Andy's Glasses

We have a little flat roof. Over the extension we built onto our kitchen 12 years ago. The guys who built it have long since vanished into that netherworld ether of shitty craftsmen who you never want again to darken your doorstep. Or lighten it, re-shape it or fill the missing chips. Nor anything else in the house ever again. The ‘builders’ who are unfit to change a lightbulb. But they’re gone. Names changed, phones disconnected, addresses never existed in the first place. History.

So we’ve had half of the extension replaced over the years and all was seemingly fine, until water started to come onto the dining table one friday night. And no-one likes watered down chicken soup. No-one! We did a ‘DIY’ job, which was putting a big bowl on the table under the leaky bit of ceiling. But I knew that was never really permanent. So our builder came and said ‘holy shit! look at the roof!!’ Which, I must confess, I hadn’t done much of in the intervening 12 years and it just looked like some lead sheets. With a big gap in the middle. Which probably (though I ain’t no builder) was the problem. So Mo patched it up and sent his ‘roofer’ round.

We’ve used Mo for 10 years. He’s a proper building contractor and is the most reliable and available dude in the world. And no, you can’t have his number, I’d give you all my pin numbers first. And most of my family. And Mo sent Martin. The Roof Guy.

He’s actually Marcin, so he looks likes Martin but he’s Polish. And he arrived to ‘inspect’ with several lanyards round his neck. All various badges of honour, medals of valour almost, within the roofing fraternity. He’s a master roofer. He’s specially licensed as a fibre glass roof specialist. He’s a health & safety approved, officially… errr… healthy and really safe guy, and other things too. Which he lets you know. Often and repeatedly.

What Martin isn’t is modest. What Martin is though, is fantastically professional, efficient and neat. They even covered the lawn to save it from dust. And the roof? OMG it is a thing of such beauty I just have to share. And not just the neatest, most beautiful flat roof ever, but, according to Marcin (because Martin wouldn’t have said it like this) it is g-varanteed for 20 years, backed by an insurance, AND he included all the ‘isolation’. You know, the stuff that prevents heat escaping. Isolation.

God bless him, is what I say. And his chest-full of lanyards.

Happy Sunday (Man United fans excluded, obvs)

A xxxx

That’s it then. The football season’s over so this must be the final table. Finished early this year due to… because… errrrr… as the new stadium at Tottenham is delayed because the interior designers can’t decide on the final colour scheme in the toilets. So the Premier League said ‘play today and then its over’.

So, true to my prediction, Spurs won the league. Bournemouth (my newly elevated second team after last weekend’s trip there) finish second. The rest don’t count. And the only team not on the picture above, because either the first or last had to ‘go’ due to space allowances, is West Ham. I mean really. Like, ‘if only’. I have many West Ham friends who I’m rather fond of. But as a team, and as a collective fan-base, they stink. Awful, nasty, horrible and they hate Spurs. But like really hate Spurs. So for today only, as Monty Python said: I fart in their general direction. Arsenal managed to avoid relegation.

I also have to laugh at the irony that is me. I start my Saturday, as every week, at my martial arts class. Which today, among many other things, had us essentially hitting each other. Ok, we use big thick padded bags but we hit. And kick. And punch. And we all come out (often as not) unscathed, unmarked and unbleeding. Then I go to tennis, that genteel of sunny-day sports, and beat myself to shit. The other week it was my face I managed to hit, today my left ankle. Really hard with my racquet. And it became more painful as the day went on. So I iced it. With a leaky (didn’t know at the fucking time, obviously) bag. Ended up with a wet sock, but also with a less swollen ankle. Oooooh, that’s clever. Must google ‘padded tennis racquets’ and see what happens.

So even though I didn’t got to Spurs/Wembley today I realise why the football season is so great. Because it has the power to lift spirits. When you look and we’re 1-1 with Fulham after 65 minutes it is depressing. But when it ends 3-1, oh that’s so nice. Reaffirms your faith in… everything.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

We need the rain. We need water. The reservoirs are depleted, the rivers running dry, the crops desiccating and my lawn looks like shit. But why does it have to fall on Thursday? Or Lila-day as its known round here? Though I must add that Lila really doesn’t mind the rain. Is barely aware that its raining. As you wouldn’t when sitting inside a (child-friendly and Brussels-approved, health & safety version) plastic bag. Being pushed by a less waterproofed adult (that’d be me then). Lila would only notice if her share of the croissant got soggy. So… were we to be so indulgent and stereotypically grandparentish as to buy such ‘bad food’ for a baby; we’d just have it inside instead of outside which is our normal practice. Yet Thursday seems to be the official ‘day of rain’ in this parched, arid and searingly hot summer. The fish are dying but I’ve got a super tan.

And as regards the new, multi-almost-billion pound stadium for my beloved Tottenham Hotspurs, I’d just like to say, to all the smug and sneering Arsenal, West Ham and Chelsea fans who seem to have inevitable opinions on this matter, on the record and with my lawyers present and the cameras rolling: it ain’t my fault. I’m not building the fucking thing, nor (thank God) financing it. I don’t control the workforce nor the upholsterers. Not the plumbers nor the hod-carriers’ mates. I’m just a football fan. Eager for ‘my’ new stadium to be finished. So it can better than all theirs. As befits Champions League football. And building a stadium where the old one stood is always more difficult than the alternatives. Like Arsenal who moved to a new council dump and never fulfilled their promise to create a new one. Or West Ham who stole their stadium from the tax-payers, and continue to do so. Or Chelsea who don’t actually have a new stadium and if too many more punitive measures are taken by our government on overseas billionaires or on Russians in general, the building of a new stadium will be the least of their worries. White Hart Lane Nouveau will be so splendid and so big that surely it is better to get it perfect than to rush it.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

Another week, another England sporting superstar in trouble for the English malaise. Getting pissed and fighting with whoever is around at the time. Obviously, we can’t include England cricket star Ben Stokes in that really now as he has been found completely ‘innocent’ of all charges. And that, quite honestly, is backed up by some fairly clear evidence of him not beating the shit out of two men. It looks like he is, but, according the law, he wasn’t.

This week its Danny Cipriani, the recently recalled England fly half. He was out having a perfectly innocent ‘drink with his team-mates’ on a pre-season trip in Jersey, when he decided to take his drink outside. And was told by a bouncer that he couldn’t do that. I don’t know why; seems reasonable to me, seemed reasonable to Danny, but you know bouncers; ‘if ya ain’ on da list ya ain’ comin’ in’. Danny obviously wasn’t on the list of people allowed outside with their drinks. So they did what all reasonable people would, and had a fight. And then, when a policewoman came to sort out the matter, she somehow got hurt too by Danny. I can’t see really how a solitary policewoman would have trouble with a fight between a bouncer (say, 6 foot 2, shaven head, muscles lurking under every tattoo, probably steroided up to some extent; not making judgments, just sayin’) and a 6 foot of solid muscle professional athlete of a rugby player, I can’t see how she’d have had any problem at all with that scenario. But she did. And he resisted arrest and managed to hurt her in the process.

The terrible irony is that cricket and rugby are our ‘good guy’, gentlemanly sports. Football is for the real scummy thugs. These 2 heroes of their nation in their respective sports, are gentlemen.

But ya know, men drink, men fight, happens pretty much everywhere, not quite as frequently as here but its fairly universal. What makes these issues so horrible, and the long list of footballing incidents of a similar nature (so for the purposes of this debate, we’ll ignore the sexual assaults, rapes, statutory rapes, gang bangs, etc. etc. etc…) is the attitude of the guilty when caught. Basically always a version of ‘DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM???’ As if being famous for hitting/kicking/throwing a ball around gives you immunity not just from prosecution but for being a total asshole as well. “Oh! Sorry Sir!” they actually expect the reply to be, “I didn’t realise it was you, who played so well last weekend that you actually won the man-of-the-match award, I’m so sorry to have bothered you, especially with you being so rich. Just leave these bodies here and me and my other police colleagues will be delighted to sort them out for you. Sorry again, Sir.”

Our sporting heroes seem to have acquired a sense of entitlement to which they are certainly not entitled. And having reached some pinnacle of some sporting hierarchy, need to appreciate how lucky they are. Rather than use that precarious status as an excuse for acting like a nob.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

Cars don’t break down any more. People do, but cars, over the last 40 years, have become so much more reliable and dependable. There was a time when you wouldn’t leave home on a road trip without AA cover, a pair of tights (in case the fanbelt ‘went’, which they often did), a large vessel of water, for when one of the radiator hoses ‘went’) and the recital of a long and complicated prayer which involved brakes and clutch fluid, steering bushes and spare tyres. They’ve managed, over the time, to stop the bits falling off and are now making parts that don’t keep on packing up with ware. In fact they’ve probably overcooked it with computerisation so now when your car does break down they don’t send a mechanic so much as an IT consultant who plugs the car in and reads out what’s gone wrong.

But if you do want to see broken down cars, the M3 to Bournemouth is definitely the place. Its not a long journey, though it is an awkward one with lots of horrible roads, like the M25 involved, and yet every 3 miles Waze (without whom we NEVER leave home) informed us of ‘WARNING: car stopped on road ahead!’ which inevitably it was. But this happened, on our combined journeys, about 12 times. I mean WTF?? Are people from ‘the South’ driving older cars? Can you not get a car serviced once you go below Streatham?

Fortunately we didn’t break down. Though did return home with brake fluid warning light coming on rather annoyingly which I may have to smash to reduce its annoyance. And we had a day and a half in Bournemouth with our friends who live down there. Some of the time. You wouldn’t want to live there all the time because its not London.

I hadn’t been to Bournemouth for years, lots of years. And had virtually no recollection of it. Thinking it to be ‘just another English seaside town’ with a thin strip of crowded, stoney beach packed with 22,000 tattooed northerners drinking beer from cans at 11 in the morning. Kiss-me-quick hats, fish’n’chip shops, buckets and spades, greasy spoon cafes and filthy little ‘hotels’ which have managed to circumvent all and any nod to ‘health, safety and hygenic’.

Of course they have got all that, but the thing with ‘Bournemouth’ is that it is a vast area. Of absolutely amazing coastline. Soft golden sands, wonderful cliffs, all sorts of amazingly geographical wonderment. And it has real restaurants. And lovely (looking) hotels and it is very classy. And there’s Bournemouth and Poole and Sandbanks (so affluent that Harry Rednap lives there) and Christchurch and all sorts of fab towns and places in between. Its a snob’s paradise of an English seaside town, so Mel loved it. And, if I’m being honest and removing my champagne socialist, Corbynite hat for just a moment, so did I.

We did one… probably 3 mile walk along a fantastic beach. Cliffs one side, soft sand and virtually empty the whole way from Mudeford to… the car. Not good at geography, I just like it. The sun even shone. We’re going back.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

Ahhhh, Jezza. They keep diggin’ and they keep striking gold in them thar hills of old news releases.

Where were you in 2014, Jezza?

I might have been, I can’t remember. Only that I didn’t actually lay a wreath at the grave myself. Might have cheered… said a prayer… but an ENGLISH prayer, a working man’s prayer. Terrorism is a sign of workers revolution… isn’t it? And I went there because I’m opposed to ALL terrorism and by laying a wreath at the grave of those murdered by the Israelis in Paris in 1992 (who were, in fact, the Munich bombers, found by Mossad) in a terrorist act, I am opposing terrorism. Obviously I don’t actually count any acts of terrorism against Israel, Israelis or Jews because… because…

Because there are too many to count?

If you want to oppose ‘all forms of terrorism’, Jezza, ya need to oppose ‘all forms of terrorism’. Drawing some mythical, socialist line that protects the IRA and Hamas from inclusion is beyond hypocrisy. In fact its fairly beyond comprehension.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

Its over. The football season. The beginning of the football season is over. First matches all been played. Are the results in any way ‘representative’ of what’s to follow? Do they offer any viable predictive value for the 37 following matches? Or are we in that grey area where the players are still ‘on holiday’ to some extent, others still tired from the World Cup (that’ll be Spurs then) and new managers, new players, not yet bedded in and comfortable with each other. All sorts of variables. Essentially, these are early days for our new and beloved (so far) fledgling season.

Anything can still happen.

Yesterday morning I bumped into West Ham Jezza. He was excited, he was filled to overflowing with the optimism and limitless potential that, for football fans, is only possible before your team has kicked a ball. His team is looking good, he felt, bought a few, sold a few, done a couple of deals, which, being West Ham, means us tax-payers have been screwed again, and he was feeling really good about the new season.

And I love that. Fans are born optimistic and have it beaten systematically from their very souls ever year, only for it to pop up as soon as the last ball of last season has been kicked. As last season ends it automatically pushes the ‘reset’ button of possibilities. And Jezza was really positive. In a ‘no, this season I REALLY feel it could be different’, kind of self-delusion.

They lost 4-0 to Liverpool. A team who were pretty damned good last year and have strengthened their side wisely since.

I am optimistic for my team. We looked on Saturday like a team playing their first game in a while. We looked tired. A bit sluggish. Lacking the energy and stamina we’re normally famous for. But we won. And if you can win when you’re playing at about 60% that’s gotta be good.

I didn’t see the Arsenal game yesterday, I was driving down to Bournemouth to stand on very windy beach with our friends. But Arsenal lost. I managed to acquire that information along the way. And thus, Manchester City won. Arsenal have some new players who the pundits feel didn’t do too well. But neither did Thierry Henry when he arrived there. They have a new manager, their first in over 2 decades, so we’ll cut them some early slack. Though Manchester City look like they’re still in last season mode. Awesome. Devastating. Frightening.

So much to speculate, all of it mere guesswork. So I reckon Spurs will win the league this year, but only if the city of Manchester gets accidentally nuked by North Korea who mistake it for Massachusetts. Arsenal are Corbyn’s team and thus need to be relegated. For the good of the country and the world.

Happy seaside Monday

A xxxx

Our beloved Harry Kane, leader of the line for the one and only Tottenham Hotspur, captain of this fine nation’s almost best ever national football team and man of all (Premiership) seasons, has faced some tough scrapes in his life. He played for Millwall FFS where just arriving at the car park is a trauma. He’s been kicked, bitten, butted, punched, studded, all manner of horrible shit that are the knocks of top-flight football. But nothing could have prepared him for the shit-storm that has followed him after the birth of his baby this week.

Harry tweeted that he was ‘so proud of his wife for delivering a lovely baby with no anaesthetic’.

Oh dear. You can be proud of your new baby (or grand-baby), you can be proud of your wife for the almost inhuman trauma that is ironically the most humanly thing ever in delivering a baby. But you simply CANNOT be proud that she used no anaesthetic. Because that implies, according to lots and lots of women, that those who may have had some degree of medication during their own childbirthing, are somehow inferior.

And this was not just the usual feminazis, my own daughter voiced concern when she saw Harry’s tweet. Because when she delivered the world’s most perfect baby, it was far from the perfect birth. Never mind anaesthetic, there were nine consultants, fifteen other doctors, 6 midwives, 26 nurses and 3 delivery guys from Dominos. And not all were gathered because they knew that ‘the next messiah’ was about to be born. No. They were there because my daughter was in big trouble and needed serious help (God bless NHS teaching hospitals). Did that make anyone less proud of her? No, probably the opposite. Yet that’s not the point.

But this was Harry Kane. Not Boris Johnson, not me, not anyone with a great facility with the written word. Or, let’s be frank, a wonderful understanding of the world. So I reckon what Harry meant was: ‘so proud of my wife, delivered a lovely baby; oh, and she didn’t even have any meds’. You can read any sentence 15 different ways. Unless its written by Boris, obviously. Harry probably went to some NCT classes which tell you again and again how children born unaided (regardless of how much suffering and near-death experience the mother might encounter) will be ‘better’ than those born ‘less naturally’. And thus thought it might resonate to include the ‘anaesthetic’ bit. Who knows?

All I know is, Harry Kane is as qualified as any man to comment on the intricacies of childbirth (unless that man is an obstetrician). He’s a footballer, FFS. To attack him (2 hour feminist radio program last night about just that) is grossly unfair. To do so when he’s trying to enjoy the wonders of new baby time is worse. But to do so just when the new football season is starting is totally unforgivable. Must have been Arsenal women on the radio.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

Its interesting just how… interesting, some lives can be. Makes you wonder how you can do so much in so little time. Take, f’rinstance, Lewis Ludlow (who???), the man accused of plotting a terrorist attack on Oxford Street, Madame Tussaud’s or St Pauls, aiming to murder ‘about 100’ (not sure of the maths involved in such a calculation, but bow to his superior… errr…) people in the name of IS.

Young Lewis, (26 now) converted to Islam when he was 16. Ok, so far so good. But prior to that he’d been a confirmed Neo-nazi. Who obviously adheres to the ethos ‘if ya can’t beat ’em, join ’em’ and decided that hating (among others) Muslims and waving a swastika around wasn’t as much fun or anything like as zeitgeisty as actually becoming a jihadi. So he was radicalised. Can’t have been hard to do. I reckon anyone offering the chance of more hate, more death and Lewis would’a been asking where to sign. Which makes you wonder what had happened in this poor kid’s life to poison him so much that he sought only organisations of hatred. I’m sure that the word ‘ideology’ is an alien concept to the Lewis Ludlows of this world. Its the ‘glamour’ that is the lure. I honestly doubt he can spell ‘ideology’. Not sure I could without a spellchecker but I’m dyslexic with (little or) no murderous tendencies, so leave me alone.

Lewis calls himself ‘the eagle’. I have no idea why. He certainly doesn’t look like an eagle. He looks like a loser. Maybe he eats mice? Who knows nor cares. He’s goin’ daaarn. Sentenced in November. Good fucking riddance.

The powers that be have decided that Boris Johnson (fat blond Judas type politico pig who changes allegiances like most of us change socks) cannot be charged with any form of racism for his comments about the burka the other day. Though he has been told to do some form of stupidly PC, wrist-slappy kind of ‘sensitivity to minorities training’ or some such neo-liberal bollocks. They’ve been talking about it all morning of the radio. And its all rather strange.

Because although the accusations and debate are about perceived Islamaphobia (which it isn’t) or appropriate level of comments for a Member of Her Majesty’s parliament and whether Boris should be sacked, shot or just hated, its actually become altogether different.

Its become another debate about Brexit. On all the phone-ins, Remainers want the wrath of God meted out upon that ugly blond head whereas Brexiteers find him innocent of all charges and think he should be knighted for ‘having the honesty to speak about such a ridiculously taboo-ified subject. I personally think that the most hurtful, damaging, nasty thing you could ever do to Boris would be to simply ignore him. He’d fucking hate that.

Great win for Spurs today in the first match of their season. Ok, let me re-phrase: a win for Spurs today, which is great. More accurate. We’ll take the points anyway.

Happy first Saturday of the new football season

A xxxx

Lila was sent home from ‘school’ on Tuesday. Selling drugs behind the pram-sheds. Singing football songs in prayers. She beat up a little boy who stole her Lego; she used the Ben Stokes ‘self defence’ plea but to no avail. Ok, she had a temperature. A hot one. That’s the real reason. And she’s been poorly since, poor little thing. So the world’s ‘most perfect baby’ (well, MY world’s most perfect baby) who never wakes up in the night, who never cries, moans or does anything that isn’t ‘perfect’ (most of the time), other than make more mess that 65,000 football fans, was seriously ‘under the weather’ for our weekly Lila day. She went to bed in our house, as usual, about 7. Then woke up at 9, not usual. Went back to sleep, we continued with our bridge game, but not for long. Until she became really unhappy, needed much more attention and bridge had to be abandoned for sustained child-care. And that’s how the night continued. Up, down, asleep, crying, more sleep, more waking. Very un-Lila.

But she’s small. When adults get flu they feel deathly, horrible, ill, rotten. And they understand what’s happening. Poor little Lila lacks such experience and understanding (even though she’s fucking BRILLIANT). So she just carries on as usual until it doesn’t work. Its hard to understand illness in all its cause and effect when you can’t even put your socks on.

(PS. The drug she would have been selling at school was Calpol.)

And speaking of temperatures, I’ve heard that the sun gets even than hotter that Lila-with-an-infection. Wow. I’ve never taken its temperature but ‘hotter-than-hell!!!!’ goes nowhere near close enough for our own Sun. And now we’re gonna fly there. I’m guessing that the Parker solar probe is likely to be unmanned. As where its going, a mere 3.83 million miles from the sun’s surface (which is just about ‘the house next door’ in universe terms) reaches temperatures of 1.66 million degrees Celsius. That’s really hot. Hotter than Oxford Street last week and that was REALLY hot. It makes you wonder what kind of wood they’re gonna use for the space ship with all that heat flying around. I mean; Icarus went there a couple thousand years ago, but the wax holding his wings on melted. Bummer. And he hadn’t got off the ground in Crete when that happened. (Loser).

So this probe will tell us lots about our Sun, which is fab. But the amazing thing is that due to some very clever people, the instruments inside the probe, even right there in the Corona, will remain at 29.4 degrees. How can they do that? 1.66 million degrees outside and 29.4 inside. Yet they can’t even PUT AIR CONDITIONING IN FUCKING TUBE TRAINS!!!!

I think some research needs to be redirected from the wonderfully theoretically informative to the more pragmatic and realistic domains.

Happy Friday

A xxxx