Andy's Glasses

So what am I supposed to do now? There’s no more tennis, the World Cup is over (in case you missed that) and the new football season doesn’t start for almost 4 weeks!! The European Championships are 2 years away and the next World Cup not for 4… and a half, because they have to be played in winter due to the abject stupidity and institutionalised corruption of (old; I’m hoping) FIFA awarding the tournament to (fucking) Qatar. Which is too hot for camels in the summertime, never mind pale and pasty Scandinavians. In the winter it will be a cool and moderate 47 degrees, which is fine. Note: fans take fans.

The Men’s final at Wimbledon produced the right result, ie: tennis players 1, big serving giants, lost. But it was unspectacular. Anderson had simply run out of serves after his 6 hour serve-a-thon semi-final on Friday and his type of player has no ‘plan B’. Most players don’t have a ‘plan B’ against Djokovich and if they do it generally fails anyway.

So with Novak (as I call him, fellow tennis players, you understand…) strolling to victory it was time to change channel for the football. Though the BBC is so brilliant you didn’t need to even do that, they did it for you. They pushed the tennis to BBC2 so you didn’t have to go to all that effort of picking up the remote and clicking. Giving you more valuable eating time. Though personally, I chose to change location. Not to Russia but to Lila’s house. On the grounds that even if the football is shit, it’ll be loads of fun with the baby.

Which it undoubtedly was, but the football wasn’t shit. It was fantastic. And controversial.

World Cup finals tend to be rather conservative affairs; very defensive, everyone worried that the first goal might be the last so they’d rather prevent it than score it. No-one said footballers were clever. But this game was played by the two most exciting teams, played with flair and skill and power and pace. Then the French, typically, started cheating. Griezmann went down in a tackle in which, it was later seen, again, and again, and again, there was no contact with the defender until after Antoine was on the floor and already writhing in ‘agony’. Free-kick, own goal, 1-0. But Croatia equalised quite magnificently with a brilliant goal. So the French used the VAR ticket to appeal an incident that was never a penalty in a million years. But that would be the million years before they invented Video refs. And if you slow it down sufficiently, it looks a bit like a handball. At full speed it certainly isn’t, just unintentional contact. So the ref changed his decision and awarded the penalty. 2-1 to France.

To be fair to the French, something I’ve spent a lifetime avoiding, they then just ran away with the game in quite spectacular style. Even the world’s most potentially brilliant but generally as useful as a cricket bat on a fishing trip, player, Paul Pogba, realised at least some of that potential.

Hugo Lloris had a mad moment, which he does and it ended 4-2. The highest score in a World Cup final since VAR was introduced. The most goals… blah, blah, blah.

Then we all cried as the captain of SPURS went up to lift the trophy. And some of us thought… just for a moment… if you screwed up your eyes a bit…

So what am I supposed to do now then? Eh??

Happy end-of-the-world (cup) Monday

A xxxx

I’m opposed to movie sequels. Politically. Ok, there are exceptions, otherwise life would be dull and I thrive on hypocrisy. The ONLY acceptable sequels are Kill Bill 2, because it really wasn’t a sequel, Godfather 2, because it was such a magnificent movie and in a way all 4 parts were just a serialised version of Mario Puzzo’s books. And, of course, Terminator 2, which is still mind-blowingly brilliant even after decades of advancement in special effects in the industry.

Otherwise, sequels are just a form of exploitation of the masses, which sounds a bit Marxian but its true. “They loved Die Hard, so just re-make exactly the same movie with a different back-drop and ‘they’ will love that too. And if they don’t, it’ll be too late because they can only make that decision on the way out of the cinema they’ve already paid to enter”. Cynical bastard movie-makers. The same ones who made Rocky 2, Death Wish 2 and Under Seige 2. And I really liked Under Seige (1) because it used Stephen Segal’s single facial expression (even Keira Knightly has 2) to great effect and lots of things blew up.

The Bourne series, with Matt Damon (coining it) as Jason Bourne were just following the books. I was in my serious Robert Ludlum phase (nineteen-seventy… something) when The Bourne Identity came out. Brilliant book. Followed by The Bourne Supremacy, The Bourne Holocaust, The Bourne Constipation, The Bournes shop at Asda and The Bourne Free. But the books were just as exploitative as the movies that followed. Though being books they tend to be judged differently and in a more hi-brow manner and thus are given licence to exploit and be repetitive.

Yet there is absolutely no excuse for making a sequel to Mama Mia. None whatsoever. Issa fucking song. Not even a particularly good song. On the grounds that Abba made it. And they spun a quite stupid tale around a song and used some really powerful A-listers like Meryl Streep and Julie Waters and Pierce Brosnan and so I went to see it. I was the only man in the place. And it was tragically, pathetically awful. Simply cringeworthy. Not in a Larry David kind of cringey way, more in a overly simplistic children’s tv type way that is embarrassing to see.

But because half the world’s women went to see it, they want them to go see another one, or even see if they can get the other half involved.

Lily James is in it, which would normally be sufficient to have me rushing to any movie theatre, but the thought of Pierce Brosnan (not-)singing again produces an instant repelling effect along with all the pre-release images which show that there can be too much happiness in the world. Too much smiling, too much… fucking Abba.

World Cup final? Wimbledon final?? OMG. No sequels there.

Happy final day

A xxxx

Ok, so now the football’s suddenly gone all non-English and non-interesting, the Wimbledon that I had horribly, cruelly, with such fickle callousness, disregarded, has once again come back into my life with a vengeance. With a rush. With just 5 hours of Nadal (who I love dearly) and Djokovich (who I don’t really) playing the most spectacular game of tennis I’ve seen since this morning in the park when I had a knock-up with Michael from Tai Chi. It was that good. In fact the game at Wimbledon was fucking amazing. Possibly the best I’ve ever watched. Certainly the most recent. Which always raises the ranking.

I didn’t watch the ‘other’ semi-final. The two fucking giants out-serving each other for 6 hours as the crowd fell asleep by the final set 24-22. zzzzzzzzzzzzz

Don’t like big servers. I know, they must be good, one of them (doesn’t matter which) has reached the final and is thus the 2nd best player in the world today, at least. And yet I have no time for them. And really dread the day when being 6 foot 9 and having a fuck-off serve would be enough to see off the Feders and Nadals, the sublime ball-players of their generation. There again, I’ve played virtually every Saturday and Sunday for the last 20 years without taking a serve, so what do I know?

Meanwhile, Trump has elevated the ‘special relationship’ to ‘the highest level of special’. And Donald himself is a bit ‘special’ so he should know. Yet he was big enough to make a u-turn. He changed from ‘a soft brexit is for dipshit, weak motherfuckers who we’ll tax to shit’ to ‘whatever Theresa decides is fine by us, fine by us’. How’d that happen?

The protests went well. Lots of people. Lots. And having already been a bit ‘nyeh’ about them, when I saw that both Jezza and Nicola Sturgeon had attended them, that crossed a red line. Quite literally a red line. Comrade Corbyn is, unsurprisingly, anti-capitalist and thus anti-American. Trump is just the world’s easiest target around which to rally all manner of troops. You can make it about any of his many crimes but really they’re just the excuse to be anti-American.

World Cup final tomorrow. And tennis final too. Then what do I do??

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

Trump’s here. But not for long. He’s off to see Pooot’n in a day or two so is here just long enough to upset Theresa May, probably grab the Queen’s ass and tell a few nob jokes to some hoi-poloi. Oh, and do some ‘deals’. He loves a deal. But only if its a ‘good deal’. And NATO isn’t really a good deal for America. Because, basically, they fund it. And in a way you have to admire Trump because he’s the first American prez to actually come out and say ‘WHY ARE WE PAYING FOR THE WHOLE NATO THING WHICH PROTECTS YOUOUOU?!?!?!?!’ Good question. And he’s also said that a ‘soft brexit’ (note: I can’t be bothered any longer to capitalise ‘brexit’ because its become so dreadfully boring so I’ve relegated it), which is effectively ‘no brexit’ will adversely affect trade with the US who are about to impose big tariffs on European trade and we’d still be part of the European trading thing. Oooohhhh.

Trump calls it as he sees it, no-one can deny that, no matter how many fat baby blimps you float around London. I hope there’ll be at least two of them because Trump says everything twice so it would kind’a poetic. And are these blimps just ‘freedom speech in a democratic nation to express their distaste for a man who is a known for… well, everything rotten really’? Or is it just a extension of the hard left’s apparent hatred of America and all things American, using the new prez as an excuse to further demonise our closest ‘ally’?

I’m no fan of The Donald. In case you may have missed the last 2 years of my incessant slagging off of the most inappropriate president the world has ever known, including Kim Jong-Un and Gadaffi. And I couldn’t give a shit about a couple of Trumpish balloons floating about, disrespectful as they are, but he kind’a needs to be disrespected as a person, if not always for the role he’s currently taking. And there’s the Islamaphobia and the misogyny and the gropage and the sexism and the ‘from these cold, grey hands’-ism regarding guns, to name but a few.

But where were the protestors when ‘we’ had the Saudis over for the full Royal Visit? The nation that has, just last month allowed women to drive; that has sustained the war in neighbouring Yemen responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civiliains; where torture is common, raped women are stoned to death and all is really peachy? Where were the protests when President Xi came over from China, again being given the full horse-and-carriage reception even after he personally removed the words ‘human rights’ and ‘presidential elections’ from the Mandarin dictionary?

So if the protests are anti-Trump, then that’s fine, but where the fuck were you for previous tyrants and scumbags? If its just Corbyn-inspired anti-capitalism, then I hope they bring out the tear gas, rubber bullets and Boris’s water cannon.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

The photo is of the Trump protection heli-thingumy which flew past my house yesterday and disturbed Lila’s nursery rhymes, noisiest thing ever. Why couldn’t he take the tube like everyone else?

Its over. The dream. Its not coming home. They are instead. After they play Belgium in the most unmotivating match that can ever be played; the ‘losers final’. Or ‘3rd/4th place playoff’ to give its silly and overly descriptive formal title. Especially as no-one ever gives a shit who came either 3rd or 4th, even 5th or 6th. And its pretty much the last thing any of the players want. But its not about the players, its not even about football, nor national pride. Its an excuse to sell a few more tickets and some advertising space on tv. And I’ll watch it.

Not sure what I’m more upset about; losing last night’s match to Croatia or feeling totally manipulated by the press all the way through the tournament. Because they told us how shit we were, then how great we were, then that we had the ‘easiest run to the final ever’ but then with each ‘easy’ victory they claimed how brilliant we’d undoubtedly become to overcome such ‘world class’ opposition. By rolling over shit teams in not totally convincing style. And then we ‘believed’. If I had one video of someone telling me ‘its coming home’ (David Beckham, the Queen, a bunch of chassidic rabbis, Hitler, schoolkids, cheerleaders…) then I had a million. I’m proud of our boys though.

Everyone will remember precisely where they were when England reached the semi-final of the World Cup in 2018. Our (another) ‘Kennedy moment’. And I was… err…

Roger Federer losing, if I’m honest, probably upset me more. Of course I wanted England to win the football but once the second half got under way it just seemed never likely to happen. But I’m used to England losing in championships. I’m not used to Federer losing anything. Unless its his Nike sponsorship contract because Uniqlo have offered him twice as much money. Yet it had to happen. He’s 83 years old now (so you’d believe if you listened to the agist fuckers in the BBC commentary box) and has won everything there is ever to win, 9 times over. But I don’t care about the winning; its how he wins. With style, grace, elegance and most definitively beautiful method of play. But 5 sets against a giant South African serving machine was too much, even for his levels of sublime. Which are a lot like mine, some would say. Ok, I would say. And so we have to ask whether the Fed will ever win Wimbledon again. I seriously hope so.

Serena has no such issues. She’s a fucking monster. And I love her. Just because she’s the ultimate winner and even ranked 131 in the world, there’s no-one like her and in all likelihood, there never will be again.

That ends today’s sports report. There may be others to come, but they won’t feel the same.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

France are in the World Cup final. The country everyone hates, along with all the others, has made it. Beat Belgium’s ‘golden generation’ in quite a thrilling but not very exciting match. Which left all that ‘gold’ somewhat tarnished. Again.

And tonight its our turn. Against them Croats. Our destiny. And every time I hear Gareth Southgate speak I’m impressed. I haven’t started wearing a waistcoat yet (nor fucking EVERRR will) but surely its only a matter of time until we all do. Metaphorically at least.

Christiano Ronado can afford all the waistcoats he wants. He’s left Real Madrid in a massive(ly expensive) move to Juventus. He’ll earn 30 million Euros a year. After tax. Not that anyone pays much of that in Italy, not even the presidents. Which will provide a nice little ‘nest egg’ for his retirement. So he’ll be able to afford winter fuel when he’s old.

Last night they had a program on about time travel and its possibility, or not. No-one watched the program because it was on at the same time as the Belgium/France game, but it looked interesting. Because I’ve always (but haven’t we all?) been fascinated by the prospect of such an endeavour. Even after Einstein came up with his famous equation (none of which have ever been proved wrong) which shows that were you to reach the speed of light, as you’d need to to travel in time, you would pretty much cease to exist. Not that anything can ever travel faster than light anyway. But you’d either vanish or something else weird would happen as the equation would have you turn into the square root of a minus number. Which doesn’t exist in the real world. Not that Einstein’s world was that ‘real’ in any meaningful sense. But real enough. Though the silly thing about all this ‘time travel; can we? can’t we? will we? won’t we?’ is that we know the answer is unfortunately an emphatic ‘Non!’, like Brexit offers. Because if anyone had ever invented such a mechanism, even in 100, 1000, 10,000 years time; they’d come back. And then we’d know. In fact they’d have come back to 1753, bringing their super-technology and waistcoats with them. If anyone will ever devise time travel we’d have always known it. And don’t mix your tenses when talking about anything else.

Happy Wednesday

COME ON ENGLAND!!!!!

A xxxx

Ok, forget yoga and tai chi guaranteeing that you live forever with
the body of a Greek God and the brain of Einstein. It don’t work. Not
today, apparently. No matter how many ‘warrior’ poses you perform, how
long you spend in ‘downward dog’, you’re gonna be a fat bastard but
without the wherewithal to realise it.

Because that was last week’s news. This week its all changed. Must be
evolutionary. Surely they couldn’t have got it all so tragically wrong
in the past?? 10,000 steps a day (Mel counts every single one) means
less than NOTHING in the post-July-9th world. Now you need work outs.
Proper, muscly, sweating in a stinking gym, dumbbell, push-ups type
work out. 12 times a week for 17 hours. Real work. Ya lazy bast…

Apparently from 35 years old we start to lose muscle. Well, you do,
I’m fine, so by mid-50s you need to be working on that. Yoga and
pilates and tai chi are fine but just not enough, which is completely
unsurprising really. Lying on a mat saying ‘ommmmmm’ for 45 minutes
actually DOESN’T cause weight loss or improve muscle tone. Who’d’a
known? And you lose 90 grams of muscle a week/day/month (can’t
remember). So you wake up on a Friday and you’ve only got one tricep.
Bummer. And then you metabolise differently which further increases…
everything bad and horrible. So to combat this terrible decline, you
need hard work.

But, and thank the Lord for always being a ‘but’, if you are a
gymaphobe, like me, then there’s a kind of ‘light’ version that
doesn’t involve sweating in smelly places with too many lycra-clad
sweaty gits. Because ‘a brisk walk for 11 minutes twice a day’ will do
for a start. So I’m fine, I walk for at least 30 minutes on my daily
return commute and I only ever do ‘brisk’. I elevate ‘brisk’ in fact
to ‘GET OUT MY FUCKING WAY YOU SLOVENLY GIT!!!!’ And if you carry
‘heavy shopping’ that counts as muscle work for the over 40s, which is
almost as sad as it is unbelievable. Gardening counts, not that I’m
very keen, but I do mow the lawn. Which does 2 things, it makes me
sweat and makes me drink. Beer, JD & coke, things like that.

Alternatively, the path to true happiness (unless you’re Boris Johnson
who is not only a fat git but destined for HELL) is to watch football,
eat pizza, drink lager. How could anything that feels so good be
anything but?

Happy healthy Tuesday

A xxxx

I suppose the question is: how much sport can you watch? Coupled with: and what are the priorities? Because I normally watch Wimbledon religiously. But this year my god has deserted me. Or perhaps been replaced by a bigger god, the World Cup, the MOAG. Mother Of All Gods. An interesting phrase that the more patriarchal among us will have hours of fun with.

But this is not some philosophical fucking debate about theology, this is important! This is sport!!

For getting on for 40 years, since my repeatedly dislocating right shoulder put an end to my own, personal aspirations to Harry Kanism, tennis has been my game of choice. I’d loved it before but, ironically considering tennis for a right-hander is the most right-shouldery game you could ever get, it was fine to play. Not so brilliant now but we all live with pains. Some people are married to them.

And I play tennis every week, outdoor, summer or winter, regardless of who the Prime Minister might be, what terrorist activity is occurring, whose winning the Ashes. Because I love playing it. But watching it is different. I virtually never watch the US Open, the Aussie (don’t do 4 in the morning for anyone… except Lila) nor the French. Can’t be bothered. But when Wimbledon comes along I’m hooked. Normally. This year I haven’t even put the hilights program on series record. An act of treason in the post-technological world.

On Saturday at Wimbledon, whilst England were beating Sweden in Russia, centre court was less than half full for the match being played. Phone use is strictly banned at Wimbledon, quite rightly so; you don’t want to disrupt an important second serve at 15-40 because someone’s mate ‘liked’ your photo of lunch with the usual electronic fanfare. But its conflict. People who bought their tennis tickets, jumping for joy in March that they’d actually ‘won’ in the annual ballot, are now desperately trying to sell them on if they happen to be for the men’s final. Normally the ‘hottest ticket in town’, now that there’s a chance England may play in the World Cup final on the same day and at virtually the same time, they’re abandoning Wimbledon in droves. Even though a day at Wimbledon is a truly magical experience.

Ironically, yesterday, there was no sport on tv. I don’t count grand prix, sorry Lewis. Mel had a ladies’ lunch birthday thing and I was ‘free’. No football, no tennis, no nuffink. My day was ruined. I had to meet friends for lunch at a gorgeous pub on the River in Kew. Terrible. Such a waste of prime tv-watching time.

They’ve had 4 years to sort out the scheduling, the problem could only have been that the Wimbledon admin bods didn’t ‘believe’. About the ‘comin’ home’ thing. Now they’re paying for it.

Shame

Happy Monday

A xxxx

Its comin’ home, its comin’, football’s comin’ home… (rinse and repeat. And repeat and repeat and repeat until your phone simply has no further capacity for alternative takes on ‘its coming home’ and won’t free up the space to take 17 more photos of Lila!!)

The team done good. Our boys was mangificent. At the end’a da day, free points was free points. And we got’em all. Even though you don’t get no points. Nah. You get to play in the semi-final instead, ‘gainst Croatia on Wednesday. Innit.

The superlatives are flowing, the hyperbole excessive and the grammar appalling, following the biggest England win for 28 years. Lila’s mum was 2. Her sister a mere fertilised egg. Gary Linneker was a player, our national captain and leader. Maggie Thatcher came to the end of her reign and passed the baton over to John, slightly-interesting Major. Queen Victoria was… dead, Winston Churchill was… also dead, Gary Glitter was not in jail and the number one song in England was something so unmemorable that I have no idea. Ahhhh, 1990.

Because the world cup semi-finals are a big deal. Its a very big deal. And I think, on reflection, I’m happier playing Croatia than Russia on grounds of safety, security and everyone staying alive long enough to finish the game. And Croatia are the smallest country, by population in the world cup. But what else do we know about them? Personally, I know next to nothing other than they’re part of that horrible, confusing mish-mash of Bosnia, Serbia, Macedonia, Kosovo and so many others that at one time were called ‘Yugoslavia’. No more. Now they’re all split (no pun intended) but Croatia did the best of all because they managed to steal the entire coastline ensuring lots of Adriatic seaside. And all the people have names ending in -ic, which is pronounced -ich. Like Modric, Rakatic, Digadic, Withoutahic and Fuckingric. There ends today’s lesson on Croatia.

Yesterday’s game against Sweden wasn’t an exciting match, very few expected it to be. It was, as we say, ‘comfortable’. Croatia will be different. They can play. Although they too were stifled in their match yesterday by the Russians and had to win on penalties. So I’m interested to see if MY England can win against a ‘proper’ team. A team who want to play and win, rather than stifle and inhibit. But if we win… omg, if we win… then we can play one of two teams in Belgium or France, who really know how to play.

Happy no-football Sunday

A xxxx

England are the only ‘non-European’ football team left in the world cup. With the loss of Brasil yesterday to Belgium, there ended the ‘rest of the world’s’ contribution to the games. I love Brasil and always have; they have a magic about the way they play that is truly unique to them. But Neymar, in one cheating, face-clutching, writhing, girly fucking dive, managed to shatter decades of wonderfulness. Bit like Rivaldo did in similar circumstances a decade ago. And now the phrase ‘doing a Neymar’ has already entered the social media lexicon for, basically, being a tosser. Which, considering how wonderful the world’s most expensive footballer can be, makes you wonder why he did it. I bet he wonders too. Shame he can’t ‘undo’ it.

Russia, the runaway outsiders, can be considered part of Europe because their teams play in the Champions League. But England, we have a more ambiguous status. Because we’ve voted to ‘leave Europe’. Which I’m well aware is strictly in terms of EU membership but I actually think ‘leaving Europe’ in the truly literal geographical sense; lifting Great Britain physically (whilst leaving Ireland exactly where it sits now) and depositing it… near Hawaii? over by North Korea? down in the Antarctic? would have been much easier than the horrendous, boring and repetitively circular process of merely working out what the world might look like after we leave.

But last night, at Chequers, Theresa May came up with THE MASTERPLAN for Brexit. And its brilliant. Ok, its a total sell-out compromise aimed at uniting the cabinet, the party, the government and eventually, possibly, to put to Europe for them to reject. So its job really is to cause as little offence as possible to as many disparate parties as possible, all of whom have diametrically opposing ideals. How can that be hard?

So I’ve decided that its all a load of bollocks and I’m going to devote my time to the football. At least you know what you’re getting there with nothing being put to a vote.

The Sweden match this afternoon, so we’ve been told, is the biggest, bestest, most importantest, amazingest… everything ever. Because having beaten Colombia, we have the famed ‘clear run to the final’. Which, other than the teams we have to play on that little journey, is what we do have.

But Sweden aren’t so much ‘great’ as ‘horrible’. They’re what is known as ‘pragmatic’. Which is a euphemistic term for ‘boring as fuck’. Not as boring as Brexit but almost. Though hopefully not as violent as the Colombians, there won’t be an abundance of Scandinavian flair on display. Their national football is like their tv offerings; very dark, sinister and complex.

Ok, time to prepare. How do you spell “BEER”?

Happy hopeful Saturday

A xxxx