Andy's Glasses

First Diana Abbott malfunctioned when asked 2 weeks ago about police numbers and costing. She had no clue. Started mumbling and conjuring figures out of thin air on the Nick Ferrari show. “Errrr… that’ll cost… errrr… just a minute… YES, 300,000 a year”. So that’s paying policemen £30 a year each then? enquired Ferrari. “Oh… errrr… wait a sec… errrr…” and on it went. Her brain was subject to cutbacks and redundancies which left it weak and vulnerable to cyber-attack by the Chinese or Russians, or even by Alexa in my kitchen. Not that I’d have that woman in my kitchen. Its against the rules; anyone who’s ever shagged Jeremy Corbyn; banned for life. Rule 364/AJVE/7772389:g.

Then BA malfunctioned on Saturday. Big time. And although ‘computer crash’ is way better than ‘plane crash’, it doesn’t feel like that at the time when you’re 15 hours at Terminal 5 without water or food or any information whatsoever. The CEO said later that they could have done better perhaps with getting in touch. No shit. Perhaps used social media, blah, blah, blah. Here’s an idea: how about a n’announcement?? Like a loud voice over some loud speaker system telling people what’s going on. You don’t need fucking snapchat when every you want to address is in the fucking room.

Then yesterday, Jeremy Corbyn himself malfunctioned. On the radio. Woman’s Hour, to be precise. He was telling the, presumably, women of Britain how every child would get free nursery school places under Labour, which is a great idea. Jezza is full of great ideas. Just not a clue how to pay for them. So Emma Barnett asked him: how much will this cost, Jeremy? And he turned into Diane Abbott without the wig. “Errrr… let me see… hmmm… errr… I’ll get back to you on that”. Don’t you know???? (Implication: YOU COME ON MY SHOW TO EXTOL THE VIRTUES OF FREE SCHOOLING FOR A MILLION-PLUS KIDS AND YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW MUCH IT COSTS???? YOU TOSSERRRRR).

And that’s when it got nasty. Not on the show, they just moved on. But the ‘real’ Cobynites came out of the woodwork and onto their twitter feeds. Suddenly, Emma has become a ‘Zionist bitch’, a ‘Zionist shill’, whatever one o’them might be, and lots of other really pleasant comments, obviously coming from the many, not just the few.

I don’t mind a bit of banter, I don’t mind if they’d called her a slag, a bitch, whatever. And I’m not sensitive to anti-semitic bollocks. But what actually irked me is that the term ‘zionist’ is now, in these people’s feeble minds, an insult. As if calling someone that is the worst thing they could think of.

Once again the long, deep shadow of anti-semitism follows Corbyn wherever he goes. Whereas the brightness of simple mathematics left him years ago.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

Some decisions are hard to make. Not exactly ‘Sophie’s Choice’ but, like, which tennis racquet should I buy? Because someone, (no names mentioned, RAAACHELLLL!!!) broke my last one. Ok, she would probably say that ‘the string broke’, whereas some of us are not so accepting of so-called ‘accidents!!!’. I normally wait about 3 years til the grip is worn out then reckon when that happens, its God’s way of telling me I need a new one. So I went to Mike’s place to get another, as you do. Sports Direct. On a saturday afternoon. Which would normally have been just ‘hell’ but because it was about 20 minutes before the cup final kick-off, the place, the roads, the car park, all empty. Brilliant. Then you’re faced with a wall of racquets. You pick one up, bang the strings, hold the handle… hmmmmm. Then another, bang the strings (remarkably similar to the first one), hold the grip (remarkably similar to the first one) and then… HELPPP!!! But there’s never anyone to help at Sports Direct. And if there is then its a 16 year-old girl who is struggling with her GCSE in art and is worried that her boyfriend of 27 minutes is seeing her best mate, Kylie, behind her back, over by the golfing accessories, and she’s getting a cold sore as well. So you look, you fondle, the racquets, not the assistant, nor Kylie, and you decide.

Choosing a government is perhaps more complex, though obviously there aren’t as many choices as there are tennis racquets in the world. And if you ignore the Lib Dems, which everyone should and most people did last time of asking, and similarly the Greens because its just a wasted vote then it becomes a very limited choice indeed. I won’t even mention UKIP, ok, other than there, because their esteemed leader, eager for any hard-right headline, last week claimed that not only would his party bring back the death penalty for terrorist murderers, but HE’D KILL CHILDKILLERS HIMSELF!!! Note to Paul Nuttall: YOU CAN’T EXECUTE A SUICIDE BOMBERS YOU ABSOLUTE TOTAL FUCKING MORON.

So its ‘him’ or ‘her’. Corby or May. Jezza the Red, Terry the Terrible. And they had a ‘debate’ last night. Together. But separately. In the same place at different times. Cos that’s what they wanted. And it was hard and brutal, fielding questions first by the studio audience and then by Jeremy ‘Pit-Bull’ Paxman who was, it must be said, horrible. To both of them. And my main worry was that Corbyn came across so decent and normal and measured that even I was impressed with a man who I know, underneath that groomed veneer, is Joseph Stalin. Theresa was ok but is still reeling from abandoning every old person in Britain and stealing their homes.

The only saving grace, the only hope really, is immigration. Because ‘we’ voted to leave Europe pretty much for no other reason and Jezza is weak on immigration whereas Theresa sounds almost as strong as she did for the last 4 times she’s promised to control it. We must hope its enough to keep Corbyn out.

I’m voting Head for tennis racquets, anyone-but-Corbyn for everything else.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

What do you do on a rainy bank holiday monday when you’ve just spent 2 hours with the granddaughter and had her wrenched screaming (me, not her) from my vice-like grip? You bake a cake, that’s what real men do. A cheesecake in fact. Which I’ve never made but my mum made the best everrrrrr and I was hoping it might be a genetic thing, so at least I’d have half a good cheesecake. Still baking so I’ll let you know.

So with my assistant, who always knows best, even though she’s only there to hold the beaters for me, we baked. And when you bake you need music, right? Its on the top of every recipe. Just before ‘measure out 250gms of flour’ it says ‘put on some 1970s rock music so fucking loud that the milk curdles’. That’s how I read it. Then it said ‘separate 2 eggs’, so I put one in the garage and left the other in the fridge. So far so good. Its only following a recipe for gawd’s sake.

But the music is important. And we have an Amazon player thingy. You know, its like having a permanent Chinese spy in your kitchen who eats nothing and can sing you any of 40 million songs upon request. She’s called Alexa but I thing Gung Ho or Kwai Chang might be more appropriate. But that 40 million is actually for real, as claimed by Amazon. So we can all hear what we want, right? Kind’a right; we can all hear what we want but not necessarily at the same time.

So we started, under the assistant’s instruction, with Ed Shearan. She loves Ed Shearan. After the second track I was about to put Alexa in the fucking blender, but instead played some common ground. Steely Dan. We both love that. But then one of us kind’of goes onto song-association-football mode and starts playing tracks that the previous one reminds me of, maybe due to the time, maybe the tone, maybe who knows. But we ended up with the Groundhogs. Mel wasn’t impressed but I was. Firstly that you can get such an obscure band so easily and then with their phenomenal mix of 70s rock in ultra-jazz time signatures. From there we went to Islands in the stream, always safe, then onto Jolene. And then, quite logically really, to ‘Stand by your Man’. Which, if ever the society for Male Chauvinist Pigs, Misogynists, wife-beaters and Bad Motherfuckers needed an anthem, that would be it.

Because poor Tammy Wynette advises you (sistas) to ‘stand by your man’, cos, after all, he’s just a man. Which may sound patronising and pathetic but is actually a blanket excuse for all and any of man’s failings and shortcomings. However big a shit he is: stand by him. Either Tammy put back the feminist movement by 25 years or Nashville is exempt from such things altogether. Either way I’m now going to fly a confederate flag from Lila’s pram. You’re never too young to make a political statement.

Happy Bank Holiday Monday

A xxxx

I love films. And because I’m a total and unrelenting movie snob, I only really watch them at the cinema. And I love art house films and French films and Iranian films and Korean lesbian films and… well, any lesbian films really, and I even like films that say nothing and go nowhere. Except Koyaanisqatsi which I fucking hated. And I hate ‘blockbusters’ and franchises and anything with a number in the title except SE7EN and anything with Tom Cruise except Rain Man, and I love weird and bizarre and David Lynch and the Coens and Tarantino and… and… and…

They’re the rules. The party line. Why go and see Fast and Furious 19 when you could watch flowers growing in fields in Nicaragua to a backing track of long-forgotten (with really good reason) Aztec bongo music played on shrunken heads?

But I have guilty secrets. Fucking loads of them. Movies that I really shouldn’t even deem worthy of the ticket price yet which I watch time and again on tv. Well, bits of them anyway. Terminator. Terminator 2 (breaks two cardinal rules but I dearly love that movie), Pretty Woman (Nooooo!!!! yes, love it), Officer and a Gentleman, Maid in Manhatten and… the worst of all, Top Gun.

The ‘fingernails down a blackboard’ effect of little Tommy was more than offset by Kelly McGillis at her absolute finest, driving a Porsche 356 with planes and motorbikes and Russians being shot out of the sky. Add in Val Kilmer at his slimiest and you really do have a wonderful film fit for the entire cheese-making industry of the world. And I love it. Everyone loves it. It took our breath away.

And so they’re making part 2. To which, as always, I have to ask: Whyyyeeeeee????? Some things should just be left alone. They’re perfect. And if you can’t improve them, why make another? Oh, for money, forgot about that, silly me. So Tom is making the movie. Obviously Scientology is a bit short this month (not in a Tom way) so he’ll make the investment for them. And star in the film, obviously, though this time as ‘an instructor’. Probably of flight, not of singing ‘you’ve lost that loving feeling’. And his ‘maverick’ rebel student is… is… is a gel!!!! No shit, they let women fly. Not yesterday from Heathrow, obviously, but in general terms, women can pilot.

I haven’t yet watched the opening edition of Twin Peaks Nouveau but its been panned by the critics. Not that I care about them. And now we have Top Gun re-boot to look forward to as well. Has the entertainment industry run out of ideas? Or just become cynical and lazy?

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

So we had Manchester, now we’re back on the election. But its a new election now. Economy’s important, Brexit’s Brexit but its all about who can make us safer. From terrorists, from ISIS, from all manner of loonies intent on causing pain and death because they’re bastards. And apparently we currently possess 23,000 jihadists in our fine nation. 23,000 who, on some level, would be happy to see more of our children dying, more of our buildings crumble, more of our way of life changed to something more Islamist.

This is what I’d do.

Deport all 23,000 jihadis. We don’t have any use for them. We can’t eat them, we don’t want them in our prisons, they have nothing but evil intent. So get rid of them. Where to? I have no idea nor care. Just anywhere-but-here sounds fine to me. We don’t need trials, waste of court time, we don’t need ‘process’, just round them up and put them on several planes. Preferably those American planes where they beat up the passengers.

And so who will protect us from terrorism?

The main arguments seem to be that Jeremy Corbyn will pump another 36 billion quid, or maybe 9.4 billion or even 622 billion, makes no difference, the money’s not there anyway, into the police force. More men on the streets, more people in work. Great. But police don’t really do terrorism, not til after its too late.

Theresa May has doubled intelligence expenditure, but decimated the police. Not sure about the net outcome, but our ‘intelligence’ is pretty wonderful, generally. Long as we don’t share it with those blabbermouth Americans. Who think that if it takes 10 minute for ‘secret and sensitive information’ to get from the CIA to the front page of the New York Times, something must be slowing things down.

My main issue is that Corbyn likes terrorists. Always has. He loved the IRA and he has nothing but tolerance and patience for Hamas and IS and thinks we should be ‘negotiating’ with them. Presumably someone managed to convince him that murderers are just workers doing an unpleasant job therefore need job security and union protection. And I agree, that’s why I always refer to them by the acronym of the ‘Confederation of United National Terrorists’.

Glad that’s sorted. Happy Saturday

A xxxx

We need to stop using electricity. Like now. The planet’s dying. Carbon is the killer. In case you missed that. And generating electricity burns coal. That’s how we do it. Newton’s law: energy cannot be created, only changed from one form to another. So we burn hydrocarbons and they provide electricity that we need to charge our phones. Oh, and our electric cars. And the telly. Maybe some lights.

In fact our electricity consumption has increased. Everywhere we used to have 2 sockets we now have a ‘4-gang’ thingy plugged in to provide more outlets. Because my whole life seems to be about putting things on charge. So action is needed. And toys are apparently the answer.

They have windmills, big ones, ok, fucking massive ones, which turn really slowly and produce electricity and now they’ve invented a new method. Using kites. Massive kites, in pairs, which move outwards and inwards in tandem, rolling a generator as they do it. They fly at about 100mph, and really high, so they’re not as unsightly as the windfarms. Though pilots probably won’t be too impressed.

They’re building 10 pairs of these kites, they’ll be 600 metres apart and flying at 300 metres. Each kite has 380 square metres of surface area. And that’s all fine, til the wind stops, or they get tangled or the lines break. Cos flying kites is dead easy, right?

These things speak of desperation. We need to think nuclear. Its the only way. A lump of coal burns for about 4 minutes, then its dead, having produced a bit of electricity and spewed its carbon upwards, so you need another lump. A lump of Uranium lasts for 4 billion years and reacts carbon-free. It really does. In fact in 4 billion years your lump has just halved its potency. Takes another 4 billion to halve it again. Ok, maybe a bit more expensive and touch more difficult to control, and if you lose control you’ve destroyed half the country for the next billion years, but it must be cheaper in the long run.

Toys are fine, but if you need power you need to harness nuclear power. Can’t understand why all these boffins can’t do that safely. They’re too busy working out which foods will kill us this week.

Happy Friday. Sunny and a long weekend ahead. Ahhhhhh…

A xxxx

This is Lila. You all know her. She’s ‘my’ baby. Others may claim her but she’s mine. And I’ve posted one or two photos of her and she’s always gorgeous and happy and serene and wonderful. She’s that kind of baby. Ok, she has her moments, but they really are quite few and far between. Its not like dating apps when the… members? victims? liars? put up their very best of all possible photos so that when they finally meet Mr/Ms Dream-Date, both are tragically disappointed at the lack of photoshopping opportunity in the real world.

Not like that with Lila. What you see is what you get. She IS that beautiful and peaceful and happy. Until yesterday afternoon. When she turned into an extra from a Wes Craven movie. With a little help from medical science.

She had her first inoculations yesterday. I don’t know what they’re for. Polio? Yellow fever? Diphtheria? Arsenal? But they inoculate kids to prevent horrible things so you have to do it. Short term pain, hopefully long term gain. We’ve all been there. Except Lila. She’s never been there before.

They STABBED MY BABY!!!! at about 2.40 and she wasn’t happy about it. I wasn’t there but whilst at work I suddenly, at that time, felt a sharp pain in my thigh. Ish. Because they Conway gene, as well as bestowing extreme beauty on all who possess it, also gives you a morbid fear of needles when in the hands of, so-called, Doctors. I have that gene, passed it on to my younger daughter, Lila’s mum remaining curiously exempt from that particular mania. And Lila didn’t like the jab one bit. Mum calmed her down, fed her and all was good and sleepy. For about 10 minutes when the screaming started. And continued. And continued. And continued.

3 hours later Mum was in a panic, as you get when your baby is inconsolable and hyperventilatingly hysterical, so the Grandmother popped in on her way to spin class. Babies might be hysterical but the need for cycling 200 miles in 45 minutes without going anywhere is powerful, so off she went. And I went round on my way home from work. Don’t know why but that’s what you do. I couldn’t console her any more than anyone else, poor little red-faced screaming thing, but Mum certainly needed support. Dad came home to. The three of us, watching the world’s most unhappy child.

On the little pamphlet they give you at the Child Abuse Centre, sorry, the Medical Centre, it says ‘your baby may be a bit grizzly after the injection’. Vague. There’s grizzly and there’s hysteria. We phoned the NHS. Who were, it must be said, totally brilliant. Check this, look at that, do this, fine, here’s the doctor on the phone now, check something else, hmmmm, I’m sending a paramedic, just to check. 10 minutes later a yellow and white car pulls up outside filled with empathy and caring.

She’s fine today. Of course. As you can see. Calm, happy. Might take her mother a little longer to become truly ‘fine’. And if I find that doctor who gave her the jab yesterday, understanding as I do the need for such things totally, I will kill him.

Happy Lila, sorry, Happy Thursday

A xxxx

So the election’s in full swing, the sun’s shining, the football season has finished, leaving the game in ‘grand finale’ mode, starting tonight, if you don’t count the playoffs, with Manchester United playing Ajax in Stockholm for the EUFA Cup. Oddly the only trophy United have never lifted. Mainly because they’ve never been bad enough to play in it before last season. So the stakes are high. Because a victory in that cup tonight will give them (never used to be like this) entry into next year’s Champions League. Where they want to be.

And then a bomb went off. In Manchester. In case you missed that. What happened was this:

Some deranged motherfucker was convinced by a whole load of even more deranged motherfuckers that the path to God, the path to personal, spiritual and moral happiness is to kill children. And deranged motherfucker number 1 believed them. To the point where he would give his own life for furthering their own cause. The cause of death. The slaughter of innocents. The deranged motherfucker collective never warned him that in fact you go straight to hell. Fast-tracked. Rather than the 70 beautiful virgins he was promised, if there is any kind of God, Salman Abadi is spending eternity with 70 really ugly, sadistic gay power-lifters from Romania who all suffer with chronic halitosis.

Maybe its the grandfather thing, or the father thing, but when I saw the picture of little Saffie Roussos I was almost in tears.

What the BBC have decided is that following any act of terrorism, what the people of Britain need to calm them, to comfort them, to inform them, is endless fucking repetition. They know 7 concrete facts and have 9 pieces of more speculative information. So let’s repeat those 43 times each. In fact, let’s extend the News, disaster special, so we can repeat them some more. And then the the emotion gives way to boredom and impatience and everyone feels better?

We are now in ‘critical’ mode as a nation regarding its security. Or insecurity. Could happen any time, any place. Yet the football tonight goes on. Must go on. Otherwise ‘they’ win. Any city in any free, Western country is at risk. Which makes you mildly paranoid… ok, makes you severely paranoid, but you have to carry on. We cannot let our values, and the things we love to do, be changed by a group of psychopaths.

Manchester… United.

Happy sad Wednesday

A xxxx

There’s a new dating app around. Just what the world needs; more people staring at phones rather than engaging with others and, like, kind’a, sort-of, like ‘meeting them’. But dating apps are big biz, big money and who am I to call the culture of the swipe ‘tripe’? Yet this new one is different. Rather than the Tindr thing, which, for want of a better parallel, is a quick one behind the pub, this new app, ‘Appetence’ is the full Mills & Boone. It doesn’t even let you see a photo of your ‘intended’ until hours of ‘conversation’ have occurred. Its more a chaperone than a hook-up thing. But that’s the intention. Romance. Remember that? Big in the 40s, 50s, 60s… then died with the smart-phone. Its about the full experience of getting to know someone in the non-biblical sense. For a while at least. The best thing about it is that on the app questionnaire you get a choice of 20 different ‘genders’ to define yourself. Wow. Just 20. Is ‘Arsenal fan’ a gender now that they’re out of the Champions League, I wonder? I’m stuck at 2 otherwise. But will make allowances for the massive range of ‘semi-gay-pre-trans’ and ‘tri-sexual hermaphrodites’ that seem to have evolved somewhere down the line.

What I say is: don’t get a dating app; get a season ticket to find true love.

For Spurs, of course. Because in the manliest of manly ways, my love for that team is currently over-flowing. Last season we played our last match at already-relegated, shit-as-anything, couldn’t win a 1-ticket raffle, Newcastle and lost 5-1. Whereas yesterday, in the season finale, we played already-relegated, what’s worse than shit but not quite dead, Hull and beat them 7-1.

Seven goals to one. Which is almost as amazing as it is meaningless. There again, football is pretty meaningless, that’s the whole point. Its the ultimate distraction.

So Harry Kane, bless his lilywhite socks, won the golden boot for the second year. He’s scored 7 goals in 4 days. Leaving me to ask that eternal question: WHY DOES THE SEASON HAVE TO END????? IF THERE REALLY WAS A GOD (who would obviously be a Spurs fan) HE/SHE/IT… (20 options elevates PC to new realms of ridiculousness) WOULDN’T LET IT HAPPEN!!!!

Arsenal beat Everton.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

Its an old problem. No, I mean, its a problem; the old. Old people. Millions of them. Where do we put them, how do we store them, what should we feed them, who’s gonna pay for them?

Answer the last question first. Who’s gonna pay?

Jeremy Corbyn wants all old people to be put in palaces, clear out that useless monarchy, they’re different old people, and fill up with retired union members. The rich will pay. Ok, he didn’t actually write that in his manifesto but could have done as he lives, economically, in some kind of cloud cuckoo–land anyway where money is in endless supply as long as he perceives the cause to be worthy. Worthy of the Bolsheviks in 1917 probably more than of Britain in 2017 but in his mind they’re almost the same.

Theresa May has a different plan. Make old people pay for it themselves. Ooooh, that’s radical. In fact its rather logical, welfare statism notwithstanding. Because the welfare of the welfare state is dependent on its wealf. And currently; it don’t got none. So those old people who go into care will, basically, lose their houses to pay for that care. Or, in many cases of care homes; to pay for that lack of care verging on total neglect. Seems reasonable.

Except its the most unpopular thing any politician has ever said. The Conservative lead in the opinion polls dropped catastrophically as soon as Theresa had finished the sentence “… to pay for those miserable old gits”.

There’s been uproar. Mainly by the children of those oldies who see their own futures suddenly bleaker to the tune of several hundred grand’s worth of house. And those ‘children’ are the ones who vote. Old people don’t, they’re not physically able to do so and the ones who are don’t waste their time in polling stations whilst the bookies are open and the brothels available.

As a society we’re getting ‘older’. Medicines, care and health have increased longevity massively in just one generation. Which has created the biggest stockpile since the European Milk crisis in nineteen seventy-something.

I think we should eat old people. They’re fairly nutritious and certainly abundant. It would solve so many problems, if we just put aside our quite irrational fear of cannibalism for just a moment. The French eat horses, for fuck sake, and we’re all appalled by this. Until we visit Paris and sample the Red Rum Stew. So we could overcome our reluctance if necessary. I know lots of people don’t eat meat, mainly because they’re silly, so they could eat the old people who were in a ‘vegetative state’. Be kind of a ‘vegetative steak’. I mean obviously I’m just thinking this through at the moment, haven’t finally formalised the details, just thinking outside the horse-box.

Too much thinking, too little football. That’s the problem,

Happy Sunday

A xxxx