Andy's Glasses

I’ve been to Berlin. Went 2 years ago. Totally brilliant city. More interesting than Romford, more beautiful than Wigan, more history than Milton Keynes, better vibe than Aberdeen and Wandsworth combined. That good. More than good; wonderful.

But that’s not why we’re here again. This isn’t just a ‘weekend break’, nor a ‘city mini-holiday’, no. Neither. We’re here this time on a serious mission. To unload a daughter over here on a semi-permanent basis as from January. Therefore we need to either find her suitable accommodation or otherwise register her for a refugee camp. Whatever’s cheaper.

So if you saw me in a Prius at 5.30 this morning and thought I was returning from ‘another wild night on the tiles’, I wasn’t. I was on my way to City Airport. The nicest of all London’s airports because its only little. It has little planes, therefore little numbers of passengers, little rooms there and its so small it only has 9 coffee shops. Passengers basically get one each.

Rachie’s off to Germany. If she wasn’t she’d have still been in her old office in Oxford Circus yesterday to face the MASSIVE EMERGENCY!!!!!!! situation that closed half of the West End yesterday afternoon. Her old colleagues were locked in on police orders, as were half of those unfortunate to be in that area. The other half (those in Selfridges, for some weird reason), were ordered to evacuate the building. Thus adding to the immediate and immense panic and chaos that was occurring.

Was this another terrorist attack? Armed robbery?? A riot??? No, it was worse. It was London’s, possibly the world’s first ever Social Media attack. Because nothing happened. Nothing was happening, nothing did happen, nothing was going to happen. But someone (not saying who, because if I did you might go round and kill him/her before I get there) ‘thought they heard gunshots’. That was it? A ‘that-sounded-like-gunfire’ situation, possibly.

We’re brave us Londoners. Fuckin’ heroic to a man/woman/thing (gotta be careful these days). Or we pretend to be. Whereas in reality we’re living on the edge. Running scared. On a hair-trigger. Its impossible not to be, to some extent. Don’t think about it for 99% of the time and then one little BANG!!!! and your mind is on Westminster Bridge, Manchester Arena, London Bridge. How can you not?

Thus yesterday did panic ensue. But mainly because a couple of ‘celebs’ tweeted the third-hand speculative comment about gunshots. And celebs, however pathetically inadequate and limp-brained they are, have billions of ‘followers’. More than Jesus did when he won X-Factor. And thus dids’t the panic get retweeted and within minutes there were 17 battalions of police, Marines, SAS, Mossad, FBI and SWAT teams that we don’t even have in Britain. All there, armed to the teeth, ready for…

For nothing. Thankfully nothing, it must be said, but how much of it was really necessary? If ever you wanted a ‘decoy’ for something serious, you know what to do.

Safer in Berlin. I hope.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

Football’s ruling ‘elite’ really are a bunch of tossers. Their belief in ‘the status quo’ is so overwhelming that they seldom, if ever, actually do anything. They don’t have to, they’re part of football, the biggest gravy-train there is. But sometimes even the FA and their partners in crime simply have to yield to pressure. And rush into action over what are, literally, life-and-death matters.

Jeff Astle died in 2002 from dementia, aged 59. He’d been a footballer and a good one. Famous for scoring headed goals. In the dark days of the 60s and 70s when the ball (felt like it-) was made of concrete but got much heavier in the wet. So, many people thought that there may possibly be a link between repeatedly banging your head against things and brain damage. As they seemed to have realised in boxing. It doesn’t take a massive leap of lateral thinking to relate head-banging to possible brain issues.

So due to the severity and the potentially massive impact (no pun) this could have on the game, just 15 years later they’re about to start a study on the link between heading a football and both brain damage and any likely implications in advancing dementia. I mean, what’s 15 years when the known universe is 6 billion years old?? Come on, its just a blink.

Alan Shearer, himself no mean header of a football, was the subject of a documentary last week introducing this study. And they’re gonna look at everything, from 15,000 current and former players and 45,000 members of the general, non-football-playing public; the ones arriving by bus as opposed to Bentley. For a ‘control’. A comparison to see what ‘normal’ people’s brains do.

And I’d personally be amazed if there wasn’t a massive difference in brain damage/function between the 2 groups. A centre-back can head the ball 30 times in a game, never mind training, practice and head-butting strangers in pubs. We shall wait and see. But remember, even if there is a difference, golden rule of statistics: corr-el-ation-is-NOT-caus-ation. Just cos two things seem to be linked doesn’t mean one causes the other. There may be ‘other factors’. Like, f’rinstance, and in no way is this example gleaned from my years of listening (in agony, with ear-ache and shame) to footballers and pundits grunting and groaning and glottally stopping their inarticulate ways through interviews, but it could possibly be that many people in football arrive almost ‘pre-brain-damaged’ in some way. Not a fact, I’m just sayin’ it could be the case. In da interests of scientific impartiality and… errr… equality.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

Today is ‘Thanksgiving’, so… errrr… congratulations? to all Americans? Thanks?? And a belated ‘sorry’ to Canadians for forgetting their one a couple weeks’ ago. So easy to forget Canadians. Because Thanksgiving is a big deal over there, where here, it barely even registers. But if you ask most Americans what they’re, precisely, giving thanks for, they don’t know. Which is fine. Its a holiday, enjoy. Day off work, they play the years only NFL game on a Thursday and, less surprisingly, they eat too much and drink more. But the reason? Errrr, pilgrims? settlers? harvest? Who knows, who cares.

I care. Deeply. Ish. But only because I read an interesting thing about it yesterday.

The puritans and pilgrims arrived in America in the late 1500s. They heard of a ‘new world’ and thought it would be a good place to go and sell Jesus, in case the locals there were ignorant of Christian ways. Which was always gonna be likely. So out they went, pretty brave too, not like some kind of gap year hi-jinks, this was for real. No Pan-Am, not even any internet. And they landed in Massachusetts and made home. And pretty much starved. The crops they’d brought from England didn’t work so well over there and they were suffering. McDonalds was still 350 years away. Then some local tribe of ‘Native Americans’ showed them the errors of their ways. And they then thrived over there and became ‘Americans’. And in 1621 they had a massive feast with all the tribe members in celebration of the proper harvests and abundant food that became the distant forebear of the Man vs Food Challenge. And to give thanks to the ‘Red Indians’ for their live-giving help.

Just before they engaged in their wholesale slaughter and mass genocide across the entire nation.

Thanksgiving was never a religious festival, even though with those involved, God would’a been a big recipient of some of those thanks, doubtlessly. Religious types don’t take a pee without thanking the Lord. But even ‘back then’ they decided that Thanksgiving shouldn’t detract from their sabbath, which is why its on a Thursday. Or a Monday if you’re Canadian. So it becomes a kind’a pre-Christmas. Another excuse to eat turkey. Or quinoa if you’re a vegan. Or any other ‘trans’ type of personality. (See? Equality, innit.)

So Happy Thanksgiving

A xxxx

A lawyer is suing Oxford University. Nothing unusual there; lawyers sue people all the time. But this is the lawyer himself suing the University because when he studied (modern history) there, in 2000, he only achieved a low 2.1 degree. Which has held back his legal career sufficiently to sue the University for £1million that he would have earned if he’d been better educated and qualified with a higher degree.

Basically; his opportunities in working life were reduced because of their failure to get him a first, or even a good 2.1. He blames ‘inadequate teaching’.

You’d really have to see how all the other students on his course fared before making any judgments. Because if they all got low 2.1s and 2.2s then maybe he has a point. But often the lines between graduate marks kind of ‘float’ so that a certain percentage get a first, the next so many percent a 2.1, etc. Which makes it even more difficult to forensically diagnose the problem.

An alternative reading of the situation could be that Faiz Siddiqui (for ’tis he) is just a bit of a thicko. Nice, but dim. Not the brightest bulb in the chandelier. Clever enough to blag his way into Oxford but perhaps lacking in academic industry? Who knows? Who fucking cares? I hope he wins the case and gets 5 million.

Because then I’m going to sue my old PE teacher (from 1971) for not making me Lionel Messi. I’d have earned (and not paid tax upon) billions. I was keen, I was ‘gifted’ (to a degree… a very lowly degree, probably a 2.1) but due to ‘lack of proper teaching’ Barcelona never offered me a contract.

I’m going to sue my driving instructor for not making me Lewis Hamilton. I can drive. I can certainly drive fast. Why didn’t he ‘push’ me to excel? £132 million. In cash, per-lease, payable in Monaco. Like Lewis.

Can you just imagine the legal precedent if every under-achieving, lazy dipshit could sue his education for his failure to succeed all the way to unrealistic expectations? I’d be the first in line.

Happy slowly recovering Wednesday

A xxxx

Do you remember when a ‘virus’ was a microbial sort of thing? Nothing digital about it, nothing to do with technology, more to do with vomitus? With feeling like you’re going to die, then wishing you could die, then sweating a lot, shivering, shaking, all the while feeling much too hot and much too cold at the same time. Remember that? Well, its best if you do. Because viruses are probably the oldest form of life on the planet. A billion years old (random number picked because its BIG), and yet still going strong. Very strong in some cases.

On Friday night Lila’s mum had ‘the night from hell’, sickness, diarrhoea, all kinds of evil were perpetrated upon her by an evil fucking virus.

So on Saturday night, Lila’s dad suffered the same fate.

Not wishing to be left out, both Mel & I succumbed on Sunday night. One minute we were in bed, almost asleep, but both feeling a little ‘queazy’, and then next we’re in separate bathrooms engaged in a bout of competitive grossness. Ok, I was given a 20-minute head start just because… whatever. Not sure who the winner was, or how you’d define a ‘winner’ at all, but we were both losers. I had visions of the movie ‘Alien’ and the song ‘both ends burning’ by Roxy Music sprung to mind, no idea why.

But fortunately I’m a man. And therefore not prone to give in to such minor obstacles in any significant way. So slept til 3.30 in the afternoon and spent the rest of the day moaning. Heroic. That’s me.

Decided not to go to work today either, mainly because I don’t want to spread the joys of this horrible, nasty, evil thing around.

So instead, I’m learning about one of my modern day heroes, Elon Musk. Having virtually invented the viable totally electric car and driverless vehicles, in between his own personal space programme, he’s building up the Tesla range. He brought out the ‘3-Model’ as a cheaper alternative. But can’t make enough to supply demand. Telsa have orders for 1500 but only made 260 in the year. During which the company spent one billion dollars a quarter (that makes… errr… carry 1, divide by 9… errr) 4 billion spent in a year. Mainly trying to get production up. And now, whilst he’s busy not building the model 3s he’s promised, he’s introduced the amazing lorry thing (0 to 60 in 5 seconds in a 40-ton truck) and a new supercar. Neither of which currently, he has any hope in hell of producing. The problem is that his mind races on at a speed which industry can’t hope to keep up with. Ya gotta love him though. Just don’t invest.

Happy foodless Tuesday

A xxxx

Things I really love: (in no particular order)

Sunday morning tennis in the sunshine.
Gypsy Kings at the Royal Festival Hall last night.
Food.
Lila smiling.
Lila sitting.
Lila… anything.
Food. (“you said ‘food’; I like ‘food'”)
England beating Australia at Twickenham.
England beating Australia anywhere else.

Things I really hate: (in strict ranking)

Arsenal winning.
Spurs losing.
Everything that happens for the next 6 hours should those two hatefuls occur simultaneously.
Olives.
Nuclear armageddon.

Ok, there are other things I hate too; whilst I’m fucking at it!! Its my blog, innit? I can hate what I want. I hate Jeremy Corbyn, because if he doesn’t actually hate me, he hates everything I stand for or value.

I hate all type of ‘reality’ tv because its the worst kind of misnomer. There’s nothing real about the Kardashians, and nothing watchable about any of the million other ‘famous for being famous’ shows depicting groups of vain and narcissistic morons obsessing about themselves and their tragically shallow lives.

And I hate football managers who bemoan ‘the standard of refereeing’ to the point where the testicle-free zone that is the Football Association actually fine them, only to smile smugly when their own team become beneficiaries of such adjudication errors.

In case I didn’t mention it; I hate Spurs losing to Arsenal. Particularly this (ok, and any other) year when we’ve been playing so well. It hurts. Its horrible.

And yet life goes on. Even Spurs go on. To play (hopefully) hapless West Brom next weekend who may very possibly be without a manager by then as the daggers are out for poor ole Pulis.

I may even rename this page ‘Lila’s Glasses’ as she seems to have taken those now too. As a stark reminder that however bad anything ever gets, there is light, there is love, there is indeed hope for the future. At least off the football field.

Happy (nyeh) Sunday

A xxxx

Who invents this shit? Somebody, somewhere decided that babies have difficulties eating yoghurt off a spoon. Which is true, they can’t really hold a spoon properly (doh; they’re fucking babies; of course they can’t; they can’t do anything properly, its why we have them), so let’s invent a canny thing. A ‘bag’ of yoghurt with a little pipe at the top that enables them to squeeze the yoghurt, ‘gently’ from bag to gob, via tube. How hard can it be? (See above; the video is even better and even more inevitable, with yoghurt squirting all over the place).

‘Spoon-feeding’ has now been consigned to life as a mere metaphor. Its origin will be forgotten. That, once upon a time, we mashed up food, pulped it into something usually only done by waste-disposal machines, then slid the slop gently into a waiting baby. Done with. Finished. Because we live in a world (well I do) of ‘baby-led weaning’. At precisely 6 months old, to the day (Lila’s mum is nothing if not precise, bless her), Lila was sat in a high chair and presented with food. Ok, not like a pizza, certainly not a baguette or steak, but food. Peach. Banana. Some porridge. And for an exclusively breast-fed baby this was not ‘food’, just ‘things’. We’ve had bright red balls and fluffy teddy-bears, now we’ve got this shit to play with. Squeeze it, throw it around and, importantly, stick it in my mouth. Aaaaah; unlike the balls and teddys, this has something that I’ll come to know of as ‘taste’. Hmmmm. And its a good thing. So good I’m gonna stick this mango right in my ear. See what it sounds like.

And from small beginnings, Lila is now an official eater. Ok, I won’t lie, it can get a bit messy in there. Basically she eats like a fucking animal. No cutlery, no plate, just hands, feet, mouth, whatever happens happens. Some goes in, chewed, swallowed even on occasion, the rest gets distributed around the globe, like 3rd world aid.

I was horrified when I heard that this is how babies are trained to eat. But now I’m a total convert. Firstly because it actually seems to work, but mainly because it is probably the most entertaining event in the world. Funnier than Michael Mackintyre, more gorgeous than Harry Kane, it has now become my most viewed event. And will remain so. Unless we should beat the Arsenal tomorrow at the Emirates. Then I’ll have a proper choice of viewing forevermore.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

Its amazing what can finally become the ‘last straw’. In the case of Zimbabwe the last straw is Mrs Mugabe. They’ve put up with (not that they had much say in the matter) Robert Mugabe for 37 years. During which time he has, (in no particular order): taken a productive and economically viable nation and lead it to bankruptcy; removed all the white farm owners, by force and often by murder, to turn their previously viable holdings into virtual squats for his unworking mates with a massive sense of entitlement and no desire to work; ‘ethnically cleansed’ all tribal opposition, including the slaughter of 20,000 in Metabeleland; turned anything approaching ‘democracy’ into a joke; has seen hyperinflation leave his people starving; while he and Mrs M. live a seriously ‘high life’ of riches and opulence. To the extent that their son recently posted a video of himself in some nightclub pouring champagne over his diamond-encrusted Rolex.

The lifelong Marxist views held by Robert Mugabe do not appear to be genetic.

All is corrupt, all is bad, nothing good has come from his ‘term’, not for Zimbabwe, not for his people, not for Africa, nothing. Yet they put up with it because they have absolutely no choice or say in the matter. Until Tuesday, when the tanks rolled down the High Street.

Mugabe is 93. Same age as my dad but nothing like as lovely a man. My dad would never have murdered 20,000 people in one go. 275 was always his limit.

Succession needed to be considered, as Mugabe’s many frailties became apparent. He’s losing it, basically, as he’s entitled to do. The first thing he’s actually entitled to in the past 37 years. So the natural ‘heir’ would be Emmerson Mnangagwa, Mugabe’s long-term number 2. The two men served prison time together in their revolutionary days and have remained close all through. But Mrs Mugabe had different ideas. And she famously backs up her ideas with violence. More importantly, the people of Zimbabwe hate Grace Mugabe with a passion. Maybe its the arrogance and nastiness, maybe its her ordering a 100 carat diamond with, basically, the money that should be feeding their children, I don’t know. But hated she is.

But Mnangagwa is hated too. Also a man with blood on his hands. A lot of blood. But someone who at least appreciates that without Western capital, his country will die. Something the Marxist in Mugabe never took on board, or if he did, was never prepared to act upon.

Zimbabwe’s in a fucking mess. As it has been for 37 years. Corruption, tyranny, silencing of opposition, total autocracy, economic ruin. The Marxist dream.

I have visions of Jeremy Corbyn. God help us all.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

So you just get settled into your nice, mid-season routine. The nights close in early, its cold and dark and so Sunday at 4 I go round to Lila’s to watch the football with her. Cuppa tea, wriggling Lila, Burnley vs Newcastle. Watford against Liverpool, Manchester City playing anyone. Who cares? Its football, its on tv, what more do you need? (baby: optional)

And then comes the hateful ‘international break’. No World Cup qualifiers for England this time, we’ve already qualified. So its bloody friendlies. Meaningless matches (unless you are Gareth Southgate) with no interest, no excitement and most of the players crying off injured. Which, where the Spurs players are concerned, is a good thing. The rest of the hurt-list are just wimps, but the Spurs players are resting their little niggles carefully so they can regain full fitness. In a much more heroic way than the rest. I’d rather they stayed home with some Bovril than risked getting their legs bitten by a German. Or even by a Brazilian.

Yet for some countries, this has been ‘World Cup’ weekend/plus. The playoff matches, the real do-or-dies to see who will join those at the top of their groups who’ve already qualified for next year’s finals. And it didn’t go ‘to plan’. Though logically it can’t ever. With (approximately) 50% of the teams involved being tragically disappointed.

None more so than Italy. The 4-time World Cup winners will not be gracing that stage next year, for the first tournament since 1958. Italy has gone into meltdown. It never takes much. But football over there is completely woven into their social fabric. Like pizza. But with less calories. Like the Catholic Church. Except more people care about football. So without that, all that’s left is bum-pinching. And seriously, how long can that go on in the current world climate???

The football heroes in Italy are all they have. They don’t have war heroes. Like normal countries. So Gianluca Buffon, their talismanic national captain and goalkeeper extraordinaire, has borne the weight of all the hero-worship of the entire nation since the last dagger went into Julius Caesar’s back 2000 years ago. Pretty much when Buffon started playing. But he’s retiring without that ‘last world cup’, which is indeed terrible for one of the game’s genuine superstars. In fact he’s so gorgeous I’d normally put his photo up today in honour. Unfortunately (for him) Lila is way more gorgeous, so, sorry Gianluca, this really ain’t your week. We’re all going to miss their 9-man defences and WWF style match-play.

In England we’re generally not as patriotic about football. To wit, last night I took far more pleasure from Christian Eriksen’s hat-trick against the poor Republic of Ireland than I did from England ‘brilliant'(??) nil nil draw against the Brazilians. Because Christian is ‘my boy’ who I love like the son I never had, and Jamie Vardy isn’t.

Ciao bene Wednesday

A xxxx

Hitler did for nationalism what Harvey Wienstein did for the casting couch. He went so far that the back-lash took decades to recover from. If it ever did. Maybe its just me but my hackles always rise when I see groups of nationalists, on the news, inevitably dressed in balaclavas and holding flags and flares, marching down the streets of, also inevitably, some East European country. As happened yesterday in Poland to mark their Independence Day. Not sure which particular ‘independence’ that refers to. Possibly from the Nazis, maybe from the Russians. But whatever, now they’re independent and they want more. They want to be white, Catholic and independent.

Which is just so at odds with European thought. The rest of Europe reacted massively at the end of the war away from nationalism, towards a more cuddly, soft & fluffy leftism that eventually became the European Union, via various stages of ‘we don’t need borders, we’re all the same’-ism. Europe has since the war been about ‘inclusion’ and ‘togetherness’ and here come the Poles saying, basically, a big FUCK OFF to foreigners, to people of colour and, of course, to Jews. Wouldn’t want to leave them out when the selectiveness and persecution kicks in.

My late grandmother, who was born in Poland and emigrated here when she was just 1 year old, used to say: ‘the Poles taught the Nazis how to be anti-semitic’. She also used to say a lot of other things; about calves-foot-jelly, about weird and wonderful practices, particularly in the kitchen, a lot of which made little sense, even in Yiddish. But that phrase always stayed with me. Mainly because its true. The famous ‘pogroms’ in Poland took place for decades before Hitler was born. And there’s no doubt that, even though they were under an occupying force during the War, many Poles were relatively eager accomplices in the ’rounding up and extermination’ processes. Others were indeed heroic and wonderful. But they represent the minuscule minority. And now Poland is demanding a ‘historical grievance’ payment from their German neighbours, just a paltry £758 billion. Just a ‘token gesture’.

Poland joined the EU because of trade and free passage for its builders. Who do a great job. But it never signed up to the spirit of the ‘union’. And is rather Trumpesque in its stance against Muslim immigrants and immigrants in general. But only if they’re non-white.

So in a way it was really refreshing in these times of inclusion and general softiness to see 60,000 masked Poles stomping the streets of Warsaw waving those lovely ‘almost-swastika’ nationalist flags and even the ‘falanga’ flags which are of purely anti-semitic origin.

Gotta love them Poles.

Happy Monday

A xxxx