Andy's Glasses

5 hours, door to door. Fredrichshain, Berlin to London, NW. And I reckon that’s good. Its a long way. The Germans have always been efficient. And when the train timetable says ‘8.17’ and the board says ‘8.17’, ya just know that the train’s door will be closing at precisely 8.17. And its all smooth and efficient and… yes, just a hint of ‘officious’ at times, but in a good way. A German way.

Flights have got cheaper. Ok, they charge for every sheet of toilet paper, every breath you take, every dump you make, everything, but the basic, ‘headline’ price is cheap. And then you get to the airport. Where ‘cheap’ gives way to ‘fleece’.

Because you leave security, at virtually any and every airport, and find yourself in the duty free shop. You can’t get a cup of coffee or to a departure gate any other way. If there was a way, I’d have found it. So you walk through. And see bags of M&Ms, for 14 quid. And you see whisky that Waitrose sell for £24 a bottle at the ‘duty free price’ of £38.75. Where there’s allegedly about a tenner of various taxes on each bottle. So where do the prices come from? Take off the duty then add in your waist size, in pounds. Or dollars. In Colombia, unlike many other South American countries, they use only their own currency. The Peso. 4000 of which buys you a pound. Yet at Bogota airport everything is priced in US$. Why? Cos it looks cheaper. And everywhere in Columbia you can buy a bottle of water for under a quid. But at Bogota airport its $3. About £1.80. Berlin is very cheap for food and drink. Yet a bottle of water at the airport is three-and-a-half Euros. A latte, 4 Euros 50.

Its not (just) about being a bastard Colombian or a stinkin’ German, its about airport pricing. Because once you’re through security there is no turning back without it costing you a flight. You simply can’t go anywhere else. Nor can you take pre-bought water through. So they’ve got you. And therefore, can charge what the fuck they like. Why do Boots sell their water for 40% more at Heathrow or Luton airports, than they do in Hounslow or Luton high streets? Because if they tried charging £2.70 for water on the high street you’d just laugh and but it next door. There is no ‘next door’ at an airport. And if there is, they’re in on it too. The fleecing game.

And people going on their ‘olidays are notoriously spend-free. They love wasting their money at airports on overpriced rubbish. And are consequently exploited maximally by the chains. Which is hateful and deceptive. Because ‘duty-free’ used to mean much cheaper. Now it means, just make it in sizes and shapes that we don’t sell on the high street and double the price. ‘They’ will never realise.

Shameful.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

Its still cold in Berlin. Bright, sunny at times, but colder than… cold places. Berlin’s in the east. So east it could almost be in Poland. A notoriously cold place. But at this time in the great scheme of history, Berlin is not in Prussia, its not part of the Hapsburg Empire, nothing to do with the Austro-Hungarian alliance, but Germany. Tomorrow? Who knows.

Yet due to a fantastic modern invention, even though we’re millions of miles (so it would seem) from either Wembley or even Bournemouth, I am able, at the flick of a finger across my phone, find out the latest of football scores that are happening all the way over there. Its a miracle. Due to the vast mileage involved, the BBC site is on a few minute delay from reality, but as I’m permanently about 2 hours, 36 miles and at least 2 dimensions from any sort of reality, it suits me fine.

So yesterday, as we relaxed at ‘Rachie’s Place’ warming up (the biggest pastime in Berlin), I could follow my boys as they breezed past poor Everton with aplomb. And a Son. Harry Kane has now scored more goals in any month ending in a ‘Z’ than any other striker with a surname eligible for the D-J phone book. He’s scored more in a lunar calendar year than anyone in Africa. So he scored a couple more yesterday. And I was watching on the news at Zidane during Real’s 1-0 loss to Villareal that he was putting Harry’s number into his phone. Because they need a proper goalscorer at the Bernabau more than ever.

Chelsea drew 0-0 at home against 10-man Leicester. Which firstly made me very happy and secondly made me wonder how Conte can be so smug and arrogant about Morinho when his own team are positively shit? At the moment.

And then Arsenal went to Bournemouth. Who are, to no surprise really, floundering near the bottom of the table. Bournemouth, whose whole team, if sold, could buy one half of Alexi Sanchez’ left foot. But my joy of Arsenal’s loss today is not just due to deep hatred and terrible resentment of our north London rivals. Like it usually is. Today its because the fight for the top 4 places is closer than its ever been. And we need to be well ahead of the Goons. And now we are. How long this will last I have no idea, but I’m lovin’ it right now.

Happy Sunday evening. Coming home tomorrow.

A xxxx

Never mind Rachie living here, I almost feel like its ‘home’ here. ‘Specially in ‘our’ new apartment, which is gorgeous. So this is not your regular tourist Berlin, checkpoint-charlie, hitler’s bunker, all the schnitzengruben you can eat, type trip. This is about living here. About supermarkets. They have Lidl AND Aldi. Both within a 5 minute walk. In fact there’s a Lidl 3 minutes in either direction. Different ones. Not just me getting lost and going round in circles. I think.

The first thing about Berlin in January is: ITS FUCKING COLDDDDDD!!! But like, really, really cold. Its ‘only’ zero degrees out there but in the wind (there’s always wind) it feels like -62. At least its not raining like our last trip in November, when it didn’t stop.

The other thing you notice, especially when you’re in a supermarket, is that everything here is generally written in German. With no subtitles for the linguistically challenged. Like… Rachie. So shopping takes an age. An era. The sell-by dates expire as you stand there trying to work out what the fuck it all means. I was happily buying some cling-film until a lovely old German lady informed me it was baking parchment stuff. The words here are so long. Which is quite helpful as quite often they explain what things are. So a sink plunger would be called something like ‘ein thingumyoufsuckingsheissefromdasink’. Easy peasy. Other words are more difficult. Much more difficult. But we’ll get there. I have to become fluent by Monday when we come home.

And home is London, in case you didn’t know. And London is positively reeling under a massive insult from the President of the whole world, Donald J Trump. Who is no longer coming to visit us!!! Holy shit! And all because ‘Obama’s’ plan (actually it was George W Bush but no-one told the Trumpster) for moving their embassy from posh Grosvenor Square over to downmarket but very very up’n’coming Vauxhall is, in his words ‘a bad deal’. Luckily its only costing a billion quid so its not like its important or anything. But its irrelevant. Its not about real estate. Its about cowardice. And ‘fake news’. Trump once again is using his allegedly most despised media tool, fake news, to fakely change the news. Which is that he’s scared to come because we all fucking hate him and he won’t get to sleep with the Queen. Or whatever she does with really important people who aren’t orange. There’ll be protests everywhere and his ‘hero’s welcome’ will in reality be about egg-throwing and lots of screaming abuse.

Insult London, ya tosser, you insult MEEEE.

Lucky I’m not there.

Happy Saturday night

A xxxx

“I’m going to Berlin on Saturday”, I informed my mate at tai chi last night, explaining my up-coming absence tomorrow. “Are you going in a Lancaster?” he inquired. Which is a bit ‘don’t mention the war’ but I thought rather funny at the time.

In fact I’m going EasyJet. Pretty sure its not a bomber, but ya never know. You can never have too much orange in your life. And you get the opportunity to get up ridiculously early, leaving home in the pitch black of night to arrive at Lovely Luton for a 6-hour delay. I hope not. We have places to go, things to do, all of paramount importance.

Because tomorrow the younger daughter is emigrating. Well, she’s going to work in Berlin for a bit anyway. So Mel & I need to accompany her and ensure she stays. And to carry bags. And such bags. Of such magnitude. Such weight. You know how a ‘black hole’ is an infinitely small point with an infinitely large mass? Well that’s how Rachie packs. I’m only worried that the big case may exert a gravitational pull on cars on the M1.

Oddly, this photo, so wonderfully appropriate, was taken last week in Melbourne. As in ‘Australia’. Why they have a ‘Berlin Bar’ there I don’t know.

I’m gonna miss her.

Ok, I’m over it already. Did you hear about the Windmill Club? Or Windmill Theatre?? Whatever its now called. The first place ever to have naked women on its stage. In the 1920s, opened by a woman (the famous/infamous Mrs Henderson) and the condition was that the women weren’t allowed to move. Ok, breathing was acceptable but like statues didst they stand. Because then it was ‘art’. Twitch a toe and it becomes ‘pornography’. And the Windmill has run as some form of, basically, strip club, ever since. Most recently as a ‘table dancing’ or ‘lap dancing’ establishment of the highest standards and culcha. But now its lost its license. Because what a ‘sex club license’ allows you to do is lots of things, except actually selling sex. You can imply, you can tease, you can pretend, you can do all sorts of things but to be legal, like with mobile phones in cars, it has to be ‘hands free’. You can simulate but not stimulate. Once any fondlage occurs there’s trouble. And they found not merely fondlage, but virtually fornication occurring on or nearby the premises (upstairs). So their license is now revoked.

The Windmill famously never closed during the war-time blanket bombing by the Nazis of London. ‘Even during the Blitz; come see the Titz’ could have been their slogan. But now it will close because a bunch of feminists are objectionably objecting to the objectification of women. And have therefore forced closure by illuminating naughtiness. Even though everything that happens there is mutually consensual, mutually beneficial and a way for their ‘sisters’ to enjoy a job that probably pays quite well. Which they’ll now take to the streets. There’s always that argument that women flaunting their bodies (and whatever else they choose to do with them) is not objectification but ’empowerment’. Obviously not in this case.

Oh well. I feel this act will do little to ‘end’ sleazy sex trade in London. I hope not.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

We seem to spend a lot of time arguing gender politics. Not me, specifically, because I’m a radical post-feminist, egalitarian right down to my nob and yet would always give up my seat on the tube for a lady. If she was good looking enough. But its not about me.

Theresa May has filled her ‘cabinet’ with women ‘and minorities’ to give a ‘true reflection of British society’. I don’t know the ladies concerned, they’ve all arrived straight out of ‘left field’, but it almost seems like some kind of reverse discrimination in which its not ‘the best person for the job’ but the ‘the best woman for the job’. She also managed to lose Justine Greening and instead of sacking health secretary Jeremy Hunt, managed to promote him and increase his remit. Now that is good management. (Theresa May is a woman).

Carrie Gracie was the BBC’s China editor, for many years, but has now resigned because of pay differentials at the Beeb betwixt men and women. And she has a point. She earns £125k a year and has to live in China and speak Chinese. I couldn’t speak it for a Bitcoin. For 10 million. But I’m a man so I probably wouldn’t have to; they’d get an interpreter. And pay me more. Jeremy Bowen, the middle-east editor earns about 50k a year more than Carrie. And Jon Sopel, the American editor, earns double what she does. And gets to live his life in English. If you call that ‘English’.

Meanwhile, Catherine Deneuve, (one-time) stunning French actress, has spoken out against the ‘me too’, or ‘moi aussi’ brigade stating that a ‘bumbled pick up attempt’ is not a crime, nor abuse. I’m not fully familiar with French seduction techniques (though I’m guessing that ‘anything will do’) but getting an 18 year old girl into a hotel room and parading around with your dick out demanding massages on the threat of never working in this town again, can’t really be misconstrued as a ‘failed chat-up line’. Its not specifically the actions that are wrong but the implied threat from someone in obvious power. Other than for the French, for whom its just ‘plus ca change’. (Note to self: should visit France more often).

And Virgin Trains have banned the sale of the Daily Mail on their vehicles. On the grounds that ‘its shit, innit’. And it is shit. Reactionary, right-wing, pro-Brexit, anti-virtually everybody who isn’t royalty or can trace their lineage back at least 9 generations, and rubbish. But people like it. They feel comforted that newspapers agree with their racist, homophobic, misogynistic views. But they won’t be able to buy it on Virgin. Which is the worst form of censorship ever. Its not the train company’s business to decide what folk should read. Getting on a train is not joining a specific political class. Or getting a better education. Shame on you, Branson.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

In Las Vegas this week is the CES, the biggest (obviously; its Las Vegas) techno-gadgetry exhibition in the world. All kinds of useless things of a hi-tech nature are featured there. And of course, lots of robots and robot-things. I differentiate because a robot is only a robot if it is humanish in design. Like C3PO. If its a flat box or barrel or something other than, its a robotic thing. Like R2D2. Easy. A sexbot is really, alarmingly, scarily humanoid. Not sure if they’re featured in Vegas but really that would be the best place to feature them. Sleazy, sordid and expensive. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, as the saying goes. Which is true other than for STDs, excessive winnings (much rarer) and brides.

And last night, for the first time everrrrrr in Europe, a football match used VAR technology. Video Assistant Referee. Playbacks of contentious things. Goals. Offsides. Dives. Done in London, in last night’s case for the Brighton match, 75 miles away from the action, but that’s irrelevant. Not like they need to send a messenger. Or a pigeon. Even a robot-pigeon. Everyone’s wired up and bluetooth-ed together and, hopefully, on the same page. The ref says into his mike ‘that goal ok?’ and 75 miles away they’re already examining the output of 15 cameras checking for signs of naughtyness and 4 seconds later they say ‘yeah, its fine’ and the goal stands. Easy peasy.

But its not. Roy Hodgson, the Palace manager, continued to argue with the ref even after the VAR had spoken. I mean, that should carry a prison sentence. Arsene Wenger will choose to believe the VAR only if it finds in Arsenal’s favour. If it doesn’t he’ll discount the evidence and continue to abuse the refs. I’m not sure if managers or captains can ‘demand’ the ref turn to the VAR but if they can that would be the end of football, as we know it.

So what we need is robo-refs. They look like referees, they wear black shorts an’ everything, but they’re robots. Fitted with… 16 cameras, or in fact, analysing the input from 25 cameras around the ground simultaneously, whilst running and blowing a whistle. Robots can do that. Robots can do everything. And if players try to abuse a robo-ref (and they will because they’re all fucking stupid) he’ll turn his phasers to stun and floor the bastard. They can do that too. No-one’s going to argue an offside decision with a linesman who uses laser beams and times in micro-seconds. Other than perhaps Wayne Rooney (see ‘stupid’ above). But linesmen are now called ‘assistant referees’ and if they’re using video technology they’ll have to be Video Assistant Referees and that will cause confusion. But we’ll get over it.

You just need to get a battery sufficient to run 12 kilometres over 90 minutes whilst handling all that information. Be a bit embarrassing to have to stop a game to charge the ref. Where would you plug him in?

Its the way forward.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

The city of Nottingham is famous for two things: Robin Hood and Brian Clough. The first robbed the rich to give to the poor, like Jeremy Corbyn wants to do, and the second was less a legend, more a God to the people of that city. Because Cloughy managed Nottingham Forest football club back in the late 70s during which his team won the league and not one but two European Cups. More than Chelsea (1), more than Manchester City (none) and certainly more than Arsenal (zero). Since 1980, Forest have had little to celebrate. Nothing in fact. Relegation and struggle is seldom worthy of celebration. And Forest are currently mid-table in the Championship, the second tier of English football.

Yesterday they celebrated. Because the ‘wonder of the FA Cup’ is always that it throws up unlikely combinations of teams. And sometimes, the unlikelies actually win. Which is generally a brilliant thing because it gives the poorer, lower league teams a chance to make a bit more money as they advance to the next round, and it makes everyone feel fabulous. Except the losing team. They don’t feel so fabulous, they feel like shit. For losing to a team that, in theory, on paper, perhaps at another time, they’d beat with ease. Hence the term: ‘Giant-killers’.

So the current (or should I say ‘former’?) cup holders, Arsenal, went to the City Ground to play their third round tie against lowly Forest. And I don’t know (and will NEVER know, nor even care) whether Arsene Wenger fielded a really odd team of unknowns because Arsenal are playing Chelsea in a different cup on Wednesday night and wanted to rest his ‘stars’, or whether it was sheer arrogance that to play such a lowly team as Forest ‘we can afford to leave the big boys at home to rest, even our third-stringers can do the job with ease’. Either way, that’s what he did. Perhaps a combination of those 2 factors, I don’t know. I can’t read his mind, particularly when its banished up in the director’s box for slagging off referees. Ironically accusing them of giving too many penalties to other teams and not enough to his Arsenal. Ironic because Forest had 2 penalties awarded to them yesterday. And that coupled with Arsenal’s chaotic and lacklustre team, resulted in a rather emphatic 4-2 win for Nottingham Forest.

Sometimes penalties are given because of refereeing errors, players diving, dubious decisions. Other times they’re given because a team is shit, can’t defend properly and panics. I make no judgments, just leave it ‘out there’ for you.

I only know 2 Forest fans, and one of them is a West Ham fan really who ‘adopted’ Forest because he went to Nottingham University. But they’ll be very happy today. The glory days are back. Ish.

Tottenham Hotspur beat AFC Wimbledon 3-0. Just FYI.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

Following allegations in ‘the book’ about Trump’s mental stability and in fact questions as to whether he has any brain whatsoever, the Prez put everyone in the world at ease by tweeting that because he ran a business AND became a tv star AAANNNDDDD became the president of the USA, this is proof of not just being clever, but being ‘a genius’. And all because of ‘my mental stability’.

Question: how much credibility do you lose by replying to what you’ve just said is nonsense? Why dignify it? And which world leader would ever use such words? Even if they’re true, by using them in such a ridiculously childish way it just shows once again that he has NO judgment whatsoever. Other than tragically poor.

But at least he says something. Unlike the world’s other great fucktard, Jeremy Corbyn. The man so eager to shout out for everyone’s rights. Well, other than Jews or Israelis, obviously, they don’t deserve any rights. But we’re talking now about Iran. Well, we are, but Jeremy isn’t. As the situation in the Islamic Republic of Nuclear Aspirations degenerates in the populist protest against the horrible, unelected Islamic regime, the death toll rises to 40 protesters and there’s outcry. In the world. Against the awful regime and its response to the protests. But not a peep from Corbyn. Why? Or Why not? perhaps.

Because Corbyn’s inherent love of ‘the people’ is obviously secondary to his hatred of America. And Iran really despises America. Hence Corbyn can’t speak out against the Islamic regime. Which tortures people, executes gays, represses women and can generally be considered as ‘not very nice’. But Corbyn doesn’t care really about the ‘people’ he’s always superficially banging on about. If you are an enemy of the US then he will defend, speak up or act on your behalf, regardless of any or all atrocities perpetrated against your ‘people’. Which is why he hates Israel so much, because of its strong connections with America. Oh, and he doesn’t like Jews much either, that’s probably relevant too.

Its quite amazing that a leader of the progressive, liberal Labour Party should be so keen to align himself, and his party, to evil Totalitarian regimes who repress their populations just because they share his contempt for America.

So who is worse: a dork who says nothing or a moron who tweets too much?

I’m going to ask Lila.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

100,000 people have converted to vegansim this January. Not sure how they know that. Do you have to ‘register’ as a vegan? Do you need a license? Or do they have smug-detectors vans out there just noting the increased activity as they drive round Hackney and Islington? I don’t know. But 100k extra vegans in the land. Sighs of relief from herds of cattle, I dare say. You know my views: eat what ya fucking want; just LET EVERYONE ELSE DO THE SAME and eat what they want. Is there a law that to be vegan means you have to be an evangelist about it? That you have to assume some sort of moral superiority just because of what you choose to eat? Or choose not to eat?? Seems that these 100k who’ve ‘pledged’ to become vegans this January are just acting like sheep. Obviously like sheep that aren’t mutton and without skins.

How about the scientist who is a ‘bivalvegan’? WHATTTT??? Oh, come on, you know what that is, don’t be so horrendously ‘2017’, its a vegan who eats bivalves. Mussels, scallops, oysters, you know, bivalves. Eats them because, as a scientist, she positively ‘knows’ that their nervous systems simply lack the necessary equipment to feel ‘pain’. She could ask them. “Open up half way for ‘yes’ or all the way for ‘no'”. Or she could just stick them into a pot of boiling water and use my rule: if you can’t hear them scream, then they ain’t screaming. Lobsters (not bivalves, obviously, but crustacea) fail this test, they do scream. Or, pass this test, they do scream, depending on which side of the totally stupid, hypocritical and ass-holish debate you stand (in your leather-free shoes with your synthetic socks and sack-cloth shirt).

But surely its not just about ‘pain’ and, its about death and exploitation. Are bivalves not animals? Are they not being bred in horrible conditions, farmed en masse just for the human palate? They might not feel pain but could still like a nice view, perhaps. A stagnant river-bed in the Wirral. Who knows what bivalves ‘think’. Or if they think at all. So this heartless bitch is happy to throw a dozen oysters down her gullet but ‘gets really upset about whitebait’. All those animals dead just to feed one human!!!! Well I love whitebait. Especially their heads. Which Mel sometimes cuts off and then I eat them. And I think I can tell the ones that really felt pain because they definitely taste better.

I’m gonna be a vealgan. Like a vegan but eats veal. Well why the fuck not? Its as much sense as anything else. Its enough to make you turn to football. As long as they’re not made of cow-hide like they used to be.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

Donald Trump is the president of the United States of America. In case you missed that. He is also, according to a book coming out today, a paranoid retard with the attention span of a goldfish, the mental agility of a rubber plant and the facial colouring of a tangerine. That last bit is perhaps less relevant in the current inquiry.

Steve Bannon, by all accounts someone else way short of any definition of ‘normal’, has written a book, actually authored by someone else, but his input for sure, revealing all about the election campaign and the current status quo at the White House, as he was heavily involved in both until the inevitable fouling foul of the chief exec a few months ago. So as word comes out about the book Trump is faced with the decision of what to do about it. And making decisions, particularly quickly, is not what this POTUS is very good at. So he set his lawyers on getting the book banned. Which, as a single move, has increased the initial sales potential probably to 10 times the initial print run. However big it might be. Everyone now wants to read it. I want to read it.

Trump tweeted the other day (his tweets are the perfect yardstick for how dire is his understanding of any particular situation) that ‘the East Coast is set for a freeze; how lucky we didn’t waste trillions of dollars on ‘global warming’!!!’ I mean; how dim can you be? But the tweets come when he’s alone. They’re unfiltered. And without his teams of advisors, he really does know absolutely nothing. As those tweets show again and again. He just ‘shoots from the hip’. Unfortunately, both hips are in need of replacement.

Meanwhile in Yemen, the Houthi rebels have now pretty much ‘taken’ most of Sanaa, the capital. The president has been killed and all has gone to shit. As its been destined for the terribly devastating years of this rather evil and cynical ‘war’. The Houthis are Iran-backed Shia militants and next-door neighbours Saudi Arabia are fighting them in the name of Sunni Islam. And because they fucking hate Iran. Thus Yemen is that awful thing; a proxy war. A war between two military powers but in someone else’s garden. In this case, in Yemen. The poorest of all the middle-eastern countries.

And nice to see, in one of the very few videos to have made it out of Sanaa (internet shut down, phones dead, no contact with the outside world) the Houthis celebrating their victory riding tanks round the streets shouting ‘death to America’ (who have no involvement in that particular battle whatsoever), ‘death to Israel’ (ditto) and ‘death to Jews!!’ (hmmmm).

So that’s all going well then.

Happy Friday

A xxxx