Andy's Glasses

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

Tests in Norway have shown that ‘we’ (and I speak for the entire human race here; everyone on the entire fucking planet!) are getting thicker. More stupid. More dense. Less ‘intelligent’. And I think they’re right. I think you are getting more stupid every day.

Apparently, after the last war, ‘intelligence’ increased over the decades progressively. It was called the ‘Flynn effect’. No idea who ‘Flynn’ was but he was clever. Then, with people born about 1975, reaching adulthood by the 1990s, the tide turned and IQ test scores started dropping by 3 points or so every decade.

The tests were done on Norwegian men going into national service. So really, it says nothing about women. Who may be getting cleverer as ‘we’ get thicker, or may follow suit with the boys in the name of ‘equality’. And you can’t knock the sample size because they’ve tested 730,000 people, which is certainly a significant number. Yet its flawed. Fatally flawed.

Mainly because of the big question: how do you measure ‘intelligence’? The old measures, like skill with a football, the ability to find pornographic material in a desert, doing wheelspins in the car park at Tescos, may no longer be relevant in the post-digital world. Maybe these people, the daft ones, have other skills of a technical nature which the old ‘IQ’ tests just don’t pick up on. Surely if ‘intelligence’ is evolving, as it will, then testing needs to evolve too, to represent this. But they can’t do that because then you’re effectively testing different things.

One thing’s for sure: newspaper researchers are definitely getting more stupid. The article in the Times suggested that IQ may be dropping because of the way children are taught languages and maths. But ‘IQ’ was NEVER about learning, studying or cramming. It was supposed to be ‘innate’ and unchangeable through life. Above all academic stuff. That’s why they invented daft tests of increasingly obscure series of things, connections, similarities and differences, because maths and English didn’t work on these innate and ‘inherited’ functions.

IQ is a load of bollocks. Always has been. It was invented by Victorian English rich white men who wanted methods of proving their racial superiority and created tests that demonstrated that very point. IQ, due to its very ‘innate’ and ‘hereditary’ nature has always been abused by Eugenicists, like Hitler, who found yet another way to improve ‘The Race’, by sterilising or just killing the sub-normally intelligent. Others have done and still do similar. So we hate ‘IQ’, even though we’ve got Mensa certification an’ everything.

As many have said; IQ tests measure the ability to do IQ tests. And pretty much nothing else.

Yours cleverly

A xxxx

Lila is just so clever and bright. If you say the word ‘zoolander’ to her she instantly goes into ‘supermodel’ pose. Other supermodels generally don’t wear nappies, I grant you, but mainly because they don’t eat anything whereas Lila eats everything.

We went yesterday all the way to the ‘green’ at the end of the road for the local ‘summer fayre’, or ‘summer fair’ or even summer fete. Who cares what they call it. They have it every year and to mark my 30th anniversary of living in the local area, we went. Ok, and because it was Natalie’s birthday the other day and she thought it a good place to see friends and eat things. I have no friends but will eat anything. And I’d never been before.

And as I sat back, with Lila, obvs, watching the scene, there was something almost magical about it. It was the absolute typical summer English fayre scene that is played out on village greens up and down every and all shires, every nook and cranny of my country.

There’s a church. Actually we have two, one at each end of the green. One for… errrr… Christians and the other for… other Christians who don’t like the first ones. And they provide the bookends, and the magnificence whereas everything else is really low-key and quaint. Stalls selling cakes, face-painting for kids (they refused to do me; that’s fucking AGIST!!), sellers of wines and beers, local companies trying to flog you Volvos (yes, bit odd but everyone needs corporate cash) and there was a dog show. Which was fab. Would have been if I had a dog. Which would have probably won because most of the dogs did win something. My old mate, the retired judge, came out of retirement to judge once more. Knows nothing about dogs, everything about judging. The cockapoo won ‘best of breed’ and the Retriever got 6 months for aggravated licking.

And everyone stood around, or sat on blankets on the lawn, eating, sipping wine, all dressed in summery colours and wearing silly hats, kicking balls, kids running round, it was ‘the perfect scene’. All that was really missing was rain but you can’t have everything. Though Rachie came back from Berlin for the celebrations so we had most of what we needed. And life was rosy once more.

Then I picked up the Sunday papers and learned that America and Canada are on the verge of war and North Korea will fight on America’s side. Holy shit!!

Happy Monday

A xxxx

For some reason I’ve become fascinated by the concept of ‘choice’. Well, I know the reason, because of event that occurred last Sunday, but we’ll get to that later. Because we live in a world of almost limitless choices. You want ‘some cheese’, the average supermarket sells 146 varieties. Ok, 130 are all green/black/blue or slimy and you wouldn’t go near them, and 10 are even worse, being the ‘vegan cheeses’, which is a bit like buying a car without wheels. Though probably not as tasty. We google something we want or need or desire and up pop 43,724 options. Way too much choice.

But I’m concerned with the fine line that exists between ‘choice’ and ‘no choice’. F’rinstance…

You turn up at a lovely little cafe on a gorgeous, sunny Sunday morning. And you’ve walked your little socks off (233 steps, but feels much further), so you really ‘deserve’ that iced coffee/pot of tea/croissant/massive-high-fat-full-English-breakfast or whatever… but there’s no table to be had. Despair, despondency, depression, de-caf. Then a table leaves!!! OMG!!! Fantastic, we’ll take that, thank you so much, there is indeed a god. And you’re relieved and grateful and happy as happy can be.

No choice. No consideration as to whether this was a ‘good table’ that became available, no decision to make, no alternatives to consider. There’s a table! Take it!! I’m sooooo happy!!!!

But as we get ‘luckier’ then our happiness becomes more limited. Luckier in that you turn up and there’s 3 free tables. Ah. ‘Where would you like to sit?’ asks the charming Kosovan resident smooth-person. Because last sunday after tennis I was chatting to a few people there when two women arrived to this very experience. Half an hour before, the place was rammed and they’d have been turned away or, worse still, made to sit inside. But due to timing, they had a choice of 3 tables. All of which were in the sunshine and next to the park. They went to all three. Checked out the ‘environs’, the view, the table, sat down, got up, repeated, then started again. Unbelievable. ISS’A FUCKING TABLE, NEXT TO ANOTHER ONE, NEXT TO ANOTHER ONE, ALL THE FUCKING SAME!!!! But I didn’t say a word. Instead I started to think about choice and about dissonance. Of the cognitive variety. When we get very uncomfortable if we may have made the wrong choice. When ‘his’ burger looks better than my rack of lamb. When its great here in the pub but would the movie have been a preferable choice? Or whether this table that I’ve picked is in fact as good as the one I just rejected.

The human condition is a strange one.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

So we’re all set for the ‘G7’ meeting in Canada. The annual meeting of the world’s most powerful (by numbers) economic nations in the entire known universe. They started as a group of about 5, then it grew up to 8 when Russia was invited to join, post-Soviet era, and then they got kicked out again in 2014 after the invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea. Although if its about economic might, what’s the odd bit of territorial modification of questionable morality got to do with it? But heh, we can’t be sitting at the table with people we disagree with and disapprove of, can we? Wouldn’t be right. So its back to 7.

Theresa May wanted to use the meeting as a platform for proposing more sanctions against Russia in the wake of the Salisbury ‘incident’ and various other naughty Putinistic stuff. But, as they say; man plans, Trump laughs. Before the fat president had even walked up the steps of Air Force 1 to take him to the meeting, he announced that in fact Russia should again be included in the Group. A statement that would have gone down as well as a doner kebab at a fashion shoot with the other 6 who were all waiting to attack the blond one for his prohibitive trade policies.

Trump doesn’t care what the others think. He really doesn’t. As a massive anti-Trumpeter that I am, even I simply have to admire his ‘America First’ attitude, stated (so fucking loudly and repeated, obviously, he repeats everything in case you missed it the first time) during his election campaign. And thus he acts accordingly. If the president of France disapproves, then fuck him. He’s not an American.

There are those who feel that Trump stands by Russia as the quid pro quo for their invaluable assistance in him winning the presidency. Oooohhhhh. Others just think he’s a nob. Its all a matter of politics.

I was more concerned that at the G SEVEN meeting, the early photos, the inevitable, faux-pally, brothers (and sisters)-in arms shots, there were at least 10 ‘leaders’ and Trump hadn’t even arrived yet. Because up there were the European Leaders, even though they represent no ‘nation’ that I’ve ever heard of, and other freeloaders who just like taking expensive flights and eating free food. No show without Punch. And punch them I’d like to.

Happy Summit

A xxxx

I mean; Russia’s almost my ‘second home’, right? I have a deep-lying love and feeling for all this Russki stuff. I understand them. I’m almost a part of this whole ‘Russian thing’. Right? I mean, a week there in the strictly tourist environs, speaking to no natives unless they were tour guides, walking the streets, travelling on the underground like a native… I’m as Russian as any Somalian pirate.

But Putin, man, he pulls no punches. He’s now said that joining the war with Syria has been the best testing ground for his weapons that any (warlike, aggressive, no-care-for-humanity-whatsoever, murderous) country could have. Since joining Assad in the war in 2015 Moscow reckons its tested more than 200 new weapons. And although all weapons are tested (I’d imagine), there’s no test like a proper militarised battlefield. Particularly someone else’s battlefield, and even more so when the brief from the national leader in Syria doubtless contains several versions (Arabic, Russian, Rhyming slang) of the word ‘indiscriminate’ within its text.

So as Putin gets all his toys out over there for ‘testing’ (“Hey Yuri, try this one! Its a new bomb that destroys people who have names beginning with ‘S’ but no-one else!!!”), human rights activists estimate that the Russians have killed over 6,000 Syrian civilians. Nearly 2,000 of them children. As they lay waste to entire cities that have the misfortune to be labelled as ‘rebel’ in that some people there oppose Assad. Some, not all. Yet all get either killed or displaced.

Funny that there’s 50 times more fuss when 75 Gazans are killed trying to infiltrate the Israeli border, led by Jihadi terrorists. But I make no judgments. Though reserve the right to imply them.

So Putin is really happy with his new weapons. And continues trying new stuff. Nerve agents, tea laced with radioactive shit, umbrellas tipped with poison. Yet Russia is where ‘we’re all headed’ for the upcoming World Cup. England defender (and Spurs ‘legend’, til he leaves) Danny Rose has told his family not to go with him to Russia because of racial abuse he’s encountered there previously and he wants to spare them the pain.

I’m almost getting the feeling that Russians aren’t very nice people. Led by a seriously un-nice leader.

Happy Friday

A xxxx