Andy's Glasses

I find myself suddenly in the unique and somewhat uncomfortable position of agreeing with Donald J Trump. He of the world’s largest signature, most flamboyant combover and (usually) the most moronic comments. But this was no tweeted soundbyte. This was no twice-repeated and thus thrice-meaningless phrase. This was a speech. With whole words and sentences in joined-up writing. And what he said was, when distilled down to its true and inner meaning: “I don’t fucking trust Eye-rannn!!” And thus he scuppered ‘the deal’. A word I’m growing to hate more with every day of his presidency.

The ‘deal’ hatched by Obama and a few Euro-nations involved promises from Iran about the extent and uses of its nuclear stockpile. Which had to be closely monitored. To ensure that it was used for powering the nation’s tvs and plug-in cars, and emphatically NOT for nuclear weapons. And if Iran promised this then the rest of the world would lift trade sanctions on that country. Which translates as ‘buying its oil once more’. Which we now do. Shit-loads of it. 8 times more than we did before the sanctions were lifted.

So Iran gets its nuclear POWER, and it gets to earn lots of money in exported oil. And what do we get? Ahhhhh, according to nobel-winner Barak Obama, we get ‘world peace’. Nothing more noble than that. Because if Iran has no nuclear weapons then we all sleep better at night. Oh, and cheaper oil, which is of massive benefit to any and all post-industrial nations.

But the inspectors in the Iranian nuclear facilities haven’t been able to inspect as they’d like. They’re only allowed in certain places. Not the ones where they make the warheads- ooops!!! Where they make nuclear power stuff that’s a bit more secret than the usual ‘plug-and-play’ type, so you’re not allowed in there.

But world peace is indeed the highest aspiration. And we must look at how Iran is now passionately involved in its pursuit. By running a 5-year proxy war in Yemen with the Saudis, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Yemenis. That’s fairly peaceful. Then there’s Syria where Iran’s airforce and military support Assad in his systematic murder of anyone and everyone who looks like they might be a ‘rebel’. Iran sends its Shia Militias everywhere to fight. Then it sponsors Hamas and Hezbollah with both arms and finances, that they might both attack Israel with greater potency, the nation Iran has sworn to ‘destroy’. And then there’s the possibility that if it is shown that Iran is nuclear then its most hated enemies in Saudi Arabia will go the same route. That’ll be peaceful.

So the question comes down to: do you trust Iran? Its simple. Trump doesn’t. I doesn’t(?) No-one really doesn’t. Thus Trump is… errrr… (this is hard)… Trump is… RIGHT!

Peaceful Wednesday

A xxxx

We’re a nation plagued by weather. And surprised by all of it. We’re all familiar with British Rail’s definition of ‘the wrong kind of snow’ (white, falls from the sky, cold, bit wet…) and particular types of rain (the eskimos have 100 words for snow, even the ones who don’t work for Eskimo Rail; we have 736 words for rain) which cause massive upset to our entire national infrastructure. But heat? HEAT??? That one really throws us. And produces several interesting evolutionary responses. The first being to jump into the car with all the family and head out on massively clogged roads, to the mating grounds and spawning sites of generations of antecedents. Like salmon swimming up the waterfalls, the legions of great unwashed flock to Southend and Brighton, to Lyme Regis and Clacton-upon-Sea. Where they adhere to the ancient, innate rituals. Like never being more than 4 inches in any direction away from another family. 700,000 people on 39 yards of beach. Its a collective thing, much like wilderbeasts in the veldt. Security in numbers. So you start the day nose-to-tail on the A12 or the A36 or whatever, and then, 14 hours later, when you’ve actually arrived AND found somewhere to park, you finally lie on the beach. With your head just touching the overhanging stomach of the 19-stone binkinied ‘babe’ on the adjoining towel. Heaven.

I just won’t do ‘traffic’ on bank holidays. Never. So instead Mel & I went for lunch in a fairly local park. Where they have an allegedly wonderful cafe. And as it was not only a bank holiday but the nicest, sunniest, most beautifully stunning bank holiday everrrrrrr, we figured no-one else would be there and we’d have the place to ourselves. The good news was that we did get a table. There must be 100 tables because its a fucking park so they just bring more tables out. No shortage of space. But, as I stood in the queue to order and pay for lunch, I learned that there was in fact a shortage of food. The owner, lovely if totally stressed-out Israeli dude, told me that not only had his staff been flat out since 8.30 that morning (it was by then about 3pm), but that they’d had to send out for more of virtually everything. So we’re ‘on a break’ so they don’t die. Come back in 15. Grrrrr…

And yet even I, the most impatient man God ever made (and he in fact made me himself), thought: ‘WTF?’ I’m in a gorgeous park, I have shade, I have sun, I’ve just got drinks (which hadn’t run out), just wait. And we did. And lunch was wonderful, eventually, almost dinner really.

I asked the owner if he kind’a, would’a, could’a, should’a, possibly bought more food, knowing, as we all did, that the weekend was to be sunny and hot? That he might be a tad busier than on a normal damp, grey tuesday in Feb? But he doesn’t trust weather forecasts. Hmmm…

Happy back-to-work Tuesday

A xxxx

Donald Trump is a plonker, we all know that. An orange one. And he talks in phrases, which he repeats. So he doesn’t forget what he’s just said, in case it was important, which it invariably wasn’t. He can’t handle whole sentences and so entire concepts are quite frankly beyond his capability. Which all put together has an almost Forest Gumpian feel to it, or ‘Being There’, where subnormal people reach great heights by saying very little into which everyone else reads profound wonderment.

Our Donald was addressing the NRA, the most powerful organisation in America, including Congress and the Senate, so it would seem to an outsider. And because it was the NRA his previous stance of ‘we must protect our children’ changed to ‘guns are more important than fuckin kids’ in the flash of a sponsorship donation. What’s a few dead teenagers compared to our constitutional right to shoot who the hell we want? And to illustrate his point he chose Britain. London, in fact. Which he already has issues with because we conned him out of his Embassy’s fuck-off site in Grosvenor Square and stitched him up with a disused warehouse in Vauxhall in exchange… and a billion quid. He likes a ‘good deal’. Well, (for us) this was a dream deal.

So Donald conjures up an imaginary, nameless hospital in London, ‘right in the centre’, in which there are so many knife victims that the corridors flow with blood. Its like a ‘war zone’. And England has the strictest gun control of anywhere!!!!

I just don’t know what point the man is trying to make. I can’t see any sense in this comparison. Is he saying that we need guns in Britain to protect us from knives? Or so that our killers can use guns instead, making them much more efficient and producing less blood to mop up? Or that increasing gun control in the US would just lead to more knife crime?

I have no idea. Its just an ill-conceived (and obviously totally fictionalised) story that the great man feels justifies the virtual ‘no-control’ policy on guns in America and the best reason for it to continue, unchecked. I’m sure the collective inbred retards of the NRA gave him a standing ovation for his stunning illustration.

So their answer remains consistent. If kids have guns, give teachers bigger guns. Faster guns, more powerful guns. I know an old lady who swallowed a fly, I don’t know why she didn’t just swallow a cruise missile and end it right there.

Happy Bank Holiday, sunny Monday

A xxxx

Just the last word on the local elections. Which were, apparently, all over England. None of the bits that don’t count, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, just us. And more specifically in London, where Labour did shit. Because Labour’s eventual plans for London, should they ever (god forbid a thousand times) come to power in what will be known henceforth as ‘departure day’, they will either nationalise the City of London, or impose such stringent taxes upon it that it will just move somewhere else. Labour simply hates the entire concept of The City. Even though it produces half the country’s wealth at least and generates more in taxes. But that is McDonnell’s dream; to bring down capitalism. Replace it, as they did in North Korea, with starvation.

And how good does the sunshine feel? Turning up for tennis yesterday it was warm, bright, cloudless, wind-free and I thought ‘WTF??? I can’t play like this. Where’s the rain, frost, ice, hurricanes??’ But it was ok. Almost like it was invented as some kind of ‘summer game’? News to me.

Today too, waking up to all that sunshine. I’m so glad that I didn’t become a vegan yesterday. Mainly because its always struck me as a dull and desperate thing to do, more suited to the wintry grey world lacking in colour and happiness. But I was tempted. I mean, so many people are vegan-ing out these days, maybe its time for some industrial quantities of tofu in my life. Not just for making the soles of my vegan tennis shoes but actually eating it. So to test the theory we went to a restaurant last night that only sells meat. To see just how horrible, how cruel, heartless (mainly because we didn’t eat any hearts, even though I quite like them), and brutal the world of the carnivore can be. Although I’ve lived in that world for nearly 62 years. Probably didn’t eat too much meat for the first week or so, therefore I have ‘form’ as a vegan, though not sure about the ‘non-dairy’ bit relating to breast-feeding.

And the Turkish restaurant brought us the ‘almost-vegan’ option. An immense platter of barbecued meat. The ‘almost’ comes about because there was rice and salad on the plate too. A little. Just for counterbalance to stop the plate falling over under the immense weight of the meat. And it was wonderful. And I can honestly attest that no animals whatsoever suffered in any way at all whilst pigging out for an hour on all that flesh.

I’ll put the tofu back in the freezer.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

So, according to the party leaders, these were the undisputed winners of the two-and-a-half major political parties. Sorry, I can’t give that shambles of Lib-Dems more than a half, and that’s being generous. The Tories won. Labour won. And the Lib dems won. That’s it and its conclusive and final. Because all can in fact take some small points as victorious, but all in fact, objectively, were equally losers. Except the Lib-dems but they’re obviously only half a loser.

Any mid-term elections are used by the voters as comments on the national government. Even though these were local elections I couldn’t tell you who was going to fill in the pot-holes, who intended to pick up my garden waste before it turned to compost, who was going to increase elderly care. I voted on government issues. Even though they were irrelevant. Its what we do. And in mid-terms the government always gets hammered. As a protest. Yet this time it simply didn’t happen. Ok, the Tories lost a few seats but they expected to. They barely expected to hold onto Westminster, Wandsworth and especially Barnet. But they did. And that can only be viewed as a massive ‘FUCK YOU!!!!’ to Jeremy Corbyn. A sentiment with which I heartily agree.

Are you a monoluncher? Do you, like Tory Minister, Dominic Rabb, have the same lunch every single soddin’ day of the week? Its all the talk. Dominic has a chicken (good, fat free, white) and bacon (baaaad; processed and red; the devil’s work) bagette (terrible, bleached white processed wheat, loads of sugar and salt) with salad dressing (the worst), coupled with popcorn (peanut butter flavoured) and fruit pot (shitloads of sugar) and a smoothie. So he’s gonna die. Any second now. According to neutritionists Dominic consumes 864 calories a day, 54 grams of sugar, 3.5 kilos of unrefined… shit and 1lb 3ozs of napkins and plastic forks. And neutritionists always advise a ‘varied diet’ to ensure all major groups and stuff are covered. I’d personally say Dominic is a bit of a pig and has the imagination of a tea-spoon but if it makes him happy? And as we spend our days agonising over the excessive choices for absolutely everything currently available, does it not in fact reduce his personal stress by taking one choice a day out of the equation? Also worthy of consideration is that neutritionists, like most quasi-scientific purveyors of ever-changing quackery, know less than fuck all. Today’s heart-massaging wonderfood is tomorrow’s artery clogging carcinogen.

Eat what you want, ignore the pundits.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

Read an interesting article the other day about Jurgen Klopp and his Liverpool team. Basically, what we all know; they score a truck-load of goals but can’t defend for shit. Hence the 5-2, 6-3, 4-2 type scorelines that have typified their season. But rather than seeing this as a weakness, the article used it as praise. Basically as long as you score more than your opponents you win the game. Rocket science it ain’t. But you have limited ‘resource’. ie: 11 men. Who can, generally, only be in one place at one time. And if they’re all screaming into the opposition’s penalty area it tends to leave gaps at the back for teams on the break. Its always a balance. Are your two central midfielders there to break things up and protect the back four or do you want more attack from them? How ‘wingy’ are your wing-backs? Are they there when they need to defend? Do your front-line players chase back to help the defence? All interesting questions. If you’re a total football nerd, geek and tragedy.

The article suggested that Klopp’s approach is the correct one. That it provides entertainment. Even if, for Liverpool fans, that entertainment means you never relax during any game, even with a 2-goal, 3-goal, even 4-goal lead. Its always precarious. But, as a neutral, we really could give a toss about the fragility of the average Liverpool fan’s stress levels. Let them take valium. Like the rest of us. And its always been ‘the Spurs way’, attack full-on and if it leaves you a little ‘porous’ at times at the back then so be it, just make sure you score more than you let in.

Manchester City, like all (but relatively very few) ‘super-teams’ manage to get the balance simply perfect. They are irrepressible in attack but incredibly solid when defending. The players have a fluidity of position which maximises both sides of the game. Barcelona have done the same for a generation but that generation is rapidly coming to an end now.

And then there’s Arsenal. Who, in their ‘invincibles’ team certainly shared the dream. But now Wenger has modified the paradigm so that they manage to combine being awful in defence with being shitty in attack. And cursed with the inviolable criterion that you must always ‘walk the ball into the net’. ALWAYS make that extra pass even when you’re through on goal and it’s unmanned.

So we’ll all be Liverpool fans for a day when they play Real in the Champions League final. And I don’t know what the odds are but I would never bet against Liverpool in a Euro match, and I would certainly never bet against the current Klopp boys in any match.

