Andy's Glasses

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

Would you press the ‘fire’ button on a nuclear missile? Would you actually be responsible for the imminent destruction of (possibly) millions of people, most of them uninvolved in whatever the row is about, even if there was similar coming our way? And if that was the case, what good would the ‘retaliatory strike’ do, other than give you some posthumous vengeful satisfaction?

But we’re hard-wired to defend ourselves, right to the very end. Yet it has to be ‘proportional’. So if the good citizens of Halifax choose to jeer at Theresa May when she read her election manifesto there, exercising their democratic right, why didn’t she just bomb the place? I would have. Because the fall-out would have taken out not just Halifax but most of the people north of Watford, south of Glasgow. Hmmmm…

At tai chi we learn self-defense. And if someone tries to hit you/stab you/kick you, the most expeditious conclusion to the problem is ‘break his arm’. Which may not be as ‘proportional’ as asking him to stop and slapping him back, but it works much much better, much more quickly. So you get on with going out for lunch.

Jeremy Corbyn doesn’t eat at McDonalds. He eats in workers’ canteens or not at all. He can’t digest globalised food. Certainly wouldn’t drink a Starbucks coffee. He’s also nuclear-intolerant. Which, if I’m honest, on some level, we all are. Because no-one really would ever want to deploy the ‘ultimate deterrent’. Unless it was on Saudi Arabia or Manchester, obviously. But you have to maintain that deterrent because if you don’t, in politico-military parlance; you’re fucked.

Countries are not all run by sane people. North Korea certainly isn’t. Iran? Hell, no. And those countries are the ones who might just think twice before pushing their own buttons and sending nukes to a country that has the capability to retaliate. But would Kim Jong Un think twice about bombing anyone else? He’s a nutter. Wouldn’t give it a second thought.

Whatever he may say to placate the population, Jeremy Corbyn would never push that button. Fine, that’s his right. But does that make us safer? Or make us a potential target for rogue nations confident in our lack of response? And if he won’t push the button, why renew our Trident missile system at a cost of £2billion which could otherwise probably get pissed down the health service toilet? (I’m a big believer in the NHS but NOT just pumping more money into the terribly organised waste of money system it is now).

So the Shadow Foreign Secretary yesterday claimed that Labour’s previous ‘we will reconsider updating Trident’ position may not happen. Only for the Shadow Defence Minister to contradict her and tell her its not her brief. Oooooh, yet more conflict in Labour. Handbags at dawn is preferable to nukes at (eternal) dusk. And certainly more fun.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

That title is not about Lila, though she’d actually wear it on a baby-gro if they made one and if she could read, she’d have the tattoo.

But its not. Its about Spurs. And the rather nasty and horrible accusations that we face every season of ‘bottling it’. By crumbling at the end of seasons. Normally at critical times, but, as last season, losing the plot just for fun.

No more.

Last night was a pretty meaningless match really. Leicester, ironically safe from relegation, (and still, in some way, ‘champions’), played my boys, who are second and will stay there. Nothing to play for. Why bother?

Why bother? Because we’ve had a 6-goal match in us all season, that’s why. It was just a matter of time. And finding a team prepared to crumble under the wake of our immense tidal wave of play.

I missed it. Entirely. Martial arts trumps meaningless matches. Rule number 14b. So meaningless I forgot to record it. Instead I sent Wayne up there to Leicester, he has plenty of time on his hands. As my envoy. And what transpired in the wet and grey wastelands of the East Midlands was an abject lesson in attacking football by, ON THEIR DAY, (read: ‘not at West Ham’) an unplayably brilliant and gifted team. And another from Harry Kane in how to score loads of goals and put yourself top of the golden bootees. Til Sunday.

Jermaine Defoe, never exactly one to stick around when relegation rears its ugly head, is out’a Sunderland in a hurry. It was in his contract that if that doomsday scenario should arrive, and it did, then his contract is over. So not only he can leave, but as a free agent. So the £6million quid asking price is in fact for him. And he wants 100 grand a week to play. You know what: that’s a fucking bargain. For any team. To score 16 goals for a team that dire and dreadful is a feat on its own. And he virtually was on his own. And he’s only little. But he will score goals. Always. Wherever he plays.

Happy Friday

A xxxx