Andy's Glasses

When is a penalty not a penalty? When the ref doesn’t give it, that’s when. Similar to ‘when is a handball not a handball’? Unless its perpetrated by ‘our side’ rather than yours. Here’s the rule. Andy’s rule. Ready? At the end of the game you add up all the goals, allocate them numerically to the teams that respectively scored them and you get, after some basic calculus and three new algorithms, what we’ll call ‘the result’. If you can count to 3, maybe sometimes 4 or 5, then your pathetic maths skills are still sufficient to the task.

What you don’t count (unless you’re a total nob or an Arsenal fan… just thinking that one… can you be an Arsenal fan if you’re not a total nob? Hmmm…) is the missed opportunities, the refereeing decisions, the travesties of justice, the tragic unfairness, the fact that the ref has issues at home, none of that. Its what we call IRRELEVANT. Just so’s you know.

Therefore, with no further delay, I’d like to compliment Spurs on yesterday’s quite frankly amazing result at Manchester City. Amazing. 2-0 down and playing about 10% as effectively as they were last weekend, they didn’t give up. Which may seem logical and obvious but it isn’t to Spurs fans. Our memories don’t have to be that good to remember the heads down, shoulders slumped ends of matches in a state of complete surrender.

But no more. Not under Pochettino (who never talks about ref’s decisions, either way, unless specifically asked and then he just shrugs it off). We scored a fab goal, we pushed Raheem Sterling over a few times, we scored another great goal, pushed Sterling again, for luck, then saw the game out even after losing our Toby, the best centre half the league has ever seen. AND we started without his mate Jan Vertongen, the other best centre half the league has ever seen.

The only way you can actually question the comeback is to think: ‘yeah, but its only Man City’. Something we wouldn’t have thought under the previous 19 managers (over one year, seven months). But for some reason, the ‘best manager in the world’, given an unlimited budged and the most expensive team ever assembled outside China, has ended up with a very fragile bunch of superstars who can neither score sufficiently nor defend properly. Not enough to justify their pay-cheques anyway.

So we didn’t win but by Donald it felt like it.

Happy Sunday. Jack Frost has certainly fucked up my tennis schedule. Bastard.

A xxxx

Well, we’ve all survived the first 18 hours of the Trump presidency. In fact its gone rather well, so far. The sun still rose this morning, the tennis court still managed to accumulate sufficient fucking frost to render any play impossible, Tai Chi was still life-changingly awesome and no nukes fell anywhere in the world. So all is looking good. Except…

America’s in turmoil. Its almost broken. Like Britain was (is?) following the Brexit vote. Like Scotland was after their (no) independence vote. Because democracy is a divisive thing. Its not supposed to be, its supposed to bring the population together to make a wonderful, collective decision. But its only wonderful for the winners. For the losers it can be horrible. Sometimes it doesn’t matter so much. Sometimes it does. And it breeds a discontent.

So today there’s yet more protests. They had them yesterday, and they got a bit nasty in Washington. And today there are ‘women’s’ marches all across America and all over the world. Basically protesting against Trump. Because if you protest for women’s rights you are protesting against all forms of sexism and misogyny, most of which are frequently displayed or voiced by Trump.

But really, a protest against Trump is not a great idea, whatever you may think of the man. Because he only had one vote. So your protest is actually against democratic process, for failing YOU, or against your neighbours, colleagues, workmates and soccer moms for voting for the tosser in the first place. And that is the divisive bit. You end up protesting against fellow Americans because you think they’re stupid.

Trump’s speech yesterday was a lot of nothing. Same as all his speeches. He should have addressed the hateful divisions in his nation. Because that’s for now more important than jobs, the economy and foreign policy. Cohesion first, the shit can be shovelled later. Though the first shit he yelled about was ‘eradicating radical Islam from THE FACE OF THE PLANET’. A sentiment as noble as it is totally ignorant, naive and quite frankly pathetic. We know that Americans love a ‘strong man’, one who goes up to the plate, they love a John Wayne (even though he was a fucking ACTOR), Davey Crockett, men with guns.

To ‘defeat’ radical Islam would take a massive shift in a philosophical culture deeply embedded in millions of minds. One man with a gun, even a really big gun, can’t ‘defeat’ that. An army can’t defeat that. It would take several powerful people from within the Muslim world.

Ironically, even if Islamic terrorism ended tomorrow, there’s still 22 million psychopathic Americans who own sufficient weaponry to kill more innocent people than a hundred ISIS armies. Obama tried to do something about that and failed, its not really even on Trump’s agenda.

Early days,

Spurs at Man City. That’s almost bigger than a new Prez.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

I love a food fad. In fact, I just love food. Preferably in excess, but lots of moderation counts. As in, that was a ‘moderate’ food intake, now I’ll eat yours.

But I love a food fad because they’re so transparently stupid. And they last for approximately 3 months until someone says ‘actually, if you DO eat that three times a week you’ll die of heart failure within… well, TODAY!!!!’

I used to love looking at the ‘recipe’ bits in the Sunday mags. Fabulous steaks, golden chickens, roasted this, broiled that, topped with melted cheese… I didn’t even mind that they’d add a salad now and again, just in the interest of adding another colour to the picture (that’ll be green then) but also to make us feel better about the immensely high-carb, red-meat calorie-fest they wanted us to replicate.

Now it all leaves me cold. Because mainly, it is cold. Jamie, Ella, various Hemsleys, they’re only publish recipes that are ‘on message’, that are heavy on the quinoa, rich in kale, exceptionally low in taste. I mean ‘greens’ are fine. When consumed next to something big and meaty and juicy. They are a means to an end, not an end in themselves. Unless you count ‘the end of enjoyable eating’.

And we’ve had a couple years of ‘clean eating’. Which was basically ‘cleaned of any or all possible goodness, flavour or calories’. Bring out the spinach but for God’s sake DON’T COOK IT!!! And salad dressings (remember them?) are a thing of the past. Kill ya. Stone dead. Sugar? Salt?? Jesus; what were you thinking? Bread? Might as well eat broken bottles. Carbs?? Devil’s food. Why? Because it was decided that the entire world is gluten intolerant. Even the (now reckoned) 99% of us who aren’t. Yes, we’re all closet glutards just waiting for that bloated feeling. Gluten intolerance. Might as well cut out all wheatgerm. Which, in previous fads, was the best food possible.

So now they’ve debunked the whole ‘clean eating’ think for the stupid, excessive over-reacting fadism that it really is. Which, if I’m perfectly honest, makes absolutely no difference to what I’ll now eat, as I never really bought into all that bollocks in the first place. But now, I can eat proper foods again without the sad looks of anorexic waitresses, without the disgust on the faces of the ‘believers’, without any guilt.

Clean is over; let’s eat dirty. Yeahhhhhh!!!!

Happy steak and cheese bagette with extra mayo Friday. Hold the lettuce.

A xxxx

Pep Guardiola, Manchester City’s outrageously expensive manager, took his lacklustre bunch of under-performing but over-payed fading stars to the cinema yesterday afternoon. To see LaLaLand. The Abu Dhabi budget could stretch to a few seats at the local Odeon. So I went to see it last night too. Only to see what effect the movie might have had on Manchester City because they play Spurs on the weekend. In the biggest game of the season (part 17). Otherwise, obviously, I’d have gone and seen something more manly. With guns, aliens, tanks, death, Trump, sinister…

And the City players saw a gloriously vibrant and glossy and bright film about striving for your dreams. Which, in the absence of subtitles in 12 different languages (assuming they can all read to a degree) would have been mainly lost on the international mish-mash of non-Anglophones. But all was not lost, the movie is exceptionally visual. And musical. International things.

Ryan Gosling is everyone’s favourite Canadian. Though most would be hard-pushed to name another, other than Mark Carney and several Trudeuax. He’s not my favourite Canuck because Mel was born in Vancouver, even though she sounds more Yorkshire than Klondike. And we have the Torontonians to consider when we talk ‘favourite’. Anyway…

I like Ryan Gos. He’s funny and cool and learned to play jazz piano for the part. And it is exceptionally impressive. He sings. Not well, but well enough and it all seems very ‘real’ for a movie in which traffic jams are the cue for massive song-and-dance numbers.

Emma Stone is odd. She looks odd. And alternates between totally gorgeous and ‘nyah’. But she has more true star quality in front of a camera than any other actor currently out there. Certainly more than the entire Manchester City team combined. She mesmerises, she simmers, she lisps, but she is just wonderful in this, as in The Help, as in Birdman. She has that innate Gene Hackman (blessed be) quality of capturing all the light in the room and becoming the only person you see.

There is (hateful, overused word alert!!!) ‘chemistry’ between the stars. Unquestionable. If they weren’t shagging each other between sets they really should have been. Two great actors being totally credible and realistic in a fucking musical. Takes a bit of doing.

Did I like the film? Yeah, I liked it a lot. Did I love the film?? No, not really. Did it live up to the hype? Do they ever? Would it look better with Spanish sub-titles? Hmmm…

Most importantly would it have inspired Man City for the weekend? Oh Gawd I hope not. Let them be shit, just one more time.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

We’re leaving Europe. Brexit means Brexit zzzzzzzzzz…

Yet Theresa May was impressive yesterday. Despite the clown suit she chose for the most important speech Britain has heard since Churchill met them on the beaches (different bunch of Europeans), she delivered her ‘plan’ with strength and force and a genuinely ‘don’t fuck with me’ attitude. But its all up in the air. I’m sure no-one actually knows the real mechanics of the process. In part because no-one’s ever done it before (Greece nearly did but received a reprieve, or 3 billion Euros from Germany, as its known), and in part because you simply can’t unwind 50 years of laws, rules and regulations overnight. Whatever Nigel Farage reckons.

On the basis of the speech the pound increased its value significantly yesterday. Couldn’t she have made the speech before we went to India? Would it have killed her? I could have saved 752 Rupees, I reckon. Maybe 821 (about a tenner). Selfish bitch.

Nicola Sturgeon is making noises once more. Or perhaps ‘still’. As she rarely stops. And its the same message: Scotland voted ‘in’ and ‘refuses’ to leave the EU. Good for them. I didn’t want to leave either, but I appreciate what we call, south of the border, ‘democracy’. I can’t unilaterally decide to stay in Europe. No more than the borough of Richmond, (also ‘in’) can declare itself an independent Euro-affiliated Island within an Island. ‘We’ voted out. The majority. That’s the way it works. The resultant minority has to put up with it. Or move away.

You can’t move Scotland. I’ve tried. It won’t budge. But little Nic is threatening once again to ‘devolve’. As if that’s such a massive threat that Britain will simply unwind the whole referendum thing and collectively go and have a group hug with Merkel and Hollande and Junkers again.

If Scotland did vote to ‘leave Britain’, itself a really unlikely outcome, it would have to apply as do all nations for acceptance into the European Union. It wouldn’t just ‘stay in’ by default. It would need, as all countries do, to show qualification on a myriad of criteria, most of which it wouldn’t make the grade. On grounds of its football league alone it would struggle. Once you factor in independent economy and dangerous foodstuffs, the French wouldn’t wanna know. Let alone the weinerish Germans.

But last time Scotland remained British by the skin of its haggis. If there is a next time, and she is threatening more so daily, the move to stay British, one feels, will be much stronger. If not, that could be interesting.

Meanwhile, they’re going to be paying us to drive BMWs, coming over to remove unwanted immigrants and sending teams of otherwise useless Euro-MPs to pick our fruit in the summer. Its all brilliant.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

If you weren’t sure exactly what it meant,
America is to have a new President
which come in all shapes, colours and sizes
For four years; gone before anyone realises.

This new one is the colour of gold
his face, his hair, all toned to what was ‘orange of old’
But being the Prez is not about appearance
Its a serious business requiring a startling intelligence

And there, really, is where the problem lies
The Trumpster man is ‘brain-denied’
He’s bluster and boom, gung-ho and John Wayne
Anything else is really a bit of a shame.

It will be Friday before he officially starts his new job
yet already he’s upset half the world by being a bit of a nob
With Taiwan contact China go ballistic
This isn’t a game, its more than mere statistics

Germany too reap his derision and contempt
Whilst another dose of hair-spray ensure’s he’s never unkempt
“Merkel made a tragic mistake” by letting those Syrians come
Jihadi’s one and all, kick ’em out and let me know when its done

He does have a soft spot for England Scotland and Wales
His mum loved the Queen, and all in which she sails
Well my Mum loved Morecombe & Wise but that doesn’t mean
I’d want to do a trade deal with them, however the terms might be keen

“Europe’s a shambles, NATO a frikkin’ mess”, he utters
But Russia’s dead cool and not at all run by dangerously aggressive nutters
For Mexicans I’m gonna build me a big wall
Six foot wide and twenny foot tall

“And cos BMW wants to build a factory down there
I’m gonna tax them cars to shit; that’ll make things square
They should be buildin’ ’em here, in the U.S of A
Jobs for my boys, work for another day”

“Oh, we do make ’em here, down in South Carolina
I didn’ know that, no wonder them cars is so finer.
70,000 jobs, to be absolutely precise
And a 35% tax would make cars a truly terrible price”

“Yeah, but they don’t drive American cars in Berlin… errr… Paris?… Munich
Like Beemers over here are driven by thousands of the rich”
But that’s because BMWs are fine vehicles indeed
And a 3-ton Chevy pick-up is probably not what Germans need

“I have a lot of respect for women; I’d rarely screw anything other
But I value their opinions, their counsel, their wisdom, particularly when theyr’e uncovered
I don’t like ‘dogs’, ugly ones make me sick,
no time for the disabled either really, its not what makes me tick”

So The Don is coming, to a White House right near you
Don’t be depressed, the world’s already mired in poo.
This is no time for getting all limp and wussy,
When you see that gel, just grab her by the pussy!!!

God fucking help us

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

Who is a bigger bastard? Diego Costa or Dmitri Payet?

That’s a tricky one. Both are total, absolute bastards of the first order, mercenary, disloyal and petulant. So here’s another question: can you be TOO rich?

The problem in football is perception. Nothing more, nothing less. We, as fans, ‘perceive’ our players kissing their badges when they score, running into the crowds to embrace their ‘brothers’ and speaking up their clubs at interviews making all the right noises, albeit with a few too many ‘ya-knows’ and ‘at da enda’da days’. They appear ‘loyal’ to their clubs. Devoted even. As we are all devoted to our jobs, homes, families, lives. Until something better appears on the horizon. And then the wife leaves the husband and kids because ‘she’s only got one life’ and ‘wants to live it!!!’ (See; you want equality? You got it.) Or the offer from the competitive business proves too tempting to resist (“I’ve given this company 9 years of my life, I’m entitled to move on, don’t owe them nuffink!!”)

So with footballers. They are like mayflies. They get their day in the sunshine, then they die. Ok, overly dramatic, they get 10 years, 15 if they’re lucky. Oh, and if they’re good enough. Therefore, while we’re banging on about ‘loyalty’ they’re just thinking of their careers. And how to maximise them for the lean years that will follow. Because at some point, you’re 33 years old, knees are shot, shoulder’s weak, ankles ruined, groin… whatever happens to them happened, and you’re unemployed, uneducated, can barely string half a sentence together and you have 9 children from 5 different women on the payroll. What’cha gonna do? So you need to reap the harvest.

Sometimes timing is all. No-one shouted ‘disloyalty!!!’ at David Beckham when he left Manchester United for Madrid. Partly because his issues with his manager were famous and in the public eye and mainly because we all loved him. And therefore we wanted him to do well for himself, and we would take some of that reflected glory as payment-in-kind. That’s fair. He banks 78 million and we get to say ‘I saw him play when he was 17’. Fair.

So as players approach 30 they inevitably start looking to bolster their pension pot. And there’s always some country somewhere starting up a ‘superleague’ and trying to attract ‘names’ to give it credibility. Be it Kazakhstan, China, or Paris. And the offers forthcoming are quite frankly ridiculous. Even Jeremy Corbyn was shocked. “You’re earning 200k a week, we’ll give you 600!!” And the guy thinks: I’ve been at this club for 19 months, I wasn’t born here, I haven’t even bothered to bring my family over from France/Spain/Wherever, so fuck ’em, I’ll take it.

And you can’t blame them. Yes, its greed. But aren’t we all greedy? Don’t we all want a bit more?? Or a helluva lot more, if its on offer?

Diego Costa wasn’t even loyal to his country. He changed from Brazilian to Spanish. Dmitri Payet is just a little shit, not necessarily a cockney one. So hate these players if you wish, but don’t use the ‘loyalty’ card. Its simply not appropriate.

Which is why we all enjoyed seeing Everton (still really a ‘poor’ club even though they now have a new, monied owner) beat Manchester City (untold riches and ridiculous wage structure and generally as hateful as can be imagined) yesterday afternoon. Don’t know if John Stones enjoyed it that much, nor Pep Guardiola, but I did.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

This is what happens when Spurs lose a match.

I go out on Saturday night, maybe dinner, maybe a movie, come home, make tea and don’t watch Match of the Day because I hate it and have no interest whatsoever in any other team. Instead I find the comfort that really only a T-1000 can provide. I’ve never bothered to record Terminator 2, you just don’t need to. Its always on somewhere. And Linda Hamilton provides the comfort. Yes, my team has lost a football match, let’s watch some psychopathic paranoidly delusional fucking head-case-from-hell crack up before my very eyes. Ahhhh, nice. Let’s shoot things now…

But of course, this is ‘history’. We haven’t lost a match in ages. So last night, after our dinner out, even though T2 was in fact on, I hit the play button on MOTD. For Mel. She needed to see what I’d already seen earlier in the day. Spurs not just winning but doing it in such wonderful style and grace that even Arnie blowing up 57 police cars with a rocket launcher becomes second best.

Then this morning, due to excessive rainage on the tennis courts (I fucking hate that), I watched it again. I just had to. In fact its not even the game and the goals. Its the hyperbole from the pundits. Its the wonderful praise heaped on the players I love like the sons I never had; the brothers I never wanted (remember Caine and Abel?)

Then I watched the rest of the games. As you do when you have time. And I learned that Bournemouth, although great, simply can’t win matches. And that I still love Tommy Huddlestone and wonder why such a class act is still at Hull. Other than the ‘fitness’ issue (football euphemism for eating all the pies).

And I learned that I have to re-think the whole Andy Carroll thing after that absolutely fantastic goal-of-the-season he scored yesterday. Because I used to think he was just a great big, fat, ungainly industrial lummox of an injury-prone, trouble-making, thick-as-shit, Geordie rapist scumbag who spends more time wasting NHS resources than he does kicking a ball. But that goal has changed everything. Well, maybe we can drop the ‘ungainly’ at very least. And a goal of such stunning athleticism that he’ll doubtless be on the physio’s bench for the next 27 months getting over it.

I had a conversation last Christmas with a Liverpool fan. I try not to have many. In which we discussed ‘belief’. Because little Johnny ‘believed’ that his team could win the league. But really ‘believed’ in an almost religious way. That if you believe sufficiently, then it WILL come true. I told him Spurs fans don’t do that. Too cynical. Too battle-worn from the years of frustration.

And yet… and yet… maybe not this year, maybe not next, but Pochettino is building something at Spurs. Something really good and powerful and strong. And if we can keep those fucking Chinese away from our star players, because the streets of Shanghai are NOT paved with gold, they’re paved with a billion Chinamen polluting the place up, then maybe… just maybe…

We can dream.

Happy, dreamy, wet, fucking rainy Sunday

A xxxx

When Eddie Murphy made that atrocious remake of the Nutty Professor, very few Jews complained that the Jerry Lewis role as professor was originally Jewish. Who basically gives a shit? The re-make was so awful no-one wanted to make any claim to any part of it.

The play Hamilton is a historical production in which all the cast are black. Even though the original old white men, the founding fathers, weren’t. No complaints. In fact the show’s apparently brilliant.

Yet when Sky tv make a re-make of Michael Jackson’s life, there’s uproar. Because the title role is being played by a white man. Uproar. Led by Ms Jackson Junior who claimed the programme made her want to vomit. So they’ve pulled it. ‘Out of respect to the family’. The vomiting family.

This is not about any form of racism or discrimination. Because no-one really cares what colour people are in films. And I don’t think its specifically about Joseph Fiennes performance either. There was no lack of realism there. Nor would there have been if Michael had been played by a white girl.

Its about the chronic tragedy that was the life of Michael Jackson. One of the most brilliantly talented performers of his, or any, generation, other aspects of his time with us were rather odd, a bit bizarre, well on the far side of ‘eeeuuuwww’. And Michael Jackson, in 2001, when the film was set, was no longer the ‘little black boy’ of the Jackson 5. The family can make claims of a skin disease whitening his skin, but it wouldn’t account for the almost total facial reconstruction he’d had too. Which, deny it or not, whatever the reason, took a sweet little black boy and turned him into an androgynous little white person of undisclosed gender affiliation. Thus when you see Joseph Fiennes as Michael it is essentially funny. In the main part because it is so realistic. And that, I feel, is what the family don’t really like. That he became something of a joke-figure.

So if Mike Tyson had played Michael, the effect would have been the same. He was a seriously tragic figure. Whatever colour. Or lack of.

Dmitri Payet is different. He’s a very nice colour. But everything else about the West Ham (for the very short term) midfielder is really not very nice. He is horrible. The worst kind of horrible. Because he’s repetitively horrible. He has a history of playing for a club, ok, playing quite brilliantly, then demanding to leave. Just out of the blue. And not just demanding, but refusing to play, refusing to train, everything but an all-out hunger strike. West Ham obviously don’t want him to leave, they’re doing pretty badly with him, heaven knows what’ll happen without him. But he’s no longer an option. He’s returning to Marseilles. From whence he came. And where he performed the same stunt a few years back when he wanted to leave.

Therefore Dmitri Payet is my tosser of the week. And that’s a real achievement for the little Frenchman because he’s been up against Trump, Obama and a lot of stiff competition.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

A few months back I had cause to mention the new ‘Hyperloop’ transport system. It works on the basic principle that: if the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, the fastest way to travel along that line must be better than using slight modifications of Stephenson’s Rocket. Our new HS2 trainline (should it ever start, heaven forbid) will use trains travelling at 250mph. Elon Musk’s Hyperloop travels at 760mph. You could get to Birmingham hours earlier than by train, so YOU COULD LEAVE MORE QUICKLY. Surely that’s the whole point of ever going to Birmingham, to come away again and count your blessings.

But it wouldn’t go to Birmingham. It would go to Edinburgh. In under an hour. You could go just for lunch. Though no idea why you’d want to do that, unless your cholesterol levels were dangerously low.

Using the hyperloop technology is going to be ‘free’. Elon Musk, Mr Paypal, Sir Tesla, has decided not to sell the plans, just give it to the best proposal using it. Dubai will probably have the first one, running one to Abu Dhabi. To see if excessive gold and diamonds will slow the thing down significantly. And I’m not sure the exact nature of the ‘competition’ but Britain apparently has four bids in the game. One being from Liverpool to Hull. Useful that one.

But its that technology. Its wonderful. A vacuum tube with a ‘train-thing’ suspended by magnets and whizzed along frictionlessly by compressed air. And speed. Oh my, the speed.

I have no idea what such a thing might cost, but I’m gonna guess its ‘rather a lot’. Unless IKEA are doing a special on do-it-yourself, flat-pack hyperloop vacuum tubes.

So why fuck about with HS2. Old technology, old ideas, variations on ‘slow’. Its not like its cheap. Its outrageously expensive and brutal on the countryside. Though to be honest, there’s plenty of countryside out there, we won’t miss a little bit taken away.

Let’s do it. I want one.

Happy Friday

A xxxx