Andy's Glasses

I missed a lot yesterday. Running round like a blue-arsed fly, I believe the expression to be. Though I’ve never seen a fly with blue arse myself, that doesn’t mean they don’t exist somewhere. Maybe its a regular, black-arsed fly that is moving so fast away from you that it is experiencing ‘blue-shift’, like planets and meteors do. Who knows? Who cares? Whatever it is, that was me.

So I missed the football. For which I’m eternally grateful. Watching Arsenal win the day after enduring Spurs loss is simply too much. So I watched the granddaughter instead. Much more interesting. Much more enlightening. Even though she was asleep.

But as I found the score, there was mass upset and emotion from the Spurs fans who happened to be in my kitchen at the time, free-loading on my scones, as they do, yet massive excitement from a Man United fan, happy to see anything that is bad for Manchester City. How shallow and weak and rather pathetic such an outpouring is. Wallowing in the upset and misfortune of your rivals. Wouldn’t catch Spurs fans doing that…

Then the son-in-law suddenly brightened. “That’ll keep Wenger there for another ten years!!!” he proclaimed. And I thought ‘yesssss’. Best news for Spurs fans ever. And as Alexis Sanchez hit the winner, they’ll pay him whatever he and his team of black-mailing, corrupt, live-in-another-world team of psychopathic ‘agents’ and other bottom-feeding, parasitic vermin demand. “You want 300k a week; TAKE 400!!!! Just keep him at the Emirates”. He gets injured that’s then 20 million a year sitting at home watching Netflix with his physio.

Yet over in France yet more excitement. The two centrist parties, the ones that have held sway in that sorry land for decades, both lost their candidates in the presidential battle. Not that either were worth that much. Can’t be; they’re French. But that leaves just Marine Le Pen, fascist, slightly-sanitised neo-nazi, in the right corner, and Emmanuel Macron, granny-shagging (no comments, per-lease, I refer only that his wife is 25 years his elder) independent socialist in the left one.

The rise of populism once more. Anti-establishment voting hits France. In what they’re calling ‘the continuation of what started with the ‘Arab Spring”. And that worked out… errr… hmmm… ok, its still working out.

I vote for Lila.

Happy monday

A xxxx

What do you do when you meet your God? I don’t mean… ‘Him’, or ‘Her’, perhaps, up there all bearded and omnipotent and omniscient, but your real, honest-to-goodness heroes? What do you say to them that expresses how you feel but doesn’t leave you looking like a screaming Beatles fan in 1964, throwing your underwear and sobbing like a baby? Of course, what you want to say is: I LOOOOOOVVVVVVEEEE YOUOUOUOU; YOU’RE MY HERO, THE BEST, BRILLIANT, SO MUCH PLEASURE… and I LOOOOOVVVVEEE YOUOUOUOU!!!!

So instead you remember where you are (errr, Wembley?) and shake his hand and say: ‘How’s your knee these days, Ledley?’ all calm and relaxed as if you get to meet iconic sporting heroes every day and you haven’t just wet yourself in just a teeny weeny way.

Because Ledley was not just our captain, our God, our saviour, he was also one of England’s finest players. When he switched from central defender to holding midfielder he transcended the mere brilliance he brought to his former role and redefined a new one. For club and very notably for country too. And all that with a knee that was beyond normal dire fuckage. Way beyond.

Ledley (my new best mate), ‘told me yesterday’ that he couldn’t train with the team for 5 years. If he had, his knee would be too inflamed to play the match. So he just rested it, then (probably) had it pumped full of steroids so he could last hopefully, 90 minutes on Saturday. After which it would be re-swollen like a giant melon, and the cycle went on. And that is, by any definition, heroic. Although some would define it as ‘stupid’. Not me.

I also met Ossie Ardiles. And if Ledley was Thor, then Ossie was Zeus. He came in 1978 after winning the world cup with Argentina and, along with compatriot Ricky Villa, became the first ‘foreigner superstars’ to play over here. Odd to imagine now, when you look at any Premiership team sheet that we used to have a league full of English players. A Scotsman seemed exotic back then. The Welsh positively other worldly. Which in a way they still are.

And Ricky was brilliant. But Ossie was simply divine. Playing alongside Glenn Hoddle in the midfield he was an absolute master of skill and vision. Which had me down the Lane every match. The Hoddle/Ossie show. Didn’t even matter if we lost (he says, even though it did, it really really did).

Bit like yesterday’s match. We were better, we were dominant, slick and superb. And much nicer than Chelsea. Prettier. Yet we lost. Yet another semi-final disaster. Our seventh now.

But heh, it was a great day and right now Ossie and Ledley are writing how they met Andy Conway!!!! In real life!!!!

If you call this living. I’ll get over it. In time.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

Everyone loves communism. When they’re 17-18 years old and don’t know what it means. It sounds so ‘fair’, so equal. A life of working for the community, never needing anything, never wanting, working for the good of all, decisions made by committee. Brilliant. Except it doesn’t work. Never has, never will. Not on a large scale, anyway.

When I was 18 I went to work on a kibbutz for a summer. Cheap holiday. Holiday? Up at 6, collecting eggs from chickens who, in the most part, didn’t really want their eggs collecting, they wanted to keep them. I still don’t know which came first. But for my toils I was housed (in a shed), fed very well, even got paid a little, given all the horrible cheap Israeli cigarettes I could eat and had a great time. The kibbutz ran by a committee and it was efficient and profitable (fertilised eggs and furniture plus a bit of agriculture, obviously). Decisions were made collectively and although there would be disputes (Jews love a dispute) these were minimal and rarely produced gun-play. Which was good because everyone on the kibbutz was armed. To the fucking teeth. And I thought ‘communism is a wonderful thing’.

Then I learned the brutal truth. The kibbutz model is on such a micro-scale that it can function well and everyone can gain. But on a bigger, macro society, it just can’t. It crumbles to corruption, state-armies to control the masses and worse inequality than in a non-communist state. Communism effectively replaces democracy with starvation for the majority. All enforced with secret police, random arrests, imprisonments without trial, all the good bits that make Russia and China such great places to live. Never mind North Korea. All of which are ‘lands of equality’ in which a select group of billionaires run a nation that can’t feed its people, so it locks them up instead. Least you get fed in a gulag, I suppose. Well, I assume you do?

So where does Jeremy Corbyn fit in with all this? He may claim to be a ‘socialist’, he may pay lip service to a ‘fairer society’, but he’s a communist, pure and simple. You have to be to dress that badly. And the first thing communists do is remove democratic process. It gets in the way. So Corbyn’s best mate and main party funder, Len McClusky, head of the Unite Trade Union, just gave a wonderful demonstration of how to be a good ‘comrade’ and ‘bruvva’. He just sacked from the Union the man who was due to stand against him in a leadership election. For ‘allegations’ that may or may not prove to be true, so we can’t say what they are.

Jeremy Corbyn is a horrible and divisive man, he’s even divided his own party, many of whom are fleeing rather than be ‘tainted’ by association. His ideas come from Tsarist Russia and he has no economic plans other than ‘tax the rich’, that ill-defined group. Almost as ill-defined as ‘the working people’. Captains of industry are not included in that, despite their 97-hour working weeks creating the employment we need.

And I’m worried. What if… what if… you know what I mean.

Happy anxious Friday

A xxxx

Donald Trump has a lot to answer for really. He’s a sexist pig, a total moron, he repeats everything he says twice, because its so important you might have missed it the first time. (Bring in finger gestures:) SO. IMPORTANT. YOU. MAY. HAVE. MISSED. IT. THE. FIRST. TIME. He builds walls to keep his neighbours out, sucks up to the Russians, threatens the Koreans to the point where we’re closer to nuclear war than any time since 1962 and sends bombs and missiles across the world like most people send Easter Eggs.

I can forgive all of that. But having your own son cavorting round the White House gardens in full Arsenal kit????

I mean: WTF????

This is Barron Trump (naming children as a way of pandering to your own outrageous ego is a whole different question) who is 11. And the thought is that Barron was ‘turned’ by either Thierry Henry (former Arsenal striker and French hand-ball specialist) who met Trump at some book signing or other; or by Piers Morgan, noted Gooner and serial contender for the ‘World’s Biggest Tosser’ title for 27 consecutive years. Morgan ‘befriended’ Trump (fame and famous people are everything to Morgan) when on his Apprentice show.

One of those 2, we feel, ‘radicalised’ the innocent child who may previously have decided to do his cavorting dressed as a Washington Redskin (before they ban the name on PC grounds) with shoulder pads and helmet. Or a Yankees kit. Utah Jazz. Enough fucking sports teams over there, for God’s sake.

Yet he chose an Arsenal one. His father must have known this would be deemed offensive in so much of North London. Personally I’d have been happier to see the little tyke in ISIS black, rather than ‘THAT’.

This is the final straw. Raping women is one thing, but dressing your son as a Gooner?

I’m with Kim Jong-Un on this one.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

Its our democratic right to vote. That doesn’t mean we need to be doing it every sodding day. Yet the Prime Minister has now called a general election for June 8th. She waited for me to finalise our Scotland trip (we’re leaving on June 7) and then set the next available day. But I’ve got her number, I’m going to get a postal vote. And… errr… and post it to her. That’ll show her.

Its actually quite a brave thing for the PM to do. The last 3 elections of note were: Brexit, Trump and Erdogan on Sunday cheating his way to impose dictatorial measures on Turkey. Like he doesn’t have enough already. All three of those elections yielded big surprise results. A consequence of the ‘populist’ movement. Which is spreading over the world without anyone actually telling us what it really means. If you count lesser elections, like Corbyn as Labour leader twice (fucking twice!!! a nob like him), then populism seems to have a lot to answer for.

Thus Theresa May is putting all her (easter) eggs in one particular basket, gambling that with the opinion polls currently showing: Corbyn 1% (his mum); the Lib Dems scoring a big ‘who???’ and the conservatives on 97%, it wouldn’t seem that big a risk. Yet shit happens. Happened to Hilary Clinton, happened to David Cameron’s smug assumptions of our Europhilia, happening all over the world. Therefore we have to assume that ‘populism’ is the new euphemism for ‘insanity’ or ‘poor judgment’. Perhaps it just means, as is implied, a general wave of anti-establishment feeling. And, like many north London liberals, I’m all in favour of anti-establishmentism, as long as it doesn’t increase my personal tax liability or reduce the number of footmen and butlers we have.

So on June the 9th we’ll either have the same PM as we have now, but with a stronger mandate, a bigger majority in the house and a full 5 years uninterrupted to sort out Brexit. Or, we’ll have Comrade Corbyn in Number 10, take down the Union Jack overhead and replacing it with a red flag, John McDonnell next door, as head of the KGB, torturing ‘rich people’ (anyone earning over 25k a year who is NOT a member of a trade union, especially Jews), and turning us into North Korea but with better haircuts. For the time being.

We could possibly even have the Liberals in power. Yeah, I know, would take a turnaround of epic proportions, but ya never know with ‘populism’. Then we’ll go straight back into Europe and… and… well, there is nothing else.

I could see Sir Nigel Farage suddenly returning to the head of his party, for the 9th time this year, to make that push for power he so passionately desires. Sadly though, with the Serial Scouse Liar currently in charge and no policies whatsoever to talk about (bit like Labour, really) that’s unlikely.

Anyone but Corbyn.

Happy Wednesday

A xxx

Last season Newcastle were relegated to the Championship. This year, barring an almost miracle, both their fellow North-East teams, Middlesboro and Sunderland, will go down too. Possibly even Hull which is not far… well, up north somewhere. Though Newcastle look destined to return. But for the 3 months of no football, there’ll be no North East team in the Premiership. I know, who cares, right?

The clubs from ‘up there’ are being systematically replaced by teams from the South. Not, like, London, south, but from the real south. Two years ago it was Bournemouth, the seaside town of my childhood, and now Brighton, the other one, (and the only ‘seaside resort’ possibly in the world with no fucking sand), have just gained promotion to return to the lofty heights of the Premiership. Good luck to the Seagulls. I wish ’em all the best (which is giving us 6 points) and give them 6 months. Ok, you can’t actually go all the way down in that time but you know what I mean.

But talking about food (???) some ‘food psychologist’ (yet more ????) has been shamed. Shock, horror!!! But this dude is like a big prof at the lofty Cornell University in New York. Who published the results of a test in 2007 that found that claims made on the food packaging make people think it tastes better. So carrots “which make you see in the dark!!!” taste better than ‘Waitrose essential: carrots’. And “low fat, low sugar… caramel” will be ranked as better flavoured than normal caramel. Which is made from fat and sugar, ironically. Presumably the ‘low’ means just a smaller pack, who knows.

He was found guilty of ‘p-fishing’. Getting loads of data, all totally meaningless, and looking (with a very big computer) for anything that is statistically valid. Any two variables that can be found to be greater than 5% chance of not happening randomly and there you have it: the new law of gravity, the ‘proof’ of the pudding, in this case literally. Which just goes to show what a load’a twaddle almost all statistics is.

Another statistic is that John Terry is 36 years old. So Chelsea are putting him out to pasture. With the cows. Probably cows that gang up on people. But JT doesn’t want to stop playing footy. And he can’t manage yet. So we all look forward to seeing him next year warming the bench at Hull. Maybe Bournemout. Possibly Leyton Orient.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

I grew up in London. The best place ever. Biggest playground in the world. All things were available at every stage of life. Brilliant. I could smoke like a chimney by the time I was 12, play a decent game of snooker by 14, knew the tube network inside out, all that was missing was shoplifting and pick-pocketing to be the entire Artful Dodger. But I never knew about ‘the ways of the countryside’. That mysterious and mythical region that existed the other side of Epping. Full of mystical beasts (sheep) and enchanted forests (Richmond Park) and things that townies just didn’t really understand. And even though I’ve now traveled quite a bit, I still don’t really get the whole countryside thing. The ‘rules’.

So yesterday, on our way back from Arundel, we thought we’d have a nice walk on the South Downs. They’re big green things they have down there. There are ‘public footpaths’, advertised on little green signs to tell you where to walk. I missed about four because I was in ‘get back to London’ mode which means driving very very fast. At the fifth I stopped, turned the car round and went back. Public Footpath.

There’s a gate. There’s always a gate. Double one. Big locked, tractor-sized one and next to it a little ‘person sized’ one. For persons. Public persons. Let them in, keep cows out. And they never teach you, in London schools, how to open a fucking gate in the countryside. They should do. So ten minutes later, Mel & I proudly (yes!!! I’d done what a thousand country folk do in 5 seconds without even a thought) walked into ‘the countryside’. Hmmmm, lovely, smell that air, feel that grass underfoot, wonderful.

There were a bunch of cows in the field. Sorry, a ‘herd’. About 200 yards away, 30 or so bovines. Who all looked up. Fine. Then started ambling. Towards us. I don’t care, but Mel really is no fan of any animal that’s not on her dinner plate. I laughed, ‘they’re cows for God’s sake!!’ and God in fact made them daft and extremely timid. Sharks, I’d be worried. Lions, for sure. Cows? Just walk on, darling.

The cows broke into a run. All of them, heading for us. Most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen. We arrived at the next gate just before they ‘arrived’ and stood in the refuge of the next field. And the cows piled up to the gate and just stood there staring. I think they were attracted to Mel’s jacket. You can see the attraction. I’ve since learned that cows are pretty much colour blind. Though are aware of ‘yellow’ when presented in such Mel-type quantities. But fuck ’em. We walked on. Round the next field, conscious that unless we wanted to walk back to London, we’d have to return the same way to the car.

Eventually we returned, half hour later. And there; staring where we’d left them, were ‘our cows’. All of them. The whole ‘gaggle’. Just staring. At their messiah in yellow. Mel.

I opened the gate and they did what cows do; cowered and moved away. I would say sheepishly but I’m not sure if you can say that in the countryside. Mixing your meataphors. They scattered. Knowing that I do martial arts. We walked on. And left them… doing pretty much what they had been doing, but somewhere different.

Bizarre. I’ll never understand the ways of the countryside. That’s part of the charm.

Happy cow-free Monday

A xxxx

What a weekend that this… has been? is being, will continue to be??? Cos it goes on and on, seems like for 4 days. Which of course it is. I’m loving Jesus too at this point. Yesterday Spurs won. Again, not just a win but a blow-away, fuck-off annihilation. Superb, elegant, classy, fast, powerful. Frikkin wonderful.

Played some tennis on Friday, f’ra change, tai chi on Saturday, no change, and then today Chelsea lost. The dream. I only saw the end. We went to Arundel Castle. In… errr… Arundel. Down south. Put it on waze and 2 hours later you get there, as if by magic. And its fab. Most wonderful gardens ever. But I can’t talk about it now. Because in between all that, and swooning over the fact that blue and white Spurs make pink stuff for baby girls, I got involved with Asian lesbians in a big way. Really big way.

We went to see The Handmaiden. Korean movie based on the book Fingersmith. They moved it from Victorian England to Korea under Japanese rule. So its very historical and therefore ‘hi-brow’ and its subtitled, unless you speak Kim-Jong-anything, therefore its ‘arthouse’ and it is probably the most beautiful filming I’ve ever seen, so its classy. And yet what stands out is the lesbian porn.

Though really I’m perhaps not giving the film the credit it deserves. I never read the book but I’m now going to because the story is quite brilliant. Twists and turns like… something very twisty and turny. Like the road to Arundel. Wonderfully so. Even though its over 2 hours long you’re just gripped. In fact you’re scared that if you miss just one word your life may never be the same again. Its also really funny in places (though don’t worry its horribly violent in others, in case I’d put you off) and wonderfully acted. I don’t expect humour from far Eastern films. I expect people leaping over buildings whilst killing 17 birds with a samurai sword. But you don’t get that here either. They missed a trick

All you get is probably the best film you’ve seen for a decade. Ok, for a year for sure. Maybe 5. And definitely on my all time top 10 list (currently 86 films). Go see it.

In tomorrow’s exiting episode of The Pesach Journal we need to talk about cows. No really, we do.

And I need to tell me mate Ali that tomorrow night I’m right with him. Us ‘Boro boys gotta stick together in time’s of (mutual) need.

Happy very late Sunday

A xxxx

Jesus, feels like I’ve been away forever. Oddly, Jesus has been away forever too. But is due back now, tomorrow or the next day, so don’t worry. But its a funny thing, I get time off work and suddenly my time’s not my own. So even though the world has now taken about 4 more steps closer to nuclear oblivion, even though now Trump has found the buttons to push, he keeps on pushing, and even though Spurs won yet another game today, even though Kelvin McKenzie has become a bigger hate-figure than Assad, I haven’t had a chance to put ‘pen to paper’ (its a metaphor for writin’ things, in case you’re under 23).

Every second has been spent planning a holiday. Just 8 days in June. In Scotland. At Christmas we spent 2 weeks in India, it was all pre-arranged and wonderful. One phone call and it got sorted. But this one is more ‘self-service’. And it ain’t easy.

Firstly, this is Scotland we’re talking about. Its not the French Riviera, the Alps, the Croatian coast. No-one knows Scotland is lovely. Even though its where most of their Scotch comes from. They just make judgments based on its football league and its whingeing mps and assume its a midge-infested vitimin-free-zone where it pisses down all day every day of the year. But when we went 2 years ago we learned the magic of the Highlands. And decided there and then we wanted to return and go further north. So I booked the flights yesterday, on airmiles. Bargain. Which proved to be the easy bit. The really easy bit.

Because even though we decided long ago we were going to fly to Inverness, get a car, if they have such things, if not then a horse-and-carriage, and tootle round the northern coastal bit, round to John O’Groats. Ok, and a few distilleries, if we must. Then last Sunday, just before we were finalising dates and stuff, the fucking Sunday Times printed a massive piece about the Northern 500!!! Never heard of it? Me neither. Its a road trip. Starting in Inverness and driving round the northern coastal bit round to John O’Groats. Bastards!!!

So the first stop we decide, let’s call it ‘Glengoolie’ (not its name but the real names get really complicated, AND I DON’T WANT TO GIVE YOU IDEAS). It has 3 hotels worthy of the name, 4 inns and 17 B&B places. All fully booked til November. “We’ve got the garage you can use. Bring yer own bed and the roof leaks. Just 200 quid a night. Supply an’ demand, innit?” So finding 7 different places to stay is proving very time-consuming. We still haven’t finished, but you kind’a get Booking.com-ed out after 19 hours of sheer frustration and depression.

Kelvin McKenzie? Attacked Ross Barkley the Everton player who was knocked out in a bar in Liverpool last weekend. McKenzie, writing in the Sun which he used to edit before he moved onto the Murdoch first team at Sky, insulted Barkley, really viciously, attacked the entire city of Liverpool and most of its inhabitants. Who mainly deserve it and Barkley is a bit lame. But demanding he be sacked? Elevating insulting Liverpool/Liverpudlians to the status of high treason? Demanding that McKenzie be summarily sacked for his insulting words? I won’t even mention the racism-that-isn’t-racism because that might give it a validity above the contempt it really deserves.

McKenzie is horrible. And he wrote an opinion column that quite frankly he shouldn’t have, which was approved by a sub-editor who shouldn’t have done so either. His crime is one of writing a terribly unfunny piece. Nothing even vaguely amusing in it. So yeah, sack him for that. But not for ‘crimes against Liverpool’. And once someone on the radio mentioned ‘Hillsborough’ in this context, I almost murdered Alexa (Amazon joke).

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

I love Facebook. I’m a recent ‘convert’. And now it allows me to post
photos of lovely little Lila every day for loads of my friends, and
even more people that I don’t even know, to swoon over and ‘like’ and
‘love’ and ‘aaaahhhhhh xxxxx’. And once one person has ‘liked’ it, the
photo goes onto their site too, for their friends to ‘like’. And if
any of them ‘like’ it…

I reckon, working on the ‘7 degrees of separation’ model that there is
only one man in the entire world who hasn’t seen Lila sleeping with
her hands over her head. And he’s a bastard, so we don’t care. His
loss. And that happens within minutes of the photo being posted.
That’s why Facebook made 10 billion dollars last year from
advertising. Because it reaches almost 2 billion people.

But its not some passive form of inter-connectivity, leaving us to our
own devices; you like my granddaughter, I’ll like your chocolate cake.
He likes your puppy vomiting over the Vicar, I’ll like your chimpanzee
in a Ferrari. No, its an algorithm. And it monitors every click we
make, every breath we take, every vow… sorry. It monitors everything
we do on phone, pc, tablet, anything connected. It probably hooks up
with ‘Alexa’, our Amazon music player which/who allegedly is run by
the Chinese hackers. Its all connected. And those clicks dictate which
adverts Facebook shows us. Which friends it thinks ‘we may know’.

The algorithm is a secret. They’re all secret as far as I’m concerned,
in that deeply opaque way of very advanced mathematics. But Facebook’s
is their fortune. Or was, till they started showing people paedophile
sites and instructions for beheading. Which, it must be said, it will
only do if those people are ‘that way inclined’. If you are mates with
Jihadi John and Abu Hamza, its a fair guess that you’ll be into
advanced bomb making. So the Times journalists who set up a bogus page
essentially inviting kiddy-pornographers and Islamic extremists on,
were not disappointed.

Algorithms don’t have a morality. They’re just a very advanced method
of offering you what, statistically, you’re most likely to want. And
when people complain about inappropriate sites, I can’t image that
process is done by people either. If 1% of people complain about
sites, that’s 10million investigations. They probably have another
algorithm for that. Who knows? But its a problem. Advertisers don’t
like being connected with the bombing of a school, the rape of a baby,
Arsenal’s current form. Its immoral, its wrong and really, with all
their vast billions, Facebook should be able to stop it.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx