Andy's Glasses

So a widow phones the Jewish Chronicle to place an obituary for her husband.
What would you like to say?
‘Morry Goldberg. Died’
That’s it?
‘Yes’
No ‘loving father, wonderful husband, missed by…’
He was a terrible father, awful husband and everyone hated him.
Well you might as well say something else, the first 6 words are free.
She pauses then says:
‘Morry Goldberg. Died. Volvo for sale’

I love that joke. And Volvo was the car of choice for orthodox Jews for many years, particularly before they invented ‘people-movers’ in which the inevitable 12 kids could all fit. Before that it was the classic Volvo ‘Estate’ car. The older the better.

And now Volvo announce that after 2022 they will no longer make petrol/diesel ONLY cars. They’ll make hybrids and they’ll make electric but no purely oil-burners. Good for them. Other manufacturers will doubtless follow. Its the way forward. The inevitable. And I don’t mind. Its progress. Doesn’t mean I have to drive a milk-float, however you dress it up, but I like problem-solving, I like technology and I like change. Long as I don’t have to use any of it.

Pollution’s the problem. Well, it is round here, not so bad in northern Scotland. But even a petrol-head like me is sometimes appalled by the shit in the air in my City. It makes my shirts dirty. Though I’m still really not convinced about the whole global warming stuff. Remember the last Ice Age? Of course you don’t, but it happened. The world froze up. You could walk from Alaska to Siberia across the Bering Strait. Which would have been the Bering Highway if they’d had cars, or even people, at that time. Then the world warmed up again. Phew. No cars, no factories, no nothing. Just wooly mammoths farting (methane, high in carbon) but not enough to affect anything.

And now its warming up again. Whether natural cycles or ‘man done it’, who knows. But its created a quantum shift in car technology, along with many others, all to reduce our dependence on burning carbon fuels.

The irony is that, until the ridiculously over-priced (and getting over-pricier by the day and it hasn’t even started yet) Hinkley Point nuclear power station, we are burning fossil fuels to make ‘lectricity. But the biggest issue is; there aren’t anything like enough charging points for all-electric cars. People with garages and drive-ways are fine. But most people live in flats, terraces, and sometimes park half a mile from home. Where do they plug in? The answer, of course is ‘driverless’. Then it ain’t your problem. Even though its very depressing.

I promise that if I see you by the roadside one day looking for a pack of double As because your Nissan Leaf has died, I won’t laugh too loudly as I wave, screaming past in a plume of toxic emissions.

Don’t use electric, convert to Nitro-methane. 10,000 drag-racers can’t all be wrong.

Happy Green Thursday

A xxxx

Iss’all abart the workers. Everything. The Corbyn way. The distinction is a subtle one. ‘Workers’ are not professionals. So Doctors in the NHS may not be included, for their 97-hour weeks, because they do a bit of private consulting on a Sunday. Workers is workers! Bus drivers, coal-miners, dirt-diggers. Teachers are professionals but for some reason they’re exempt from non-worker status and be counted among the ‘many, not the few’.

Brexit is about how best it’ll benefit, or otherwise, ‘the workers’. Not the bankers who will suffer, they’re not workers. Even though would appear to work, on occasion, in between the drinking (on expenses) marathon sessions and the time laid aside for sexual harassment. But they get paid bonuses, so they’re not workers. Tube drivers get paid bonuses too, but they are definitely, salt-of-the-earth, working men. And wo-men. The Grenfell Tower residents were all workers even the unemployed ones. Its easy.

Jezza even went to Glastonbury to send his message across to a bunch of drunk, stoned, loved-up rock’n’rollers, who loved his words. Mainly ‘NO TUITION FEES!!’ those three words. By the time he got to workers rights most had gone to spit at Liam Gallagher on Stage 3, or to try and catch Ed Shearan’s sweat as it flew into the crowd. But Jezza was Glastonbury’s friend.

Then its over. Glasto. And the clean-up begins. So the geezer wot owns the field calls in 700 people to clean up. Lot of mess to clear. Says it’ll probably take 2 weeks but in fact takes only 2 days. So he sends ’em home. With just 2 days’ pay. Which is 2 days more than if they hadn’t turned up but still. Its because it was, according to Corbyn’s world, a ‘zero-hours contract’. So those workers had no ‘rights’. If they’d have fallen pregnant whilst picking up burger wrappers, they wouldn’t have been entitled to 17 months maternity leave on full pay. If they’d got sick they couldn’t have gone home to rest up and still be given statutory sick pay. Or in fact not turned up at all and still be given sick pay. Pension rights.

I mean what kind of world is it where you can just get some people in, pay them for what they do and then say ‘bye; thanks a lot’? How is that fair? And so for Corbyn to be a party to this chronic abuse of workers is quite shameful. I’m appalled. I’m gonna vote for the Socialist Communist Workers Militant Collective next time instead. Casual labour?? Not on my watch.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

The Grenfell Tower saga enters several more stages of lunacy as what started as a simple humanitarian tragedy was first stolen by the Corbynites as a political issue, who then elevated it to virtual accusations of ‘rich people murdering the poor’ and now its being hijacked from the Lefties by the racists. Not, like ‘racists’ who hate black people, but the opposite. Those who see racism everywhere.

The judge appointed to the inquiry, Sir Whassisname-Double-Barrel, is just a bit too white to really be put in charge of such a case where so many of the victims weren’t. He’s too ‘establishment’ to be ‘impartial’. Are we in the fucking Raj? In 1863? This is about a building in London in 2017. Its about a fridge catching fire. Its about suicidal cladding. Its about many things, but skin colour ain’t one of them. Its about legality and responsibility and decisions made decades ago and who might be accountable for them.

They didn’t get a Liverpool fan to run (any of the many) Hillsboro’ inquiry; they didn’t get a Roman Catholic priest to run the paedophile inquiries, why do you need ‘diversity’ for the Grenfell Tower one? Should they appoint an Eritrean refugee who doesn’t speak English to head the thing up? Yes, because he’d be ‘representative’ and presumably impartial. If he knew what either word meant.

Bizarrely, whilst we’re all agonising over these quite ridiculous and politicised irrelevancies, its interesting that the ‘cladding-of-death’ is still approved for use by the British Board of Agrement. Don’t even know what that name means but they’re the ones who say what can and can’t be used. And the BAA is indirectly approved by the government. And run by an ex-Labour mp. Corbyn will obviously accuse her of being a rampant Blairite.

No-one ever slagged off a council for saving money.

But the bottom line is… they’ve found the perfect bottom for women. They can all use it, or buy it from Primark. Ok, maybe not. But scientists (with waaaaay too much time on their hands) have decided that the ‘perfect bottom’ is… 0.70. I’d thought that all along, obviously, cos I’m a fucking genius, but nice to see it quantified so clearly. That’s the waist to hip ratio. If your waist is 25 inches (in yer fuckin’ dreams) and your hips 35, that gives you 0.71. So next time someone asks if their ‘bum looks big in this’, just give them a calculator and say ‘you do the maffs’.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

I’d just like to point out that the current All Blacks team is not weak, average or even merely ‘ok’. Like all their teams, they are outstanding. Every player. Their method of play. Their link-ups. Its all and always, the best there is. Just thought I’d get that out there before someone pipes up with ‘oh yeah, you beat a ‘weakened’ or ‘second rate’ All Blacks team’. Because the Lions didn’t. They beat a quite brilliant All Blacks team.

More importantly, am I allowed to ‘personalise’ the British Lions? In a ‘them and us’ kind of way? Yes, I think I can. And I will and if you have issue with it then you’re probably South African or Australian and therefore simply don’t count. I’m British therefore I am Lion.

Sonny Bill Williams got hisself sent off early in the game. Because he’s a nob. And like all nobs he does silly things. In this case performing an act of common assault on one of OUR players. Known in rugby as an ‘armless tackle’ or in wrestling, where its much more common, as a ‘forearm smash’, Sonny Bill saw red in every sense. He knows you can’t perform such an act; he’s played the game once or twice before.

Yet still the All Blacks played fast and furious but fortunately failed to score a try. Not so fortunate, for us, was that we gifted them 10 penalties, seven of which were converted. By Beauden Barrett, who was far less effective without Sonny Bill on his inside, but that’s what happens.

The Lions managed to score not one but two glorious tries to tie the game at 21 each. And then with just 3 minutes left we earned a penalty. ‘Just’ 40 yards out. In the pouring rain in Wellington. Up steps Owen Farrell. Could he produce a Jonny Wilkinson moment? Was the pressure too much??

Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Owen steps up, cool-as-ya-like, after that funny staring thing they all seem to do, and slots the ball between the uprights. 3 points, couple minutes to play, should be enough. As it proved to be. Even for the All Blacks. Victory for the Lions. Yippee.

Because now, on Saturday, we have ‘THE DECIDER!!!!’ whereas if we hadn’t won, we’d just be looking for some kind of consolation. This makes it exciting. Although Aukland is the hardest place for any visiting team to ever play. Which is why none of them has won there since 1994.

Come on Engl- Brit- Come on Lions

Happy Wimbledon-Starts-Monday

A xxxx

Things you don’t expect from the geezer filling up your car at the Chevron on Hollywood Blvd in 1981:

Ability to speak English
Ability to be English
Any intelligence whatsoever
A sense of humour

So as I stood there fillin’ up the old Cadilacs and Pontiacs and Chevies with ‘unleaded’ and regular, wearing my rather fetching blue shirt with the Chevron chevrons on the front, and I asked if Sir would perhaps require cleanage of his windscreen or checkage of his oil??? I was something of a novelty. “Are you Australian?” they would inquire. And conversation would ensue. They never spoke to Noe (Guatamalan) or Boris (Mexican) or anyone else. But to a white Englishmen they are prepared to break convention and have a conversation with an ‘unworthy’. Without actually asking the ‘elephant in the forecourt’ question of: what the fuck are you, a beautiful, urbane, educated white person with perfect Hollywood bad-guy diction, doing THIS for???

On my first day there, just round the corner from the ‘Chinese Theater’ (the one with the stars’ hand and foot-prints in the concrete) a yellow Ferrari pulled in. No gas, but can you help me with my mirror; its broken. James Coburn. My Man Flint. The third of the Magnificent 7. In ‘my’ gas station. Oh my. The following day Bobby Womack came in. Nicest guy in the world. Even worked out I was English and insisted on shaking my (greasy, oily, petrolly, tyre-pressury) hand.

I was offered jobs, given business cards, asked to be taken to dinner (women and men), propositioned regularly, and all for minimum wage.

One particularly friendly Mexican American (sounds American, looks a bit Mexican) asked if I liked ‘soccer’ because he played in a Sunday game with loads of Brits. So along I went and found my footy-fix for the next year, attended by a varying crew of players and a referee. Referee? In a friendly?? Because he loved the game and had an injury that wouldn’t let him play proper. He was John Helliwell of Supertramp, possibly the biggest band in the world at that time, 2 years after Breakfast in America came out. Welcome to California. Where superstars referee football games and Englishmen pump your gas.

Then one day a really sweet English girl came in for gas. Can’t remember her name, but she was lovely, Geordie and a nanny. To baby Lilly, sitting in the car. The child of Malcolm McDowell and Mary Steenbergen. Oh. My. God. Malcolm McDowell; Clockwork Orange fame. Kubrick’s ‘If…’ one of my fave movies everrrrrr. And Mary Steenbergen who had just won an Oscar for Melvyn & Howard (really fucking odd movie), possibly the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen (but ain’t they all?) and I was in love. Again. Unfortunately not with the nanny who I seemed to be dating a bit, but with Mary. Who was funny and charming and wonderful, and the least available person ever.

So other than the shit money, the filth, the constant scrubbing of fingernails and the ever-present smell of gasoline; how could it have been anything but ‘the best job ever’? And although pumping gas can be dull, it was a proper ‘garage’ doing all kinds of technical shit to people’s cars. And we had an in-house Triple-A guy. He’d get a call for a breakdown, go pick up the car and bring it back to us. He’d get paid by the Triple-A and we’d get the work. Lou had 2 trucks, a little ‘repair at the scene’ kind’a thing and a fucking monster tow-truck. And I mean ‘monster’. He could pull (and did) a bus with it. And I used to move it round for him. 8-litre, V8 diesel. Most powerful thing ever. You could win any ‘demolition derby’ in the world. But he wouldn’t let me. Obvs.

Yet sometimes even the best jobs ever need to end. Life moves on. A day’s a long time in politics, a month was a long time at Dan Fetter’s Chevron.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

Much as I have nothing but sympathy with the entire Grenfell Tower business, I’ve now officially ‘ad enough. The event has been politicised, hi-jacked and has descended into a class-war witch hunt. Not to the degree that it’ll detract from the rugby tomorrow but its just become really annoying.

Emails show that they cut costs when organising the… cladding!!!! A word that will never ever be used again by anyone who is not in a court of law. Never by anyone in the building trade. It is forever tainted. And by saving a few grand here and a couple of hundred thousand there they ended up with a building effectively covered in fire-lighters. Like those white sticks you use to start a barbecue. But here’s the thing: they didn’t know. Ok, maybe they should have known but that’s what building regulations are for. To ascertain any risk and make sure all materials and structures are safe and ‘compliant’. And those shitty, awful, deathly sheets of cladding, although illegal in America where they’re made, did indeed ‘conform’ over here.

But we’re all clever in hindsight. And virtually every tower block in the country, we’re now learning, is covered with the same shit. The cheap option.

And although Jeremy Corbyn et al are implying/suggesting that the council saved money “on the poor” because Lord Shit-don’t-Stink up the road needed a new footman to clean his Rolls Royce, that is just simply not the way it works. Councils, all of them, whoever is in charge, try to save as much money as they can. So the question is not about negligence but just simple choices. Do you want the more expensive cladding, even though the cheap one is totally approved and within regulations, or spend the money on teachers in the schools? Dinners for the kids? Rubbish collection? Police patrols?

Or they could have hiked the Council Tax to have it all, that’s always popular. Every council is always urged to cut costs. Obviously not with disregard to safety but they need to provide care for the elderly in vast amounts too. And you can only cut a pie so many ways. I know, I love pies. And never get a big enough bit.

This is nothing about ‘rich and poor’, nothing about ‘let’s burn the place down with everyone in it’, its just a thing. Ok, a horrible thing but let the inquiry take place and STOP ALL THE WORTHLESS ACCUSATIONS, SPECULATIONS AND BLAME-GAMING until its over.

Lila’s best friend is a giraffe. Should I be concerned?

Happy Friday

A xxxx

I’ve said it for years. Though mainly to Mel. And mainly on holiday. I’ve said: HOW MUCH FUCKING BOTTLED WATER DO WE NEED???? Because she worries about dehydration. In Scotland. Where the risk of dehydration is seven hundred and ninety-six thousand times lower than the risk of drowning. But water we buy. And worry about buying. So we buy more. Keep spares. Fill the car. Not with petrol, but bottles of water. Water, water everywhere but… well it is for drinking.

And today in the paper there is total vindication for my aquaphobia (not rabies, the other one). ‘Plastic bottle menace rivals global warming’!!!! (I put the exclamation marks myself because it was in The Times. If it had been in the Sun or Mail they’d already have been there).

We (and I speak for everyone in the entire world here, except probably me) buy a million bottles every minute. Ok, not all water, there’s all those vile brilliant orange and radio-active green sugary drinks that kids buy too. But bottled water is the main culprit.

“Oh, I only drink Patagonian Trench Water” (£7.26 for 500mls) “because the bottle is recyclable and no sheep have to die making it”. And yes, a lot of bottles are ‘recyclable’ but you have to collect them first. And then assume there is sufficient recyclability in the world to cope with them. Otherwise they just end up in land-fills and most certainly on beaches, in rivers, on every single green (and bottled) field in the land. And then they break up and enter the food chain. Everything’s less recylcable when its hurled out of a car window.

Drink Evian today; kill a fish tomorrow. That’s gonna be my next tattoo.

Every other person walking round the City is carrying a bottle of water. In London. 17 degrees outside. And raining. Yet walking from the office to the coffee shop, you need water. Just in case. Its almost as annoying a ‘badge’ as the phone carried in the other hand. Held just in front of the face. Its a statement. “I drink water”. Not a powerful statement but nonetheless its a club. The water-drinking-to-excess club. Or as it will now be known: The Trout-Murderers Collective!!!

I’d like to point out that whisky comes in glass bottles only. And coffee comes in paper cups (ridiculously, they’re virtually all un-recyclable). Coke comes in cans (tomorrow’s Vauxhall Aventurama).

So next time you buy a bottle of water; think again. And just throw it away. Errrr…

Happy dry Thursday

A xxxx

Jon Snow, the veteran news broadcaster has found himself(ie) in deep doo-doo. He was photographed in the deep other-doo-doo that is the mud at Glastonbury with bunches of kids, all having fun and frolics in wonderfully high spirits. And Jon was joining in a rousing chorus of ‘fuck the tories, da-dee da-dum, dee-whatever’. Oh no! But he’s a newscaster. He IS Channel 4 news. Has been for three centuries. How can he claim impartiality if he’s a closet Corbynite anarchist militant Trotskyite Momentum-er??

There’s calls for his immediate resignation. And in fact he should resign. For having the appallingly bad taste to be caught being ‘an old person at a rock festival’. Not for joining in a sing-song which is a pretty meaningless thing to do. One seldom expresses one’s deepest political feelings whilst performing in a group knees-up. Perhaps he could appeal that his singing was perhaps inappropriate but after dropping a few ‘E’s, throwing back fifteen cans of Red Stripe and sucking on a spliff the size of a bus, his judgment may have been impaired. Oh, that’s ok then.

If you Google ‘greedy, monopolistic, world-dominating, megalomaniacal, people-screwing profit-monger’, you just stay on the Google page. There is no-where finer. And no-one better really. And now they’ve been fined for being all that. 2.4 billion is the size of the fine. But its ok, its only Euros.

Of course Google has a monopoly. That’s why we use it. Because we know that everyone else on the planet uses it so we’re never ‘missing out’ when we google something. We assume that every piece of information, everything that could ever be sold, every phone number and address that ever existed, lives on Google and no-where else in such quantity. And with such accessibility. It couldn’t work for us so well if it wasn’t such a monopoly. We’d only be getting half the story. And no-one likes that.

Did Google abuse its position? Was the fiery Danish bird right in attacking them? Oh yeah. On both counts. Google puts up its ‘sponsored links’ first and foremost when you search an item to buy. And I, as a consumer, assume that those are the best deals available. But they’re not. They’re the best deals that will pay Google when you click on them. You may be able to find your tennis balls or ink cartridges or nappies cheaper, but you’ll have to look down the page a bit for that. Something that Google know, is a path less traveled.

Do I care that Google abuse me like that? Not really. Will Google miss the 2.4 billion Euros? Not really. But I suppose you have to keep fiery Danes in work and Google in check.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

How’s this for scary. For thousands of years people had found great
big, almost perfectly triangular white stones, about the size of a
hand, and not known from whence they came. Speculation went with the
times. They’re petrified tongues of dragons, they’re from the moon,
God done it, usual stuff.

But what they in fact were is teeth. Can you say ‘were… is’? Who
cares. Not just any teeth but those from a shark. But teeth the size
of a hand??? Oh yeah, its quite a big shark. In fact its not. Great
Whites are ‘quite big sharks’, up to 20 feet long. These teeth came
from a 60 foot long Megalodon, errr, shark.

Unfortunately (???) they became extinct. About 2.5 million years ago.
Shame. Otherwise the shores of Australia would be full of them. Not
that the megalodon inhabited the Pacific specifically, but all really
dangerous creatures seem to be drawn to the Antipodes. Normal sharks,
box jellyfish, snakes and spiders, rugby players. What kind of shark
net would make you feel safe when the predator has about a 12 foot
jaw-span? Answer: fucking massive ones made of reinforced concrete.

They reckon there was some kind of mass extinction. Which happens.
Like when the dinosaurs died out almost completely because of a
meteoric impact in Mexico. Which killed off the vegetation, which
killed off the herbivores, leaving the poor carnivores nothing to eat.
The sun was obscured for 5 years so only the weeny little (previously)
insignificant, barely-a-snack sized mammals survived. And one minute
you have a mouse or a cat, and just a few million years on they became
my great-great-great-great…great-great grandfather, Schlomo ben
Yehuda ha-Cohen. Though I prefer to imagine my family evolved directly
from sloths and didn’t need to adapt so much afterwards.

This extinction was less dramatic. But a Megalodon is gonna have a
healthy apetite. 60 feet of it. And they reckon that something
happened which massively reduced the number of aquatic mammals upon
which he dined. Also lots of turtles, again, BIG ones, became extinct
at the same time. Hmmmmm. They think the sea waters may have receded
for some as yet unknown reason. But I reckon it was those American
carnivores fucking up the atmosphere with carbon and pollutants. The
antecedents of Donald Trump were in fact bottom-feeders, but drove
Cadillacs. Its the only answer.

Happy evolution

A xxxx

The initial hypothesis of this study in child psychology was that an infant could be quite happily separated from its mother (and more importantly, from her breasts) for a short period of time as long as sufficient care, protection, love and alternative foodage were to be made sufficiently available.

The purpose of the study was to ascertain whether a baby would starve itself rather than accept bottle feeding? I refer to previous studies that found this would likely be the case: Conway et al, 2017, Bell et al 2017, Conway et al 2017, Bell et al, 2017 (and countless fucking others!!!!)

The baby was removed from its parents by the research team, Professors Conway and Conway (Phd, Phd, Op,Tom1,sT1c, Hons) and placed in an alternative home along with various items for providing comfort. Vis a vis: play mat, bouncer, a truck load of brightly coloured objects that rattled, squeaked and sang when manipulated.

The subject was placed on the mat and observed. Observing was in fact quite magical as she squirmed, kicked, smiled, gurgled, giggled and performed many other acts that don’t have adequate descriptions in the ‘handbook of scientific terminology, and other bollocks’ book. After an hour, on her front, on her back, singing songs (the scientists, babies don’t do that), and pulling funny faces, the clinical team were suffering from deeply strained facial muscles so the subject was moved to what is known as a ‘baby bouncer’. Where she happily… did what little babies do. Which is nothing productive, nothing creative but is for some unscientific reason, immensely satisfying and rewarding for all present.

It was then noted by the team that baby was possibly getting a bit hungry. A little fretful, rooting behaviour, so we deduced that ‘feeding’ might be the appropriate course and duly applied the food source (bottle of mummy’s milk) to the subject.

To say ‘this didn’t work’ is an understatement akin to ‘an atomic bomb will remove stubborn stains’. In fact the similarities between a nuclear reaction and what took place in normally placid, happy little baby were strong. She went ballistic, as the euphemism goes. In psycho-babble terms, she went fucking ape-shit. No amount of calming, coercing or £50 note bribes would induce her to accept the food.

We quietened her, bathed her, changed her and tried once more. An attempt so successful that the mother was phoned to COME AND SORT OUT THIS HYSTERICAL CHILD!!!! Who at the time was blue in the face and hyperventilating.

The experiment was deemed a great success. Well, greatly enjoyable. In parts. Other parts, nyeh.

Conclusion.
Babies are illogical, stupid and stubborn. Which is why we love them so much.

Happy Monday

A xxxx