Now I’m off to West Bromwich. Only spiritually.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

So you have, say, a bad tummy, like, last week. And you mustn’t eat. So you buy a bottle of coke; real, red-label, full sugar, dental-enemy, obesity-rated, fat coke. Because of the sugar. Your body needs it. Preferably ‘flat’. Unlike your stomach would be if you drank it any other day of the year. Not that you could afford to, the fuckng new tax makes it suddenly a rich man’s drink. Or a sick man’s drink. You should get a rebate on the tax if you have a bad tum. Either produce a medical certificate at the till or throw-up all over the check-out girl. And then when you feel a little bit more stable, someone says ‘plain biscuits’. Just those 2 words. So you buy some. And that’s where the problem starts. Because you can’t buy 1. They won’t sell it. Only in packs of about 100. And you eat 3 the first day. Cos you’re sick. And ‘testin’. Then you eat maybe 5 the second day. Then you get better. Hooray, back on proper food, milk in coffee is back on the menu, all kinds of pig-out may resume as before. And you do pig -out, making up for all those lost days, all the weight that ‘simply fell off’ or got poured down various toilets and buckets. And you still have 93 plain biscuits left in the pack. That you don’t need any more. But they’re there. In my workspace. Looking at me. Should I throw them away? Give them to charity? Or just leave them alone and hope they don’t ‘call out’ to me.

Yet they do. They call. They whisper ‘eat meeeeee’ repeatedly throughout the day. And so I do. The race before they go stale.

Voting day today. We, in London at least, not sure about the rest of the great unwashed, but we vote for our local councillors. And the rule is: ‘anyone but Labour’. On the grounds that they are horrible, evil nasty people. Who actually intend to let you vote for a specific Labour candidate and then, after the election, they will deselect your candidate and replace him with some Momentum shit-head Trotskyite anti-semite. That’s what they have planned in Haringey and if it proves not to be illegal (under review) there’s nothing to stop them doing it elsewhere. Which is as dishonest as it is undemocratic. But (new, new) Labour has never been about democracy. More about abuse, sexism, racism and trolling.

Vote Rich Tea today

A xxxx

Where’s it written? That it has to rain all the fucking time? I’ve never seen that contract but it seems to have been implemented anyway. Yesterday was lovely, sunny, nice. Monday was the day from hell, weatherwise, and today looks like being its demon-brother. Or sister. Sorry for assuming that demons are male. Females have equal rights to everything. That IS in the contract. Played tennis in the rain on Saturday, in the drizzle on Sunday, we’re in May and it feels like February. Rachie’s in Berlin, far, far east of here, where you’d imagine it snows for about 8 months a year and temperatures never get above about 10. Yet she’s moaning she’s too hot to sleep, enjoying 25 degrees every day and we’re here freezing. And the heating’s not working. It was yesterday until we had a new valve put in the boiler because it wasn’t heating the water properly. Now the water’s hot but the heating non-functioning. And Lila’s coming to stay tonight. Lila doesn’t really give a shit about the temperature, well, she never mentions it, but her mother will take one walk round in the arctic house and take my baby straight back to her house where the thermostat is always set at ‘hospital/greenhouse/sauna’.

But enough about the weather, even though its my right as a British personage of British… things, to bang on about endlessly. Yet being British is something of a problem for some people. Which in turn has led to the downfall of Amber Rudd, former Home Secretary, former wife of AA Gill, she has lots of form(er).

I can’t even be bothered to get into the details and events that removed this… person from office. Too boring. Suffice to say; she fucked up. There’s only really one crime in politics and that’s telling fibs, both to the public (who put you there) and to Government committees. Ok, sexual harassment will get you sacked too but Amber wasn’t accused of that. The ‘Windrush’ scandal is a terrible thing, that as with all terrible things, has been embraced and highly politicised by the Opposition, which is their job, I begrudgingly suppose. Amber didn’t get sacked for the Windrush stuff, she got sacked because of her office’s policy on ILLEGAL immigrant removal. Windrushers were always legal but got caught up due to various cock-ups.

So in steps Sajid Javid to the role. And that’s quite a brilliant appointment. Because its hard to accuse the son of immigrants of anything racist or anti-immigrant. What’s more he’s the son of a bus conductor which makes him less Eton and more accessible than your usual Tory. Maybe his dad was conductor on the bus that Sadiq Kahn’s dad drove? Wouldn’t that be something??? Or not.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

As everyone knows; I am the absolute perfect specimen of physical perfection. In every way. And more. And yet even a virtual god like me gets issues. Body issues. Not like the ones teenage girls get which lead to eating disorders, I could never get involved in any kind of food intake reduction paradigm which had ‘Cadburys’ written anywhere in the small print. My body issues are of the damage and destruction type. Or the function failure due to repetitive strain. But we just ‘work round’ the issues, addressing them as necessary and avoiding the painful bits when we can. We all do it. Even normal humans. Like you.

But this seems to have reached some kind of apotheosis for me. Well I hope it has in a way cos if anything else starts hurting I’ll have to stop any kind of movement whatsoever for 3 months.

The right shoulder is always an issue. It just is. Has been for decades which is why I play (right-handed) tennis. Because… errr… because I’m too stupid not to. And I like tennis. And Spurs Paul would wither and rot if I didn’t exercise him regularly. So at the end of tennis my shoulder is sometimes a bit painful, along with the adjoining bit of neck.

The sprained finger episode was somewhat extended when I fell again last week running up some stairs and landed right on it. Left hand, little finger. Still swollen, still have to be careful. Particularly at tai chi where we employ the kind of ‘top to tail’ method of violence, practising strikes with every part of our bodies (not on the floor, as I often do when alone but on other people), feet, knees, elbows, head, wrists, knuckles and, of course, fingers and sides of hands. But AAAGGHHH!!!!! not there. Generally just after I’ve thumped said finger into a fucking punch bag. Boxing gloves are for wimps, Labour supporters, Arsenal fans and other tossers.

Last week we were falling over. Not like I do in my spare time for my apparent hobby, but HOW to fall over in a way that you can control and spring back up again whilst under attack. So you fall. Then you do it again, and again, and again. And you get two things, you get good at falling down and getting up, and you get a bruised coccyx. Which means sitting in certain positions is painful. Bummer. (that’s a pun).

On Saturday something interesting happened. To the outside of my right knee. Don’t know what, it just felt funny during tennis. Thus I took the medical view and just ignored it. Medically. And played again the next day. The funny bit was that by the evening it was the inside of my knee which was swollen. And in fact still is. Feeling ‘tight’ and a bit odd.

So at the moment of writing, my toes are in pretty good shape, one knee fully functional and my right thumb is nigh-on perfect. Everything else is under consideration.

Great win for Spurs last night. We’re coming for Liverpool. Who play Chelsea on Sunday. And I want Chelsea (5 points behind us) to beat the Scousers (one point ahead) because I’m ‘looking up, not down’.

Happy, healthy, pain-free Tuesday

A xxxx

Spurs play Watford tonight at Wembley. Probably in the pouring rain. And as we’re now right at the sharp end of the season, this game is at least a 6-pointer. I’ve emailed the Premier League to issue extra points if we win, but at the time of writing I haven’t received a reply. They’re probably considering it very seriously. And why is it so big? Because our ‘8 point cushion’ from Chelsea who are sniffing up our… well, just below us in the table, has diminished to a slightly uncomfortable 2 points after their win on Saturday. Not even a good win. I’ve also written to the League to ask if they’ll reduce Chelsea’s 3 points to 2 because it was such a poor show. Haven’t heard about that yet either. They must be busy.

I was voicing my concerns yesterday to Spurs Paul and he steered me along a new path. A different path. Less paranoid, less negative, fretful, neurotic. More positive. Because, as he pointed out, we have 4 matches left, including tonight. And if we win them all we will finish in 3rd place. Fuck Chelsea. They become irrelevant. We’ll overtake Liverpool!!!!

Don’t look down; LOOK UP!

And I thought ‘yes, I can do that!’ I can look only upwards and think only positive thoughts. A new positivism. A relative positivism. Because after spending my entire adult life and most of my childhood scared shitless about the results and fortunes of other teams, I can now change and manifest the confidence I have in my current team. Its not like they’ve ever let me down before.

At the other end of the table its very very interesting. So many teams vying for relegation. West Brom just won’t die. How pissed off must their fans feel when having gone most of the season being total and absolute shit, they wait til they’re just one point from relegation and start winning every match. Stoke, you must feel, are doomed. Then there’s Southampton and Swansea. Who meet in 2 weeks time for a 19-pointer. And I won’t discount West Ham from the relegation possibles yet either, mainly because I really don’t like them at all.

In the Championship (once-)mighty Wolves are coming up, with either Cardiff or Fulham. That’ll be decided in the final match next Sunday. One gets automatic promotion, the other has to endure the absolute torture of the playoffs. Which are an aspiration for all of the season but an horrendous curse if you actually have to play them. Go figure.

Come on you Spurs

Happy Monday

A xxxx