Andy's Glasses

Theresa May is a wonderful negotiator. No doubt about it. She goes to Florence to speak to those rotten Euro-bastards and give them ‘what for’ and ‘read the riot act’ and make our case for leaving their repressive, demanding, over-charging Euro-bollocks, and plans to offer 18 billion quid for a 2 year ‘interim period’ after Brexit, before… before proper Brexit. And within one measly day’s news headlines, that has grown to 40 billion. I mean, WTF??? Well, its only money.

Meanwhile, back in London, you’ll need to take the bus. Walk. Tube it. No more Uber. Its finished here, done forever, don’t need ’em. Uber? Phah!! Got black cabs, got mini-cabs, well we did have mini-cabs before Uber arrived, but we don’t need Uber. So they’ve lost their license in London. Quite right too.

Who needs all that rotten convenience? Who needs that job flexibility? Who needs to have trackable, traceable drivers who are cheap enough that our daughters use them to get home from Shoreditch at 3am rather than that lovely, safe, reliable, speedy night bus. Or walking, semi-drunk, in their mini-skirts and high heels. Who needs that? Who needs to be able to call a ride with a press of your phone, get a cab within 2 minutes and not have to go to the cashpoint first? Naaaah mate. Who needs ’em? Who wants to be part of the future when the past is so appealingly expensive and antiquated and quaint? You wouldn’t want London to be just another city hooked up to the most wonderful alternative personal transport system in the world, would you? Not when you can become un-Ubered and be part of the 3rd world for riding round. Except most of the 3rd world has embraced Uber and found it to be a massive asset. Both in terms of public usage and job creation. Like it is here, but its simply not ‘good enough’ for London. Not… not… not… I wish I fucking knew. But licensed they won’t be as of September 30th. Though doubtless there’ll be appeals. But really. Really!

Spurs played at West Ham today and were winning so easily that was almost embarrassing. So they decided to try and make more a game of it so had one of our players taken off, give them a man advantage. Which levelled things up a bit but not enough to affect the result.

No tennis for me today. Nor tomorrow, much the pity. Seeing a hip man on Tuesday night. Not like a geezer with a long beard and tattoos who runs a vegan kebab shop in Dalston, more a besuited dude with a white coat and stethoscope. Though really, as an orthopaedic surgeon, more a hammer, chisel and Black’n’Decker. Oooohhhh.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

Mental health is an issue. Big issue, apparently affecting up to 40% of 14 year olds, particularly girls. Who, let’s face it, have never exactly been the most stable of genders. Yet 40% is a massive number of kids worried about social pressures, body images or life in general.

So the first question is: was it always this way for adolescents and we’ve just never quantified it or labelled it as a ‘condition’, rather than just the negativity and misery we expect from that demographic? Or does this represent an increase in mental problems, rather than an increase in the testing?

About 1 in 3 kids (so it seems) is ‘dyslexic’. Whereas in ‘the old days’ one in 3 kids was just thick. Or a shit speller. (I’m a bit dyslexic myslef so can cast nasturtiums at this grupe). Then they invented testing for it and created a whole new class of ultra-bright, multi-talented individuals who share a ‘condition’. Which is liberating.

So is mental health the same? Have they just become better at ‘diagnosing’ it, classifying it and making a nice, safe comfortable ‘condition’ into which the young can find solace?

Adolescence is a particularly difficult time of life for everyone except me. My only problem during that fabulous time of expansion, growth and world awareness, was spelling ‘adolescence’. But for everyone else, apparently, its now a problem. But the world has changed. Mainly in that there are no delays in information. I just bought some new shoes; here they are (7 photos attached to this message). No graphic descriptions, no waiting for the great unveiling on Saturday night; here they are. They haven’t even made it out of Zara but you’ve seen them already.

And people post images all the time on social media. Which fall into 2 groups: gorgeous thin people with muscles and smooth skin to make everyone go ‘wow!’ And slobbering fat people with spots put up to make people laugh. Its cruel but that’s what they do. Thus increasing the entire ‘body image’ shit that has always, to some degree, affected particularly young girls. You do get anorexic boys but very very few relative to girls.

Now they want to counsel ‘freshers week’ students to keep them ‘sober and sane’. Good luck with that. Both of ‘that’. Particularly the sober bit. Its in an effort to try and improve mental health. Which inversely correlates with drunkedness, regardless of how it feels during your 7th tequila shot.

If the testing for mental health is now sufficiently good that it can help, then fine. If its just an umbrella to hide under, another grouping to share misery with, not quite so good. I would say ‘avoid social media’ but for this generation its just too late. Lila’s not getting a smartphone until she’s at least 21. Unless she wants one, of course.

Happy New Year (the Jewish version)

A xxxx

I must admit I don’t have much time for the UN. The United Nations! Sounds grand, sounds like some league of superheroes, brought together for Marvel Comics and a movie franchise. A group of men, AND WOMEN, joined in the pursuit of world peace and harmony and happiness. Except its not like that. And its based in America which pisses off about two thirds of the members anyway. I’m not sure exactly what the UN does. Its like an over-riding world police organisation but seldom acts like one. Unless anyone complains about Israel, then its in like a shot.

The UN has made about 10 times more resolutions about Israel than about the rest of the world put together. It has done nothing about Myanmar and the current mass genocide and expulsion/departure of half a million people. It did nothing about Syria as the country crumbled amid the worst killing of civilians since the Holocaust. It makes no moves against Russia ever, whatever they do. And in the Yemen, the worst humanitarian crisis of the moment, it holds its silence as the Saudis slaughter and starve the people there.

Yet when Israel builds a wall to prevent terrorist attacks by fundamentalist Islamics (which we’re all, tragically, a little more familiar with nowadays), and which in fact reduced those attacks by over 90%, the UN boldly steps in with proclamations, resolutions, toothless demands and calls for all sorts of impotent bollocks.

To sum up the uselessness, the stupidity, the sheer comedic value of the UN: Saudi Arabia have a seat on the UN Human Rights Council. And has been elected to the Commission on the status of Women. They don’t allow women to drive in Saudi. Nor leave their homes without permission from a man. Yet the nation ‘represents women’ in the UN. And as they sit on the Human Rights Council, a blogger has been condemned in that fine nation to receive 1000 lashes over his 5 year prison sentence. For, basically, ‘dissin’ the Prophet in a blog. Ok, they can impose their laws as they see fit, ‘its a free country’, phah! And the blogger knew he was acting against the law. And that those laws are not as we know laws to be. But instead repressive, restrictive and totalitarian in nature. But to give a seat on the Human Rights council to a nation which stones to death rape victims on the grounds of adultery?

In all this the UN is tacitly condoning Saudi terror and endorsing it with an international validity.

So that’s why: I fucking hate the United Nations.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

The only times when you’re asked the hard/soft question are when you order eggs for breakfast or when you take your country out of the European Union. There are other parallels. Boris Johnson seems now to have egg on his face. As a consequence of the second situation rather than the first. Theresa May is covered in egg and David Davis not only looks like an omelette but appears to have a similar IQ. And I feel, as most do, that we’re just kind of ‘drifting’ towards Brexit with no plan, no negotiating position and not really much clue of the parameters. Which in turn shift frequently and are dependent on whom you hear from. None of which puts Britain in any kind of position of strength. Boris wants it hard! Hard as ya like. Just walk away and tell anyone with a funny accent to fuck off! Reclaim the 350 million quid a week which was ridiculed as a concept the first time he used it. Theresa May wants the softest of soft; barely a whisker, of departures. Almost seamless. You’d never know we’d left.

Yesterday Theresa was in Canada. I love Canada. And handsome young Trudeau assured us that we’re great mates and will continue to trade together as always. Which is great. Canada is a massive country with a tiny population. Polar bears don’t import stuff. They generally eat ‘locally sourced’ food and won’t drive a stick shift. So the trade between our nations will carry on but that won’t replace Europe. Canada is trade we already do now. And part of that trade will doubtless be dependent on our (current) access to the European markets. Which we won’t have upon our departure. Similarly many of our non-Euro trade partners will reduce their dealing with us by the size of the Euro-dependent stuff. We need new markets. Previously unexplored.

North Korea has potential. Long as its still there after the current madness. Big population of starving individuals. And no-one else in the world will trade with them. Well, China does. But they don’t make much. Hmmm… The famine-ridden masses of Kim Jong-Un’s nation would just love Princess Diana mugs. Spurs scarves. They just can’t get enough Charles and Camilla t-shirts.

I’m hating Brexit and its boring.

Lila is never boring. Always wonderful. And today she ‘ate’ her first proper breakfast!!! Milk is for wimps. Real babies not so much eat food as spread it around liberally, toss it about the kitchen. Lila vs Food. Lila definitely won. Bless her.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

Do they have orthopaedic care homes? Or ‘sporting care homes’ perhaps? Where old people who refuse to ever slow down in their pursuit of athletic excellence can go and get put back together. To live their lives out being pumped full of steroids and being physiotherapied along so they can play just one more game of tennis, have one last run, make just three more attempts at jumping 7 metres on the pole vault, before they die.

People always ask me the same thing when they haven’t seen me for a few years/months/weeks/hours; ‘have you lost weight?’ they say. Because they’ve forgotten that I’m just a skinny bastard. Always have been. Nothing to do with ‘eating well’. Which I never have. Well, I do eat well. Then I eat badly afterwards. Very naughty badly. Mel’s in good shape too. Not sure how that precise shape would be described but its not a bad shape at all. So people accuse us of ‘being fit’.

No, we’re not fit. Fit implies glowing with muscular perfection, with rampant athleticism, with everything working perfectly, harmoniously, effortlessly wonderfully. Mel & I are more: ‘held together with sticking plaster, surgical supports, k-tape and an endless supply of ibuprofen’. We’re the medical equivalent of a 1958 Porsche Speedster that is polished to perfection, chromed to the max; but the engine’s firing on one cylinder, the carbs clogged up and the spark plugs missing.

This morning I have a physio appointment. Been booked ages. Just an ‘interim service’ kind’a thing. Check it all over, make sure its not too damaged, stiff, seized up, whatever. Particularly the shoulder which was cortisoned up a year ago and is thankfully now almost 65% ok. That was the plan. Til yesterday. I hurt my hip on the tennis court about 6 months ago. Been liveable with since then (read: I still play tennis on it even though I probably shouldn’t). Either forgot about it or learned to live with the infrequent minor discomfort. Then I went for a shot yesterday morning, moved fast, very fast, almost explosively, to the right (that’s the hip) and… well, exploded. My hip did. That’s what it felt like. Holy Shi-iit!!! I hobbled to the coffee shop then walking the 200 yards to my house, I actually had to stop. Couldn’t move it without sheer agony.

Yet today its not too bad. Back to normal (levels of minor pain). But was replaced by a sharp ache between my shoulders, right across my back. Woke me up. So you just have to wonder: What the Fuck??? And get physio. Lots of physio. And drugs. Better get to my appointment early. We have much to do.

Happy, achy Monday

A xxxx

When you learn a new word you have to re-organise your internal glossary. Otherwise you’ll get it wrong in polite company and be accused of some form of obsessional political incorrectness. My mother always referred in to ‘coloured people’. No Mum, I’d advise, we call them ‘black people’. Oh no, wasn’t black, just light brown… She never got it, bless her saintly memory. She’d never cope with the new obsession for sexual and gender redefining. She grew up in the most binary of all possible worlds. So I was never dressed in pink or instructed in gender neutrality. For which I can forgive her. But for not buying me a Barbie doll?? Never.

Today’s word is ‘polyamorous’. Read it in the paper. You’d guess it has something to do with loving anything, or perhaps everything, just from the Latin. “My friend is polyamorous” it stated. So I at first thought she’s into boys and girls and animals and plastic objects, perhaps corpses, trees, who fucking knows. But no. Apparently its more ‘everyone’ than ‘everything’. So please amend your internal word-list accordingly. Delete these terms: slut, bike, tart, whore, slag and all synonyms thereof and replace with ‘polyamorous’. Easy. Done that.

The Spurs match yesterday was very binary. We did all the attacking, Swansea did all the defending. So a proper binary score; 0-0. Was it dull? Not really, Spurs looked fab at times, not so fab at others, Swansea were incredibly organised, with a back 5 in front of the goalie and a line of three 5 yards in front. I’ve never felt that football matches are defined by the goals scored. Ok, they’re nice but I’ve seen some amazingly exciting 0-0 draws, real edge-of-the-seat stuff. This wasn’t one. You only moved to the edge of your seat yesterday to avoid the cramp of inertia. But it was ok. I won’t bang on about missed penalty awards because that’s such a horribly Wengeresque thing to do. We didn’t win because we didn’t score. End of.

Fortunately I went to the match with The Miserable Fucker which redeemed the day. Because he’s not really that miserable, though he reserves the right. And for 90 minutes (ok, ‘plus stoppage time’) we ignored most of the match to pictorially illustrate the far more interesting conversations about grandchildren obsessions, about food obsessions, about how the world could be made better if everyone just ate more meat and killed more animals, about whether its appropriate for old men to get tattoos and if so, of what? And ok, a bit about football. So did I enjoy ‘the game’ which started when we met up, the travelling together with other friends, the bullshit, the banter? And did I enjoy ‘the match’, are in fact different questions. Neither of which I’m prepared to answer without my lawyer.

Happy Sunday, which it may be for either Chelsea or Arsenal but not both.

A xxxx

Britain never signed up to the full ‘Schengen’ agreement by which all member states of Europe, plus a few others like Norway agreed to ‘free passage of Europeans between states’. We never signed up because we’ve always had a small-island-mentality and we always will. Not saying it was a bad thing not to do the full Schengen, just saying it was a thing. Which won’t matter a jot once we finally, eventually, agonisingly Brexit because we’ll probably end up joining the Schengen to get the trade deals. Even though we didn’t need to when we were a part of the madness that we’ll call ‘Europe’. That clear?

Free passage of Europeans means that they can cross borders. It never referred to the freedom of Europeans to march along the streets of Islington singing German marching songs in groups of 15,000 or more whilst setting off flares and being very foreign. We never signed up to that.

So when someone on Thursday night sent me a video of precisely that I immediately went and hid behind the sofa. I mean; fuck me!! Germans marching with gesticulating arm-movements and aggressive chanting in London! Holy shit. And on a thursday too, which is not a European football night. Then I realised that for some poor souls, Thursday night IS Euro night. That other Euro night. Oh. (Sorry; but for 20 years we’ve endured such gloating so cut me some slack here). And this was just those lovely Cologne fans come to see their relatively lowly team compete at even that minorly ‘high’ level for the first time in decades. So the whole fucking town came over. Even though they were only awarded 3,000 tickets for the ‘away fans’. Itself a bit ‘mean’ really, but that’s Arsenal for you. 20,000 of the Germans came, a-singin’ and a-marchin’ and basically being really Germanic. Without tickets. Though many did have tickets but in the Arsenal sections of the ground. Supposedly some error in the system where you enter the team you support; “zat vould be ze Arzenal’, and your address: Bustenhalterstrasse 52… and those very clever computers work out whether you might be a chancing away fan rather than a true Gooner scumbag. Or not, as the case may have been.

You have to laugh.

Off to Wembley soon for the Swansea game. Doubtless after yesterday’s ‘event’ at Parsons Green the security at the game today will be vast and thorough. I bloody hope so.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

In an effort to try and reduce obesity, the world’s fastest growing health risk, doctors are now going to send porkers on cookery courses. Exercise classes. So they can eat properly and move more. That will cost about 500 quid a person but they reckon the long-term gain in reduction of diabetes will more than compensate. Though initially you need to cough up (no pun)… 500 quid… times every fat person up north… add in the few down here… Wales and Scotland… well, its a few billion quid. Everything the NHS does costs a few billion quid by the time the administrators have had their kick-backs from the diet and exercise companies involved. Where really, all you need is four words, spoken preferably over the top of a pair of reading glasses, with due gravitas and sincerity; “eat less, move more” and the world would be fine again.

Which was somewhat contrary to my experience at the cinema last night. We went to see Detroit. Kathy Bigelow’s bio-pic of the terrible race riots in the eponymous city in 1967, focussing on one specific event during that time of insanity in which three black guys were basically, cold-bloodedly murdered by the police and half a dozen others assaulted and beaten. Its not exactly a ‘feel-good’ movie. But looked interesting. And was. Though not as interesting as it was laborious. Not just overly long but long and slow. One of those films that you endure for the sake of learning things rather than enjoy for its own sake.

The tickets were free! Lila’s mum gets free tickets every week if she walks sufficient ‘steps’ for her health insurance to love her. And give her a pair of cinema tickets that she can’t use because she has a baby. That’d be Lila then. So we went in her place. And when you pick them up there’s a popcorn machine. A hot-dog thing. Fizzy, sugary drinks. Nachos. Which they drown in bright yellow fat and call it ‘cheese’ then throw on some jalapinos (one of yer 5-a-day, obvs). You could ask for a salad. But they’d look puzzled and offer you ice-cream instead. You could ask for carrot batons with humous, but they wouldn’t know what the fuck you were talking about. No, sorry sir, we only sell fat and sugar and only in humungous quantities. To justify the outrageous price we’re going to charge you.

I ordered a popcorn, medium, sweet. I only do sweet. Mel almost prefers salt but I have trouble picking the sweet ones out in the dark so she concedes to avoid the spitting out that may otherwise follow. “Would you like to go large for just 30p extra???” Holy shit, I thought, I’m living ‘Supersize Me’. I’m being upgraded.

Don’t you know that the country is suffering unprecedented obesity? Isn’t this kind of crass commercialism the very reason? Because food, especially popcorn, costs virtually nothing, so you pile it on to justify increasing your take-per-seat? In some cases very large seats. Its destructive to society and harmful to individuals and you should be ashamed of yourself and your rotten company.

That’s what I should have said. Instead I opted for, ‘yeah, why not, I’ll have the large, thanks’.

Fortunately I have the metabolism of a mosquito so its no biggy. Oh, and I’m a pig, so that was 30p well spent. Now I just have to live with the guilt.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

So a normal morning for me is nice. Mel brings me a cup of tea in bed as she leaves to go swimming (I know; spoilt rotten; which I reciprocate, in case you’re worried, on Saturdays when I go to me early martial arts and leave her lounging in bed like a total princess!!). And I sit there, princess Andy, perusing the paper all calm and lovely. Get up about 7.30, shower, shave, sh- whatever, and then its downstairs for a leisurely breakfast. Though how leisurely a banana can be I haven’t worked out yet. Drink more tea, write a blog, then on me bike and off to the tube. That’s ‘normal’. Easy. Nice.

This week we had ‘house guests’. Lila and her mummy. So the morning routine changed a little. Lila wakes up, quite late for a baby really, and calls out, not crying, not screaming, just nonsense sounds, similar to the ones Mel uses, but without the Yorkshire accent. And I run in and grab her, before her mother can get out of bed. And she greets me with a big smile (no-one’s ever that happy to see me, including me) and I grab her out of the cot. And we play. And read the papers together. Lila’s very interested in what’s happening in the world. And whether the plight of the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar is better to chew than the Spurs match report on the back page. And we jump about and giggle and stand up, fall over (and that’s just me) and its wonderful. Eventually, several hours later I’ve managed to take a shower while she feeds and then I take her back. ‘We’ eat our banana. I chew and swallow my bits, she’s more creative. Way more creative. So after mopping the floor we play more. Our favourite game is rolling over. Even if we don’t want to end up on our fronts, that’s where we roll. Because we can. I put her back and she rolls again. Don’t look for logic, she’s a woman. Sorry, what was I saying; she’s a BAYBEEE.

And she’s leaving me today. Life goes back to ‘normal’. But who wants that?

Normal for Spurs is winning home football matches. And in that respect life went back to ‘normal’ for them last night, beating Dortmund in the Champions League. Not gloating, not bragging, but Dortmund are a ‘proper’ team. German. Good. Classy. Not like the unheard-ofs that many other British teams were fortunate enough to play. The Qarabags and Basels and the finest that obscure European principalities with populations less than 4,546 people can muster. Dortmund. Who nearly won the competition not so many years ago under Jurgen Klopp. Whatever happened to him, I wonder?

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

The i-phone X is coming out. Sorry; THE I-PHONE X IS COMING OUT!!!! Raise the flag and shout halleluyah. Or at least, buy a few Apple shares. If you can afford 1. Cos its gonna be the biggest thing since the abacus. Since the wheel. Since sticky-backed-plastic. This is gonna be massive. It has to be to justify the 1000 pound price tag. A grand for a phone. You can buy an ipad for 300 quid but the phone is a grand. You ordered it yet?

I haven’t. Having managed to avoid iphones 1-9, or perhaps A-W, I’ll stick with my 27 year-old Nokia with that annoying ringtone. And my Motorola ‘Oyster’. I’m not mean, I’m just… mean.

But iphones are fully legal under EU law. Therefore, come the ‘glorious day’ when we are no longer EU-bound, it will pass seamlessly into British law. That’s the deal. We call it ‘repeal’ but actually its just embracing all those lovely laws and regulations that those Euro-fuckers have forced upon us for 50 years and making them our very own. So we can destroy them, throw them out and use them as part of the Grand Foreign-People Avoidance Plan of 2019. And the best bit of all; we don’t need to put them individually to parliamentary vote. The government, being all-wonderful, faultless and totally trustworthy, can decide for us without bothering all those moaners and whingers who sit on the opposition benches with the minutae of the laws. They can just take the good without the bad. As they see them. These are the so-called Henry VIII laws. Henry invoked massive power to himself because anyone who dared argue with him would be either divorced, outlived or beheaded. And Theresa May wants the same powers over the EU laws. For her government to accept them, reject them or change them as she sees fit without due parliamentary process.

So she can, with a sweep of her pen/ipad, end those pesky Europeans from coming here (leaving our hospitals, corn-fields, restaurants and building sites almost empty, but what the hell), and keep the BMWs rolling in on their superbly oiled bearings all the way from Germany. The initial reading of the repeal bill was read last night and passed. But there is far to go with it. And when ultra-sensible, ultra-Conservative good person Dominic Grieve, the former Attorney General, says his own party are wrong on this massive legal issue, ya gotta think they’re wrong.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx