Andy's Glasses

Richard played the guitar. He never won a Grammy. But he did achieve something which Bob Dylan didn’t, nor The Beatles, even Taylor Swift or Beyoncé. He won the talent contest at the Gants Hill Odeon, Saturday Morning Pictures, in about 1965.

Saturday morning pictures was method for unloading noisy, destructive children into institutional care for 3 hours every Saturday morning, for about 2 bob. That’s 10p for those who need to know. They showed old films, ‘cliff-hanger’ serials and really dire b-movies. Anything that about 500 kids could scream at. And they announced that there was to be a talent competition during the intermission, on such-and-such a date.

Rich by then had mastered playing 3 chords, as taught by his book. And fortunately, they were the perfect ones for the then massive hit, ‘If I had a hammer’. Richard’s best mate, known as ‘more Richard’, bought himself a little set of tom-tom drums. And our great friend and local psycho, Harvey, bought a guitar and proclaimed himself a singer. He couldn’t play the guitar, nor sing really, but he was insanely enthusiastic.

And on the day, ‘the band’ defeated all the other contestants. Even the tap dancers stood no chance. Nor the kid juggling. With one ball. Because back then, guitars were ‘exotic’ to kids. And to have two of them ‘right there!!!’ And ‘live!!!’, meant no-one else had a chance. Their photo appeared on the front page of the Ilford Recorder and somewhere in ‘the archive’ I have the copy my mum cut out. Richard was standing at the back. Near the shadows.

Music was a big part of his life. And this year we’ve had a lot of time to trawl the extremes of Alexa’s vast collection, seeing if they have a 1967 hit by Ten Year After, or ‘Split’ by the ‘Groundhogs’. Which, to her credit, she invariably does.

Two weeks ago I went to see Rich and said ‘I’ve found a new track’, and he said ‘so have I’. But in fact it was the same track. Not an old one we’d just remembered, just something new we’d found. At the same time. Now this may seem like its divinely inspired. More cynically, if two people are searching on Alexa, which was Rich, or on YouTube, as I was, for basically the same kind of music, their algorithms should find similar sorts of songs. Or maybe, whoever your Lord Above might be, HE uses the same algorithms as well.

But we both found ‘Carry on my wayward son’ by Kansas. That was a source for merriment in itself as we generally always called each other ‘Son’, for reasons of historical forgottenness. And it is a fantastic track. The words, which we only noticed a bit later, are, retrospectively, the most poignant imaginable.

Carry on my wayward son
there’ll be peace when you are done
Lay your weary head to rest
don’t you cry no more.

And now I have the world’s biggest ever earworm. I hope it never leaves.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

The eulogy.

Richard Lawrence Conway was born in 1953. In 1958 he saved my life. After I’d had a fit of ‘terrible two-ness’ our saintly mother hooked my walking ‘reins’ over a garden gate and walked away. Leaving me. Possibly to a life of post-Dickensian alms houses, to the fate of a Fagin, who knows? My brother came back and rescued me. An action he only occasionally regretted.

Richard was clever. Quiet, considered and clever. He could just do things. Anything he set his mind to. And the first was deciding to play guitar. He bought a cheap little acoustic 6-string. And a book. With the right book, there was absolutely nothing Rich couldn’t do. He learned the chords, threw away the book and without ever learning to read music, became an accomplished pub-band guitarist. He never wanted to be a ‘rock star’, Richard hid from the spotlights and the limelight. He just loved playing his Stratocaster.

But during the guitar learning phase, he discovered electronics. He bought a book. It was always a book. He learned about the then ‘new’ transistors. When everything got smaller. Radios, amplifiers, all got small. And Rich was 14 when he taught his physics teacher about solid state electronics. He built amps for his guitar, he built mixing tables for his band, and every Sunday morning came a procession of his guitar playing mates with some kind of minor dysfunction in their equipment which Rich would just fix. It was always Sunday morning because then they could stay and have bagels for lunch.

Somewhere during all this Richard received a degree in Pharmacy and started working at John, Bell and Croydon in Wigmore Street. And also, during that time, he met Diana. Neither of which events caused even a pause in his guitar playing or obsessive devotion to electronics. Richard had met his absolute ideal. A wonderful woman who allowed him to be himself. All the joys of true love whilst retaining full control of his soldering iron.

Then someone produced a computer. Long before the word ‘binary’ was hijacked by the wokes. This was life-changing for Rich. He bought a book. Built himself a computer and, with Diana by his side, his life was complete. He was not only an expert in programming and software, he could build you one too. And eventually all his other obsessions gave way to computing. Other than Diana, she remained his longest standing obsession.

Rich was funny. Always exceptionally dry, bitingly sarcastic and very witty. A fabulous uncle to his many nieces and nephews. And such an angelic man that he never even shouted at my wife Melissa during his long years of partnering her at our bridge table. I would have.

Since January, let’s just say ‘we’ve had some challenges’. I would say ‘he never complained’, but no-one who knew Rich would believe that. But it was always a pleasure seeing him every week. Playing proper ‘old’ music on his Alexa, sorting out geo-politics and re-living Mel Brooks films and 1960s tv shows.

We will all miss him terribly.

A xxxx

The funniest thing about Syria is that Bashar al Assad is an ophthalmologist. Trained at no less than Moorfields Eye Hospital. You wouldn’t necessarily go to him to have your cataracts sorted, or with a glaucoma issue, but if you needed 20,000 people murdered, he’s your man. If you need a few Kurds bombed out of existence, get a referral from your GP to Assad and he’d do it. On the NHS. Or using chemical weapons on entire towns which housed ‘the rebels’ (as of about 10 o’clock this morning, ‘the government’); it was one of his key ‘specialties’.

The hypocritical oath obviously has limits, if you rule Syria. All that ‘preservation of life’ stuff is obviously open to contextual interpretation. Like ‘assisted suicide’, but on an industrial scale and without the safeguards.

But now there’s a new kid on the block. Abu Mohammed al-Jolani is the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and now the de facto leader of Syria. I don’t know what kind of doctor he might be, preferring camo to scrubs, but he seems like a really nice man. Well, when I say ‘nice’…

Normally, in a war, there are the good guys and there are the bad guys. But in Syria, they simply don’t do ‘good’. Only in the relative. Lesser of evils, kind’a thing.

Assad was possibly the most evil tyrant in the world in terms of deaths of his population, before you even consider his alignment with Iran and Russia. So he’s definitely a bad guy. Yet the boys of HTS used to be part of Al Quaeda. They changed the name, a bit like the IRA becoming Sinn Fein, due to some ‘understandable baggage’ attached to the name. HTS are still proscribed as terrorists by the UK and loads of other countries. They are Islamist jihadis. Well, according to Abu, they were. No more. They’re going to be democratic. Hmmmmm. Like ISIS were? Like Afghanistan under the Taliban? Like Iran. How long before they impose the kind of sharia which terrorises its own population and reduces women to total anonymity and irrelevance?

Except they’re not like the Iranians. HTS are Sunnis. Iran is Shia. They hate each other. So Iran will no longer support Syria. And Syria will no longer be providing massive infrastructure to Hezbollah. Putin will not deal with HTS, he spent the time supposedly ‘eliminating terrorists’, when ISIS occupied swathes of Syria, actually bombing HTS strongholds rather than ISIS.

Safe to say: Syria has not so much ‘been saved’ as gone from major fuckage to a different major fuckage. God help them. I wouldn’t.

Now I’m off to march (in the fucking rain) against antisemitism. In London. The place I was born. Yet needs this.

What a world.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

I note that this is one of my favourite titles for my postings. Because I like changes. And I like David Bowie. And right now, although unfortunately there is no change in Bowie’s status (alas he’s still dead), the world is shape-shifting once more.

France is crumbling. Arrogant, obnoxious tosser, Michel Barnier, the by now ‘ex’ Prime Minister, known to us for making Brexit as horrendous, contentious and onerous as he possibly could, lost his current job yesterday after a vote of no confidence by their parliament. Known there as ‘parrr-liamentt’ (French accent). He tried to push through a budget single handedly, without normal process of having it voted on. Because it wouldn’t have passed the vote. Because their parliament, however you pronounce it, is dysfunctional. But doing it alone is an issue in democratic terms. So he’s toast. He is a Gallic Gregg Wallace. Without the fun along the way.

Which is better than the President of South Korea. He’s been impeached. Also having failed to get his government to approve his budget, he suffered a total mental withdrawal from subtlety and declared martial law. It’s what you do; I’m struggling with this piece of legislation; call in the fucking army!!!! But South Korea has a long memory. Half of it, the shit half, including martial law. So ‘the people’, led by the president’s opposition, just took to the streets and sent the army away. And are going to arrest the President.

So we look to America for support, ‘special relationships’ and lurve. But unfortunately, the ‘new America’, the one that starts in January, fucking hates Sir Kier Stargazer. And who can blame them? It appears the US will be run by a mouth-watering (if you’re into cannibalism) combination of Donald Trump, Steve Bannon and Elon Musk. What’s the opposite of a ‘holy trinity’? A criminal who has just wiped his crimes off the slate. A recently released jail-bird and a dangerously insane genius. Who happens to be the richest man in the world. And has declared that only the super-rich should govern. Yup, not just the ‘rich’, they’re in fact a problem in Musk-world, but only the super-rich. Because the world needs the values which made them super-rich. Which all gets very Ayn Rand in outlook (if you don’t know her and her ‘objectivism’; just read one of her exceptionally long and insanely detailed books; which are totally brilliant).

Thus a Britain in which Allison Pearson gets charged with some ridiculous and irrelevant ‘hate speech’ crime, and the government is still ruled by a woke-ism which inhibits Musk’s sacred freedom of speech, is unlikely to become a willing bedfellow with the USA. Britain would need to resort to rape.

It’s all a shit-show. And, if I’m honest, I love a shit-show.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

The problem is cows. Lots of them. They are basically machines for turning grass into milk and steak. I know, that’s not a very vegan attitude, but I’m not really very vegan. I’m more ‘the anti-vegan!’ And I know cows can look lubberly and cudderwy, but basically they are my food chain and I want to eat them. I particularly like eating their babies. Not because I’m so fond of veal but just on principle.

But I appreciate there are a few issues about cows. Particularly as about half the world’s surface has now been turned into grazing land so that McDonalds don’t run out of burgers and so the Gaucho Grill don’t run out of Chateaubriand. And, I suppose, we do, as a species, drink a bit of milk. Eat cheese.

Cows are ruminants. Grass is pretty indigestible (try some today, you’ll still be chewing it next Tuesday) so cows, like other kosher animals, have three stomachs. Not like that fat geezer from number 27 who drinks ten pints a night, but by design. And the grass ferments as it moves between the stomachs to reduce it to the required nutritional level to keep Mrs Cow fit and fat. Yet as it ferments it produces methane gas. Which the cows release by… errrr… well, in the usual way gases are released from a body. And there’s only two exit strategies in place for such gases.

Methane is the worst of the ‘greenhouse gases’. It makes carbon look friendly. And a truly massive amount of methane is farted and burped up into our atmosphere every year by cows. If you want to put a figure on it, I’m happy to invent one: 736,422.73. Wow, that’s a lot of methanes.

So in comes Bovaer. It’s a cow food additive which prevents the enzymes in a cow’s gut from producing methane by about 40%. There are no side-effects. Known to man. Or cow. It’s cheap, effective and goes such a way to ‘saving the planet’ that over 80 countries have so far signed up to use it. Cows have said ‘it tastes like chicken’.

A win-win all round then. The farmers don’t complain (itself unusual) and the cows are happy and our great grandchildren might still have a planet in 50 years time. Surely no-one could have an issue with that?

And yet, the Twitter-tossers are up-in-arms. Why? Because they can be. They have a phone and absolutely nothing productive, helpful or worthwhile to do with their lives. Not since Covid when they were all anti-vaxers. So, as they sit there a bit short of conspiracies, in comes a revolutionary product to enhance every man, woman and cow’s life, so they might as well tip any milk from ‘additive companies’ down the toilet. And film it, of course, if it ain’t on film and posted online, it never happened.

So vote Bovaer, not anti-vax tossers.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx