Andy's Glasses

So you remember my ‘TIA’, right? Surely you do; you uncaring, forgetful know-nothing. My ‘transient ischemic attack’. I thought my left arm went funny for 2 minutes one Sunday morning before tennis and the next thing they’re blue-lighting me to intensive care and reading the last rites. Ok, a slight exaggeration, when I got round to mentioning it to a doc-type-person they insisted I get checked out, so I went to see a neurologist.

He was a very nice man. He did lots of physical tests that involved pushing his hands, pulling his hands, touching my nose, touching his nose (I wanted to touch the nurse’s nose; she had a lovely nose), lifting feet, raising head, kicking… hundreds of ‘things’ all very quickly. I passed. I can push against a doctor’s hand like a man of 25. Blood pressure fine, heart sounds fine, all good and dandy, great.

So it was probably just a ‘nerve thing’ then? Like, just a ‘nothing’?

Oh no, saeth he, it was definitely a TIA, a little clot of blood or cholesterol entering the brain. Holy shittttt!!!!! So we need to run some tests.

If only I’d have known.

First they took blood. Loads of blood. My fucking blood. I’ll never get that back. Bottles and bottles of the stuff. Then I went and had an ultrasound scan of my carotid arteries. Which is quite brilliant because you can watch them on the screen and see the blood (what I had left) flowing through. And that doctor told me my carotids were ‘beautiful’. His words. No thickening, no deposits, however excited a man can get about arteries, this man did.

Then I had a head scan. An… MRI!!! I’ve been in one of those before. And, when going in head-first, I lasted precisely 21 seconds before the panic attacks felt likely. But this time it was an ‘open scanner’. Ahhh, fresh air and lovely. No, exactly the same as the closed one but with a little gap either side where you can’t see daylight (with yer fucking head nailed to a board) but you can feel it with your fingertips. I survived. I lasted the course, which amazed me, if not the radiologist.

And I returned to my neurologist who told me that everything was fine. But like everything. Fine and dandy and happy and wonderful. Which would almost be sufficient to forget the whole thing but he wants me to see a cardiologist too. To absolutely prove beyond any doubt that I AM a fraud of the first order.

Because if blood is good and arteries are good and cholesterol is fine, the for a TIA the only other cause is a dodgy heart rhythm, causing little clots. Possibly. And we just need to tick that box too. Which I’ll do when I get back from Australia. For where we leave on Monday.

In my condition!

Happy, healthy Friday

A xxxx

OMG! What a day in Westminster. The biggest, most exciting, most productive, most decisive day since…

Because Theresa May won over the entire parliament and is allowed to continue in ‘the worst job there ever was’ at ‘the worst time you could ever do it’. And when I say ‘the entire parliament’, I obviously don’t mean it. Because we’re talking about politicians and politics and therefore every word must be ‘spun’ to distort, embellish or just plain lie about the actual reality.

So in fact only the Conservatives were allowed to vote. Obviously, it was a vote over their confidence in their leader. And of the 317 Tories who did bother to vote, 200 of them voted their confidence in Theresa. Or at least demonstrated their opinion that ‘she’s the best of a bad bunch’, possibly ‘rather her than me’ and some considering how awful it would be viewed from ‘greater Europe’ should the head ‘man’ and negotiator leave at this incredibly late and pivotal time.

Labour weren’t allowed to vote, but they were allowed to shout a lot beforehand. Jeremy Corbyn has been ‘groomed’ into a new persona for his ‘leader of the opposition’ role as its the first time in his entire 45 year career when he’s not allowed to speak whilst wearing a duffle coat and holding a placard. And his new persona, chosen by highly paid image consultants (50 quid for 8 sessions in the Red Lion pub in Esher) is that of ‘angry geography teacher’. So rather than just raising his voice at important parts of his speech, he just shouts the whole thing. “YOU DIDN’T HAND YOUR HOMEWORK IN ON TIME AND SO YOU MUST DO IT AGAIN AND I WANT IT BY FIRST THING TOMORROW MORNING!!!”

The Irish ‘allies’ of Theresa May now hate her, won’t vote for her, have taken our ‘bribe’ of a billion quid and instead of fulfilling their side of the contract, voting for the government, they’re going to spend it closing hospitals where abortions are carried out. It’s what they do. Fuckwits.

The Scots despise May and now want to team up with Labour to force a new vote of no-confidence, this time in the government, which is much more serious. The problem is that Jeremy Corbyn ONLY wants this path to end in a general election so that he might grasp his chance to turn the UK into Moscow in 1925 (ie starvation and bankrupt), whereas Nicola Sturgeon wants it to lead to another Europe referendum. At least she’s ‘on message’ with the fact that this is ALL ABOUT EUROPE. Whereas Corbyn, as we know, couldn’t give a shit about Brexit or Remain as long as he can avoid singing any national anthems.

The Liberals don’t count. In any way. Similarly Sinn Fein, the Green(s) (there’s only one and if trees aren’t being cut down she stays quiet anyway) and Plaid Cymru who only debate in Welsh.

So there you are. Theresa May stays. In part because she had to promise that she’ll be gone by the next election. Ok, she stays ONLY because she’s promised to leave by the next election. But you know what? I have a growing respect and admiration for her. She’s doing a job. And she’ll stick with it. Even at the eventual cost of her career. That’s noble.

In retrospect we should have had a rampant Brexiteer doing the negotiation for us because they could have threatened Europe more effectively. It’s hard to make threats when in your heart you don’t want to carry them out. But if Rees-Mogg, tosser that he is, said he’d leave with no deal, Europe would have softened. Something they never needed with Theresa. But there ya go.

Glad its sorted. (???????)

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

It was decided yesterday that we will emphatically NOT be leaving Europe. To leave would be a total national disaster whereas to remain ensures that we at least get to play in the knockout stages. You know: EUROPE! The Champions League. No-one has the remotest interest in that other ‘Europe’ the unmoving, intransigent, inflexible, dictatorial hate-land of greed and incessant demands, we’re done with that, I mean Eeeuuuuuuurrrrup: the football!

Spurs went to Barcelona needing a miracle. But heh, this is Christmas time and that’s the only reasonable time of year to expect, need or demand nothing short of ‘the miracle of Barcelona’. When God (big Spurs fan, arguably, in many ways ‘the biggest’) did the modern day equivalent of parting the Red Sea whilst 37 bushes burned and the one day of oil in the Temple burned sufficiently to light the floodlights at the Nou Camp for a month. And remember, when God shouts ‘come on my Son!!!’ it has a more profound meaning than when anyone else says it, bearing in mind who his ‘Son’ is. If you buy into that particular testament.

So Spurs, having endured the worst start possible in the early group matches, were left in the most precarious of position from which to proceed. In their group of 4 teams they needed to get from their last match the same number of points as Inter Milan did in theirs. Milan’s was at home to the ever-losing bottom team, PSV. Spurs’ match was away at the best team in the entire fucking world in the fortress of Barcelona’s Camp Nou. We needed to win to be sure, pretty certain that Milan would trounce PSV.

And we got off to the best possible start, conceding a goal after 7 minutes. Good. Gives the Catalans a false sense of security. Right. But did heads drop? Did shoulders slump?? Did… it all go to shit??? No. This is Spurs. This is Pochettino. We came back, we attacked, we stole the game away from them. We out-possessed the most possessive team ever. And attacked them. But couldn’t score.

Meanwhile over in Milan, the unimaginable happened and the Dutch eternal losers took the lead. Ahhh, that’s not quite so bad then.

Until late in the game Milan equalised with PSV. Leaving Spurs in a Brexit situation. But then the miracle. Two miracles in fact. Lucas Moura scored an equaliser for Spurs in the 85th minute and PSV prevented the all-out, throw-everything-at-them Italians from scoring a winner at the San Siro.

Spurs Barca; 1-all. Inter PSV; 1-all. That was it. All that was needed. Job done. Miracle performed. God is great. And Spurs move forward. Amen.

Oh, Liverpool won as well, apparently.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

I had a bizarre event a few months ago. Well, it seemed it at the time.

I needed to get a pair of glasses for a girl who’d lost hers and had to replace them with exactly the same, even though it was ‘discontinued’ and not available. I googled the model to see a photo to see if there was anything similar as the manufacturers had taken it off their website. But no, sorry, ain’t got one, come and choose another.

The next day I had a message on my personal email, from eBay offering me a brand new frame in the right colour, size, everything. So I bought it and sold it to the girl. What? I’m a charity?? The girl was so happy. And the world was a better place.

And I thought ‘wow!!!’ the power of the internet. It helped me. It led me to the path of profit. It facilitated my life. But its fucking scary. That a business computer can result in personal emails. Whether beneficial or spammish or a pain in the ass is not the point. The point is that the connections are all ‘in there’.

Then I had a conversation last night which was even more scary. My friends were just talking over breakfast about something they needed to buy, just casual and chatty, as ya do. His phone was on the table, ‘asleep’ and resting and seemingly inert and benign. But then he started getting messages offering him the items they’d been discussing. Same make, model, colour…

Apparently ‘whatsapp’ listens whilst its asleep. You have to turn off the ‘microphone’ facility in the settings. Or it spies on you. From a marketing perspective but really; do we need that??

And this is mind blowing too. The Voyager 2 space probe, launched in 1977, has finally left the Solar System, its gone out of the area influenced by our Sun. Not like Manchester, which also gets no sun, but like, a long way away. Where da sun quite literally don’t shine. And its now on its way to the next star. And travelling at 35,000 miles an hour (no speed cameras up there) it is going to take 40,000 years to reach the next star. Which, if you do the sums, is… carry 3… times 7… a million for luck… is a fuck of a long way.

And should it encounter alien beings, they’ll open up the package of photos and tapes and stuff and immediately start looking for a Betamax to play them on (good luck doing that here, let alone half a light year away). And if Shawaddywaddy doesn’t have them rushing to planet Earth then the prospect of getting a mullet haircut surely will. If they have hair. On their 3 scaly heads.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

I wear a yellow, hi-viz jacket. Not a ‘gilet jaune’, because I’m English. Not a political statement, not because I’m on a building site, but because I cycle. And although women in Range Rovers are ‘yellow-blind’, generally it makes you visible to most drivers who might, on occasion, choose to avoid you.

But my gilet jaune has been hi-jacked. First in France, previously a nation famous for stylish attire and classy dressing, when the hi-viz became a political movement, which itself has then been hi-jacked further by extremists both right and left who use it as an excuse for riots and violent anti-government protest. And now here. In our own ‘back yard’ as some of the protesters yesterday in Westminster chose to adopt the garment for their own political purposes. Bit subtle, perhaps, as a yellow jacket has no meaning whatsoever on this side of the channel, but its probably just a comment by association, solidarity with the rioters in Paris, thugs of the world unite, kind’a deal.

Yesterday’s protest was about… yeah, fucking Brexit. With the ‘pros’ on one side and the ‘antis’ on the other. Spokesperson for the ‘get out quick!’ brigade was Tommy Robinson, leader of most banned far right organisations since Hitler died. His message clear: Europe=immigration; immigration=Muslims; leave Europe=no more Muslims. You do the maths!!! It’s simple, elegant and stupidly facile and misleading. As you’d expect from Tommy Robinson.

Also speaking was the new head man of UKIP. Don’t know his name, no reason to learn it; the party’s dead and what remains is more of a joke than it was under Farage’s smilingly toxic leadership.

So the anti-Brexiters marched too. Not sure which side was wearing hi-viz because the gilets jaune movement is anti-government and as both sides of the Brexit debate are anti-government, including most of the government itself, there’s confusion. But the anti-racists marched, because wherever Tommy R goes, they follow. And a bunch of feminists marched too. Why not? March is a march, right?

It was peaceful. Because we’re British. ‘We’ll always have Paris’, the skinheads probably whispered in each other’s ears as the protesters peacefully departed. Probably just as confused as everyone else as to what, precisely, the demonstrations were actually about.

Vote tomorrow. God help us.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

Sometimes I just thank the Lord that I was born… in another century, another millennium, another world. And never more so that learning about ‘incels’.

An ‘incel’ is an involuntary celibate. Someone deemed by ‘the world’ as being too ugly, too short, too bald, too toothless or too nerdy to be worthy of dating. I’m not sure how short you need to be to become ‘beneath contempt’, if its like limbo, but contempt is what these poor people get, these ‘incels’ from the dating world. They post their pictures and await the onslaught from online ‘babes’ and in fact from other, more manly, more hunky, hairy, toothy, jockish male shag-magnet types too.

So they then run to ‘incel’ chat-rooms and form what would once have been known as ‘nebach clubs’, in which they wallow in their collective self-pity and ‘enjoy’ their apparent hopeless situation. Basically, that they ain’t gettin’ none. Celibacy endures, their self-worth diminishes and they’ve given up and seek comfort in a world of total fucking losers. And all done without ever venturing outdoors. Probably done mostly in the toilet at work.

Because if your (sad, sorry, tragic, pathetic and totally moronic: no judgments here) life is run totally on a fucking smartphone then quite frankly you get what you deserve. If you choose to ‘advertise’ yourself, to run your personal marketing strategy in a 2-dimensional forum in which superficiality is all anyone can ever see, then you’re a tosser. Because the Brad Pitts and George Clooneys and Robbie Williamses of this world will always ‘win’ in the feedback game, even if in real life they may be (who knows?) vapid, stupid, rude or conversationally soporific. Because they look gorgeous. And in that horrid little world, that’s all that counts.

Were any of these short, fat, ugly, creepy, nerdy types ever to venture into a pub, a bar, a club, or even in the canteen at work, and actually ‘engage’ with people; real PEOPLE, not just bland and photo-shopped faces on a phone, they could show that underneath all that ugliness, there’s a charming, or funny, or self-deprecating, or clever, or interesting person with whom real members of the alternative gender might actually like to spend time with.

Of course, if you have absolutely nothing to offer anyone because you in fact DO spend all your time in chat rooms and on masochistically insulting and judgmental web sites, and therefore cannot even have any time of interaction without your phone being involved, then a true loser you are.

But at least give yourself a frikkin chance, rather than condemning yourself to the nether world of the pre-defeated.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

Arsenal’s new manager, Unai Emery, is of the ‘new breed’ of managers, pioneered by Arsene Wenger, whereby they don’t just show you which way to kick the ball. They are holistic in approach. They start with diet and training and they essentially control every facet of the players’ lives. Because having players, like George Best, Jimmy Greaves, who lack nothing in the skill department but everything where self-control is concerned, simply doesn’t suit the modern game. No team ever shagged their way drunkenly to the title. So the new way is to improve fitness and stamina and reduce injuries, hopefully. Train hard, eat really well, don’t drink, don’t smoke and sleep properly. Unai is 100% committed to this paradigm.

So how happy do you reckon he was to see some footage published by The Sun (who fucking else?) which showed about 10 of his superstars in the VIP lounge of a club at 3 in the morning, clocking up a £30,000 bar bill and being seen inhaling ‘hippy crack’ from balloons? Just a couple of days before the first match of the season.

I make no judgments. I believe strongly in a work/life balance. I always adored the wild guys who lived to excess. But I’m really pleased that this happened at Arsenal.

Brexit. The world’s biggest fuck up. Do you remember the old joke: can I buy that bread roll please? Certainly, that’s 40p. 40p??? They’re only 35p down the road. Well go buy one there then. I can’t, they’ve sold out. Ahhh, when we’ve sold out, ours are 35p too.

That’s the Labour Party. ‘Our Brexit plan is fab. Ours is wonderful. Everyone would love our ideas. This government has fucked it up royally. It’s divided. Blah, blah, Marxist crap, then more blah, blah, blah’.

It’s dead easy to have ‘the perfect Brexit plan’. As long as you never have to get it past: (in no particular order): the remainers in your own party, the leavers in your own party, the same in all the other parties, the Irish, Brussels and everybody else in the entire continent. In short, the Labour Party have the absolute best plan that no-one will ever see nor care about. Tossers. And I’m fed up hearing about it.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

I haven’t spoken about football for a little while, because I temporarily lost interest. You know when your WiFi cuts out for an hour with no apparent reason? Same thing, the football fuse just went, no reason, nothing sinister, nothing untoward. Though I remember precisely when it happened; 16.00hours on Sunday. Such is life.

But now I’m cured! Hard-wired back to the beautiful game. Now that I have something to gloat about once more.

Because Wednesday night’s victory over unfortunate Southampton at Wembley enabled us to leap over both Arsenal (who had TEMPORARILY pushed us down the table) and Chelsea (who would have done if they could have beaten the mighty Wolves) into 3rd position where, for the time being, we’re happy to be.

Yet it remains ‘the funny ole game’. Arsenal went to Man United last night pretty much expecting a win. Even though they never win at Old Trafford, this should have been their year. United are not just shit, in any normal meaning of ‘shit’, they are unmotivated, destabilised, lacklustre, shambolic shit with a manager intent on increasing all those horrible adjectives further. Furthermore (I love looking at ‘form books’ because they’re always wrong) Spurs beat United this season, early on when United where still at least performing as a team, and Arsenal, in case you missed it, beat us last week. Ergo, if 1+1=2 then the Arse should have won.

Football’s not like maths. It’s more like… football.

At the other end of the table its hell. Its always hell. No-one wants to incur the ‘curse of Christmas last’, because if you’re bottom of the table at Yule time, yer fucked. Except for the teams who weren’t, but we don’t count them. A curse is a curse.

Newcastle live just above the drop zone but aren’t doing well. When they lost at home to West Ham (also a bit erratic, even by their won standards) last weekend, I thought: how bad must Newcastle be? To lose to that rabble? And I like Geordies, so its sad. I like Palace too (I have to say that), whereas Huddersfield, Burnley, Southampton, Cardiff… does anyone really care which 3 we lose? On a scale of tragedy from chipped paint on a fingernail) to ‘The Titanic!’, just pick any 3 of them and it would barely rank at all.

Well, in football as in ‘gone with the wind’, ‘tomorrow’s just another day’.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

The Leicester Square Odeon, home for decades to premieres and Royal views and the place with more red carpet than Ikea, is to reopen its doors next month after a ‘refurb’. Another one. Usual thing; needed a ‘lick’a paint’ and 47 billion quid later it looks fab. But all that paint and red carpet doesn’t grow on trees. So when it opens it charge £40.25 for the ‘best seats’. These are the Emirates First Class of cinema seating. Reclining, obvs, massive, in case you’re fat, and with ‘three times the leg room of normal seats!!!’ Which is about twice what you probably need really. Normal cinema seats aren’t cramped, another 2 feet would be nice. You don’t need a basketball court in front of you. I don’t think the 40 quid includes either a butler or masseuse but that can probably be arranged.

As an avid and regular movie-goer (and movie buff sometimes, though movies in the buff rarely) I have my cinemas of choice. I like sitting on a 2-seater sofa. With Mel. And I like sufficient leg-room to stretch my very long (32” inside leg) legs. I rarely get the urge to ‘walk around’ during a movie. If I do, then the director’s got something wrong.

And more leg room means less seats.

Yet just this Sunday I was prematurely mourning the demise of the cinema. When a mate told me that Saturday night he saw ‘Disobedience’, which I saw that very night. I saw it at the Phoenix, he saw it in his lounge. On some Curzon Movies stick that hooks up to the intraweb via Amazon and, blah, blah, blah, you get brand new releases, on your own tv. All the sofa you want. Snacks in the kitchen. Pause button! Movies in the buff if you wish, and if you’re wife can stand it. But brand new, first weekend releases, at home and legal, not pirated.

So not only do movies have to compete with tv, with Netflix, with Sky Movies, with Amazon, with all manner of competitive shit, they now would appear to have lost their only ‘edge’, the ‘first view’.

You can watch it at home for a tenner or fork out 80 quid to see it at Leicester Square. Plus travel. Plus 30 quid for popcorn. I like popcorn and its not going to be cheap there, is it?

So if you go to town to watch the movies, the back rows (where we have to sit, one of Mel’s many ‘rules’) its only a tenner each. Bargain. And if you get sneered at by the wide boys in their fold-down, duck-down, hyperseats, just tell them you feel sorry for them because they obviously don’t have a cinema at home. Like wot we don’t.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

We’re all into ‘sustainable’ models. Food, business, natural resources, everything needs to be ‘sustainable’. They make sense. And even though coal is not in any way sustainable, nor a particularly good thing to burn from an atmospheric point of view, try telling the Poles that. Or the Indians. Or the Chinese.

But are Manchester City ‘sustainable’? A more interesting question. Except for the 97 people who just read that and thought ‘oh football!!’ and went back to sleep.

Because the Financial Fair Play rules (which no-one can understand and have never been put to any good use) are finally being dusted off and brought to bear on that most… Northern, of oil-funded, grass roots football teams. They actually represent everything that is pretty abhorrent about our national game. And yet to watch, they are the dream. Every football club would want to play with such style, such skill, such grace. But they can’t afford the players. Because to buy and pay the ludicrous salaries of world superstars means that your business model is no longer ‘sustainable’. You spend more than you reap. Which in any other business, or for most other teams, would mean bankruptcy, receivership, death.

Not at Manchester City. Nor even at Chelsea who currently have 100 players out on loan all over the world. I’ve got one to wash my car. Mow the lawn.

But now some emails have come to light over the Man City ‘sponsorship’ by Etihad Airlines. The financial details of which have always been a little… sketchy. Particularly as the club are owned by Sheikh Mansoor, who also ‘owns’ Abu Dhabi, and Etihad is ‘state-owned’ and hence is, in practical terms, owned by the good Sheikh. Is there a good Sheikh? I’ve never met one.

The emails show that in 2015 ‘Etihad’ paid its ‘sponsorship’ of 67.5 million quid. But the Sheikh said that the airline would actually only pay 8 mil and his own company would sort out the rest.

Which is precisely what the FFP rules were there to eliminate. The fact that clubs can ridiculously overspend and some overseas billionaire can ‘sustain’ his vanity project by just coughing up the shortfall. Books balance, we have the best club in the world. It’s that hated model used at PSG too.

But now Man City may get banned from the Champions League. Which will be totally fantastic should Spurs only manage to finish 5th this season. And more importantly (WHAT’S MORE IMPORTANT THAN THAT???) it would send a loud and clear message.

Southampton, Watford, Burnley, possibly even Spurs, and lots of other top flight teams, can’t compete with unlimited funding. Therefore the league is unbalanced and unfair. Unless Mansour bribes UEFA. Not a totally unprecedented scenario.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx