Andy's Glasses

That filthy Scottish bastard who slam-dunked Elliot Daly on the ground after 90 seconds of yesterday’s match at Twickenham with a horrible, illegal and potentially neck-breaking ‘tip tackle’
was given a yellow card. 10 minutes in the ‘sin bin’. He should have been red-carded or more appropriately given 10 minutes in the pillories. Though if any of that proper ‘justice’ had been meted out, the game would have been even more one-sided than it already turned out to be. When I asked my sister-in-law last night if she’d, like me, swooned over the England match yesterday, she replied just that: ‘it was a bit one-sided’. Yeah, I explained, but when our side is the ‘one’, that can only be a good thing.

In fact it was a great thing. Even though it was never a competition, just a demonstration of what I will call ‘total rugby’. Like Barcleona invented ‘total football’ under Cruyff, so England under Eddie Jones are guilty of practising rugby near perfection. The ‘near’ only for two reasons. Firstly that Eddie would never want to stop improving, and secondly because Scotland, despite pretty good form of late, were fucking awful.

England dominated the game right from the start, in every part of the pitch, at every breakdown, certainly at the line-outs which produced the first 3 tries. Of the 7 they scored. In case you missed that. Seven.

And as always, rugby matches are won by the forwards, the backs just decide by how many. The England midfield was unplayably brilliant. George Ford, Owen Farrell and Jonathan Joseph were simply fantastic. Better together than any sum of the parts. The speed and accuracy of their passing and running simply blew the Scots away. Not that I’ll gloat. Any more than I have to or want to.

What a joy to watch. Unless you happen to be Scottish, in which case: sorry.

Spurs play Millwall today in the FA Cup semi-final. Which I’m gonna miss because Mel’s birthday celebrations start today. Birthday’s not (officially) til Tuesday but, like the Queen, the actually day is only a small part of the ongoing events. So we’re going for lunch with the gels and assorted others to the Ivy. The new one that they just opened for us in St Johns Wood because the old one is a bit too far away and parking there’s a bitch. Mountains, Mohammed, etc, etc, etc.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

I turned 60 last year. Old. Fucking old. But heh, I was only a day older than the day before, and its not like one minute you’re 27 and the next you’re 60. It just feels like that. One of the rules of getting old is that you have to moan about aches, pains and injuries. You have to mention bowel movements at least once a month, multiple micturations (oh, look it up) and most importantly, you need to develop a vast orthopaedic knowledge. Life becomes a bit more medical.

The other night I went to Tai Chi. Which is a truly wonderful thing to do. Teaches you balance and poise and standing properly and walking correctly and how to perform the Tai Chi ‘dance’ and how to use that to break people’s bones. But only people who wish you harm. You can hurt others but its not compulsory. Tai Chi is ‘deep’. You learn a movement, then you smash someone in the throat to really appreciate what that movement should be for and thus makes you do the movement more accurately, which in turn enables you to hurt more efficiently. Just a very simple, energy-efficient feedback-loop. Only takes a lifetime to learn.

So the other night, conscious as ever about my very dodgy right shoulder, and careful of my relatively recently strained hip, I performed a ‘slant fly’. All Tai Chi moves have names. Lots of them quite pretty and poetic. Which can be deceptive as ‘white crane spreads wings’ is a simultaneous head block and smash into someone’s bollocks. Slant fly is a way to knock a man backwards. Or a woman; tai chi is really equal opportunity and hence violence against women is heartily encouraged. And its a great move. And it all comes from your legs. Unless… unless you accidentally get your back involved and you’re toppling about 16 stone of your mate using muscles that don’t like it. So my back went a bit funny too.

This morning I went again, because you have to, because its wonderful, because its fun and because its sort of addictive, and I tried to be very conscious of… most of body which was still hurting and aching and painful. And I was.

So buoyed by my lack of further injury I went to tennis. Where my shoulder felt like it had already dislocated, my back was constantly painful and my hip played up after about 50 minutes. I didn’t know whether to limp, hobble or just fucking lay down and die and be done with it.

60 isn’t the new 40, they lied. Its the new 90.

But I’m discovering new muscles all the time that I never knew I had. To re-write the late, great Harry Carpenter, I’m pulling muscles in places I never knew I had places.

Happy, achy Saturday

A xxxx

We need to talk about Emma Watson’s tits. I’m sorry, but that’s what its come to. Because a row has positively erupted over this very photograph, taken for Vanity Fair. As photos go, its ok. Emma has only two looks, this one, that I’ll call ‘hard and manly’ and another that she learned at Hogwarts, more ‘soft and fluffy’. She really should go to the Zoolander school to pick up a few more, but for now, that’s what there is. I saw her once at the Swiss Cottage Odeon and she looked like a 9 year-old scraggly waif. This was in the foyer, I should note, not on the screen.

However, Emma left her witchiness behind her, went to America to study (she’s clever) and has become a UN Ambassador for something or other of a broad and meaningless nature. That’s her official title. Angelina has a similar one. They’re all a bit similar, UN things given to famous babes. But Emma’s all about feminism. Gender Equality. Feminism.

And following the publication of the Vanity Fair pics, some haggard old sourpuss Daily Mailesque hack commented along the lines: “I’m a feminist, an equal rights campaigner… oh, and these are my tits”. As if feminists and breasts are an incompatible combination. But if women are allowed to keep their breasts (and I really, sincerely, heart-achingly hope they are) then perhaps its the overtness in these photos that caused some ultra-feminazi to complain so? Which yet again comes down the most confusing of all issues men have to face in the post-feminist world. Which is: at what point does ‘taking control of your body in a sort’a flaunty way change from ’empowerment’ to ‘pornography’? Not that these pics were in any way pornographic. Wish that they were, the fuss would be more worthwhile.

Because when a man sees such a thing, is he allowed to shout: “YOU GO GIRL, YOU OWN IT, YOU’RE SHOWING YOUR EMPOWERMENT”, or should he just wolf-whistle and twerk his builders’-bum-cleavage at her whilst being guilty of objectification? We need to know; we need to be told; we ain’t that bright and can’t follow the rules because they shift like thighs in a pole-dance. Oops.

It also haunts Emma a bit because she had the audacity to accuse Beyonce of being a bit provocative in her videos. As if. But what Beyonce does is definitely ’empowerment’, definitely. Nothing titillating about that whatsoever.

Hope that’s all clearer now.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

What do you do when you’re playing a second-leg European tie and you have a four goal deficit from the first leg? Which is, quite frankly, massive. Almost insurmountable. Almost.

Arsenal found themselves in such a situation on Tuesday night having been mullered (and Roben-ed, Vidal-ed and many others) 5-1 in Munich in the first leg. So they opted for a fiendish plan… to concede 5 more Ok, they did score one first, but then it went south from there. Assisted, inevitably according to Wenger, by some ‘revolting’ refereeing decisions. Strange use of a word but he’s not from these shores. Even though ‘revolting’ in French normally involves use of a guillotine. Anyway…

It, basically, all went to shit. Heads dropped, the spirit simply deserted the team as if sucked by some celestial vacuum pump, and they gave up the fight. Such is the level of disgruntlement currently circulating round the Emirates. Not a happy place. Worst of all was a picture of Alexis Sanchez sniggering as Bayern’s 5th went in, when he was on the bench. What a horrible picture.

There is an alternative.

Barcelona (my bestest, most favourite ‘dream team’ other than Spurs) also faced the seemingly impossible after losing their first leg 4-0 to Paris St Germain. They scored 3 by midway through the second half but then catastrophe. Like 4-0 isn’t catastrophic enough. They conceded a goal by Edson Cavalli (think ‘Harry Kane but swarthy’). The dreaded ‘away goal’. So now Barca need to score a total of 6 to win. 3 more goals. And time is running out. And is running out. And running out…

With the clock at 88 minutes Barca scored again. Then injury time. OMG. Another goal. Still not enough. Then in the 95th minute, with the whistle almost in the ref’s mouth to blow for time (almost, just a little excitement created here, not that it needed it), Sergi Roberto hit the winner for Barcelona. The place erupted, the world stood on its collective head, I was declaring a 4 Hearts contract at the bridge table so sadly missed all the fun as a million Catalans group-hugged and screamed. Amazing result. Amazing excitement. Just amazing.

The difference between Arsenal and Barclena’s responses to their 4-0 deficits was that the Barca manager, Louis Enrique, resigned after the Paris match. Ooooooooohhhhhhh…

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

I fear that with Chelsea’s win last night the title ‘race’ (if it was ever ‘on’) is over. Spurs are second in line, currently, and remain 10 points behind the Blues. And logically, who, do you reckon, are more likely to have a mini-collapse? A bad run? A blackout? Nervous breakdown or total meltdown? Who is more likely to ‘do a Spurs’ than Spurs? I’m hoping that we can just continue our good form without such an event; that in itself would show massive promise. But Chelsea, much as I hate them, simply have to be admired.

They beat West Ham last night. That’s not hard. But its the way they do things. The addition of N’golo Kante to their horrible ranks this year was a massive piece of an almost complete puzzle. The rest of which simply fell back into place when Morinho left. Hazard become Hazard once more, Costa returned to being Costa and Pedro has become a revelation, being much more than the Pedro he was before. I suppose we must credit the manager, and so I reluctantly will do so.

Arsenal play Bayern tonight in the Champions League. They need to overturn a 5-1 deficit. Not hard to do. Just score 4 against one of Europe’s top 3 teams and concede none. But to do that Arsenal would need to be at their best. And they are currently approximately 72,782 miles from that place. Ozil’s injured but that’s no big loss because he tends to disappear in big games anyway. Sanchez is, mentally if not physically, ‘gone’. He wants out and is playing like it. The anti-Wenger movement in the fan-base has risen from about half to approximately three-quarters and all looks glum in Emirate-land.

Meanwhile at the ‘Theatre of Not Going as Well as We’d Hoped’ all hell broke loose. Bournemouth defender Tyrone Mings was attacked by Zlatan Ibrohimovic. The second assault was a blatant elbow in the face when they went up for a high ball. The first attack was Zlat hitting Tyrone really hard on the studs with his face. Dirty faaarkin’ Swede. Get a three year ban, by which time he’ll be another pensioner. Man United will be the new Leyton Orient and Morinho will be managing the tea and coffee supplies in a padded institution. Subject to medication.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

We were taken out for tea yesterday. As a ‘thank you’. I accept all
the thanks ever offered. Especially if it comes with strawberry jam
and clotted cream.

We went to the quite stunning Rosewood Hotel in Holborn. No, not
‘quite’ anything, really really fucking stunning. And the ‘mirror
room’ is what you’d expect; lavish, immaculate, six miles over the
top, yet really comfortable and relaxing. Not many mirrors though, so
maybe not everything you’d expect.

And I love afternoon tea. High tea. It is the infrequently taken (for
the sake of your arteries) best meal of the day. It should contain
everything you want to eat but nothing you really need. That’s the
rule. We even skipped lunch in anticipation. And I hate skipping
lunch. Or breakfast… dinner… snack-time…

Most of London’s big hotels do ‘tea’. Why not? Its a quiet lull-time
for them and they can flog you a few sandwiches and a scone for 30
quid a time, including ‘all the tea you like!!!!’ as if tea is the new
gold or single malt. Its tea. So they make a big deal about it, about
everything. To set them apart from all the other hotels doing pretty
much the same stuff.

At the Rosewood, the USP is that their ‘tea cakes’ are ‘inspired by
artists’. So the little white cube thing (salted caramel and chocolate
mouse with a mini-profiterole inside, nothing too sickly), was a
‘Banksy’ and had a little Banksy label attached. Amazing. Much better
shoved in my gob than hanging on a wall. Or scribbled on a old garage
door. The little spotty thing in the middle tier was a wonderful
‘bisque’ (the French or otherwise pretentious way of saying ‘biskit’)
with chocolate fondant and passion fruit creme, but was rather a
disappointment in that it was ‘a Damien Hirst’ and therefore I
expected something a little more ‘dead animal in formaldehyde’ or
pig’s spleen and bleach, but there ya go.

Wonderful tea. Wonderful afternoon. Sugar rush not yet subsided.

They don’t serve high tea at White Hart Lane. They serve up wins
instead. And the head waiter, the maitre d’, the head honcho in the
goals department, without any pretentiousness at all, is Harry Kane.
Who ‘only’ scored 2 this weekend, which for him is one short of his
‘usual’. Another great (ok, and ‘home’) win.

What an afternoon that was.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

Now here’s a funny thing; Spurs are the latest ‘flat-track-bullies’ (and long may it last) who beat teams lower than they are but struggle against the mighty. And logically, that should always be the case. You beat teams who generally perform worse than you do and suffer against those consistently better. Ain’t rocket science.

Yet Liverpool buck that trend. They lose to Leicester. The lose at ‘fortress’ Anfield against all manner of relegation fodder. But put them up against top 6 teams and they excel. Other than Manchester United (ironically the team they’d love to beat more than all others combined), they’ve won every match against top 6 teams this year. United they drew with, twice.

And yesterday they faced Arsenal. So Arsene Wenger, no stranger to ‘big match preparation’, no struggler with the use of histories, video recordings, and generally considered as great a master tactician as has ever pulled his hair out in the Arsenal dug-out. So he devised a plan to overcome the Scousers. A devious plan. A (sort of) clever plan to put those Liverpudlians right out of their stride, bamboozle them, confound them, throw them into disarray. He left out of his team Alexi Sanchez.

What an inspired and brilliant move. Find the most influential player on the team, the one who has either scored or been involved in 26 of his team’s goals this season, the man who puts fear into opposition defences, who draws players out of position just by his very presence. And leave him absent. Hah! That’ll show ’em.

And it did. It showed them the path to Arsenal’s goalmouth. Which they found twice before half-time when Wenger brought the Chilean into play. Just one question for Arsene:

WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING?!?!?!?!?!?

The relegation battle heats up, with no-one laying down to die, just yet. So there are many contenders.

Spurs play Everton today. Must-win game. As opposed to… Its a 6-pointer, possibly 8. Because silverware and glory and championships is all good and well. But every Spurs fan in the world has but one main, consistent and over-riding aim. To finish above Arsenal. Sad, perhaps, but honest and certainly true.

Whatever happened to Scottish football? Remember Rangers, Hibs, Hearts, Aberdeen? What happened to them. Sadly its turned into a bit of a joke up there.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

Travis Kalanick, the big boss of all of Uber, had a bit of a row with one of his (millions of) drivers. And he lost it totally. And it was filmed. And went viral. Obviously. And he was ashamed and we were judgmental and everything’s gone to shit.

But when you need to get to Leicester Square this afternoon, who ya gonna call? Ghostbusters? Or Uber?

So everyone’s talking about Uber. Again. So I feel I should. Just because…

Well, because of recent events I now know a lot more about Uber than I did before. But now everyone’s talking about ‘the wheels coming off’ and ‘the end of Uber’ and all such shit. Because our moral indignation won’t get my dad home at 10 o’clock last night for 19 quid when I’m over the limit and he’s tired. But Uber did. And questioning bizarre business models won’t get you anywhere as quickly as Mohammed in his Prius. Bless him.

Uber is a ‘hi-tech start-up’. Which is a modern day euphemism for ‘cost a fortune to run, loses money by the truckload and yet has a ridiculously high perceived value’. In current money, about $70billion valuation. For a company that’s lost 4 billion in the last 7 years.

Not of my money. Of investors money. Start-up investors know the score; stuff in the millions to develop, then keep on stuffing, in this case in billions, to keep it going during the expansion. Not because expansion will necessarily produce more profits, but precisely because it produces more losses. So why? Where’s the payoff??

Uber has an absolutely amazing infrastructure, already apped up in everybody’s phones, of linking customers to rides. When the world goes driverless, which is definitely where its headed, Uber will be at the top of the tree. Tesla may make the cars, or Nissan, or anyone, it don’t matter. What matters is hooking up those cars with the people who need to ride in them.

There’s a big hoo-haa every time an Uber driver rapes/molests/gets drunk or any alleged indiscretion. Or even the ‘team’ at Palo Alto being sexist. But they’re not specifically ‘Uber’ problems, they’re people problems. Any large group of people will have 1 rapist, 2 molesters, 3 drunks and 7 sexists. Statistically proven. It happens with Hackney Carriage drivers, with chartered accountants, much higher in football clubs. Much, much higher. Its not a ‘problem with Uber’, its a problem with ‘rapists’.

So I may knock Uber for indiscretions, I may condemn their CEO for being a persistent tosser (on Trump’s economic advisory panel???), I may tut when they get bad press. But then I feel hypocritical because the next time I need to get somewhere in a hurry and cheaply, its their app I call up. I could ‘talk with my feet’, but I’d rather ride in a Prius.

Appy Saturday

A xxxx

Leyton Orient football club are in deep doo-doo. Really deep. They are going to court this month to face a winding up order due to an unpaid tax bill of £250,000. That really winds me up. London’s second-oldest football club, dating to 1881, can leave the world forever due to an amount of unpaid tax that wouldn’t even be noticed on Google’s unpaid tax account. Nor Amazon’s, Starbucks’ or countless others, who avoid far vaster sums each and every week. The sum is less than a week’s wages for Wayne Rooney, who gets about 300k for the 10 to 15 minutes he plays each week.

And that is the real crime. The disparity in financial viability of the ‘big clubs’ in the Premiership and the wee clubs down in the League. Because even though these organisations are strongly linked (generally in terms of relegation) they are funded separately. Mainly because, given the choice, most armchair enthusiasts would rather watch Chelsea play Arsenal on a Sunday afternoon than Port Vale vs Rochdale. Snobs. And I know the arguments; we have the best league in the world, but only because of Sky TV, blah, blah, Rupert fucking Murdoch’s fucking money, blah!

I have a serious soft spot for Orient. In 1969 they won (the old) Division 3. Luton Town, now out of the league altogether, were runners up. And every weekend, and sometimes during the week too, the 13-year-old me would go down to Brisbane Road and join the 30,000 who regularly attended during that fantastic season. It was pure magic. The ground so small that the players would talk to us when they came to take corners. It was just a wonderful time, even though I was a Spurs fan. This was such ‘lowly’ football there was no conflict of interest. I consulted a lawyer about that.

30 years later, 30 years of being a bit of a purist Spurs fan, it must be said, not tainting my Premiership boot-soles with lower league dirt, Orient reached the Division 1 (or, old division3) play-off final. To play at Wembley(!!!!), against, mighty Scunthorpe. So I fished out my old O’s scarf, phoned a mate about tickets (“can you get?”, “this is Orient, you can get as many as you want”), and dragged the daughters to Wembley for the day. Old Wembley. Proper Wembley. When you could still park in the borough on match days. And what a match it was! Pure, total shite. From the kick-off, the poxy Scunthorpe goal that decided it, to the last whistle, a dull and dire game of football. I fell asleep, the girls ran off to practice their pick-pocketing skills and then we came home.

But I still love Orient. Barry Hearn sold the club 4 years ago to a guy with a very dodgy track record. And now its all come back to haunt everyone. The team look like being relegated out of the league altogether and possibly wound up as a business. Leyton Orient will be no more. Yeah, Wimbledon, blah-di-blah-di-blah, but no. So please send me a cheque for a quarter of a million pounds made out to HMRC and I’ll do the rest.

Its the least you can do.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

What do you do about wannabe jihadis who wish to join their fellow psychos in ISIS? There’s a big noise about this, we stop them at airports, we detain them… and then what? They’re jihadis. They want to bring death, disruption and destruction to our way of life. They want to kill. They want to murder. They want to be given a 14 year old ‘wife’ to rape. Maybe a few more. And they wish to end all Western Ways. They’ve been poisoned to despise our way of life. How do you go about ‘un-poisoning’ them? Its like the old joke: you can unscrew a lightbulb but not a pregnant woman.

Let them go. In fact, I’ll contribute willingly to their one-way tickets to Syria. If they have ‘jihad’ on their minds, treat it as a blessing that they’ll be doing it elsewhere. In a place where they have proper armies to battle, rather than innocent civilians.

Interestingly the suicide bomber dude who died with ISIS last week, Jamal al-Harith, the guy who left Guantanamo Bay with a 1 million pound payoff for… for whatever our wonderfully benevolent and asinine government reasons were deemed suitable for someone with a serious jihadi history, Jamal took a road trip in 2009 to Gaza. On the ‘Viva Palestina’ convoy. Led by George Galloway. There were 7 other known radicalised jihadis on that trip. I’m not big on ‘guilt by association’ but I’m certainly prepared to make an exception for Galloway.

But now ISIS is finally appearing to be failing (praise be) the question changes to ‘what do we do about those who went to fight with them and now want to come home?’ On the weekend 2 British medical students died in Mosul, part of group of 9 who originally went there, during bombing. They reckon there are probably about 400 ‘Brits’ left who will want to return ‘home’ to the land that educated them, supported them and their families and which they now want to destroy.

What would Donald Trump do? That’s not a joke really. The whole ‘ban all Muslims’ thing was a tragic over-reaction to his fear of jihadis. Its obviously not morally or factually correct to assume all Muslims have jihad on their minds, its just a minute minority. But the 400-odd who might return here are exactly the ones we don’t want. And they’re British.

I think we should deport George Galloway too, while we’re at it. Just because…

Happy Thursday

A xxxx