Andy's Glasses

…young and sweet only 17… that was me. In 1973. I was… the Dancing Queen! And I revisited 1973 last night for a friend’s 60th birthday party. It (thank fucking Christ) wasn’t fancy dress, but musically it was as as 1970s as a pair of ‘loon pants’, platform shoes and LSD. And thus was nostalgic. Even though a lot of what was played was what I’d have then (and, possibly now) described as ‘shit’. The DJ, obviously given parameters way too flexible for my own rather selective taste, went just a touch too far down the pop trail with T-Rex, crossed the line with Sheena fucking Easton and went way into the red zone with ‘I’m in the mood for dancing’. The worst song ever made. Because its banal, repetitive, stupid, screechy and you can’t not dance to it. If you’re in such a mood. Therefore you have to hate the song for its cynically commercialised awfulness, whilst you try not to move to its rhythms.

And thereby hangs my own personal crisis. Well it was ‘back in the day’, now I don’t give a shit what people think. Which you’d know if you’d seen me dance. But back then my world was divided into the music I LISTEN to, which had to be of certain types, had to show musical integrity, had to be unusual, obscure and so far beyond ‘not commercial’ as to be almost unlistenable to. Sort of like Pink Floyd. Except I didn’t like them very much. And I liked rock. Hard, heavy, proper rock. Not glam rock, not hair rock, not bunches of American pretty boy pretenders, I wanted rock like wot they made in Birmingham. And even folk wot they made in Newcastle. But I also loved Bowie and Lou Reed and Talking Heads and pretty much anything that came out of New York.

But the other side of the great divide was what I liked to dance to. Because that was so different. I didn’t want to take acid and spend 4 hours shaking my head around to music that was otherwise beyond bodily expression. I wanted funk music. Not pseudo funk, not ‘pop with a funky beat’, I wanted the real deal. I wanted… ‘imports!!!’ No such thing now, music is totally internationalised and available to eat before Taylor Swift has strummed the last chord in the studio. But back then music was very much defined along national lines and only came in… hard copy. Called ‘records’. That you had to buy (download). And lots of records deemed unlikely to sell in vast numbers simply didn’t arrive on these shores. So you had to go to specialist record stores or proper nightclubs (even if you were just a few years shy of legal entry) to hear them. And to dance to them. So I went to a place called ‘Countdown’, a little club in the West End, and ‘Funky Nassau’ (then an import, only released in Britain about 3 years later) changed my life. Forever!! Ish. Hardcore dance tracks that had the added kudos of being unheard of by most people. The music snob’s dream.

I’m still a terrible music snob but I’ll dance to almost anything. With sufficient volume and sufficient alcohol.

Happy nostalgia

A xxxx

The front page headline on last night’s evening standard read: “royal invite for NHS Doc who helped princess walk tall”. I mean it didn’t have any !!!!! after it but it could well have done. And we still would have had no idea what the fuck they were talking about. But of course (???) its about Princess Eugenie who is getting married next weekend. Of course. We’re all excited and riveted and really NEED to know that the surgeon who sorted out her dodgy back, aged 12, gets an invite to the ‘Royal Wedding’ of the… month. Not of the year, Harry and Meg already done dat. Relegating this one to the top of everyone’s ‘who cares?’ pile.

I kind’a knew Eugenie was getting married, there was an article a while back about the BBC stating that they wouldn’t be filming it. Errrr… there’s a ‘Gardener’s World’ special about Japanese knotweed scheduled. Hmmm… we’re showing a compilation of out-takes from Celebrities on skates doing silly things. It clashes with the football. Anything, just NOT EUGENIE’S FUCKING WEDDING!

But why? She’s a royal, ain’ she? She’s a granddaughter of the Queen. Just like Harry. But a gel. Even got the ginger hair. The only difference is; no-one cares about her. Nor about her mother. The ‘saintly’ Sarah. Fergie, as she was known. Before she became a financial whore. Even Prince Andrew was shamed in various get-richer schemes and dodgy deals, making promises about his connections and influence. The whole family is a bit on the sorry side.

Why that was a front page headline on the day we almost started a war with Russia I’ll never know.

Meanwhile, back in Australia, they’ve shown once again why that is the land that God not only deserted but put there simply as a punishment. Which is why he loaded it with all of the most toxic, deadly, venomous and evil creatures not found anywhere else on His planet. They have the most deadly jelly-fish (kill ya dead from 100 yards away), the most dangerous spider, the most wicked snakes, the sharks are fucking everywhere and the drivers are terrible. But we know all that.

What we didn’t know was that they also have the most deadly sea snakes too. Who’d’a guessed? So when there’s no shark warnings and you go for a paddle in the shark-netted area, just to be safe, and think that it must be the best place in all of Australia as all those land killing creatures can’t follow you, you get bitten by a sea snake and, like the British kid the other day, you fucking DIE!

We’re going to Australia at Christmas. I’m not getting out of the car. After checking for spiders first, obviously.

Happy horrible pissing-down Saturday

A xxxx

The wonderful thing about Russians is that Russians are wonderful things. Sorry, that was ‘tiggers’ but I’m sure Pooh Bear will forgive for me borrowing his phrase. Because Russians are wonderful, never think otherwise. They drug their entire athletics team, orders coming right from the Kremlin, which has its own doping department, an under-secretary for performance enhancement and a pharmacy. They send agents to Salisbury to murder enemies of the state with chemical weapons. They hack the entire planet, from American elections to Brexit votes. Their Ministry of Hacking is now the biggest building in Moscow. Certainly with the most aerials. And the most nerds.

But all the espionage, the subterfuge, the cheating, the murders and other dastardly deeds are nothing compared to the Russia’s biggest agency of all. The Department for Denial. You’d think it would be just one man. Sergei. Who sits there with a rubber stamp which says (backwards, obviously, cos its a stamp, and probably in Russian): DAT IS A LIE!!!!! He has others which say ‘WE DID NOT DO DAT!’ and another, using google translate after they borrowed it from Trump: ‘FAKE NEWS!!’

But in fact those Russians have elevated the previously innocuous art of denial to levels never before plumbed. Maybe that should be ‘depths’. Whatever. And written across the gateway to the Agency for Denial is the legend: WE KNOW NO SHAME.

Because quite frankly, its become an embarrassment. You can say that two murderous spies were ‘just tourists’ all you want, however laughable it appears, but when they turn out to be ex-high ranking military, now presumed KGB (you can change the acronym all you like, the intention and the methodology remain constant. NKVD, GRU, yeah, really), those denials get a bit limp. But still continue.

So now we have the Fab Four. They went to Amsterdam just after the Skripal ‘event’ and hacked into the Office for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons by using a rented car stuffed with hacking shit. All manner of cloak-and-daggery were in there, of the modern, cyber variety. All four are KGB, all travelling on sequential diplomatic passports and all caught totally red-handed (what other colour could it be?) in mid-hack, with all 12 phones (12?) and lap-tops and equipment packed with incriminating shit, what can Russia do?

Deny. That’s what it can do. Accuse the world of being ‘spy-obsessed’ and feed their own population its usual state-controlled pack of lies.

Putin, himself ex-KGB (isn’t everyone?), will be really embarrassed by this. Not for the ‘mea culpa’ effect but for the sheer incompetence of the exponents. If the Fab Four aren’t already dead, their futures look bleak.

Another interesting question is why we’re only just hearing about this now, when the arrests were made 6 months ago. Hmmm…

Your in denial

A xxxx

Who is the greatest footballer in the world? Simple question; its either Messi or Ronaldo. Though really, the voting is pretty much over. Ronaldo is a brilliant footballer but is seldom named alongside the Peles and Maradonas and Cruyffs in ‘best player ever’ context. Whereas Messi is.

But all is not well and lovely in the lives of these 2 megastars of immense mega-ness and super-stardom. A girl has named Ronaldo as her sexual abuser and rapist 10 years ago. He took her to a hotel room and ‘allegedly’ didn’t heed her shouts of NO! Though he is Portuguese and maybe didn’t understand the language. She was raped. Allegedly. Ronaldo denies all such actions and is shocked and saddened by the horrific nature of that type of crime. I almost believed him, on the basis that I’ve always reckoned he’s gay. But that may just be my own misunderstanding. So they’re now investigating this historic crime. And it shed light on the fact that the young lady in question was given the sum of $375,000 and an injunction to keep Shtum. Which, I grant you, is a slightly odd thing for a totally innocent man to do, but we don’t question. Especially as its only about 4 days wages for Christiano.

Messi too is no innocent. He too is guilty of a sustained and continuous assault in Wembley last night, and what you’d have to call the ‘rape’ of a perfectly good football team. What other term could be chosen to describe being royally fucked, totally against your will, despite repeated and constant protestations to STOP!??

Those who were at Wembley last night to witness this abuse against the team they all love, oddly feel privileged to have been there. Watching a man (no longer a ‘boy’ he’s 31 now, even though he still looks 12, plus the tattoos) at the very top of his game. And to put that in context, ‘his game’ has always been 10 times better than anyone else’s so he has a very high baseline.

I wasn’t there. I was watching another little person. Even smaller than Messi. And she was asleep anyway, I just like watching.

Since 1970 I’ve viewed Pele as the greatest player ever, probably the greatest that there ever could be. But every time I watch Messi I see that crown slipping his way.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

Whenever I see one of those photos of ‘hunter’ sitting by dead prey holding his (or her, as animal murdering is definitely egalitarian and non-discriminatory) rifle, I feel a bit sick. And today there’s a photo in the paper of Mark Bristow doing just that. Mark and dead zebra. Mark and dead buffalo. Mark and dead leopard. Nice. Holding his gun and dressed in ‘camo’. Cool.

The issue is that Mark advises a ‘big cat’ conservation organisation on certain days of the week, then goes out shooting those big cats on others. That way there’s no conflict of interest. His argument (all THEIR arguments) is that by paying licensed people to shoot big game, he is in fact injecting much-needed cash into the animal conservation and anti-poaching system. And at $100k a big animal, its a lot of money. There’s also the ‘culls are needed to protect the whole environment’ argument, much favoured by fat white men with big rifles.

Yet all that, true as some of it might even be, is mere justification. It’s trying to find a reason that is socially acceptable to defend the indefensible. Those reasons are not WHY they do it. They’re just, in their mind, a context which allows them to do it. They’d do it anyway.

My concern is the minds of people who want to kill animals, just for ‘sport’. Though any definition of any sport involves some form of ‘competition’ and zebra vs high-powered, telescopic-sighted hunting gun at 1000 feet is simply not a competition. Why not use a fucking tank. Oh, because then the money shot (man and corpse) wouldn’t be so good with half an elephant’s brain distributed around the hunter’s feet.

I’d really like to know what motivates a (presumably) clever man, the CEO of a Footsie 100 company, to want to kill defenceless animals. I need to know where the pleasure comes from. If he fought elephants, hand to… errr… hand to trunk, then I could see both sport and some kind of warped reasoning. Fighting a lion with your bare hands; that’d separate the men from the conservationists. But at least I could understand that a bit.

If you have a child who kills insects and small animals on a regular basis, you have a problem. You have a potential psycho on your hands and you rush to a child psychologist for help. Because killing things just because you really want to is not in any way normal. ‘Game hunting’ is the same behaviour in rich, (always) white, adults.

Lock ‘em up.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

About 6 months ago we went with friends to a Turkish restaurant. Not any Turkish restaurant because we travelled all the way so we could eat Turkish food in its natural environment. Palmers Green. And there, on Green Lanes, are 15 Turkish restaurants. All big, bright and bustling with people. Mainly Turks, but a few others too. But the one we went to was ‘special’. Which is why the friends had dragged us ‘all the way’ over at least 3 postal zones to eat there. Because they serve up a ‘meat platter’ which is to die for. And probably to die from, if you eat it often enough. But we don’t. Body’s a temple, blah, blah, blah, balanced diets, blah, blah, no man is an island, therefore he shouldn’t fucking look like one. Et cetera. But now and again…

So this restaurant, which already has a ‘sister’ further round the North Circular in Chingford, very recently opened a third. Right by my tai chi gym in Finchley. From the outside it looks magnificent; palatial and massive, on two floors, all glass fronted and brand new. From the inside they’ve actually gone for an ‘airport cafeteria’ look. Upstairs was better, more ‘dining room of very busy, 4-star hotel’. Because there’s something a bit cold and impersonal about the place.

But quite frankly, who gives a shit? (Though I may return to that theme later). I didn’t go for the aesthetic. I went for the meat. And I’d been thinking about it all day. And several days before… in fact ever since we booked it 3 weeks ago. And it didn’t disappoint. We went with other friends; well the thing is for 4 people so we had to. And in fact, and as I remembered, it is too much for 4 people. Just loads and loads of meat. All perfectly grilled on the barbecue. All marinated wonderfully. Served on a bed of half rice and half bulgar with a wonderful salad. As if I cared. Meat, chilli sauce, great bread, happy.

Then more happy. Then still happy, even though a bit full. Then finished but picking happy. Then ‘ya can’t leave just one chicken wing… three bits of shish… that gorgeous kofta… happy.

And I was, quite literally, up all night. Not sick. Not rushing to the toilet. Just lying there trying to digest. And lying there. And lying there.

So if you are, like me, a total pig with no stop button, don’t eat at such places too late.

But OMG it was so worth it.

Happy, slightly bloated Tuesday

A xxxx

Issa funny ole game is football. We love it and yet… and yet… it has a unique and stupid model based on greed, self-serving narcissists and horrendous parasites known as ‘super-agents’. Which sounds a bit James Bond, something of a Jack Reacher, but in fact its generally some fat greasy dago type whose just pocketed a quick 20 million for sending a player who never wanted to leave his old club, to a new club who can’t afford him and he’ll probably do the same thing for the same player next year. Why wouldn’t he? Another 20 mil for nought. Good bizniss innit. But how can that happen? When the players have signed a 5 year contract? Well, contracts can be broken, can be ‘bought out’, can’t they.

So as a f’rinstance, f’rexample, take… well, let’s take Paul Pogba. English football’s most expensive player. Cost 92 million quid, probably PLUS the 20 odd million for his super-agent. I say ‘plus’ because for some unaccountable (but very countable) reason, the agent’s cut no longer seems to come from the player he represents (as in the old ‘Mr 10 Percent’ model) but is an additional cost to the club. For the agent ‘facilitating’ the deal. Yet as the agent represents the player, to be paid independently by the club as well is surely some massive conflict of interest. The agent wants the player to move where he (the agent) gets the best remuneration, regardless of the player (who he represents) best interest.

But this is a ‘grey area’ which has no legislation, no Premiership rules, no FIFA guidelines, no nuffink. It just happens.

And then Paul P earns about 300,000 pounds a week. Whether he plays or not, whether he’s injured or not, 300k in the bank. Because that’s in the contract and the law protects contracts. But not necessarily for both parties. Because should that player decide he wants to leave and play for Barcelona, as Pogba apparently did in the summer, his agent makes his approaches, seeing the $$$$$ signs ringing loud and clear, even though Pogba still has 4 years left on his contract at Man United.

But Man United refused to sell. Morinho wanted him to go but the club said ‘no’. So he stayed. And that is not working out too well for the club. In fact its awful and they’re in a total fucking mess. Because one unhappy player destabilises an entire club, we all know that. And even decent managers have massive difficulties overcoming such times. Stupidly egocentric managers like Morinho have no chance. And not much choice other than to drop his 92 million pound, 300 grand a week lowlife.

The clubs need to be protected from this in the player’s contracts. Like; if you decide to leave, HAVING SIGNED A CONTRACT FOR 5 YEARS, within that period, your wages drop to 10% of the normal until the club decides otherwise. And if you choose to play like an unmotivated, disruptive, one-legged tosser on Hackney Marshes every week, you’ll suffer in your bank account. The only kind of suffering with any meaning, sadly.

The ‘agents’ need to be sorted out, the players wages need somehow to be capped and the Financial Fair Play rules need to be implemented as the deterrent they were invented for. But unfortunately no-one is prepared to upset the ridiculous gravy-train that enriches everyone except the fans and ruins the spirit of our national game

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

So Brett Kavanaugh; serial sex offender or much-maligned judicial giant-to-be? Personally, I don’t really care. But others do. Many many others. Who seem to be divided thus: if you’re a democrat anti-Trumpster, then Brett is the devil incarnate, guilty of much molestation and more machismo manhandling as a young man. Whereas if you’re a Republican, then Brett is the best thing since the last great sex offender fiasco and is being mercilessly manipulated by media malignishness. Whatever the charges, the presumption of guilt or innocence appears to run along strictly partisan lines.

Did he do it? Who the fuck will ever know? It happened over 30 years ago. Not sure exactly what the ‘FBI inquiry’ can achieve on that front. But a more important question was what, exactly, did he do? And this really is the crux of the matter. He didn’t rape anyone, that much we do know. But if he sexually assaulted someone/some people in a way that was beyond mere drunken gropage, that involved physical overpowering, humiliation of and fear in the victim, then its altogether very different from just kids hi-jinks.

We’re never going to know. His wife was by his side (as they always are, at least at the beginning of the scandals) meaning presumably that he hasn’t been a bad husband, or at least, he’s had the decency never to be caught being a bad husband.

And thus, as in virtually all sexual offence allegations, it comes down to his word against her word. Or in this case, his word against their word. As there are a few women who’ve all come out of the woodwork to make what must only be seen as fairly weak and limp allegations of not a whole helluva lot which took place in the pre-iPhone era and thus can’t be viewed on YouTube.

He was certainly no Harvey Weinstein. In fact, in reality, he wasn’t even as proven and admitted a sex offender as Donald J. Trump. Who was clever enough to make sure his juvenile boasting made it onto film.

As I’m not a member of either the Republican nor Democrat party I feel I can be more impartial. And therefore make my decisions on more scientific grounds. Which are basically that as soon as Brett Kavanaugh opened his mouth at the inquiry I hated the man and immediately wanted to find him guilty. He was too loud, too aggressive and too Godly for my taste. Therefore he did it. Anyone who invokes God’s name in an angry and arrogant rant must be presumed guilty. It’s a peculiarly American thing to do.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

Road deaths have risen as almost all drivers ignore the new 20mph speed limits imposed on some busy areas. So said the headline. Implying that the deaths were possibly caused by speeding motorists. I see it differently. I think that those deaths are of the drivers who actually DO slow down to 20mph where instructed. Murdered by other motorists. It’s kill or be killed. You either slit your own wrists or murder the cause of your anger, frustration and depression. Thus the government or local councils who impose such ridiculous limits are accessories to murder. And should be charged.

Though I do strongly feel that we need to think long and hard about cars, roads, speed limits and other… stuff. Because its basically broken. In London it is definitely broken. Yet its all a matter of perspective. I see the problem as traffic moving too slowly. If it just got itself out of second gear, got off its collective fucking smart phones when the traffic lights turn green, got out of the ‘fast’ lane when pootling along at 17mph on a clear road to let impatient fuckers (that’ll be me then) pass, then all would be much better. If we got rid of buses things would improve 10-fold. But I appreciate that’s rather difficult to implement. In a caring society.

And I do want a caring society. I yearn for it. Though appear to step out of that persona when I sit myself in a vehicle. Then I don’t care. About anything other than getting where I need to go in the shortest possible time. And I don’t even drive that much. Yet resent the fuck out of virtually every other road user.

Last night I followed a big Tesla S all the way to the gym where I do my tai chi. He was what I think of as ‘width uncertain’, or ‘tosser’. In that driving down a relatively (for back-street London) wide road with parked cars on both sides but plenty of room for two way traffic to pass, he wouldn’t pass. He rather park every time a car came towards him and then pull out ridiculously widely afterwards to continue. His brake lights flashed so often I though he must be CID on a mission with a broken siren. A slow mission.

When we eventually arrived at the gym he found a parking space. And the spaces there are quite narrow. But not so narrow that you can’t park in them, obviously, otherwise they’d call them something else. He performed an agonised 173-point manoeuvre to reverse into his space. By which time the car next to him had left his space and gone home, around the stupid Tesla, and I found a space and parked, as did the guy behind me. We chatted about incompetence in general on the way to the gym. As we entered, 100 yards later, I turned and the Tesla was still manoeuvring. Bless him. Or kill him. Either way get fucking rid of him.

Happy Friday; keep cool out there. Like me…

A xxxx

Well I’ll be blown! (Whatever that means). Ruslin Boshirov is NOT an innocent civilian Russian person of innocence and civility, who was over here for a 2-day, whirlwind tour of some of the finest parts of Salisbury Cathedral and its legendary spire. Who’d’a thought?? He said he was. On Russian tv. Mr Poot’n said he was. On every tv. And it turns out he wasn’t at all. Though definitely still a Russian. Just a different kind’a Russian. He’d said he was a ‘sports nutritionist’. So I phoned him about my diet before tennis matches. And all I got was a recorded message saying: ‘this person does not exist in the real world, you have dialled incorrectly and if you do so again your children will be dead before the night falls’. Oh. No mention of kale then. Pasta. Slow-burn carbs in general. Avoiding fats. No, just death threats. Dangerous people those sports nutritionists.

Because who we all thought was Ruslin Boshirov was actually Anatoliy Chepiga. And not only that, he wasn’t a nutritionist at all! No, he is an intelligence officer in the Russian army. I’d never have guessed that. I mean, its still just a coincidence that he happened to be here at the time of the attempted murder of the Skripals, using exclusively Russian made nerve agents against people known to be hated in the fatherland. But him and the other nutritionist only came to measure the spire. Which is actually the 973rd most popular tourist site in all of Salisbury. And environs. They’d never even heard of the Skripals, so it couldn’t have been them.

Meanwhile, Princess Meg, Dutchess Meghan, Harry’s bird, whatever, has caused a stir. According to the press that is. According to anyone else she proved once again that she is just a human being. But to sticklers about Royal protocols who obsess about ‘rules’ that go back to King Harold, she ‘caused a stir’. Because she got out of her limo at some function or other and…

If she’d fallen arse over tit to reveal any or both of those features, I could understand the attention. If she’d stopped to light a cigarette butt that she’d pulled from her pocket, or better still a joint, I could get the consternation. If she’d kicked a cat or even an old person away to get to the red carpet, that too might be grounds for concern. But they didn’t happen. What happened in actuality, that upset so many royal watchers was…

She closed her own car door after leaving it. I mean WTF? I always close my own car door and people always tell me I’m a total fucking princess. So what’s the problem??

Happy Lila-day

A xxxx