Andy's Glasses

The last bastion of pure maleness has been breached. The last domain in which men ruled, seemingly unopposed, has now fallen beneath the great sword of equality. And I’m not talking about football, the game that has for many years been played by gels as well as boys, but football commentary and punditry. Gary Linneker World. And he’s a MAN.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a football pundit thus:

A GEEZER (note, not a woman, girl, bird, tart or nuffink remotely female or feminine), a geezer wot talks abart football within a very set specific set of rules. He must speak in stupid, repetitive cliché wherever possible. He must say ‘ya know’ once every 9 words or may lose his licence to pundify. And if he doesn’t state the phrase ‘at da end’a’da day’ once every turn then Golgotha will fall. He must at all times talk in improper English, never complete his sentences and is forbidden from pronouncing the ‘H’ at the beginning of any word. Glottal stops are optional. Ridiculous jargon is mandatory and the mixing up of adjectives and adverbs is good…ly, and more betterer.

Which is why Alan Shearer is the perfect pundit. Lovely fella but someone who obviously left school long before the grammar class started, to practice headers. Which further influenced his word flow as the inevitable concussions took their toll.

Then one day, along came a blond. Gaby Yorath/Logan. The first name that of her father, one of a group of infamous Leeds thugs from their heyday in the early 70s. The latter name that of her husband, former captain of Scotland’s international rugby team. And although it was only Scotland…

Sorry. Yeah, Gaby. Not quite as pretty as Gary Linneker but she was no mere eye candy as she became the virtual Ms Linneker and presented all the sports shows he didn’t. But she was educated, almost posh, pronounced all the letters that other ‘sports personalities’ didn’t know existed.

And so to this world cup, in which there are lady footballers commentating (some even in possession of law degrees), and ladies introducing the shows. Not just to comment on the handbags carried by the WAGS but actually talking about football. In a new way. With feelings and emotions… ok, maybe not, but its different, its intelligent and quite honestly its refreshing. I’ve heard every phrase that Jermaine Jenas knows, repeated a million times.

So there’s outrage. Obviously. But its a good thing. A great thing. It speaks of the game moving away from its dinosaur past into the bright and more equal future. I just wish they’d show a bit more cleavage, is all.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

When you arrive at the Coliseum you do so with a pre-assembled cast of 42,000 people. At least 29,000 of whom are trying to sell you, in order of annoyance:

‘Beat the queue’ tickets, but the queue to buy those was way bigger than the one to get in.

Bottles of water. To whom I said: DO YOU NOT KNOW MY WIFE??? I COULD FUCKING SELL YOU WATER; WHAT DO YOU THINK I’M PULLING A WHEELBARROW FOR????

Selfie sticks. I’d rather die in a torture chamber.

Postcards, little plastic Coliseums-es (I bought 4 before Mel told me they weren’t going to be displayed in the lounge; but you can never have enough), hop on/off bus tickets (how do you think I fucking got here?), guided tours, tours with lunch, tours with extras, tours where you actually get to kill a Greek.

I kept asking who could get me in the ring with a sword and a lion, but no-one could deliver. Because swords aren’t allowed for health’n’safety reasons, lions are ten a penny.

If they banned hawkers the place would be so much more pleasant and less crowded.

But I love Rome, simply love it. Everywhere you look there’s like two thirds of a brick wall with 2 columns sticking out the top, one broken in half, and it dates back to 235BC. Well, that’s what they tell you. There’s an excavation by the Spanish Steps and one of the walls has ‘Made in China’ on it. Ok, I made that up, but you just don’t know.

And the Romans were just so civilised. They invented the Pimlico Plumbers. They invented central heating AND just like mine, Romulus could set the thermostat from his ‘smart-slave’, just press a button and its 10 degrees hotter before you actually arrive there. They invented excessive eating, politics, democracy and… and death. Ok, they didn’t invent it but they turned it into an art form. A spectator sport. The gorier the better. Even with 50,000 people inside it, there was never crowd violence at the Coliseum. Well, nothing that could possibly match that which was there for ‘entertainment’. I’ve just seen 14 Mesopotamians eviscerated with blunt instruments; wanna fight?

Such wonderful contradictions; Rome is full of them. The culture, the violence and, of course, the religion. Which is almost a combination of the first two but with God thrown in just to stir things up a bit.

If only someone here would realise that to cook food that isn’t ‘just’a like’a mamma used’a ta make’ is neither a slur on her name nor a disgrace to your national flag. Its called progress, originality, experimentation, its called DIFFERENT.

So where shall we go for spag.bol/pizza tonight? That is the only question.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

I’m lovin’ Rome. Lovin’ it. Though it is hot. Hot as hell. Which I think is very appropriate as our apartment is in the shadow of the Vatican. You can almost see the Basilico from our room. If your neck is 17 feet long. And Catholicism and hell just go hand in hand. On so many levels.

And I’ve seen… I’ve seen… I’ve seen Lila. Which, trust me, is cause for no complaint whatsoever. She offers more fun and rewards than ancient Rome ever could. And in between Lila-times there are wedding things. Lots of wedding things. Which involve eating (massively), drinking (even more massively) and socialising. Rome’s always been a sociable place, right back to Frankie Howerd and the days of the Forum.

So Wednesday night, the day we arrived, we were taken for a ‘pre-wedding’ dinner at a gorgeous restaurant right in the centre, where the streets are cobbled, the piazzas teeming and the food outstanding. When we left at midnight it was so warm and balmy and we were so boozed up and fuzzy that we walked back to the apartment. An hour of gorgeousness along the river.

Then was Thursday, or wedding day as is known. In the magnificent Grand Synagogue. Which is like a Jewish version of a cathedral with lots of marble and columns and Roman type stuff. And from there we bussed up to the hills to a villa for eat, drink and merriment. In vast quantities, all done outside. What’s the Italian for ‘al fresco’.

Today we had a lunch. Again wonderful, again everything abundant to the point just before ancient Romans would have been puking up to prepare for the next onslaught, but this time Lila came too. When we had deserts we learned from her the origins of the term ‘grazing’ as applied to humans eating. Something her grandfather excels at. See above.

Tomorrow we’re going on a walking tour. We love walking tours. And we’ll learn why Trevi has a fountain; where Caesar called Brutus a double-crossing motherfucker; why Italian steps are Spanish and if the Pantheon and Parthenon are just one building sold twice or 2 separate things.

Ciao

A xxxx

I’m going to Rome. To visit the Pope. To speak Latin. Have a toga party. To drink capuccino, in its natural habitat. To watch the world cup in a place where they have no personal interest. And to go to a wedding. Which is tomorrow. And that’s exciting. Almost as exciting as the fact that Lila is currently at large (or ‘at little’ really) in Rome. She’s learning to speak Italian. Pretty much as she’s learning to speak English. Its all greek to her.

I booked the flights last year. As soon as the ‘save the date’ thingy came round. And got them on air miles. The only outbound flight they had was Business Class, for not very many miles so that’s what we got. Which makes no difference on a short flight. Other than the lounge.

And I’m sitting there with my (English) capuccino, chewing my (English) pain au raison, perusing the paper. And learned something massive. Other than thinking that possibly it might be an idea to do drug tests on the Russian footballers. Just because: a. they’re playing so much better than anyone imagined they could, and b. they’re Russians.

But on the front page I learned the most wonderful thing. That people who ‘drink’ will live longer and suffer less possible cancers than teetotallers. I mean how amazing is that? Trump and all the other smug, alcohol-free-thinkers will be buried by a bunch of hiccuping piss-heads. So I immediately hit the free bar in the lounge and started on the path to a longer life in earnest.

Then, before my vision started doubling I got to the bit where they used the horrible, hateful, most-dullest of all terms, the ultimate ‘m-word’… Moderation! At which point I poured myself another (well, it may have been 7.30am in London but it was 6pm somewhere in the world, right??) large one and pondered how flexible a term ‘moderation’ is when you really start to think about it.

As some clever person once said: I just want one drink, because it makes me feel like a new man. But then he wants a drink too.

More Brits watched England beat Tunisia on Monday than watched the royal wedding. Therefore Harry Kane is more gorgeous than Meghan. Its beyond question.

Aribaderchi

A xxxx

I have never received a ‘sext’. Perhaps I would have if Mel could use her phone properly, but that will never happen. No-one else ‘sexts’ me so I’m a loser. Because this activity is now so common that 70% of ‘young’ people have received them. And this is how they voted: the men, receiving naked, nude, explicit, pornographic, surgical shots from women deem them to be ‘acceptable’ (the process, not, obvs., the quality of the actual picture or desire-worthiness of it). The girls (because 18-24 is pretty young) rated getting unwanted dick-pics as fairly inappropriate. Again, depends on the dick, I suppose.

When I was 18-24 it was much weirder. You had to take a photo of your dick, and unless you wanted to take another 23 photos of it (though it is remarkably photogenic, I must say), you then waited til your next holiday when you finished the roll of film. Then you take it to Boots, who may or may not refuse to print penis pictures, depending on who’s doing the printing and how lovely the penis is. You then pick up the photo and post it to the intended recipient. But it gets delayed by being sent to a sorting office in Solihull by mistake and takes ages to get there. By the time the photo arrives at its intended recipient you’re already going out with her best mate’s cousin. Worse still, in the intervening 7 months since taking the shot your willy looks different.

The only way to speed up the process and get results anywhere even vaguely approaching Instagram speeds was to just wait at the bus stop and show the intended recipient the real thing. But there were legal issues involved and dirty raincoats to consider for such an action.

But what is really interesting is that whilst women don’t like getting naked pictures (or at least are prepared to say they don’t), men/boys absolutely love it. And its just ‘there’. A genuine, not-to-be-equalitised, gender difference. Men’s minds are inherently pornographic, womens’ are more ‘Mills & Boone’, or so they’d have us believe. Gay men obviously have no such worries about causing offense. Gay women presumably just don’t ‘sext’.

I put it down to ‘biological, evolutionary differences’ because no-one can argue with that. Men’s ‘biological need’ to spread seed (even when compliant with condom regulations) is ‘inherent’ and required for procreational purposes of a strictly Darwinian nature. Therefore every woman in the world needs to see your seed-spreader?

England won last night; that’s the main thing. Three points off those wrestling Tunisian cry-babies.

I LOVE YOU HARRY!!! (But probably won’t be sending him any sexts to show that love. Different kind’a love, innit.)

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

Football’s coming home. That’s the song from the world cup of 2006 that poured out the nation’s emotions about how its about time we brought the World Cup ‘home’, to England, where it belongs. The land of the 3 lions. Ahhhhh.

There’s a big difference between ‘football’s coming home’ and ‘the footballers are coming home’, usually early, just after the tournament gets a bit sudden deathy and knockoutish. But NOT THIS YEAR. This year is our year. The end of suffering, the end of torment, we have a great squad (of Spurs players, bless ’em) and WE COULD BLOODY DO IT!!!!

Ok, that’s the hype. As is customary, we play much better before we’ve actually kicked a ball. That’s when it starts to go a bit wrong, but: this is football. Anything could happen. And it pretty much already has after just the first weekend of the games.

Ok, its a group match, there’s always early nerves and jitters, which must actually favour the underdogs, from whom nothing is ever expected beyond picking the ball from the back of their nets on a repetitive basis, so they have ‘nothing to lose’. And then, buoyed by first game success of some degree, like perhaps, not losing to Brazil, those teams can move along quite nicely.

Greece won a European championship, Leicester won the Premier league. Its football, anything can happen.

I managed to miss virtually all of the extensive footballing telefest this weekend, due to commitments. I did catch a soupçon of Peru playing Denmark, which was almost as exciting as the traffic jam on the M1 yesterday coming home from Leeds (don’t ask). I also caught a snippet of Iceland playing Argentina but that didn’t go as planned by the Argies whose footballing royalty couldn’t best the smallest nation in the competition. I thought it was more interesting that all the Icelandics have names ending in -sson whereas those of the Danes end in -sen. Hmmmm.

Brasil couldn’t beat Switzerland which is an amazing result for the watchmakers and numbered bank accounters of Neutral Europe. Germany actually lost to Mexico. Germany!!

So anything can happen. To a degree. Spain couldn’t beat Ronaldo and Messi messed up.

The England fans in Volgograd for tonight’s game with Tunisia have been told to ‘be mindful of the cultural differences in Russia’. Which translates as ‘try not to be black or in any way racially diverse’. Yet so far all is peaceful out there, which we hope continues all the way to the end, when England win the World Cup.

So agains the footballing powerhouse that is Tunisia, we should win 5-0. 8-0 maybe. But it will end 1-1. I can’t remember an England opening game in any tournament not ending with that bland and horrible scoreline. But we’ll take it.

Come on England

A xxxx

Its my birthday. Ok, the line is: ‘its my party…’ but I’m allowed. Because its my birthday. So I’m allowed anything I want. Except for one thing. Cannabis oil. Its illegal. Not in many countries but in the UK, its illegal. Even though its ‘medical grade’ and prescribed by doctors. So I can’t have it either. Not that I’d want it, they take out all the good stuff which, back in the day, was the whole point of using it. And what they leave couldn’t get a hamster high. Though it does have some quite remarkable medical qualities which nothing else apparently does. So the chronically epileptic kid who hasn’t ‘seized’ in 250 days whilst using cannabis oil, has his medicine? stash? anyway, has his drug confiscated by the Home Office and basically is now in hospital and in a very very bad way.

How can that be right?

The doctors have given him an opioid instead (nothing dangerous, addictive, mind-bending about that then?) and its done nothing. But because for some reason the entire Daily Mail reading population of this nation and the tossers who run it (the country, not the Mail) are totally opposed to anything even vaguely marijuana-ish, cannabis oil remains illegal. And enforced even when such enforcement threatens the life of a sick kid. Who never chose to be epileptic. And who could now die. Ok, they’ve just decided to let him have it back, but at such a cost and hoo-haa.

Whereas something else that is just a slam-dunk ‘wrong!’ like upskirt photos, isn’t sufficiently wrong to get all of (the 7 people actually attending) parliament yesterday to let the bill go through. Some old Tory, Sir Christopher Chope, objected to the bill. Apparently he objects to virtually all bills, on principle. That principle being that as a curmudgeonly old git he has to constantly act accordingly. And also because its a ‘private member’s bill’ (which would be a very funny pun if men were upskirted; maybe they are in Scotland?) which only needs one objection to be pushed back to the bottom of the pile. And because its effectively a law change proposed by just one person, Sir Christopher objects because otherwise we’d be inundated with silly little laws, always taking away certain freedoms. So even though this ‘freedom’ is a sick, sordid, perverse and rather sad one, he has objected to its proposed illegal status.

Either that or he publishes an ‘upskirt’ website and may lose revenue.

Jesus, there’s football on! All bloody day!! Gotta go.

Happy birthday

A xxxx

So I enjoyed yesterday’s dentistry so much, I’m going back for more today. As my anniversary present. Yes, its my- sorry, ‘our’ wedding anniversary and I have another hour booked in ‘the chair’ for my own, personal Marathon Man moment. Today’s photo is the card I bought for Mel. Not because it says anything about anniversaries, nor undying love nor togetherness, nor does it have photos of brides, flowers or bottles of fucking champagne. But precisely because it doesn’t. I like ‘obscure’. But I really like funny. And clever. Otherwise Mel would have received the same card she always gets; a football card for a thirteen year-old boy.

Enough celebration. Though can you ever have enough?? Celebration and Brexit-bollocks, the two essentials of life.

I listen (God help me) to Nigel Farage on LBC sometimes. And the only people who he speaks to (its a phone-in, in case you don’t follow; and why the hell would you?) are fellow Brexiteers. So that he can congratulate them on their brilliance and share the pain that we haven’t yet left Europe. Suffice to say we are, in terms of planning, still only just about leaving New Zealand, metaphorically speaking. And charming Nige still uses the sanitised xenophobe’s credo of ‘taking control of our borders’. Theresa May says she’ll let in Euro and non-Euros if they’re doctors, nurses, essentials. Because apparently the British workforce is severely lacking and the EN-AITCH-ESSSS (blessed be its soul, if it has one) cannot be forsaken. Nigel is not happy about this. He’d rather be lying in a hospital bed with an English apprentice electrician examining his gaping wounds, than have an Eritrean doctor here.

His other bug-bear is the appeals for ‘another referendum’ on the grounds that ‘people didn’t understand’ Brexit. He laughs at this and thinks Remainers consider Brexiteers ‘thick’. Which we pretty much do. Or if not classically ‘dense’ then at least severely misguided. In every sense of ‘misguided’, because the entire nation was severely misled by both sides. And Nigel hates the fact that ‘remain’ MPs represent ‘brexit’ constituencies. But what does he want? The vote was 51% to 49% or, as common parlance would have it; half and half. So this massively ‘undemocratic’ stance by the remainers is in fact representing half the population.

We should leave Europe, because that’s how ‘we’ voted. But we don’t have to destroy the national economy for the next 2 decades just so Farage can close the borders to immigration.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

When is a Lila day not a Lila day?

Have you worked it out yet? NO!!! You must have a very low IQ. Its not a Lila day if Lila’s not here. That’s the rule. And she’s not. She’s run off. Even though she doesn’t walk yet. Run off to Italy. Packed her little case with essentials; bunny, books, pink shit, more bunnies, and run off to Rome. And I’m so sad and desperate that I’m running after her. Next wednesday in fact, I’m going to Rome to find my baby. Ok, we all have a wedding there, but that’s not the point. The point is… the point is vague, at the moment. Suffice to say, no Lila today.

So instead I’ve booked a session at the dentist. A long one. Because Thursday is a ‘fun day’ and that must be maintained, even without the funny little one. So I’m having a new crown to replace an old one that’s well past its chew-by date, plus, there’s an infected tooth that needs… something. And they’re always fun. Coincidentally, Mel, who never has trouble with teeth, is also going, to a different dentist, for root canal today.

And to ‘convalesce’ they’re starting the World Cup for me. Russia versus Saudi Arabia. Even surgical dentistry pales into dullness compared to that fixture. Amazing that they’ve managed to find 11 Russians who aren’t out poisoning people and 11 Saudis who aren’t murdering Yemenis to actually play the match. But they are. Let’s hope there’ll be no pathetic racial stereotyping at this wonderful event.

Spain sacked their national team manager yesterday. Which is great news for all the other countries as Spain are, generally, pretty useful in big tournaments, having one loads. Though that was before Xavi and Iniesta retired. The manager announced (a full 5 minutes before Real Madrid were going to make it public) that he was leaving after the summer to manage that exalted club. The head of Spanish football called him a nob. In Spanish. And kicked him off the team.

The best news of all being that if he’s going to Real then Pochettino stays at Tottenham!!!!! So everybody’s happy. Except for the Spanish squad who will feel somewhat destabilised without their manager. Que sera, sera.

One last question. Is the sentence ‘Donald Trump is very tanned’ fake news? Just askin’…

Happy un-Lila-day

A xxxx

The Korean War ended 65 years ago. North versus South. Or, China versus America, as it transpired. The first ‘proxy war’ of our time. And a wonderful precedent it set. Unless you were unfortunate enough to be a Korean, then it was awful. And since then no Westerners have had dealings of any description with North Korea.

Until yesterday. When Man-of-our-Times, Donald J. Trump, met up with His Royal Porkiness, Kim Jong-un, for brunch in Singapore. I don’t know what they ate but I’m guessing there was plenty. And plenty of hand-shaking, photo-opportuning, back-slapping and ‘making nice’.

Trump afterwards announced, in that Trump way, that it had been very productive, very positive, very meaningful, ‘a great meeting’, a ‘tough negotiation’, blah, blah, Trumpety-blah. But he spared the details. Either because he deemed the public unworthy or he didn’t know them himself. Though we learned that Kim promised a de-nuke, though didn’t say when, and was pretty evasive about the extent of the observers and their freedom to investigate, and Donald said he’d stop the ‘war games’ with South Korea which they do every few months to scare Kim. And signatures were flourished. Trump’s in the usual 2-foot high letters and Kim appeared to order a Pad Tai with extra mushrooms, but I could be wrong on that.

Then after the extended congratulatory scenes came the little less comfortable stuff. ‘President Trump; how do you feel negotiating with a man who locks people up without a trial, murders their families and has even locked up most of his own family for decades??’ Good questions. It always gets a bit ‘human rightsy’ when you deal with anyone in the Far East. Mainly because the Chinese character for ‘human rights’ is almost identical to the one for ‘castration without anaesthetic’. Its just a linguistic anomaly.

And then there’s the force of history. North Korea signed a similar agreement in 1993. That was Kim-Jong-whatever at that time, but still it came to nothing and hostilities returned. But we remain hopeful. North Korea more than anyone else need this now. Because the country is broke, starving and the last thing it needs is to piss away another few billion on nuclear weapons. Otherwise, if it hasn’t happened already, North Korea just becomes part of greater China. Would we ever know the difference?

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx