Andy's Glasses

I have a hedge. Its a lovely hedge. Its made from beech trees. Which, unlike the more normal privet hedges, are deciduous.

You bored yet? Gardening?? I’ve never written gardening before because… because… because I haven’t. But its fascinating? exciting? scintillating? erotic? well, its about gardens an’ shit, innit? And you have to have something to do when the football season ends on Sunday.

So my hedge is made of little trees, which shed their leaves every October, all over the fucking everything, as if they don’t have a care. And then, for 7 months the hedge is a bunch of dead-looking twigs and branches. Which is fine. Its winter. Ok, and a bit of spring but as spring never really sprung here til last week, I’m happy with the feeling of bleakness that the bare, bald, brown hedge provides.

Then in May something weird happens. Something spooky, spiritual, almost, when a few leaves appear. Then a few more. And then, all over the space of about 10 days, it turns green. But not just, like ‘a bit green’, no. It turns FUCKING GREEN!!! with 3 exclamation marks. And vibrant and fluffy and soft and it says ‘SUMMER’S HERE!’ and just looks gorgeous. And that happened yesterday, so I thought I’d share.

And now we enter the fabulous 10-day period of wonderment and delight, every time we come home and see all that greenness and life and vitality. After that two things happen. Firstly it gets covered in greenfly and whitefly, no matter how much toxic shit and carcinogenic, fox-killing, bird-eating poison we spray on it. And secondly, the bitch from Barnet council phones me and tells me that the hedge is overhanging the pavement and needs to be ‘seriously!’ cut back.

‘FUCK OFF BITCH!’ I say to her. But only internally as its no way to start a negotiation. The hedge is fine, I say, its gorgeous, leave it alone and go fill in some potholes which are a genuine plague. Overhanging hedges don’t ruin cars, potholes do. She sends me photos. Seriously, emails them over with all quantified measurements of terminal overhangingness and projections from our property onto public land!! and shit. My normal argument is ‘but it looks lovely’. The ratbag doesn’t care. Nor just she seem to care about the dozens of hedges nearby which you have to avoid by stepping into the road. I don’t care about those either, they’re just hedges.

Its written into our house deeds that our house, like all others in the conservation area, has to have a hedge. Just as Dame Henrietta Barnet built it a hundred years ago. She never mentioned overhanging the pavement by 42cms being a crime. (If only it was just 42cms). So we prune it back about 6 inches and I sent her photos. Which have been edited, photoshopped and prove that ‘the camera does lie’ and that’s it for another year.

I await her phone call. I’m reading on how to train white and greenfly to attack.

Happy green-fingered Friday

A xxxx

When Spurs lost to West Brom on Saturday I cried. Metaphorically, literally, copiously, voluminously, uncontrollably, desperately, depressingly. In sheer frustration, despair, anguish, anxiety, despondency and because I was really fucking pissed off. We’d managed to lose a game, seconds before the final whistle, to the worst team in the country (at the time) and in doing so were once again plunged into that horrendous end of season ‘champions league panic’. I do realise this is football’s version of a ‘first world problem’ in that there are about 14 teams who’d take 5th, or 6th, even 16th place with great thanks and a sigh of relief. But I’m not talking about Arsenal.

We just needed to win and we were sitting pretty. But we lost, which made it nasty and slippery and tested my confidence in my new-found ability to only ‘look upwards’ when all I could see was Chelsea just over my shoulder creeping up. Because only two out of Spurs, Liverpool and Chelsea can get into the top 4 slots. And we’d had our name written large on one of them, until Saturday. And then on Sunday when Chelsea beat Liverpool I should have been happy. Because Liverpool (looking up) were ours for the taking. But if I succumbed to the briefest of downward glances I saw those bastards at Chelsea just over my left shoulder (too painful to look over my right one).

So two matches left to play, the first of which was Newcastle last night at Wembley. And we cruised to an agonising, painfully woe-stricken, awkward and clumsy victory. And probably one which never tasted sweeter. Lila’s mum and dad went, abandoning their baby at our house. And her dad messaged me that ‘we limped home’. But I’ll take it. And sing and fucking dance for a week. Because with Chelsea just drawing with Huddersfield (thus taking them out of relegation danger) we have a Euro slot guaranteed. Set in stone. Liverpool and Chelsea be damned. They can do what they want on the final day, I’m looking up. Because if we win we go third. I’m happy with 4th but want 3rd, just because.

Up, down, up down, shake it all about. I just don’t care any more.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

I find myself suddenly in the unique and somewhat uncomfortable position of agreeing with Donald J Trump. He of the world’s largest signature, most flamboyant combover and (usually) the most moronic comments. But this was no tweeted soundbyte. This was no twice-repeated and thus thrice-meaningless phrase. This was a speech. With whole words and sentences in joined-up writing. And what he said was, when distilled down to its true and inner meaning: “I don’t fucking trust Eye-rannn!!” And thus he scuppered ‘the deal’. A word I’m growing to hate more with every day of his presidency.

The ‘deal’ hatched by Obama and a few Euro-nations involved promises from Iran about the extent and uses of its nuclear stockpile. Which had to be closely monitored. To ensure that it was used for powering the nation’s tvs and plug-in cars, and emphatically NOT for nuclear weapons. And if Iran promised this then the rest of the world would lift trade sanctions on that country. Which translates as ‘buying its oil once more’. Which we now do. Shit-loads of it. 8 times more than we did before the sanctions were lifted.

So Iran gets its nuclear POWER, and it gets to earn lots of money in exported oil. And what do we get? Ahhhhh, according to nobel-winner Barak Obama, we get ‘world peace’. Nothing more noble than that. Because if Iran has no nuclear weapons then we all sleep better at night. Oh, and cheaper oil, which is of massive benefit to any and all post-industrial nations.

But the inspectors in the Iranian nuclear facilities haven’t been able to inspect as they’d like. They’re only allowed in certain places. Not the ones where they make the warheads- ooops!!! Where they make nuclear power stuff that’s a bit more secret than the usual ‘plug-and-play’ type, so you’re not allowed in there.

But world peace is indeed the highest aspiration. And we must look at how Iran is now passionately involved in its pursuit. By running a 5-year proxy war in Yemen with the Saudis, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Yemenis. That’s fairly peaceful. Then there’s Syria where Iran’s airforce and military support Assad in his systematic murder of anyone and everyone who looks like they might be a ‘rebel’. Iran sends its Shia Militias everywhere to fight. Then it sponsors Hamas and Hezbollah with both arms and finances, that they might both attack Israel with greater potency, the nation Iran has sworn to ‘destroy’. And then there’s the possibility that if it is shown that Iran is nuclear then its most hated enemies in Saudi Arabia will go the same route. That’ll be peaceful.

So the question comes down to: do you trust Iran? Its simple. Trump doesn’t. I doesn’t(?) No-one really doesn’t. Thus Trump is… errrr… (this is hard)… Trump is… RIGHT!

Peaceful Wednesday

A xxxx

We’re a nation plagued by weather. And surprised by all of it. We’re all familiar with British Rail’s definition of ‘the wrong kind of snow’ (white, falls from the sky, cold, bit wet…) and particular types of rain (the eskimos have 100 words for snow, even the ones who don’t work for Eskimo Rail; we have 736 words for rain) which cause massive upset to our entire national infrastructure. But heat? HEAT??? That one really throws us. And produces several interesting evolutionary responses. The first being to jump into the car with all the family and head out on massively clogged roads, to the mating grounds and spawning sites of generations of antecedents. Like salmon swimming up the waterfalls, the legions of great unwashed flock to Southend and Brighton, to Lyme Regis and Clacton-upon-Sea. Where they adhere to the ancient, innate rituals. Like never being more than 4 inches in any direction away from another family. 700,000 people on 39 yards of beach. Its a collective thing, much like wilderbeasts in the veldt. Security in numbers. So you start the day nose-to-tail on the A12 or the A36 or whatever, and then, 14 hours later, when you’ve actually arrived AND found somewhere to park, you finally lie on the beach. With your head just touching the overhanging stomach of the 19-stone binkinied ‘babe’ on the adjoining towel. Heaven.

I just won’t do ‘traffic’ on bank holidays. Never. So instead Mel & I went for lunch in a fairly local park. Where they have an allegedly wonderful cafe. And as it was not only a bank holiday but the nicest, sunniest, most beautifully stunning bank holiday everrrrrrr, we figured no-one else would be there and we’d have the place to ourselves. The good news was that we did get a table. There must be 100 tables because its a fucking park so they just bring more tables out. No shortage of space. But, as I stood in the queue to order and pay for lunch, I learned that there was in fact a shortage of food. The owner, lovely if totally stressed-out Israeli dude, told me that not only had his staff been flat out since 8.30 that morning (it was by then about 3pm), but that they’d had to send out for more of virtually everything. So we’re ‘on a break’ so they don’t die. Come back in 15. Grrrrr…

And yet even I, the most impatient man God ever made (and he in fact made me himself), thought: ‘WTF?’ I’m in a gorgeous park, I have shade, I have sun, I’ve just got drinks (which hadn’t run out), just wait. And we did. And lunch was wonderful, eventually, almost dinner really.

I asked the owner if he kind’a, would’a, could’a, should’a, possibly bought more food, knowing, as we all did, that the weekend was to be sunny and hot? That he might be a tad busier than on a normal damp, grey tuesday in Feb? But he doesn’t trust weather forecasts. Hmmm…

Happy back-to-work Tuesday

A xxxx

Donald Trump is a plonker, we all know that. An orange one. And he talks in phrases, which he repeats. So he doesn’t forget what he’s just said, in case it was important, which it invariably wasn’t. He can’t handle whole sentences and so entire concepts are quite frankly beyond his capability. Which all put together has an almost Forest Gumpian feel to it, or ‘Being There’, where subnormal people reach great heights by saying very little into which everyone else reads profound wonderment.

Our Donald was addressing the NRA, the most powerful organisation in America, including Congress and the Senate, so it would seem to an outsider. And because it was the NRA his previous stance of ‘we must protect our children’ changed to ‘guns are more important than fuckin kids’ in the flash of a sponsorship donation. What’s a few dead teenagers compared to our constitutional right to shoot who the hell we want? And to illustrate his point he chose Britain. London, in fact. Which he already has issues with because we conned him out of his Embassy’s fuck-off site in Grosvenor Square and stitched him up with a disused warehouse in Vauxhall in exchange… and a billion quid. He likes a ‘good deal’. Well, (for us) this was a dream deal.

So Donald conjures up an imaginary, nameless hospital in London, ‘right in the centre’, in which there are so many knife victims that the corridors flow with blood. Its like a ‘war zone’. And England has the strictest gun control of anywhere!!!!

I just don’t know what point the man is trying to make. I can’t see any sense in this comparison. Is he saying that we need guns in Britain to protect us from knives? Or so that our killers can use guns instead, making them much more efficient and producing less blood to mop up? Or that increasing gun control in the US would just lead to more knife crime?

I have no idea. Its just an ill-conceived (and obviously totally fictionalised) story that the great man feels justifies the virtual ‘no-control’ policy on guns in America and the best reason for it to continue, unchecked. I’m sure the collective inbred retards of the NRA gave him a standing ovation for his stunning illustration.

So their answer remains consistent. If kids have guns, give teachers bigger guns. Faster guns, more powerful guns. I know an old lady who swallowed a fly, I don’t know why she didn’t just swallow a cruise missile and end it right there.

Happy Bank Holiday, sunny Monday

A xxxx

Just the last word on the local elections. Which were, apparently, all over England. None of the bits that don’t count, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, just us. And more specifically in London, where Labour did shit. Because Labour’s eventual plans for London, should they ever (god forbid a thousand times) come to power in what will be known henceforth as ‘departure day’, they will either nationalise the City of London, or impose such stringent taxes upon it that it will just move somewhere else. Labour simply hates the entire concept of The City. Even though it produces half the country’s wealth at least and generates more in taxes. But that is McDonnell’s dream; to bring down capitalism. Replace it, as they did in North Korea, with starvation.

And how good does the sunshine feel? Turning up for tennis yesterday it was warm, bright, cloudless, wind-free and I thought ‘WTF??? I can’t play like this. Where’s the rain, frost, ice, hurricanes??’ But it was ok. Almost like it was invented as some kind of ‘summer game’? News to me.

Today too, waking up to all that sunshine. I’m so glad that I didn’t become a vegan yesterday. Mainly because its always struck me as a dull and desperate thing to do, more suited to the wintry grey world lacking in colour and happiness. But I was tempted. I mean, so many people are vegan-ing out these days, maybe its time for some industrial quantities of tofu in my life. Not just for making the soles of my vegan tennis shoes but actually eating it. So to test the theory we went to a restaurant last night that only sells meat. To see just how horrible, how cruel, heartless (mainly because we didn’t eat any hearts, even though I quite like them), and brutal the world of the carnivore can be. Although I’ve lived in that world for nearly 62 years. Probably didn’t eat too much meat for the first week or so, therefore I have ‘form’ as a vegan, though not sure about the ‘non-dairy’ bit relating to breast-feeding.

And the Turkish restaurant brought us the ‘almost-vegan’ option. An immense platter of barbecued meat. The ‘almost’ comes about because there was rice and salad on the plate too. A little. Just for counterbalance to stop the plate falling over under the immense weight of the meat. And it was wonderful. And I can honestly attest that no animals whatsoever suffered in any way at all whilst pigging out for an hour on all that flesh.

I’ll put the tofu back in the freezer.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

So, according to the party leaders, these were the undisputed winners of the two-and-a-half major political parties. Sorry, I can’t give that shambles of Lib-Dems more than a half, and that’s being generous. The Tories won. Labour won. And the Lib dems won. That’s it and its conclusive and final. Because all can in fact take some small points as victorious, but all in fact, objectively, were equally losers. Except the Lib-dems but they’re obviously only half a loser.

Any mid-term elections are used by the voters as comments on the national government. Even though these were local elections I couldn’t tell you who was going to fill in the pot-holes, who intended to pick up my garden waste before it turned to compost, who was going to increase elderly care. I voted on government issues. Even though they were irrelevant. Its what we do. And in mid-terms the government always gets hammered. As a protest. Yet this time it simply didn’t happen. Ok, the Tories lost a few seats but they expected to. They barely expected to hold onto Westminster, Wandsworth and especially Barnet. But they did. And that can only be viewed as a massive ‘FUCK YOU!!!!’ to Jeremy Corbyn. A sentiment with which I heartily agree.

Are you a monoluncher? Do you, like Tory Minister, Dominic Rabb, have the same lunch every single soddin’ day of the week? Its all the talk. Dominic has a chicken (good, fat free, white) and bacon (baaaad; processed and red; the devil’s work) bagette (terrible, bleached white processed wheat, loads of sugar and salt) with salad dressing (the worst), coupled with popcorn (peanut butter flavoured) and fruit pot (shitloads of sugar) and a smoothie. So he’s gonna die. Any second now. According to neutritionists Dominic consumes 864 calories a day, 54 grams of sugar, 3.5 kilos of unrefined… shit and 1lb 3ozs of napkins and plastic forks. And neutritionists always advise a ‘varied diet’ to ensure all major groups and stuff are covered. I’d personally say Dominic is a bit of a pig and has the imagination of a tea-spoon but if it makes him happy? And as we spend our days agonising over the excessive choices for absolutely everything currently available, does it not in fact reduce his personal stress by taking one choice a day out of the equation? Also worthy of consideration is that neutritionists, like most quasi-scientific purveyors of ever-changing quackery, know less than fuck all. Today’s heart-massaging wonderfood is tomorrow’s artery clogging carcinogen.

Eat what you want, ignore the pundits.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

Read an interesting article the other day about Jurgen Klopp and his Liverpool team. Basically, what we all know; they score a truck-load of goals but can’t defend for shit. Hence the 5-2, 6-3, 4-2 type scorelines that have typified their season. But rather than seeing this as a weakness, the article used it as praise. Basically as long as you score more than your opponents you win the game. Rocket science it ain’t. But you have limited ‘resource’. ie: 11 men. Who can, generally, only be in one place at one time. And if they’re all screaming into the opposition’s penalty area it tends to leave gaps at the back for teams on the break. Its always a balance. Are your two central midfielders there to break things up and protect the back four or do you want more attack from them? How ‘wingy’ are your wing-backs? Are they there when they need to defend? Do your front-line players chase back to help the defence? All interesting questions. If you’re a total football nerd, geek and tragedy.

The article suggested that Klopp’s approach is the correct one. That it provides entertainment. Even if, for Liverpool fans, that entertainment means you never relax during any game, even with a 2-goal, 3-goal, even 4-goal lead. Its always precarious. But, as a neutral, we really could give a toss about the fragility of the average Liverpool fan’s stress levels. Let them take valium. Like the rest of us. And its always been ‘the Spurs way’, attack full-on and if it leaves you a little ‘porous’ at times at the back then so be it, just make sure you score more than you let in.

Manchester City, like all (but relatively very few) ‘super-teams’ manage to get the balance simply perfect. They are irrepressible in attack but incredibly solid when defending. The players have a fluidity of position which maximises both sides of the game. Barcelona have done the same for a generation but that generation is rapidly coming to an end now.

And then there’s Arsenal. Who, in their ‘invincibles’ team certainly shared the dream. But now Wenger has modified the paradigm so that they manage to combine being awful in defence with being shitty in attack. And cursed with the inviolable criterion that you must always ‘walk the ball into the net’. ALWAYS make that extra pass even when you’re through on goal and it’s unmanned.

So we’ll all be Liverpool fans for a day when they play Real in the Champions League final. And I don’t know what the odds are but I would never bet against Liverpool in a Euro match, and I would certainly never bet against the current Klopp boys in any match.

Now I’m off to West Bromwich. Only spiritually.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

So you have, say, a bad tummy, like, last week. And you mustn’t eat. So you buy a bottle of coke; real, red-label, full sugar, dental-enemy, obesity-rated, fat coke. Because of the sugar. Your body needs it. Preferably ‘flat’. Unlike your stomach would be if you drank it any other day of the year. Not that you could afford to, the fuckng new tax makes it suddenly a rich man’s drink. Or a sick man’s drink. You should get a rebate on the tax if you have a bad tum. Either produce a medical certificate at the till or throw-up all over the check-out girl. And then when you feel a little bit more stable, someone says ‘plain biscuits’. Just those 2 words. So you buy some. And that’s where the problem starts. Because you can’t buy 1. They won’t sell it. Only in packs of about 100. And you eat 3 the first day. Cos you’re sick. And ‘testin’. Then you eat maybe 5 the second day. Then you get better. Hooray, back on proper food, milk in coffee is back on the menu, all kinds of pig-out may resume as before. And you do pig -out, making up for all those lost days, all the weight that ‘simply fell off’ or got poured down various toilets and buckets. And you still have 93 plain biscuits left in the pack. That you don’t need any more. But they’re there. In my workspace. Looking at me. Should I throw them away? Give them to charity? Or just leave them alone and hope they don’t ‘call out’ to me.

Yet they do. They call. They whisper ‘eat meeeeee’ repeatedly throughout the day. And so I do. The race before they go stale.

Voting day today. We, in London at least, not sure about the rest of the great unwashed, but we vote for our local councillors. And the rule is: ‘anyone but Labour’. On the grounds that they are horrible, evil nasty people. Who actually intend to let you vote for a specific Labour candidate and then, after the election, they will deselect your candidate and replace him with some Momentum shit-head Trotskyite anti-semite. That’s what they have planned in Haringey and if it proves not to be illegal (under review) there’s nothing to stop them doing it elsewhere. Which is as dishonest as it is undemocratic. But (new, new) Labour has never been about democracy. More about abuse, sexism, racism and trolling.

Vote Rich Tea today

A xxxx

Where’s it written? That it has to rain all the fucking time? I’ve never seen that contract but it seems to have been implemented anyway. Yesterday was lovely, sunny, nice. Monday was the day from hell, weatherwise, and today looks like being its demon-brother. Or sister. Sorry for assuming that demons are male. Females have equal rights to everything. That IS in the contract. Played tennis in the rain on Saturday, in the drizzle on Sunday, we’re in May and it feels like February. Rachie’s in Berlin, far, far east of here, where you’d imagine it snows for about 8 months a year and temperatures never get above about 10. Yet she’s moaning she’s too hot to sleep, enjoying 25 degrees every day and we’re here freezing. And the heating’s not working. It was yesterday until we had a new valve put in the boiler because it wasn’t heating the water properly. Now the water’s hot but the heating non-functioning. And Lila’s coming to stay tonight. Lila doesn’t really give a shit about the temperature, well, she never mentions it, but her mother will take one walk round in the arctic house and take my baby straight back to her house where the thermostat is always set at ‘hospital/greenhouse/sauna’.

But enough about the weather, even though its my right as a British personage of British… things, to bang on about endlessly. Yet being British is something of a problem for some people. Which in turn has led to the downfall of Amber Rudd, former Home Secretary, former wife of AA Gill, she has lots of form(er).

I can’t even be bothered to get into the details and events that removed this… person from office. Too boring. Suffice to say; she fucked up. There’s only really one crime in politics and that’s telling fibs, both to the public (who put you there) and to Government committees. Ok, sexual harassment will get you sacked too but Amber wasn’t accused of that. The ‘Windrush’ scandal is a terrible thing, that as with all terrible things, has been embraced and highly politicised by the Opposition, which is their job, I begrudgingly suppose. Amber didn’t get sacked for the Windrush stuff, she got sacked because of her office’s policy on ILLEGAL immigrant removal. Windrushers were always legal but got caught up due to various cock-ups.

So in steps Sajid Javid to the role. And that’s quite a brilliant appointment. Because its hard to accuse the son of immigrants of anything racist or anti-immigrant. What’s more he’s the son of a bus conductor which makes him less Eton and more accessible than your usual Tory. Maybe his dad was conductor on the bus that Sadiq Kahn’s dad drove? Wouldn’t that be something??? Or not.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx