Andy's Glasses

I wish to complain about the airport. Every fucking airport in the world. And, before you accuse me of hyperbole, I have visited EVERY SINGLE ONE. The lot. Because they all suffer from the same pitiful inadequacies. Exemplified by here, today, at Tenerife airport. And the problem is: there’s too many people here. And not just any people, really scummy, holidaying Brit type people. And trust me, I’m no snob. I would never judge a man by his face-full of tattoos any more than I would by his replica football shirt (away colours). I grew up in Ilford, FFS, I couldn’t even spell ‘princess’ til I was 19, let alone act like one. But when I’m stuck in the endless queuing system of queuing systems which we call ‘air travel’, I can’t help but examine my surroundings. And those with whom I share them temporarily.

The Island of Tenerife is neatly divided into two parts. Not, as travel agents would have you believe, into the north and the south, but in fact into the ‘posh’ and the ‘scuzzy’. Yet at the airports these two groups are forced to converge so they can fleetingly breathe the same horrible recycled air for the duration of BA 7463 and then diverge once more upon landing. Separating back into their life’s paths, with no more choice than salmon returning to where they were born, in order to spawn. So as we speed off back to the leafy confines of North London in our environment-nurturing, battery-powered sense of superiority, ‘they’ get picked up in their brother-in-law’s Transit van which isn’t allowed within 36 miles of London due to the excess diesel fumes it spews out in second gear, to chug them back to a trailer-park in Milton Keynes. I’m not saying it’s the correct order of things, it’s just what it is.

Before we’re allowed on the aircraft there’s the essential ‘water-dance’, without which the plane can’t take off. It’s quite a simply dance really. Here’s what you do: you get to the airport and you’re forced to discard the bottle of water which kept you hydrated on the ride there. Then after you’ve done the queuing thing, then the hokey-kokey and turned around, you go buy a new bottle of water. It may look like the one you’ve just thrown away but it’s not. It’s ‘safe’. Bought from ‘air side’, thus has no toxins, ricin, nitroglycerin, nerve agents, chemical warfare shit or other military grade explosives. Just water. But such pure and wonderful water that you can ONLY buy it if you have a valid boarding pass for a flight. It’s distilled from the urine of pre-pubescent Unicorns. Which is why it always costs 3 times the price of that ‘land side’ rubbish. Fair enough. Presumably the boarding pass is so the water is ‘duty free’, because the import tax on Unicorn’s urine is 82%, as everyone knows.

And now I’m home. And it is fucking cold. I’m going back. Where’s my bottle of airside water?

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

Because of the change in our monarchy, following the death of the Queen (the Elizabeth queen, not that other, new, fake one), the New Years Honours List for 2025 has changed its focus. In line with the disastrous new government, the abysmal state of the economy and, basically, nothing at all good happening anywhere in the UK, this honours list is intended to credit the unworthy. The losers. The tossers. The no-hopers, gloom-mongers, cretins, the morons and those who have failed to achieve. It is thus the most egalitarian honours list ever. And we should be proud of both the government for such a bold and zeitgeisty move, and to the recipients who otherwise, in many cases, instead of taking the knee before the king, would be in the front row of a court room, manacled to the dock.

Sadiq Kahn gets a well deserved knighthood. He’s been London’s mayor for almost ever and has accomplished absolutely nothing of note. Plenty of shit has happened on his watch, lots of rubbish has been spouted, and in really poor English, but he’s managed to be the most worthless of civic leaders and is duly rewarded for it.

Gareth Southgate is knighted for not winning anything with England in all those years of his stewardship. I’m not saying winning World Cups is easy, I’m just sayin’, he didn’t win none. Nor Euros. Thus deserves this honour for his abject failures. Though we all love the man dearly.

And in this context, I must this year be grateful for my continued absence from the honours. By not being honoured, I can claim that my life can’t be the total disaster it often feels like and most people think it is. If it was that bad, I’d be Sir Andy and you’d be on your fucking knees!!! But once again, even with the offer to buy Kier Starmer some underwear from M&S, my ‘services to the nation’ have gone unrewarded, and the PM’s testicles will remain cold this winter. Assuming he has some. And I don’t mean that in the metaphorical sense.

Because he stood up to Elon Musk. In the continuing worsening relationship between our two nations. Musk stated, quite honestly, that he didn’t wish to open a new Tesla factory in Scotland, which had been on the cards, because ‘no-one wants to invest in Britain under the current administration’. To which Starmer’s people (yes, he has ‘people’; you get them free when you become PM) replied that ‘the PM is 100% committed to growth in the economy’. That showed Musk.

In a battle of words between two men about business, economy and productivity, who would you put your money on? The self-made richest man in the world, even though he’s fairly hateful? Or the trumped up civil servant who’s never really worked in the real world and supports Arsenal?

Happy New Year,

(And practising for next year:)

Sir Andy of Londonshire xxxx

I’m here today to specifically and emphatically NOT discuss the ‘f-word’. It is herein and thereafter and thrice-whatever guaranteed to be absent from these pages. Other than one token sentence which may, or may not, have been expressed previously in these postings. Ready? I fucking hate football. Two f-words for the price of admission to White Hart Lane. I’m done with it, I’m over it, I’m not spending another hot, sweaty afternoon in glorious Tenerife drinking pints of Spanish lager to try and make my team look a little blurry, a little distorted, anything which might be a little better.

So I’m instead going to discuss the tragedy which has now gained traction in, predominantly, the right-wing press. The ‘end of woke’. As if, by a few neo-Faragists and MAGA-monkeys, who’ve stopped adding their ‘pronouns’ to their email signatures, the whole movement which we’ve spent years engaged in, to help the minorities, to help the dysfunctional, to give hope to the more ‘diverse’ and dysmorphic among us, it’ll just end. Boom. I’m a well known author, journalist, Tory, and I’ve declared that from now on you need a penis to enter a man’s toilet. Or, rather, that having a penis will preclude your entry into a ‘women’s toilet’. Yes, let’s go back to the Stone Age and persecute those among us who really don’t know where to take a piss in public. Again. Like we’ve been persecuted for millennia. Well, the Romans were ok with diversity. From diversity springs perversity (ex diversum perversum natus est… whatever). But in recent, post-war times, it has taken almost 3 years to move from ‘poof’ to LGBTQ++. And that covers barely a third of the options which any decent society MUST cater for. Because this once minority now measures a massive 0.0000317% of people in our nation. And therefore we DEMAND a proportionate amount of discourse and legislation. Ok, we actually demand a totally disproportionate amount of discourse. Not debate, we simply don’t do that. There is NO room for debate in the woke world. That would be totally undemocratic. If you even question one of our precepts, YOU ARE THE ENEMY AND WILL BE CANCELLED, a pariah in our rainbow nation! No, not South Africa, the other one. And that includes our passionate stance in defending Palestine against those apartheid and colonising land-grabbers, Israel!! We demand that our politicians act NOW to save Palestine for its own people. The ones who would have us thrown off of tall buildings or stoned in public for our ‘diverse’ lifestyles. We see absolutely NO hypocrisy, or even stupidity in that.

And this is what ‘they want to end’!!!

I don’t have that many issues with the end of woke. But, speaking as a satirist, it’s like half my life has been ripped away!!! The world of woke has been the piss-taker’s dream scenario. I don’t know how I ever managed without it. And now, they calling out its death knell. A tragedy.

To compensate, and get more in touch with my more feminine side, I played Padel again today. And realised that if you put a bat in my hand and throw a ball at me, I’m just happy to hit it. Whatever you call the bat. However big the ball. It’s just enjoyable. But to replace my tennis????

Happy Monday

A xxxx

For about 4 years now various friends have been mentioning, demanding, imploring that I try padel tennis, and/or pickleball. “It’s the best!!!”, they yell. “You’ll love it!!!!”, they say. “It’s just like tennis but… errrrr… not tennis!!!!”

Ok, so just to clarify and remove any ambiguity, its like this: you want me to stop playing tennis, which I love, adore and play every single weekend and have done, passionately, for about 40 years, and instead play some alternative version of ‘not tennis’, loosely based on the game I know and love, just because ‘it’s different’. Is that the gist? Or how about: so I have to give up tennis to appease a bunch of venture capitalists who’ve invested billions in ‘the next big things’ and soon all the tennis clubs will be steamrollered out the way so they can build more Padel courts which are smaller and have a much bigger yield. Because you can play tennis in any park for a fiver. But you can’t play Padel for much less than 60 quid an hour. Ooooooh, go the VCs, licking their lips, so that’s 12 tennis courts, making 17 Padel courts, each bringing in £60 an hour, seven days a week, half under cover… THAT MAKES A SHITLOAD OF CASH!!!!

My little tennis club in my local park is a prime example. It was called ‘The Angela Buxton Tennis Centre’ since she opened it in about 1958, just after Angela Buxton made it to the Wimbledon final. Lost, obviously, but SHE WAS THERE! Then later becoming the Northway Tennis Centre. Its lovely. Just four courts in a beautiful park. The new ownership of which has now received preliminary approval to be converted into…

Fucking Padel courts. Obviously. I applied to become a Padel player but Barnet Council refused. On the grounds that I’m a massive asset to the game of tennis, an exemplary and elite player of outstanding skill and beauty.

So here, in Tenerife, we joined a Padel session at our resort. They have courts, it’s a Spanish game, ffs, they should have courts. And we played. Mel and I with an ‘instructor’. Hit the ball that way, there its out, here its in, you can bounce it off the back wall and play it. Go.

It’s like tennis but… not tennis. It’s tennis for those who can’t play the real game. It’s a poor facsimile of a beautiful game. Bit shorter, less running round, very Spanish. Funny little racquet, almost a paddle. Hmmmm.

If I may say, candidly; it’s a game for poofs. For lowlifes with no talent, no skill, not enough fitness for tennis. Criminals will like it, paedophiles, clergymen in general, anyone with more than one letter of ‘LGBTQ…’, and Kier Starmer probably loves it. Plays with Kim Jong Un, Jeremy Corbyn and Putin.

Yet I absolutely hate to even say it: it was fun. And enjoyable. But sadly I’m a man of (very few) principle(s), so I won’t be enduring that again. Other than this afternoon. Possibly tomorrow.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

So you come to Tenerife to ‘get away from it all’. Even though there is really not a lot of ‘all’ to be getting away from at this time of year. The newspapers, after 14 weeks of unblinking ‘pre-Christmas’, got over the anniversary of Christ’s birth as it started because there was no more advertising opportunity. So instead have now begun the New Years’ Eve pre-match. And because there’s nothing else happening anywhere in the world, the only thing really worth ‘getting away from’, the football, has followed me here. Not in a good way.

Spurs continued their run of awfulness, unpredictability and total rubbish yesterday. The only difference between that match at Forest and the preceding ones being that instead of having to walk all the way into my lounge to watch it, I had to traipse half way round this little island to find a bar which was willing to show Spurs, the greatest team the world has ever known, whilst they were all displaying combinations of Wolves, Southampton, Crystal Palace, even Newcastle! But no Spurs. We should have taken that as ‘a sign’. But Spurs fans are as diligent and persistent as we are stupid, and between Me, Joey, Tory-Boy and me new best mate, Dan, we persevered and eventually found a low-life bar on a shoddy beach, filled with mainly British scumbags too drunk to know what they were watching. We’d found ‘home’!!! Among the tattoos, the Scouse accents, the inbred children and the vomit. Perfect.

The thing with losing more matches than we’ve actually played is that you have nothing left in the season to wish for (Caribou Cup notwithstanding; we only have to beat Liverpool, how hard can that be??) other than Arsenal not winning the league. And possibly Spurs not getting relegated. But that’s all so negative, so uninspiring, so… so Spursy. If it wasn’t for Manchester United I think I’d have given up on football altogether.

We need Daniel Levy to look closely at our present government and adopt their tactic of ‘throwing money at problems’. We need, by my estimation, just 17 new, world-class players. That’s all. Then we can ‘advance’. We can stem the tide of a season getting horribly out of hand (though unfortunately not out of mind) and move upwards and onwards.

Either that or sell the club to a shell company owned by exiled Russian oligarchs, based in the Caymans, for tax purposes, and sponsored by a tortuous, slave-driven economy in Arab Oil-Land where not one penny is wasted on human rights laws.

I leave it to him.

Happy Christmas Sales

A xxxx

I’m in Tenerife. Its hot. Job done. Mrs C needs an infusion of ultra violet in the winter, there’s probably nowhere nearer than the Canary Islands to achieve that aim. They call it ‘Spain’. But it’s not. Its Africa. Just to the west of the southern end of Morocco, where it meets Western Sahara. Florida shares the same line of latitude. Could’a gone there. But it’s further. Longer flight. And it’s Florida. Possibly my least favourite state which isn’t KKK affiliated. We could have gone to Sudan, same degree of southernness. But the resort got bombed. Ok, not a ‘resort’ so much as a camp site. And there’s problems with travel insurance. So Tenerife it was. And is. Quite frankly, it’s gorgeous here. The problem is, someone brought Lila and Joey out here too. Oh no! How did that happen??? And it’s Chanukah. Which, for the 5th time in 100 years, falls precisely on Christmas Day. So you’d think; well, in a Catholic country, it’ll be all about Jesus. Yet this part of Tenerife is a little less ‘Spain’ and a bit more ‘northwest London refugees’, so on the beach last night, there was this. Lighting the Chanukah candles. By a rabbi. You don’t need a rabbi, anyone can light candles, but by having a rabbi, and furthermore, one with a proper beard AND hat, we were truly blessed. Because the more religious it is, the less calories are in the doughnuts which you are obliged to eat. And it was really lovely. Happy. Communal. With doughnuts.

Whereas in the London Borough of Westminster, they decided not to have the Chanukah menorah this year, at Trafalgar Square, like they do every year. Because ‘of the weather’. Oh, ok. Like Chanukah is normally in the summer? No, it’s always Christmas, give or take a week or two. So why would Sadiq Kahn, in his infinite (lack of) wisdom, choose to approve such a move? Maybe between the police, the mayor and Hamas, they’ve decided that anything Jew-related is simply too inflammatory, too sensitive, will cause masses of ‘upset’ among people to allow a wonderful, happy, biblical celebration to take place in our capital. They’ve now conceded to put it up for the rest of Chanukah, which is very nice of them. Now that ‘wind speeds don’t make it dangerous’. Right.

Meanwhile, Tenerife has reached official swimming temperature for those of us who don’t swim when it’s cold. Or cool. Or even ‘not very hot’. So I’m on it. Following Mrs Conway up and down the pool like a whale on heat. Or in the heat.

Happy Chanukah

A xxxx

We need to talk about Matt Gaetz. The American former Senator who left the House of Representatives to become Trump’s next Attorney General but was vetoed by his own party on the grounds of “you ‘avin a larf, or WHAT??” Because, other than Donald Trump himself, Matt Gaetz is possibly the most inappropriate man to hold any form of high or governmental office, on the entire planet. Though I must stress: he has NOT been accused of any crime. Unless the statutory rape thing sticks. He’s only been investigated by an ‘ethics committee’ of his own party. And the 37 page report on his ethics found incontrovertibly that ‘he has none. Not a single ethic in the man, whatsoever’.

Which, obviously, made him first choice for Trump, they probably partied together, grabbing women by various ‘bits’, as you do when you’ve parted with good dollar for the privilege. But attorney general? A man with a history, and a present, of serious recreational druggage? Often purchased using PayPal, in the interests of ‘transparency’. Ok, stupidity.

I’d also like to stress that paying prostitutes for sex is NOT a crime. So possibly, paying lots and lots of money for sex is even less of a crime? Otherwise I can’t imagine how his hooker-bill came to $90k. But that came as part of an ‘all inclusive’ package with drugs too. Which doesn’t sit so well with the ‘not-crime’ thing.

The Republican Party is Conservative. In the traditional, social and political sense. It is based on proper Christian values. Though in light of recent revelations in our own Church of England, sex with minors is possibly a very Christian value. But ‘family’ is a value. Honesty. Marital vows. Loyalty. And, obviously, the right to shoot lots of people with powerful weaponry. Whilst viewing abortion as ‘MURDER!!!’ Ok, this is Donald Trump’s party so there’s no place for common sense or logic, just a lot of shouting and repetition. But even the Republicans must surely see that just a fleeting brush with some kind of ‘morality’ should really be a prerequisite for attorney fucking general???

The girl in question was 17. The age of consent in Florida is 18. If he’d have gone next door to Georgia the age of consent is dependent on your level of shared genes. Eeeuuuwwwww. And don’t get me started on Utah.

Gaetz ‘didn’t know she was 17’. She didn’t tell him. He didn’t ask. It was consensual and contractual ($400) and therefore a much better quality of under-age sex than you get from the abusers in the church. But still statutory rape.

We know Trump likes to be controversial so may well have nominated Gaetz for AG just to provoke. And yet there’s kind of a parallel between the two. They both inhabit a world of such abject hypocrisy combined with complete immunity from immorality, that neither is aware of it.

The difference is; one is heading for some minor kind of slap-on-wrist, albeit career-ending, politics-wise; and the other is going to be the single, most powerful man on the planet.

God help us all.

Happy Xmas Eve

A xxxx

Just one more question, to the neutrals it is aimed,
to check if our levels of fun are being adequately sustained:
WAS THAT FUCKING ENTERTAINING ENOUGH FOR YOU???
or was our ‘goals conceded’ level still a bit too few?

They came from the North, in fact from Liverpool
Where shoplifters abound and no-one goes to school
Home of the Beatles, no less, the source of their only pride
Yet you don’t find many locals playing in their football side.

Those Scousers were magnificent, of that there can be no doubt
Playing with an ease, a style, a superb flow throughout
Yet Tottenham rose to the occasion, enabling the impossible
They made Liverpool look magnificent, whilst we remained a rabble.

Not many teams could arrange such a really high level of farce
that enables their opposition to seemingly kick them up the arse.
The goals came in a flurry, one and two and three
The third though scored by Tottenham, that one nobody could foresee

So they scored a couple more, aided impeccably by our defence
Who were apparently playing for the neutral fans, with not much common sense
They were simply left floundering, half way up the pitch
in accordance with Ange’s methods, life can be a bitch.

‘We play the high line!’, rinse and fucking repeat
Never go backwards with the ball at your feet
We never gave up, our attacking was heaven sent
Except the ball kept going to that horrible geezer, Trent.

Nine goals was the final tally, an afternoon to be enjoyed by all
as our slippage down the table continued to bleedin fall
The pundits were a’ravin’, how Spurs are entertainin’,
it wasn’t even rainin’; but did my fucking brain in!!!

Happy fucking Monday

A xxxx

I went out for dinner last night. Oh wow, did you, Andy, I’ll alert the fucking media…

No, I did. Round to friends. Not just any friends but to Mr & Mrs My Favourite Gooner in the World, friends. Possibly the only Arsenal fan in the competition as I generally try to avoid such friendships for obvious reasons. Anyway, come to dinner, for 7.30. So we duly arrived and by 7.40 I was comfortably sipping a nice Scotch and trying to change the subject away from Arsenal’s 5-nil win at Southampton. Which finished, not coincidentally, at 7.27. We ate, we drank, we talked, we shouted, we laughed (these are decidedly ‘good people’, not in any moral sense, obviously, he’s a Gooner, but good nonetheless), just six of us, having fun.

Then, The Judge, for that’s what he did when he was still a valuable and contributing member of our society, announced that at 10.00, he was taking his leave of us. Oh. To go upstairs and watch the boxing. Well, Tyson Fury fighting Usyk for the uncontested, most contested contest the world of boxing has ever known, in the fat bastard class, simply couldn’t be missed.

And I love this. Love the fact that he simply knew we wouldn’t mind. Love the fact that the remaining five of us just carried on anyway. And I love the fact that the delightful Mrs Favourite Gooner (even though she’s a Spurs fan ‘by birth’) arranged a super meal, eaten in comfortable relaxation, within the parameters of the day’s essential sporting events. She should be knighted.

But I didn’t want to watch the boxing. I’m not the biggest fan of the sport in usual circumstances. But these weren’t usual circumstances. These were two very distinguished gentlemen engaged in battle. With their major distinction being that they are both fucking horrible, vile, disgusting people. Fury is the scumbag’s scumbag and Usyk an evil piece of shit. Ok, Ukrainian shit, to whom we’re supposed to exhibit national support, but shit nonetheless. And I don’t mind watching horrible people in sport if they’re going to lose, much like I watch Manchester City currently, or Novak Djokovic, but when you know one of them has to win? Nah. The only exceptions are Emma Raducanu, Keely Hodgkinson, Katie Boulter. Who knows if they’re horrible, they look great, therefore need to be watched. Chelsea and Tyson Fury? Don’t think so. Unless they were playing each other, then one would have to lose.

It’s hard being a sport’s fan. Harder if you have a misplaced sense of decency combined with a love of long legs.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

Not Joey, nothing reformed about him. Nigel Farage. Was UKIP-er in chief, then resigned after Brexit because the one-trick pony had run his final dressage, and then was re-incarnated as the leader of Reform. After the required length of time for refusals, denials and ‘what, you want li’l ole ME to do that???’s, the Faragist is back, heading up the latest incarnation of… well, lots of parties really. Which originally were simply based on White Supremacy and abject racism, and then, when the market for such neo-naziism struggled to sell, the kind of ‘spruced up’, suit-and-tie’ versions which changed their ideology from racial purity to ‘populism’, adopted as much Trump-ese into their rhetoric as they could and announced themselves in the ‘centre-right’ slot. Just behind the number 8.

Being Nigel Farage when we have a conservative government intent on shipping dark people ‘back’ to Africa, is a difficult place to be. But as soon as Labour ascended to our throne, his job is made simple. We are now led by a group of morons. So much so that the Americans actually re-defined diplomatic protocols to describe the new proposed ambassador to the USA in that precise term.

And being Farage just go a whole lot easier. For who better placed to pull to shreds the imbecilic plans of the Cabinet, seemingly intent on realigning us with the EU, than the man who has made his life’s commitment to extricating us from just that.

I didn’t want Brexit. Still don’t. But… ‘the people hath spoke’ and must be respected. Even the most rampant Brexiteer never minded free entry visas when he visited Paris or Rome. Was always happy with the free trade agreements. It was the dictat of the European Courts that was the problem. Forcing ‘us’ to adhere to ‘their’ mainly ridiculous laws. All of them. And now, in Starmer’s panic to do something with the economy he’s promised to fix, he’s so desperate to re-open full trade with Europe that in March he will agree to putting us back into the European Courts of Justice so that we can eat cut-price Camembert.

The Tories were scared of Farage. First Cameron, hence the Brexit vote in the first place, then all the others. Because by (initially, at least) taking us just a smidge over to the right, he’ll gain the support of all the Tories plus all the Brexit voters. And if he does get backed by Elon Musk (yes, its not ‘allowed’, but if there is away, Musk is definitely the man to find it, even if it means a completely new system of mathematics being introduced worldwide) then little old Nige could yet become our PM.

The good thing about Nigel. Ok, the only good thing about Nigel, is that he ‘gets’ where Israel is coming from, and is in the minority of hoping they can actually stay there. And as cities here consider setting up Shaira Courts, with limited power, Nigel understands the growing threat of Islamisation. A bit like his mate Donald does.

Its interesting. Farage is ideally placed to attack the government in a way the Tories aren’t, because they’re mired in centrism and fear moving either side of it. Whereas Nigel can only ever be left of where his rabble started from.

Could I ever vote for such a man? Probably not, yet I’d feel safer with him than Starmer.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx