Andy's Glasses

Ok, so this is a question that is profound, deep and meaningful: would you be happy learning your future? Would it make your life better, or worse??? Ooooohhhh, so you’d know how long you’d live, how your kids would grow, who they’d marry, which rehab clinics they’d frequent, all sorts of stuff. Or would that ruin everything. Holy shit, I’m getting hit by a bus crossing Ludgate Circus at 16.47 precisely tomorrow. Could you then avoid it? Or was that avoidance factored into that version of the future too??? It all gets a bit Terminator at that point, but we all love a time paradox. However, the future, knowing thereof; good or bad?

I only ask because in Russia they have this annoying thing at the traffic lights. A timer. Telling you, the driver, how many seconds the light will stay green, or how long you, the pedestrian, will have to wait til you can cross. Jaywalking in Russia, suffice to say is NOT AN OPTION!!!!! Because if the KGB monitor every crossing, which they do, and see a jaywalker, which they would, they press 2 buttons. One shoots the pedestrian, the other nukes his house. All done with really simple face recognition software and all data kindly provided by facebook, even though they don’t know it. So no-one crosses roads there illegally, ever. As someone who never normally crosses a road legally, ever, I’m not sure how others might view this countdown shit. But I think it bothered me. I’d rather stand there thinking: ‘can’t be long now, surely?’ than knowing its precisely 32 seconds until- 31 seconds until-30 seconds until I can- 29 seconds, cross the road. Because seeing ‘9’ seconds up there is a treat and seeing 92 is a major league bummer of proportions so big they could only be in Russia. I know, its not exactly the same as learning the precise date and time of some major life event, but its… similar.

Leaving now, which is a massive shame because we’ve had the most fabulous 7/8 days ever had in an East European city/cities. And Moscow is like the biggest secret ever, and it just keeps giving. Every time you think you’ve been really impressed by something, an even bigger thing comes along and kicks you in the gulags. To say ‘Russia has embraced capitalsim’ is like saying ‘the pope is thinking of becoming a christian’. And nowhere can that be more true than Moscow. Where you see Bentleys, Porsches, every Mercedes ever made that bears the AMG marque, and lots and lots of all of them. More Chelsea Tractors than Chelsea. And its a happy city. Even though the vast majority of its population appear anything but. Don’t know how that works, exactly, but it does.

Welcome home

A xxxx

This is the entrance to Gorky Park. Probably the main one, granted, but there are dozens of ways in. My park at home where I play tennis every weekend has more of a ‘hole in the hedge’ kind of thing. Slightly understated, modestly humble but more importantly, Stalin never intended to drive 300 tanks into Northway Gardens. Well, he probably did intend to send his tanks into every corner of every nation eventually but alas (??) he died. And I still miss him today.

Gorky Park is a wonder. I remember the eponymous movie, taken from the book, about a dark, seedy murder in the cold war. Alexi Sayle was in it, as a baddy Russian. All baddies in all Cold War movies were Russian. It was the law. But the reality is that now, it is a truly amazing place, filled to overflowing with art. And, of course, its fucking massive. And, of course, there’s virtually no signs in English so you don’t have a clue what most of the buildings do or hold. So you have to guess. Corpses from Stalin’s rule in one (really big building, obviously), torture chamber for the KGB in all the others, the Cabbage Museum, etc, etc.

The one exception is ‘Garage’, the new modernist gallery put up by Abramovich’s second ex-wife, Dasha Zukhova, she of the gorgeous face and wonderful dental work. So we went there. And NOT just because over-55s get in free. But because we love modern art. And the building is just wow, and the space is just achingly cool and minimalist and bare brick and pipework and the cafe is where you NEED to be… but the art’s gone. WHAT??? Yes, sorry, we’ve cleared out the old shit and are getting ready for the next, summer exhibition. So the 43 million square feet of gallery space is currently empty. Other than one installation called ‘atom’ outside. Its free. Which took about 14 seconds to analyse, enjoy and get bored with. Iss an atom; innit. Worth 50 Rubles of anyone’s money, that one. But its free.

There’s also an area given over to monuments from the Soviet era. Basically, statues of Lenin and Stalin, suitably vandalised, to remind us Russians of ‘the dark days’. A kind of communist retrospective. And every work is magnificent, everyone depicted there has serious bucketloads of blood on their hands and its actually quite wonderful.

This morning we ‘did’ the Kremlin. But you’re not allowed to. I got a bollocking for taking a photo in the Armoury. Not that its still an armoury, with like nukes sitting round and planes with ‘next stop Syrian civilians’ written on them. Its the armoury museum. And you’re allowed in there. Because you’ve bought a ticket. But you can’t go any farther. If you want to buy a ticket for another selective building you can. What you can’t do is wander round and murder people. Or even wander round not murdering people. And to be honest the only Russians you’d really want to murder are the hotel staff who are horrendously unhelpful, and the restaurant staff who try to ‘upgrade’ everything you order without telling you, and… all the other Russians you meet.

But Moscow is fantastic. I love it, love it, love it.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

So my first love was St Petersburg and I really thought there could be no other. But then I came to Moscow. And I thought it would be dirty. And smelly. And filled with mafia (which it probably is but they generally don’t advertise) and pickpockets and all tea would be served with either lemon or enriched uranium and every doorhandle would be covered in novochik virus and… and… and…

…and then I arrived. And it is simply wonderful. And big (everywhere in Russia is apparently humugous in size) and beautiful and ancient and modern and high and low and fast and slow and everything a really vibrant and amazing city should be. And the Muscovites are an elegant and stylish bunch whereas the St Petersbrugers look like quarter pounders with cheese. The people are still horrible here, but they look much better. Its a start.

And when in Moscow… ya go to the Bolshoi, don’t’cha. Its just the thing to do. The world’s best ballet right where it lives. What could go wrong?

We saw La Sylphide. A wonderful tale of a two gay men madly in love with a woman? Although one of them really fancies this fairy. Which sounds more appropriate until you realise that the fairy is a woman too! Then a witch comes along and there’s lots of Scottish dancing because the men are, in this ballet, wearing dresses too, well kilts anyway, and then it all goes tits up and everyone dies except one of the gay men who marries his dead best mate’s ex-fiancee. Brilliant. Like a soap opera. And so true to life as to be… as to be a ballet. But the dancing is spectacular and the music divine, the orchestra not exactly shabby, the building a dream and the ice-creams over-priced. If you work on the fairly safe assumption that ‘all ballets are a load of bollocks’, then you might as well see the best load of bollocks in the world. Really, really enjoyed it. And not just because it made me laugh in all the unfunny places, honest. I almost felt cultured for a while sitting there.

There’s a buzz around Moscow that you can only feel. An excitement. Not about the KGB, they’re gone now. But just a wonderful energy like you feel in Berlin, in parts of New York, in Shoreditch. And its great. Today we did a lot. And ended up getting the tube back to the hotel. Which involved changing tube lines twice. Sounds easy. But try doing it with no English names written anywhere, either for directions or train destinations. There’s a distinct lack of signage all over Russia but the Moscow Metro wins the prize for ‘opaque’. Even the entrances to the stations are often hidden.

But I love it nonetheless. Nothing had prepared me to actually like Russia. But I do. I really do.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

I’m on the Sapsan, the fast train between St Petersburg and Moscow. Its awesome. Currently travelling at 209kph through the Russian countryside and building up speed still. Feels like crawling over Brent Cross flyover at 45 (which is actually 5mph faster than the speed limit there, as I know to my cost). The train takes 4 hours that ‘normal’, slow, shitty, smelly, smokey, Euro-type trains take 12 hours to do. Amazing. And so ‘easy’.

So I went to bed last night, all pretty well packed and ready for our early start today. And closed my eyes and…

Started the check-list. Which went like this:

6am Alarm goes off; 2 of them set, one must work. Check.
6.10, tea, shower, dress, finish packing. Check
6.55, hotel lobby, check out, get breakfast ‘take-away’ packs, order Uber. PANIC!!!! What if it doesn’t arrive on time, what if it doesn’t arrive at all (happened just 2 days ago), what if the traffic’s bad, what if… what if… what if… PANIC!!!!
7.30-ish (see above) arrive at Moscovsky station (St Petersburg). It’ll be big. PANIC!!! It might all be in Russian signage, PANIC!!!! There’ll be security! queues!! interrogations!!! torture!!!!! delays, PANIC!!!!!
745-(please God!!) find the platform, how big’s the station, is it signed in English, ticket check, passport check? unknown, unknown, unknown; PANIC!!!!!
8.08 train leaves. Check. As long as none of the above turns to the shit option. Unknown, unknown, unknown, the motherfucker of invention. Don’t sleep til all issues resolved, lie there sweating and palpitating like a fat bastard at a spin class instead. But how can you resolve issues that you can’t even imagine? OPEN EYES!!! Breathe, breathe, breaeaeaeathe…

Repeat until dawn.

Then of course it all goes rather well. And even though its all unknown to me, the Russians have been running trains for centuries so they’re pretty good (and as always, ruthlessly efficient) at it. And the train appears to have wifi (as does almost everywhere here, bless ’em) but that doesn’t seem to work. Ah, said the woman behind me, maybe its only free in First Class and not here in steerage with Leonardo di Caprio and a bunch of Irish Russian scallywags? And my first thought was: WHAT THE FUCK DID ‘WE’ HAVE A REVOLUTION FOR???? Shades of Marie Antoinette: The people have no wifi: let them eat 4G. Ok, wrong revolution but moral’s the same.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

I know its MY problem. I know in some respects I’m not ‘normal’. Who is? Logically, statistically, the world would be the most boring of boring places if everyone was strictly on the mid-line of a normal distribution in every facet and parameter you could measure. So my ‘deviation’ is that I lack patience generally and that I grow impatient very quickly with repeated stimuli that are all of a similar class… except when that class of activity is ‘a football being kicked’, then I’m fine.

The Hermitage is (or surely fucking MUST BE) the largest museum in the world. Oh no, I just remembered, the Louvre is slightly bigger. That’s it behind Mel looking splendid. The building too, ha,ha, haaaaa…

Its an entire block AND is a deep as it is wide. Built as the Winter Palace for Peter… possibly Catharine, maybe a Nicholas or Paul, they didn’t exactly skimp on either space or quality. Because it was built in (guessing here) 1786, that’s pre-Brexit so they used mainly East European builders, carpenters, bricklayers, which is why its still standing now. It is humungously big. And outrageously flashy. And filled with so many treasures that if you were to spend 30 seconds at every piece on display, you would be there for 8 years. That is honestly what they tell you.

After 8 minutes I was bored. I’m always like that. Its cultural. If I was like everyone else there, ie a group of 37 Orientals with cameras mounted on selfie sticks pointing at every available everything, blocking the paths, pushing and shoving, then I’d be fine. But I’m not. I’m just a solitary English geezer with the attention-span of a flea. Yet the building fascinated me. In which every room you think must be ‘the ballroom’ because its the size of a football pitch but with marble columns round it. But who needs 35 ballrooms? So some must have been ‘living rooms’, ‘tv rooms’, family rooms, who knows. If they did tell us they did so in Russian, which is a touch problematic for those who struggle with the Cyrillic alphabet. Like you. I worked out yesterday that its so similar to Greek and my old, beloved list of mathematical variables and constants, that I can read a lot of it. I worked out that ‘PECTOPAH’ is actually ‘restaurant’. And was smug for a day.

So we ended up walking the bits of the Hermitage that no-one else wanted. If the 19 groups from China, Japan and Korea turned left, we turned right. And eventually found some lovely things in peace and quiet. Very similar, no doubt, to the lovely things they were looking at, but ours were European pre-17th century and theirs were early Macedonian. Who gives a shit. An artefact’s an artefact, innit?

Tomorrow morning, bright (probably) and early (very) we’re catching the fast train to Moscow. Loving St Petersburg though, and loved every minute.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

Part 2.

We must have walked 10 miles today. Possibly more. All of it simply fabulous in the glorious Russian sunshine, Sunshine. We started with a ‘free walking tour’ which we always take in all cities we visit. Because they’re so much better than proper, pay-as-you-go tours because you only pay the guide what you reckon he/she was worth. And if they’re shit, then that’s all they’re gonna get. But if they’re good, you pay them in appreciation. So they always do it better. As did Anna today. And we learned more about Alexander the Great, Peter the Great, Catharina the Great. So I deduced that to be ‘The Great’ then you just call yourself that and let people argue the toss if they don’t think it a worthy title. Go on, criticise me, ya peasant serf, and starve for a year, see if I give a damn in my caviar baths with champagne showers. And some were good and some were bad but all got normally murdered by enemies (if they were bad) or by baddies (if they were good). Because the aristocrats didn’t want too much reform, too much leniency, they were all doing just fiiiiiiiiiiiiiine, thank you very much, and if 99.9% of the population were hungry and homeless, that was no skin off my powdered, pampered, perfumed nose. Piss off.

Thus the revolution. Had to happen. Been building up for centuries and then, in 1917, ka-boom, the inevitable became the new order. Marx, Lenin, Corbyn, all taking control of the land in the name of The People.

In the 1920s the communists were still making excuses as to why the vast majority of people in the country were still living on grass and air, so instead of regular meals or steady, paying jobs, they gave them really amazing tube stations. You can imagine the relief of some starving peasant out in the wilds of Siberia when he learned that St Petersburg now had superb art nouveau stations to rival those in Moscow. Like the one pictured here. Marble columns, beautiful flamboyant chandeliers, how could the good citizens not just love it?

The Russians today are living in ‘post-communism’. And our guide yesterday was passionate about her country. And its ‘freedoms’, which are, compared to the past, pretty vast. And she said what all Russians feel about Putin, that they live well under his leadership. Politics, poisoning and persecution of political foes come way second to food, house, car, health, education. So do they ‘love’ him? Irrelevant. Do they think they would live better under alternative rule? Never. And they all remember hunger and dark days. Only here could Putin represent ‘the light’, but he does, and they love him for it.

They still reserve the right to be rude and miserable though. Or we wouldn’t know they were Russians, would we?

Happy Monday

A The Great
xxxx

So a geezer called, modestly, ‘Peter the Great’, built himself a city. As ya do. If you’re a Tsar and own, quite literally, the entire fucking world. Bit like Putin today, but with less hypocrisy. Because Peter wasn’t a ‘communist’, wasn’t a ‘man of the people’, he was a god. From each, according to their ability, to… Me. That was his version of the famous Marxist mantra. So Peter built St Petersburg. And he built it proper.

It is simply the most beautiful city you’ve ever been in. Even if you haven’t been in it, that’s what it is. Everything is simply fucking massive. Every building a palace, every church a cathedral, every every bigger than anyone else’s. The roads are immense avenues, the parks are gorgeous, the canals and rivers wonderful and it smells a whole lot better than Venice. And the food is wonderful here too. They’ve moved on from ‘cabbage’ to all manner of wonders and the cafes and coffee shops are fantastic. Everything here is low-level. They still only build up to 4 stories high and only in the same basic style. Which I’ll call… St Petersburg style because I lack imagination and knowledge. Only the building known as ‘The Big House’ locally, or officially as the KGB local office is a bit higher. Take a really brave planning department jobsworth to argue that with them.

So in between Peter the Great and Starbucks a lot happened, which I’ve missed out. So I’ll fill you in quickly. There were 27, possibly 12, maybe 15 Tsars and Tsarinas (no glass ceiling in pre-revolutionary Russia; women could be Tsar and everyone else was exploited mercilessly but equally, men and women. The rest of the world took 300 years to catch up) From Peter to the last one, Nicholas the 2nd. Nicholas was the one who lost his job to the revolution in 1917 when Animal Farm happened. There were at least 1 other Nicholas, an Elizabeth, no Harrys but Alexanders and Anastasias and lots of Tsars. They all murdered predecessors, killed their grandparents, had children put to death, the usual aristocratic shit in pre-industrial Europe. Not very nice, but people generally don’t act very nicely when all the wealth beyond 15 imaginations is at stake.

Today its lovely. Yet is filled with Russians. Who are generally viewed as being rather cold, hard, arrogant, aggressive, nasty people. And on my second day I can honestly say that they’ve done nothing to even try to dispel that stereotype. Which actually makes it more fun. Can you make a Russian smile? I’m trying. Even when they do smile its a ‘lips-only’ kind of deal. The rest is still frowning. And that’s on glorious sunny days. As we approach ‘white nights’ and doesn’t get dark till 10.30 or 11. Can you imagine the misery in winter??

Happy Sunday. Meg & Harry are still married.

A xxxx

This was my third night camped out in Windsor. At least it hasn’t rained. Its been just fantastic, sitting on my folding chair on a really nice bit of pavement, outside Greggs bakery who provide me with all (the carbs and sugar) I need. The atmosphere is wonderful, almost ‘electric’ as our crowd of union-jack draped, Queen-mask wearing flag wavers all ask each other what, exactly, we’re doing here and what the fuck were we thinking?? 3 days of my life that I’ll never get back. The boredom, when the news cameras aren’t telling us to cheer and look happy, the morons you have to talk to telling you their stories of how long they queued up (5 days) to sign the Diana memorial book and how at the last Royal wedding they actually saw a sideways glance, between 90,000 moving heads, of Pippa’s arse as it wiggled up the stairs!! But then last night it was all suddenly worth it. Worth all the cynicism, all the ennui, of that terrible feeling of nihilistic existential worthlessness, when Wills and Harry came and walked, quite literally, within 173 yards of where I was standing up screaming at the top of my voice. It was just amazing. Spectacular. Made life worthwhile once more. So I put my glasses on and realised I’d actually been looking the wrong way at some security guards. And then I did actually see them, in the flesh. And they looked… errr… they looked totally different than they do on the tv. Somehow… more… real, less… less televised.

I love a royal wedding. It makes me realise just how important I am in this great monarchy…

Woah!!! Just had a terrible dream. Awful. Fell asleep here at Terminal 5 waiting for the flight to St Petersburg and really thought I was waiting for The Wedding. Nightmare. My ‘who killed JR?’ moment in history. Never mind, I’m going to Russia where they’ll probably have a different take on today’s nuptials. If only I spoke Russian I might get their doubtless barbed and nasty commentary on a. a monarchy, b. Britain, c. something so wonderfully undemocratic in the very homeland of democracy itself.

Putin isn’t like the Queen. He’s much much richer. As any good communist should be. Richer than 10 Methuselahs, 17 Abramoviches or 4753 Manchester City players. And he’s a ‘real man’, all that bare-chested horsemanship and martial-arty baldness. A man you really have to admire. Mainly because if you don’t he will just have you killed. Simple as that.

But am I nervous? Nah. Don’t really do ‘nervous’ about foreign lands. But I do about long queues at passport control at hostile airports manned by humourless automatons trained to hate everyone from everywhere.

Enjoy the wedding,

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

I genuinely worry about the people you see walking down the street glued to their phones. No matter how inappropriate the setting; busy central London tube station in the rush hour, travellers moving in all directions at once, and there’s a ‘tosser’ staring at his stupid fucking screen with a set of studio-quality speakers attached to both ears, expecting everyone to avoid his oblivious presence. And why I worry about them is because I really would like to kill them. But we know that. I have a thing about them. Selfish individuals so obsessed with their online presence that they forget their actual reality. Tossers. We all know them. Some of you ARE them! (You know who you are). But what about the next generation?

And here I have conducted an extensive (1 person), longitudinal (almost 14 month), rather obsessive study on the subject. The official title of the research is: An investigation into the post-natal effects of digitalisation on the development and wellbeing of neo-nates. The unofficial title is ‘Lila’.

Her mum was (and remains) a bit obsessive about many thinks concerning her babe. My babe. And one of her (many) ‘things’ was that Lila sees no tv. Other than occasionally football when Lila’s dad and me turn it on and hide the remote. This is a good thing. Let the child ‘read’. Or chew books, rather than screens. Let her play with good things rather than learn to veg out in front of a screen.

But somewhere down the line it all went pear shaped. As all best intentions generally do. At some point, when things were ‘down’ (all mum’s know such moments, dads too), Lila was shown a video clip on Mum’s phone. A Disney clip. From the movie ‘Frozen’. And Lila, who had generally ignored the tv when it was on after about 20 seconds, was transfixed. Crying for more. Ok, she bashes whatever screen she’s looking at until all the windows shut down or accidentally fires up the Uber app and orders a taxi to go to the Czech republic, but the thing is SHE KNOWS WHAT TO DO. And now, at 14 months, she knows not to touch it too much or her song vanishes.

And she’s learned that in a very short time. To the extent that mum & dad now have to ensure there are no phones or ipads around when Lila wakes up or that’s all she wants. In their absence Lila plays with anything, loves her books and acts like a ‘normal’, pre-techno baby. But if she see’s even a dead screen, she wants Frozen. To which she talks, rocks back and forth, dances and loves it so much that it takes all my energy and commitment not to just play it end-to-end for a whole day.

14 months old. What hope is there?

Off to Russia tomorrow. OMG! Its arrived. Or we’ll arrive. I’ve gone on the government website and will follow their advice. Turn up as a great fat man with tatoos, swear and shout and sing as if blind drunk and ensure I have a Cross of St George flag draped round my shoulders at all times. What could possibly go wrong?

Happy Friday

A xxxx

When does someone who is ‘not an antisemite’ become an antisemite? Interesting question. Took me ten minutes to sort out the wording. But the answer, even though you’d think it should be some event or duration, is in fact ‘Jeremy Corbyn’. And here’s why.

The Russians tried to murder a couple of people in Salisbury. Ok, no-one saw the poison in an envelope marked “if undelivered please return to the Kremlin” but really you didn’t need to. Everyone simply ‘knew’. Except Jeremy Corbyn. Who refused to make any assumptions, needed the full ‘due process’ and inquiries and investigations before he’d commit himself to make any remarks against (Mother) Russia or place blame or demand sanctions.

Fast forward just one little month and Syria attacks its ‘rebels’ in an horrendous gas attack. The worst of chemical weapons, chlorine, liberally used on a civilian population. Aided and abetted by Russia, obviously, they love a good poisoning. The world condemned the action and issued threats against Syria. The world except Jeremy Corbyn. “We don’t know for sure it was the Syrians” he said. We need proof. We need investigations, blah, blah, fucking blah.

On Monday 67 people were killed by Israeli soldiers on the Gaza border. And the first one to condemn the act almost immediately was… Jeremy Corbyn! Not only demanding condemnation from the international community but also ACTION! Jeremy Corbyn, the world’s most inactive, prevaricating, equivocating, fence-sitting, inquiry-demanding, pedantic, sure-of-all-the-facts-ingly annoying person of all time, cuts the crap for once and makes an instant stand.

I never mind criticism of Israel. Its more than allowed, its to be encouraged. As with all proper democracies, freedom of speech, freedom to disagree is essential. But when its wrong is when Israel is treated differently from others doing allegedly horrible things. When the virtues of considering all sides of the situation are suddenly, uniquely ignored. Palestinians got shot. We know that. Yet there was emphatically a context in which this occurred. One that Jeremy either chose not to consider or decided unilaterally was irrelevant. Or maybe because, as he has stated, ‘Hamas are HIS friends’. As, coincidentally, are shit-loads of other all-out, no-holds-barred antisemites.

Happy Liladay (started with all guns blazing at 5.45, bless…)

A xxxx