. But they wouldn’t take me. My vowels weren’t sufficiently rounded to gain entry.

And just to make it harder, there’s the ‘legume’ issue. Its a French word. It means ‘vegetable’. Or it did. Apparently now its been reigned in. Downgraded. Now it is ONLY a few certain things, like beans and lentils and peas and… peanuts!! And as I get through about 3 jars of peanut butter a week and can dispense with 500gms of roasted, salted, M&S large ones in about 14 minutes; I’m good on me legumes.

But does it make me ‘elite’? Though you still need to eat a truckload of green shit every week just to keep upright, apparently.

I’ll worry about it when I’m 69.

Happy Elite Wednesday

A xxxx

I’ve found a great and unquestionable difference between Americans and English people. And it is that we, the British, tend to grow up. With time. Over years. As you’re supposed to. We also develop an intrinsic and instinctual understanding of age-appropriate behaviour and responses. Whereas Americans, on the other hand, tend towards stupidity and retain all the bad bits of the youth most of them never had. Its not about the lack of British ‘reserve’, its about being a nob.

(This is just a personal observation and does not in any way reflect the official position of andysglasses.com nor any of its associated corporations, companies or staff. Mainly because it has none of any of those.)

The Americans decided to bomb the shit out of some errant Houthis. And with my total blessing. We all hate a Houthi. So on a little chat group was the Vice President of all America, Trump’s head-bully and tosser-in-chief, along with the Secretary for Defence, the Secretary of State and a crusty old General or two. So they could follow and discuss the bombing raid, as it happened. Also on the chat was Jeffrey Goldberg. Who? You know, Jeff!! That journalist from ‘The Atlantic’. You wouldn’t leave out old Jeffy, would you? And they didn’t. In a high-level, overseas military manoeuvre and a secret bombing raid on an enemy, they ‘accidentally’ included some random journo in their ‘life and death’ (53 people died in the bombing) deliberations. And celebrations.

And celebrate they did. The texts have all come out. Short on words, high on emojis. Stars & stripes emojis, clenched fist emojis, hi-five emojis, bulging bicep emojis. Just like any group of 14 year old, Andrew Tate followers would send after a victorious school football match.

From a few fat arsed politicos and retired militarists sitting 5 thousand miles away from ‘the action’.

Trump said he ‘knew nothing about the inclusion of Goldberg in the chat group’. And also that he has ‘full confidence in his security team’. Which once again calls into question the President’s judgment. Why on earth would he have confidence in people who managed to add an unwanted, unchecked, potentially unsafe person in their highest of high level SECURITY chat?

The emojis are just what you’d expect from immature braggers patting each other on the back.

This message is being sent only to YOU. Unless I accidentally include Kim Jong Un, Putin, Marine Le Pen or Donald Trump.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

Mel and I sponsor a local cultural event: the Proms at St. Judes. We do every year. It’s a series of musical concerts; classical, jazz, some pop/rock, in all manner of styles, over a two week summer period at ‘our church’. The one we might go to if we: a. Were Christians, b. Went to any religious bollocks. Sorry, services. But it’s not about God. It’s about music. AND, they raise loads of money for two fantastic charities. And the concerts are great.

I think of this sponsorship as ‘culture-washing’, which all repressive regimes and money-launderers indulge in to try and appear like they’re really good people. It’s like North Korea sponsoring the summer exhibition at the Royal Academy. Similar to Saudi Arabia ‘sportswashing’ by buying Newcastle United to try and hide their appalling human rights issues and overseas murders. We all do it.

There’s lots of sponsors. And once a year, before the Proms, we’re invited to a little ‘soiree’. That’s what posh people call ‘a piss up’. Though no-one else gets pissed. And we sip wine, or gulp it, depending on how the time’s going, and eat rather nice nibbles, and we have our own little concert. Which last night was the ‘Juno Duo’ (pictured).

The woman on the door told me ‘they’re Ukranian’. Yet when I chatted with Isabella, (on the right) before the show, she just sounded like a regular posh bird. I asked where she was from? Crimea? Kyiv? Any of those other bomb sites we see on the news every night? But she answered: Worcester. Is that part of Ukraine? Has Putin got his sights on Malvern now??? No, the other performer is from Ukraine; she’s a Brit. Oh.

And she is gorgeous.

Which immediately predisposes me to love whatever they do. Cos the Ukranian looked lovely too. And she played guitar. Classical. Genteel. Isabella sang. Gorgeous voice. Opera trained. But even that didn’t put me off. She was also pretty useful on the violin.

I looked on the program. They were playing ‘chamber music’. Ah. 16th Century. Where it possibly belonged. When Led Zeppelin had not yet been invented. Ok, they played some other stuff too, but at the first “…with a hay nonny-no”, I’m pretty much over the whole thing and its either more wine, the exit or, preferably, both.

You can take the boy out of the East End…

Happy Monday

A xxxx

The difficulties with young men and boys has become so great that they’ve wheeled out Gareth Southgate to solve it. Like he solved the ‘how to win a World Cup problem’ during his tenure as England football manager. But he is a really nice bloke.

The problem is that boys are ‘lost’. They want to grow up all lovely and considerate and obey the rules of equality and decency but they get ‘influenced’ as soon as they first turn on their first mobile phone, by morons like Andrew Tate and the world of pornography which greets them, embraces them and shows them how women really loved to be slapped, raped and strangled until they pass out.

We’re breeding a generation of default misogynists. Because they simply know no better. And they’re slumping in school, compared to girls, and lack any direction and leadership.

Who can their role models be? Footballers? God forbid. The ones who aren’t currently accused of rape themselves are awaiting charges for gambling issues. Rock stars? Same problem.

And when the kids are at home all they want to do is sit alone in their rooms with their headphones on playing ‘first person shooter’ games, so they can learn how to kill people in vast numbers. As long as someone else leaves them a few weapons of mass destruction lying around on the footpaths.

Safe to say that of all the child-murdering psychopaths which have surfaced over the last 5 years, in all countries, they’ve all been male. Or, in the most part, identified as predominantly male.

Not that the young women escape entirely as they seem high on the suicides. Bullied and trolled online accompanied by legions of vile individuals extolling the praises of killing yourself and showing the means and methods of doing so.

And it all stems from mobile phones. Those ‘harmless’ little super-computers we all carry around religiously. And Joey looks at the football league tables and loses himself in the relative goal differences between Port Vale and Stockport, while Lila gets YouTube videos of American teenagers being impossibly stupid. Then we grab our phones back.

It seems, Gareth, as you eloquently put in your Dimbleby Lecture last week, that we need to control the phones. And ‘you’ can’t ban them from kids whilst ‘you’ run every facet of your life on yours. Its hypocritical.

The answer’s simple. Dump the phones. All of them. Remove them from our lives. Totally. Pretend they never happened. It may render Mark Zuckerberg penniless within 10 minutes but how likely is that to happen?

(I wrote this on a ‘slate’, to lead the way.)

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

Sometimes its hard to be a woman…

They need to re-write that song. Changing the next line from “giving all your love to just one mayun”, to, possibly, “especially when she has a penis”. Or even “so I’m changing to be a mayun too”. They rhyme doesn’t matter; its country & western. Nothing matters. But they need to contemporise these terribly 1970s concepts of gender stability, monogamy and its evil twin ‘affairs!!’, and all the terrible horrors of men leaving home, dogs dying in car crashes and men fighting to show they’re meyun. Whilst love-torn, heart-broken women stay at home crying into their peroxide bottles.

There’s a D.I.V.O.R.C.E. being fought out in the high court currently between, unusually, a man and a woman. Ridiculous claims made on both sides, obviously, it’s a divorce, and pissing away the usual few hundred grand enriching lawyers. And let’s face it: no-one likes lawyers. Today’s photo is me, this morning, with my two fine examples of the ugly faces of modern day law.

Anyway, the slight difference in the case in question is that the guy described, quite horribly I feel, as a ‘City Trader’, is the one suing his ‘ex’ for maintenance. She’s a squillionaire of some sort, and they were married for 3 years.

To refer to someone as a City Trader is to use a term loaded with prejudice and stereotype. A wide boy, so barely literate he can hardly spell ‘Rolex’, of which he wears two. One on each wrist. He drinks champagne for breakfast, drives a Ferrari and blows 20k on dinner just because. This is the horrible image implied. Though in this case it would appear to be fairly accurate, especially as it was her 20k he was pissing away on the top end of pretentious wine list.

So after 3 years of luxury and high living, he’s gone. But is demanding sufficient maintenance to eat his breakfast at the Ritz every day, lunch at Hawksmoor and dinner at Nobu. He wants £36,000 a year for flights. Which is reasonable. Because if you fly out of Heathrow these days you may need to use ‘contingency plans’ to get home. And because he’s basically been spoiled rotten for 3 years, he feels entitled to be spoiled rotten for the rest of his life. Prenup notwithstanding. Because he ‘can’t even cook an omelette’. The judge told him to learn, which I think is judgmental (errrr… yeah, I suppose quite applicable really), prejudicial and insulting.

I think he should be given everything he asks for, and more, even though he is, apparently, a serial marrier and a bit of a tosspot. Otherwise what message does this send out to users, abusers and free-loaders in general???

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

The Office of National Statistics has to work out whether we (the entire economy, not just you) are suffering from inflation, and to what extent. So they use a ‘basket’ of representative goods and services, 752 of them, and see how the price of these things change from quarter to quarter. And I’m worried that their chosen ‘basket’ is becoming a bit too ‘Waitrose’ to be applicable to the more ‘Aldi’ parts of the country. I say this with no sneer, no superiority, nothing that living in the most suburban of London suburbs would ever cause any smugness on my part. I live where Waitrose is considered ‘downmarket’!!! So when we do go to Aldi (for whisky and wine), we do so only under the cover of darkness.

But they’ve taken out of their ‘basket’, ‘cooked pork’ and replaced it with ‘pulled pork’. Very Soho, less Solihull. They’ve included mangoes, FFS. And, in the non-edibles, ‘exercise mats’. Such things don’t exist north of Stanmore. Other than the part of Manchester where all the WAGs live. VR headsets are included now whereas they’ve actually got around to removing ‘cd rentals’. When no-one has rented a cd since Blockbuster closed in nineteen-ninety-whatever.

I’m concerned that they don’t include the increasing cost of footmen. And the price of slaves, if you can even get them!! And how can you have a system ‘representative of the whole country’ if fees for boarding at Eton aren’t included?

A funny thing happened this week. The sun came out. And it was warm. Well, yesterday was. So I wheeled out the electric bike. Which wasn’t really electric at that point because the battery was deader than dead. So it was just a bike. An amazingly heavy one. I pumped up the tyres, charged it up, and, having had the brakes ‘done’ at the end of last summer; I was ready. Eager.

The traffic was light. But that doesn’t really matter. The traffic lights were often red. But that doesn’t matter. There were a lot of people at the crossings. But fuck ‘em. And I rode in from home in 35 minutes. And it was wonderful. Ok, and very easy. Your legs are turning but they ain’t doing much. And when the chain came off its cog, my legs were achieving even less. But there ya go. 5 minutes and one pair of ridiculously greasy hands later, I was back on board. The life of the biker. The fair weather biker. And even though the tube is free for very old people like me, the bike is exhilaratingly liberating. Makes the commute a pure joy. Because nothing stops you. Except the chain coming off, obvs.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

Spurs were at Fulham yesterday. In the league. And were doing ok. Well, they hadn’t conceded, were actually playing abysmally, but nil-nil at 70-plus minutes is pretty much all we can hope for, and as its better, mathematically, than 4-nil down, I was happy to take it. For the time being!

Meanwhile later that evening Barcelona were playing at Athletico Madrid. Not the ‘El Classico’, that’s when they play Real Madrid. Same city, different colour shirt. This is the El Something-else-ico. And if Athletico win, they overtake Barca into second place, just behind their Madridista buddies at Real. Though they’re not really ‘buddies’. This is football. Everyone is hated. And after 70-odd minutes, Athletico were 2-nil up.

So, other than the teams, the cities, the countries AND the scores, you can see precisely where I’m drawing these amazing parallels from.

Because 20 minutes later, at Fulham, Spurs were 2-nil down. The second goal, agonisingly, scored by Ryan Sessegnon, the ‘biggest waste of time (and money!!!) Spurs ever signed’, duly returned to the club wot spawned him, Fulham, to hammer a nail in our coffin. Thank you Ryan! Fucking ingrate. Anyway, that’s how it ended.

But its not how it ended in Madrid. At 73 minutes the Barcelona team suddenly and collectively woke up! With a start!! And won 4-2. To overtake Real Madrid in their (stupid, Spanish) league to go top.

My first thought was: that’s how you do it.
My second was: why was I born in London?
My third was: it’s just as well I’m a rugby fan; supporting Spurs would FUCKING KILL MEEEEE!!!!

Saturday’s rugby was sensational. Ok, we didn’t win the 6 Nations, that went to the (bastard) French. But we played the best rugby the world has ever seen. Against a sad and sorry bunch’a Welshmen who only got sadder and sorrier as the tries scored went up. And up. And up. It made me proud to be a supporter of England rugby. In the same way watching Spurs makes me want to vomit copiously.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

Britain became a ‘welfare state’ in 1906. Which is so long ago that the Liberal Party, who were then in government, decades before they became a political irrelevance, introduced measures like national insurance and poverty payments for the unemployed and, yes, an early form of disability benefits.

When a Labour government started the National Health Service, to be ‘free at the point of service’ (a phrase which has cursed so many proposals for improvement and modernisation) in 1948, we officially became ‘the’ nation where you were cared for’ regardless of your circumstances.

Which is possibly why boatloads of people, literally, arrive on our shores every day.

But now we have a ‘new Labour’ government (note the lower case ‘n’ in new, because Kier Starmer may be many things, most of them bad, but he’s no Tony Blair) government and they’ve decided that ‘welfare’ is probably a thing better kept in the last century.

All those millions of benefit claimants, so staunchly defended and supported by Labour all through their opposition years, have suddenly, with their ascension to government, become, according to the Chancellor, ‘a total fucking liability. Freeloading, workshy skivers, the lot of them’. (I may have improved her grammar a little). And today they’ve added the disabled to their strategy of raising funds for the army.

NATO have demanded we increase our military spend. Trump has demanded we increase our military spend. Neither have offered to pay for it, so the money has to come from the welfare budget, apparently, because of black holes, immense debt and a complete lack of the promised ‘growth’.

Why don’t we just put all the unemployed and disabled in the army??? Two birds with one stone. It’s a brilliant way to achieve two ends with no added cost. Ok, the disabled may have some physical issues dealing with marches across the Brecon Beacons in full battle gear, but they could be used in the HQ, depending on their disability, or as sandbags, in some extreme cases. You see; you just need to look at the problem from outside the box.

This government are fast becoming the most anti-social socialists since the Russian revolution.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

I didn’t watch Spurs last night. Couldn’t. I was at tai chi hitting a punch bag. And although I do think of football whilst I’m channelling my inner Bruce Lee, those thoughts are normally reserved for Chelsea players, Arsenal managers, Match of the Day presenters, who form the focus for my aggression. As well as hitting punch bags, I also managed to hit my mate’s car door whilst parking too last night. Don’t ask. Just an ‘added bonus’. I was getting ‘into character’.

So the Spurs match was far from my mind. Which, generally this season, is the best place for it to be. But not last night. No. We won. A match. A whole one. Actually it was ‘2 whole ones’ as it was a 2-parter. And we played brilliantly. Then played shit. Then were fantabulous. Then fucking abysmal. Then…

Usual Spurs really. EXCEPT… for the final result. At which point the wonderful had exceeded the dire by one goal. Which was all we needed to progress to the quarter finals of the Europa League. To play Eintracht Frankfurt over two legs.

We deserve to win a trophy. Not the players; they’re terrible. Certainly not the manager, though it might save him his job. But the fans. WE deserve something. We spend every year making excuses for not winning anything and playing rubbish, whilst still spending our money and giving our hearts to our club. Who, in return… just take it.

Dealing with Putin is much easier. Predictable. Stable. I’m not saying ‘nice’, necessarily, I’m not saying ‘fair’ at all, just a man who knows what he wants. And takes it. Regardless of who anyone else thinks it may belong to. Like Ukraine. He wants it, he takes it. So as they now discuss ‘ceasefire’, this may be difficult given Putin’s criteria. And also that among the Russian’s ‘concerns’ are that Russia must be protected from ‘this happening again’. Yes, Ukraine must agree to not drag 200,000 Russian soldiers onto its land like it apparently did last time. And as for the ‘security force’ of European (cos Americans won’t do it) military on the ground, that’s a red line. Basically, short of Moscow’s total control over Kyiv, just like in the ‘good old Soviet days’, Putin’s going to be difficult.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

Our wives are trying to kill us. There’s no doubt about it. Married men are three times more likely to be obese than single men. THREE TIMES!!! I read that in a very reputable newspaper. So it must be true. As a groom walks his bride away from the alter to a life of married… bliss?, his waistline starts to increase. She doesn’t have to feed him, it just grows and expands all by itself, merely by the knowledge that its owner is now married. Its an evolutionary thing. It ‘takes him off the market’ forever, thus increasing survival of the fittest. In the strictly Darwinian meaning of ‘fittest’, obviously. No-one dates a fat bastard. Stops ’em ‘straying’.

But I can see a flaw in the statistics. The ‘married’ and ‘unmarried’ men.

Unmarried men are either too young to get married, in which case they’re all skinny, or they’re ‘bachelors’ of a later age. And as we all know, ‘bachelor’ is an euphemism. No-one’s actually described anyone in that term since Quentin Crisp died and Oscar Wilde went to prison for being a ‘confirmed bachelor’.

So I wish to know the ages of all the people in this study alleging ‘3 times more likely…’

And their social demographic. Because as we all know, Northerners eat shit. Whilst we in the south eat free-range Ostrich-meat (no fat), flown in from… probably where ostriches live, on private jets, Northerners eat ultra-processed, high fat, no veg, tv-dinners from Lidl, blasted in dysfunctional microwaves. Even the Northern bachelors, like Jimmy Summerville, Marc Almond, they eat it too but somehow manage to keep slim.

But whilst husbands get fat, their wives stay slim. Go figure. At least they have a figure to figure.

Interestingly, married mens’ hearts are better than single ones. Which, considering they’re hauling round 17 stone of blubber with them, is quite a surprise.

And here’s the best bit: if wives die, their husband’s health deteriorates. Whereas when husbands die, there is no change in the widow’s health. BECAUSE THEY’RE SO BUSY LEAPING UP AND DOWN WITH THE JOY OF NOT HAVING TO WASH HIS UNDERPANTS ANY LONGER!!!

I didn’t say any of this is ‘fair’, its just what it is. According to some flawed mess of statistics or other.

Happy Thursday

The Husband xxxx