Andy's Glasses

An amazing thing happened to me yesterday. I watched a sporting event on tv and came away at the end deliriously happy, thrilled to bits, excited with massive relief and feeling on top of the world, invincible and ready to invade Iran single-handedly.

The England France rugby match was always likely to be heated. At least for me; I hate the bloody French. (Please note, in the interests of not causing offence, there are exceptions to my blanket dismissal of an entire and populous nation, just not very many). And for my bestest, oldest mate, who ‘lives among them’, his life is miserable if England lose. Which, according to statistics and probably common sense, they were bound to do. The French have been rampant, dominant, colossal in European rugby of late, whereas England had lost their last 7 games.

All went to (devious, French) plan by half time, with the garlic-eaters having a slim lead. Then England took the lead. Then France took it back, with just 10 minutes left on the clock. And in the last minute, England scored a try. All Fin Smith had to do was convert the kick to win the match. How hard can it be? When you look like you’re 14 years old and are playing in front of 82,000 at Twickenham in your first ever England start? But the boy done good. He kept his cool. My heart raced to pre-surgical levels.

It felt so good to win a match. Such an unusual experience to end a sporting game not in tears of frustration, anger and despair. So I made a decision: I’m done with football. Finished with Spurs. It’s all over. Too depressing. Too annoying. Too… FUCKING EVERYTHING!!!!! And I’m not going to put myself through it every week. I mean, what do single or divorced Spurs fans do? They have no-one to take it out on. Must be awful. Anyway, we’re done, me and football. I’ve paid my dues over 60 bloody years and I simply can’t take it any more. WON’T take it any more.

Until 5.35 today. That’s a sufficient break, I think. From the rugby win last night to Spurs game at Villa today is almost a 24 hour ‘hiatus’. That should have cured me. I only hope it cured my fucking useless football team.

Happy/Desperate Sunday

A xxxx

A woman had a terrible reaction to her Botox fix. Ended up in hospital with her eyes so swollen they wouldn’t open, lots of pain and terrible swelling in her skin. Friends told her that at least there were no wrinkles. If she could have smiled, she would have.

I’m not saying this woman is a moron. She was given dodgy, black market Botox from China (where else?) and had a not uncommon reaction from injecting rubbish into your face.

So I have to ask: why fuck about with some delusion of youthful appearance at the potential cost of looking much worse than you did before? I keep seeing women on the tube with ‘those lips’. And I think ‘WTF?’ Which is not the normal ‘what the fuck?’ but the more appropriate ‘why the fuck?’ Because I get that kids who spend an inordinate length of time online are presented with endless images of ‘physical perfection’. And then they get ideas from the actual brain-dead like Kim Kardashian, who gives the message that whatever you wish to look like, however ridiculous, it can be achieved with sufficient surgical assistance.

People assume that I’ve had masses of surgery, that this level of beauty and youth simply could not be natural. Well it’s not. Its supernatural. And for those who aspire to such physical perfection my advice is simple: never look in a mirror and create the delusion of your choice. But fuck about with needles? I’d rather look like… a man of 68 who looks 78 and needs work done.

The problem in Japan though, is low birth-rate. Same as Italy. The men are too ugly to find women willing to have sex with them. Or vice versa. Yet, surprisingly, this has nothing to do with desirability. This is a truly troubling phenomenon where people aren’t hooking up and when they do, they decide not to procreate. They haven’t read their bibles sufficiently about go forth and multiply, so they don’t. The problem being that within about 10 years over a third of the population will be retired and needing medical care and pensions, with insufficient workers to top up the funds. And there will end what for most countries is a giant Ponsi scheme. But what is similar with Japan and Italy is that they don’t encourage much immigration. Which is arguably the solution to this problem. Except immigrants get old too, eventually, unless you can find ways to get rid of them once they pass 60. Donald Trump could do it.

Happy FA Cup Saturday

A xxxx

Donald Trump is a moronic imbecile who shouldn’t be allowed to order in McDonalds, let alone run a country.
Donald Trump is a complete antidote to the anodyne norm of benign and impotent national leaders.

If these two sentences seem incompatible, incongruous, contradictory? then welcome to my world. Every time I watch the news, those words come to my mind. In no particular order.

Because Don, as I call him when I’m in a good mood with him, gets things done. Ok, they’re not always good things, not from a ‘non-USA’ perspective especially. But he makes his seemingly ridiculous proclamations, issues his ‘executive orders’ and the whole fucking world catches fire.

He’s not stupid. Much of what he says is actually a circuitous route to blackmail people or countries into doing what he wants. Like the ‘tariff threat’ to Mexico. Which had the Mexicans finding 10,000 soldiers to guard the US border, within 24 hours. As Trump said: ‘permanently… and forever’. So possibly a bit stupid.

And he wants to take over Greenland. Which is part of Denmark. Like Gibraltar is ‘part of England’. But unlike those loyalist Gibraltarians, the Greens fucking hate Denmark. Which doesn’t mean Don would be welcome, they’d probably just like to be ‘Greenland’, full stop.

Now Gaza. Clear out all the ‘Palestinian’ people, send ’em to Jordan and Egypt, so Gaza can have a re-fit. Like when you eat in the lounge for 3 weeks whilst your new kitchen is fitted. There are many who see this as Trump taking the opportunity to acquire some really fabulous, beach-side real estate, for next to nothing. And when I say ‘fabulous’ and ‘beach-side’; despite current appearance, it could be fabulous and the beach is the same one I lie on almost every year, 50 miles up the road in Tel Aviv, and it is fabulous. Obviously the ceasefire would need to be made permanent before any sunbathing is likely to occur.

There’s also the point that Egypt and Jordan have never been overly keen on shipping in busloads of Gazan people. Coupled with the fact that it’s unlikely many of them even want to live in Gaza, but Israel. The ‘other’ ‘1-state-solution’ which nobody ever mentions even though its on Hamas to-do list. Saudi Arabia and Syria would never want that many Iran-supporting people in their land.

The reality is that Gaza could be a ‘riviera’ site. Israel is, Beirut was, Dubai wants to be (and will probably be working out a way to move the entire Mediterranean Sea into the desert as we speak), Egypt has done it in the Red Sea. But Gaza, instead of choosing a great route to future national prosperity, chose Hamas. Who promised them ‘all of Palestine!!!’, which includes what most people call ‘Israel’. And this delusion was embraced by the citizens of Gaza more than any appeals for a better future.

So is Trump’s idea any more far-fetched than Kier Starmer’s blanket disagreement because he wants ‘Palestinians’ to live in his mythical ‘2-state solution-land’? I’m not saying Trump’s plan is particularly viable, but it is interesting. And would solve many problems in the region. Possibly creating a few more but that’s politics.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

Ya know; anyone can be a Liverpool fan. Its so fucking easy. You just relax, get a bit exited if you’re not 3-nil up by half time, possibly a bit anxious if ‘they’ score a goal when you’ve only netted 6, and just stroll away at the end, giving Arne Slot a wave with another 3 points in your pocket. Every week. Its so predictable it doesn’t exactly get boring but the wins must to some extent get taken for granted. Then you walk back to the station, stealing whatever you can find on the way.

The rewards for Tottenham fans are generally in heaven. You certainly get sod all down here. You thrash lowly Southampton, back in the middle of December, then have to wait until February for your next league win. Ok, there were a few Euro matches, some great cup games, but its the league which is of utmost importance. To win a cup whilst getting relegated is not fun. Its doomsday. Taking our billion pound stadium into the Championship. Playing an entire season (at least) where the only ‘superstars’ to visit White Hart Lane would be Beyoncee and Lamar Jackson (the quarterback for the Baltimore Ravens, FFS, keep up!!!), would be as depressing as it would be financially crippling.

But when we win… when the gods conspire to allow us a victory… OMG that feels wonderful. And it did yesterday. With an effect on the spirit that no Liverpool fan could even imagine whilst they’re busy adding up in threes. The few who possess the mathematical ability to do so, anyway.

We were sublime, magnificent and masterly. Superlative in every way. Other than the football, but that is no longer the issue. WE JUST WANNA FUCKING WINNNNNN!!!! And we did, and it felt wonderful. So wonderful that I was still smiling when Arsenal’s 5th went in against Man City about 2 hours later. Something that would in normal circumstances make me miserable and depressed.

We slipped from ‘Ange-ball’ into something more… pragmatic. Slightly less stylish, less ‘push’, more ‘pull’, more ‘Dyche-ball’ in nature, but none the less effective for it. We didn’t concede a goal. Against a pretty free-scoring side. We… what’s the word… oh, yeah, we def-en-ded. Got it.

So here we go. Are we prepared to sacrifice style for results? Flair for points? The Spurs ideal to avoid being ‘Spursy’?

I think we should have a few more dull, drab, boring victories before we decide.

Exceptionally happy Monday

A xxxx

Ok, so I cook a bit. It’s no big deal. Here’s what you do. You get some ingredients, stir ‘em up, marinade something wot needs marinading, fry those which require it, put a lid on and cook for 15 minutes/1 hour 25/3 hours 42 on gas mark 7/220 degrees/on a low light on the hob, then eat. What’s hard about that? What’s all the fuss about? Generally though, I just ‘wing it’. Its easy. Fry onions and mushrooms together and you’re 90% there. Anything else you add is a bonus. But here’s the secret. (Shhhhhh)

Always add soy sauce. To everything. And… maple syrup. OMG, maple syrup??? In something savoury???? Surely not!!!! But trust me. I didn’t invent this shit. Furthermore the geezer who invented ‘salted caramel’ wasn’t the first person to realise that sweet and savoury don’t just sometimes go together, but really really enhance each other. In fact I think my dad invented it in 1962 when he started having his breakfast toast with cheddar cheese and apricot jam. A man ahead of his time. Before some pretentious nob (probably French with those qualities) made marmite ice cream, or ox-tail blancmange.

If I’m cooking brussel sprouts, I slice them and marinade them in garlic, olive oil, soy sauce and maple syrup. Try it, it’s magical. Unless you hate Brussel sprouts. Then it’s revolting.

And I use maple syrup because honey is a thing of the past. Unless you’re a bee. I went to New Zealand. Had Manuka honey. If not the best in the world, certainly the most outrageously fucking expensive in the world. What do you have to pay a bee to end up with a 25-pound jar of honey? Anyway, despite Manuka making your heart stronger, your legs shapelier, your blood… better and your penis several sizes larger!!!!, (honest, its says so on the bottle!), it tases like honey.

A Canadian mate brought us a bottle of Maple Syrup. From Canadia, so it was proper, American-style, fat-bastard-appropriate, half-a-gallon type bottle. You’d think it grows on trees over there, or somefink. And because Mel is in fact Canadian by birth and they take away your passport if you don’t consume the required amount of their syrup each year, I started using it in cooking. I’m actually worried since yesterday that every time Mel comes home I’ll have to pay 25% of something to Donald Trump. But I’ll speak to the Home Office about that.

All this because yesterday we went out for tea and I made a cheesecake. My (dear, sweet, deceased) mother’s recipe. A proper, cooked, Jewish cheesecake, not that hyper sweetened, ultra-refrigerated American type shit which sets your teeth on edge, even sweet teeth like mine. I have no idea what cheesecake Jewish Americans eat, must be really difficult. But everyone at the tea (all Mel’s family, so a pretty useless bunch generally) said: What??? ANDY made the cake!!!!???? As if merely owning testicles precludes following a recipe. Well, a recipe is just like a car owner’s manual, but with less spanners.

Anyway, Spurs won, which makes a gorgeous, glorious, sunny winter day that much more wonderful, wonderous and, quite frankly, amazing. But more on that tomorrow, once the rest of the results are in.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

That’s the new promotion by the police. Speed Kills! Nothing subtle. Nothing cryptic. Nothing too verbose. Just the facts: speed kills!

What they don’t tell you is that driving too slowly makes you want to kill. Its different, I know, but its real. I get behind the wheel and I’m just fine until things happen. Then I want to kill, (in no particular order):

-Someone who sticks to the “20 mph” limit.
-Someone who is blocking the ‘fast lane’ traveling below the speed limit.
-The person at the front when the traffic light goes green and no-one moves. I count to… well, to ‘one’ and start hooting. But would rather be shooting.
-Someone who is in front of me and going slower than I want to travel. Which is, pretty much, everybody.
-The man who invented speed bumps.
-His wife, children and extended family.
-The man who invented speed cameras.
-Sadiq Kahn. Just because.

So there you have it. My ‘murder list’. And that’s just the one whilst driving. Which, other than abject tossers walking down crowded streets staring at their phones, is the only time I actually get angry. In any meaningful… murderous way. Oh, watching the news on tv raises the hackles, but only on BBC, ITV, CNN, Sky, Al Jazeira and all the others. And, of course, reading the Mail on Sunday makes me very angry. Which is why I get it delivered every Sunday. It’s good anger. Raises the blood pressure. Like doing some cardio work in the gym. So it’s healthy, right??

Anyway, looks like Heathrow’s 3rd runway is indeed going ahead. This, according to our chancellor, is a bit like everyone in the country waiting at a Las Vegas slot machine, holding a bucket under it waiting for the jackpots to come a’flooding out. However, I think we may need to be rather patient whilst we’re waiting for the ‘inevitable’ growth windfalls, because to build the runway, assuming permissions are granted and Ed Milliband and Sadiq Kahn are executed so they can’t prevent it, they ‘just’ have to put part of the M25 into a tunnel and knock down a few hundred homes. That shouldn’t take too long. When do infrastructure projects ever run over predicted times?

Happy Thursday.

A xxxx

Trump’s gonna go mad. He hates China with a passion already. And that was before… DeepSeek-gate!!!! Those pesky little dudes from the East have made an AI… thing, that’s better than Chat GPT, it ourperforms OpenAI, it does everything everyone else’s does (I have not one fucking clue what that might be, I’m still living in fear of AI because of the Terminator movies and won’t touch it), BUT, and here’s the big thing: it cost just $6million to set up, and its very cheap to run. And it uses ‘old technology’ because America won’t sell the newest ‘chips’ to China. What’s more; its free. The Western rival AI platforms cost over $100 million to get running. And run at a much higher ongoing cost than DeepSeek.

America has invested $100 BILLION in new AI, as well as another 65bil from Meta and 80 from Microsoft. And up steps the Chinese and make it all look stupid. And as a consequence, Nvidia, the massive, ‘big-six’ company which makes all the chips which the US won’t sell to China, took a $600billion drop in its share valuation yesterday. Which is a totally ‘WTF????’ amount to lose. Ok, its only ‘paper money’ but still. What would ‘600 billion’ even look like? Probably look like a few men with very sad faces. Crying. The others in ‘Big Tech, USA’ aren’t doing so well today either.

So basically, the Chinese have shafted the American stock market. Every fund worldwide invests in those ‘big six’ companies, Meta and Microsoft and Apple and… Nvidia. Because they’re ‘sure things’. And now they’re suddenly not. You can buy it all cheaper by exploiting Chinese children in hot-house work houses, probably get a few Uighurs slaughtered in the process and get cut-price, low-cost AI which reports back to Alexa and President Xi and probably sucks all the data from your computers and then uses it for the purposes of human rights abuses in Shanghai. A win-win.

I can’t see Don letting this go without a fight? Retaliation? With his new BFF, Elon, the massive AI-advocate, as long as its American AI, retribution will follow. And very soon. Watch this space…

Happy Tuesday,

A xxxx

Today I’m going to introduce a new word. A Yiddish word. Rather appropriate as today is the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Which also represents possibly the last time anyone was ever happy and relieved to see the Russian army coming. And Yiddish is such a rarity now, after 6 million predominantly Yiddish speakers were murdered. Very few now speak it as a language, but a lot of the words are used because they can say so much more than English words can.

And today’s word is: tsurus. It means ‘trouble’, or ‘aggro’ or ‘problems’, but in a way that would always be accompanied by a sigh of such magnitude that the listener would never underestimate the extent of the troubles. Which, as with all Yiddish words, is very contextually dependant. So you might have a big tsurus (they’re always ‘big’, there’s no other sizes on offer) because a bunch of Cossacks just rode into your shtetl on horseback to rape and pillage, or you might have big tsurus because you’re ingroing toenail is a bit inflamed. Either way, no ‘tsurus’ can ever be overstated.

My tsurus is with my football team. Tottenham Hotspur. Who have now gone the entire slippery slope from unlucky, inconsistent, unpredictable, through awful, dire and abysmal, to tragic, WTF and today: big tsurus.

We gave up on winning the league when the season was 90 minutes old and we hadn’t beaten Leicester. (Who then went on an even more abysmal run than Spurs, only to find some minor degree of security and hope by beating us yesterday).

So it was ‘top 4’ for us then. That’ll do. Champions League next year!!, as Arsenal and Liverpool were already working out who would win and who’d be runner up.

Then top 6 as we kept losing to bottom 3 teams and our aspirations had to downgrade somewhat. Then as the losses kept coming to ‘bottom 3’ teams, two things happened. Firstly, those teams were lifted out of the bottom 3, and secondly, we plummeted to mid-table.

And now, we are where we are. There are no more bottom 3 teams to beat. We’ve ‘undertaken’ them all and appear to be fighting for a place in the relegation zone. And doing it very convincingly.

Arsenal had their own tsurus too, on Saturday. Had a man sent off. As they often do. And, as they always do, they complained like fuck about the unfairness of it. It was never a foul/free-kick/penalty/offside/whatever we’re supposed to have done. But this time, they actually had a point. Of course no refs listen to Arteta because he complains about every single decision every week. So he’s the boy who cried ‘lobo’. (That’s ‘wolf’ in Spanish, in case you only speak Yiddish). But, much as I was happy for them to go down to 10 men, I can’t see how the ref chose that colour card. There ya go. Not my tsurus. I got enough of my own.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

Who wants another runway at Heathrow? I do. I want my own one so I don’t get delayed because some slack pilot has ‘missed his slot’, because he’s got a hangover and turned off his alarm. But in reality, we ALL need a new runway. 2 is just not enough. And it isn’t for a true international ‘hub’, which Heathrow is. The airport currently handles up to 200,000 flights a year and that is just not enough. Because if Heathrow is more successful, England is more successful. Although, obviously, Spain does better because they own our major airport now. Well, with the Qataris, who chose to invest when they weren’t harbouring Hamas leaders. Probably used the money which we gave Gaza through UNWRA but which never made it to the Gazan people. Anyway, more people coming in means more people spending money here. Unless those people arrive by boat, because they don’t have any cash left. And accessibility makes it that overseas businesses will choose to invest here. Making Heathrow even more important. More runways, more flights, more money. Simple.

Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, appreciates this in her quest for ‘growth’. Even though she lacks the sense to know that taxing businesses punitively will only create ‘growth’ in unemployment. But she met up with a lot of ‘big boys’ in Davos last week and she was impressing them with her ‘big plans’. Part of which, she decided, is a third runway at Heathrow.

The first problem is this.

Ed Miliband.

The man incapable of eating a sandwich without humiliating himself has become ‘Mr Carbon Neutral’ for the entire country, if not the entire planet. And increasing the number of aircraft taking off in Hounslow will produce such an excess of carbon that all the electric cars we can have in our driveway won’t be able to make up for it. And the fact that Miliband is an abject tosser does not necessarily mean that there will not be conflict of interest in our government and between departments.

The second problem is: where ya gonna put the third runway? You can see on the map the present 2. Long things running across the site, one ‘north’ one ‘south’. So where you going to put number 3? They’re 2 miles long. And in between is the terminals, so you can’t put one there. Which means you can either build vertical take-off planes or you need another two mile stretch, which will involve destroying part of the neighbourhood adjacent to the airport. That’s fine by me, I don’t live there. But there will be NIMBYism going on. And who can blame them.

Or you could build ‘Heathrow’s 3rd runway’ in Yorkshire. Plenty of room up there. And you’d get on a ‘train’ at Terminal 5, much like you do now, and it would take you straight to the gate.

Please arrive at the airport 7 hours before your departure time.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx