Andy's Glasses

There are times in one’s life when choices need to be made. Sometimes uncomfortable choices. Big choices. Sophie’s choices. ‘Should I eat the lamb or the beef?’ Sometimes even more important than even that. ‘Should I vote Trump or Clinton?’ ‘Go to the football or out for dinner?’

That fine, upstanding nation of Iran (???) have no choice. They’re playing a World Cup qualifier against South Korea. FIFA told them when to play it. They have no choice. Even though it falls during the most somber, sober, sad festival for Shia Muslims.

This ‘festival’ is a ‘celebration’ of the death of Mohammad’s grandson, which pretty much set up the divide between Shia and Sunni Islam. So its a big time for Iranians; the biggest Shia nation we are so fortunate to have. And the ‘festival’ is ‘celebrated’ by, basically, beating yourself up in public. The harder you do so, the better a person you are. Its simple. You display grief, you pound your chest, you hit yourself with sticks and stuff.

What you don’t do is cheer, scream with joy, hug a centre-back, do the Klinsman ‘dive’. It would offend… whoever. Whether that ‘whoever’ be in the heavens, in which case you take your chances, or whether that ‘whoever’ wears a peaked cap and carries a pistol and a baton and is there to enforce the will of the guys in black hats and capes.

The problem with religious states, whatever the religion, is that there is no freedom of choice. If that’s how the Iranians like it, then good for them. But there must be one or two Iranians (no names; couldn’t pronounce them anyway) who are less… less passionate, less dogmatic, less stringent in their adherence to the spiritual ways and more concerned with whether they’re gonna play 4-4-2 or a midfield diamond. My kind’a religion. As Mel often says: ‘football is the new religion’. Except in reality its much more important than religion.

The Ayatollah’s main-dude is worried that ‘there is no guarantee that if Iran score then someone in the country may celebrate’. A big worry.

So let me put the Ayatollah’s mind at rest. Iran have no fucking chance whatsoever of scoring a goal. They’re a shit team and ever since Spurs signed Son Heung-Min, I’m the biggest South Korea fan around.

No nation should put its rules and regulations above football. Its against the laws of nature.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

I’m always amazed when I look at the American presidential campaigns. Because they’re so different from our own. I know, we don’t have Presidents, we have a Queen, God bless her, and no-one votes for her. But we have Prime Ministers and that role has certainly, over the last 20 or so years, become much more ‘presidential’ than before.

Our electoral system votes for individuals in local areas. And the party that ends up with the most individuals becomes the government. The leader of the governing party is the PM, but it is essentially the party that you vote for, or your individual MP. You don’t ‘vote for the PM’ directly. Which is why when Theresa May was asked whether there should be an election because ‘no-one voted for her as PM’ she could rightly say that it wasn’t necessary as the voters had the party they voted for, with just a ‘minor’ change in leadership. Issues of total changes to the manifesto that voters were given tend to be ignored at such times.

Our system reflects our ‘condition’. It is impersonal, detached and relatively calm. It is very British.

Americans are different. They’re never impersonal, detached and certainly not calm. They shout a lot. And so the presidential elections again reflect those very differences.

And they are dirty. Really dirty. And if you find a bit of ‘dirt’ you don’t just mention it, en passant, or allude to it in subtle ways. Americans do subtlety like they do irony. Instead they take out a tv advertising campaign to let the nation know of the latest dirt dug up on their foe.

Hence Hillary’s latest one about Trump’s lack of tax payment. To which he replied: “no tax paid! How clever am I??” So she said: “so clever you managed to lose a billion dollars in one year, ya shmuck!” and so it went on.

The ever-nearing election has caused a dilemma. Republicans hate Trump and Democrats hate Clinton. A bit of a problem. But faced with horrible choices they’ll vote along party lines. Because the core values to Americans are what’s important. Security (Trump wants to build walls and get rid of ‘foreigners’, even ones born there, which is most of the population at some point), more guns (very Republican), anti-abortion (Republican), or pro-‘choice’ (Democrat), keeping the KKK (Republican), providing welfare (Democrat).

What’s odd is that you only ever see Hillary and Don only talking to their own supporters. Singing to the choir. I suppose we all need to feel the lurve.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

Dont’cha just hate it when you go to bed at night and wake up 9.6 million pounds of jewellery poorer? Oh, not again!!! you think. Phah!

Kim Kardashian went to bed in Paris in a very shi-shi hotel. One that can provide the special beds she requires that don’t cause static electricity when in contact with silicon. The potential with KK in that situation is estimated to be able to run the national grid for 17 hours.

So she went to bed, wearing 9 million quid’s worth of jewels and a fleecy, winciette nightgown from the closing down sale at BHS. Allegedly.

Robbers broke in, put a gun to poor Kimsy’s head and made her hand over all the valuables.

This is a crime against humanity. It represents the worst offense ever perpetrated to the whole of mankind. The magnitude of this will have repercussions for generations; morally, socially, saniti-ly.

WHY DIDN’T HE PULL THE TRIGGER WHEN HE HAD THE CHANCE??????

Jesus fucking Christ, Kim Kardashian, the world’s most self-serving, vapid, vacuous, egotistical end-point of the evolution of cosmetic surgery; the Frankenstein woman of her generation, the spin-off queen responsible for the dimming down of the entire tv networks, and there she was, in their cross-hairs. She has no cross hairs, they’re removed by lazer. Yet the coup de gras was not given. The opportunity lost.

I hope they catch these criminals, give them life in prison watching re-runs of all the Kardashian shit that they are now TOTALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR. Generations of the bastards, all with their own mindless ‘shows’. How much shopping can anyone watch in one lifetime?

Ok, just so’s you know, the operation was a complete success. The shoulder. Mine. Injections, knitting needles, pain, remember? So just for the record: I LOVE CORTISONE. It has, quite literally, changed my life. Ok, gotta do some sadist’s idea of ‘physiotherapy’ to ensure all stays well but wow; that stuff is brilliant. Pain to painless in just 45 minutes of massive fucking needles.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

Manchester City were the team of the moment,
they came to the Lane and endured some torment

Six wins out of six, so far, thus the record showed
But records are for breaking, their progress to be slowed

Pep Guardiola, the total football man
watched his scheme go right down the pan

Against a Tottenham side a few key men down
the pundits said against City we would surely drown

to Navas, Aguero, Silva and all their silky skills
but they couldn’t keep the ball, that was the first of their ills.

Spurs were right at them, in their faces all
from the moment of the kick-off, their fans to enthral

We pushed them hard, pressed them high
nipped their ankles, bit their thighs (poetic license; figurative)

City looked jaded, lost and well off the money
Gave the ball away so much at times it was quite funny

Then amazingly we went a goal to the good,
Didn’t matter who scored, just that we could

Devilish Danny swung the ball in from the wing
It hit poor Aleks Kolarov, the Serbian he did sting

Yet still the Spurs came swarming, with pace and energy and style
City were lost at sea, coming second by a mile

After half time we became the gift that kept on giving
Another goal, Dele Alli, Pep inclined to be less forgiving

Then we defended, in heaven and on earth
blocking, tackling, marking, for all that we were worth

A penalty miss but other than the frustration
it didn’t spoil the win that thrilled the entire nation (the important parts of it, at least)

The Arse went up to Burnley, won with the very last kick
Which was actually the very last ‘hand’, its enough to make you sick.

We’ve got more clean sheets than the Premiere Inn
So the inevitable hope and belief now has to begin

What a wonderful start to the new year of the Jews
A big ‘shona tova’ and let’s break out the booze.

A xxxx

The first album I ever bought was ‘With the Beatles’. I was 7. Knew fuck-all about music, but I loved the Beatles. Because I was alive and conscious, in a 7 year-old kind’a way, and therefore I loved the Beatles. Everyone loved them. You simply had to. They were ‘different’ enough to be special, with their long hair and matching suits, yet normal enough (arguably, being Liverpudlians, ‘sub-normal’ might even be appropriate) that you kind of related to them rather than revered them.

Which was probably their Unique Selling Point. That and the total mass hysteria that they created from the moment Please Please Me hit the charts. Everyone became a part of the Beatles story. Albeit a pretty small part, unless you were John, Paul, George, Ringo, Brian Epstein or George Martin.

Last night I went to see the new Ron Howard movie, The Beatles: 8 days a week. And it is totally brilliant. Not just for those of us who remember some of the events shown from their insane ‘tours’, playing in front of crowds of up to 55,000 people. No, actually not ‘people’ in any regular sense, 55,000 screaming teenage girls. But really screaming. To the point that no-one could hear the music, neither the crowd nor the band.

The movie shows everyone why the Beatles were great. Mainly because they were the first ‘pop group’ who wrote and played their own brilliant music, four guys who truly loved and supported each other, but who were always funny and irreverent at a time when such a thing was tantamount to anarchy. They answered back. Which turned them into the first ever ‘superstars’, even way beyond Elvis’s wildest dreams (and he dreamed pretty ‘wild’, particularly where food was involved).

They refused to play at a stadium in Jacksonville, Florida, because it was ‘segregated’ (the American Apartheit system so popular in the South in those days), so the authorities had to de-segregate it. Which they didn’t do for the civil rights movement, but they did for the Beatles.

In an interview John had said that ‘the Beatles were bigger than Jesus’. He said it not literally (obviously; to us, at least) but ironically. The fact that 55,000 people wouldn’t have turned up for a prayer meeting but would to see the Beatles was not really what he meant. But it was ironic, thus the Americans misunderstood it, banned them, burned their records in Birmingham, Alabama (bible belt; ‘segregation’, you gotta love that southern mind-set), and issued death threats.

The movie showed the fantastic relationship between the four guys, and their wonderfully charming way of dealing with the madness they created. At the end they show the concert at the Shea Stadium before 55,000 shriekers but manage to filter out most of the screaming. And its wonderful. Four amazingly talented guys living ‘the dream’ just as it was really turning into something of a nightmare. But what music…

Go see it.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

This was me yesterday. Ok, this is just a random photo of the genre: ‘guided injections’. But imagine that victim as me, without the hat, and the jab was in my shoulder. Or jabs, really. The table rotates and raises and the big arm thing moves around, all by magic. I felt like a Ford Fiesta in the paint spray factory.

There’s two things in life I dread. Snakes and injections. We should get that straight. Fortunately there were no snakes on view in Harrow yesterday when I had my injection. There were probably snakes around (there’s ALWAYS snakes everywhere, that’s why we need to check under the bed, behind the sofa, in my shoes, my garden, EVERYWHERE!!!) but I didn’t see any.

Ok, one down, just the needle issue to contend with. More difficult. When you’ve gone for an injection. I realised that.

I survived. That’s all I can say. I survived. Bravely. Didn’t cry. Didn’t take my comfort toy. She was working. And the ‘injection’ turned out to be about 14 jabs of local anaesthetic followed by several of cortisone.

And although its a bit sore (no tennis today, no tai chi; banned) I slept for the first time in months without waking up in agony. Ahhhhhhhhhh. I love injections.

Meanwhile its the weekend and therefore its more football. They do that. In between the endless scandals and sleaze and corruption-in-our-beautiful-game stories and inquiries, they play the odd game just to redress the balance. But to be honest there’s only one match worthy of mention this weekend. Tomorrow. 4pm. Spurs playing Manchester City. Top-of-the-table battle. 1st versus 2nd. Could’a been 1st vs 3rd but Everton couldn’t beat Palace last night.

So I’m gonna be first to state the hyperbolic: this is a season-defining game. There, I’ve said it. For us, this will show us how far we’ve travelled on our journey to greatness; how much work there is still to do. Being a game of two halves, we need to play a high line, get at them, high-pressing tactics, win the second ball, win the first ball, win every fucking ball, and invoke as many cliches as you can think. Only then can real joy and happiness happen.

On the eve of the (Jewish) New Year, we need Him to play his part too. You know, the omniscient and omnipotent Spurs supporter in the Heavens.

Happy Saturday, pray hard.

A xxxx

Next week starts the London Film Festival. In fact, its the 60th LFF. A- n’anniversary version. So the BFI have decided to add something new. As well as screening the movies at the usual; Leicester Square Odeon, NFT at the Southbank, various other high profile movie-emporia, they’re adding a new one to the list. Except its not built yet. The pic is what it looked like last night. And the festival starts on Wednesday. But don’t panic, on Monday it was just a flat piece of land.

Park-land in fact. Cos they’re putting up a cinema in Embankment Gardens. The little park, my own best secret place (even though its often jam-packed with tourists, commuters and winos), that is hidden between Victoria Embankment and the Strand, by the Savoy. Its beautiful there. Really beautiful. They must spend about a million quid a year on flowers, bushes and trees. They only plant ‘mature’ and they only plant ‘symmetrical’. Add in a truly wonderful array of sculptures, scatter around some discarded Special Brew cans and you have a little bit of peace and quiet and aesthetic wonder hidden between the River and the ‘shops of horror’ on the Strand (don’t like shopping, especially don’t like generic shopping).

Last week they un-planted half the beds in the park. Ooooooh. But they do that often. End of season re-plant usually. But no, not this time. This time they’re planting metal sheeting and steel scaffold. And they’re putting up a movie-house. I’ve seen images of it on the BFI site and its gonna be… well, its gonna be a proper movie-house. Big, tiered seating, big screen, Dolby wi-fi, ultra-HD, super surround-sound, silicon-chippy, fuck-off quality. And did I mention: ‘big’. Its fucking massive.

And I don’t know why; that made me very happy. In an ‘I heart Lundun’ kind’a way. You wanna show movies; I’ll build you a new cinema. Gimme 4 days.

I wish the BFI could run the roadworks department.

What doesn’t make me happy is needles. And this afternoon I’m joining Bradley Wiggins and getting some cortisone. Its being pumped into my wicked shoulder. Oh fucking joy. Needle the size of a… the size of a temporary cinema.

Happy (???) Friday

A xxxx

I find the whole Labour conference thing rather depressing. I find Jeremy Corbyn deeply depressing. But as we know, his job now is to try and unite his party. Which is deeeeeeply divided. Grand Canyon kind of divided. So whilst Jerkoff Jezza and Malicious McDonnell were up there singing ‘the red flag’ (swallowing back bits of vomit here), Tom Watson was trying to moderate things.

Tom’s a heavyweight. In every sense. He’s the deputy leader, put there specifically because he’s not a loony-lefty but the ‘acceptable face’ of ‘New Labour’. A Blairite in lefty clothing. Not the full ‘geography teacher’ elbow-patches-on-tweed, but he tries to placate those members of his party who aren’t rabidly Stalinist in their views. Mainly because they see it as being unelectable. So bung in Tommy W and you have the ‘dream ticket’; Jezza’s insane leftism moderated by Tom’s more pragmatic, business-friendly, mildly capitalist-friendly Blairism. That should work.

Sadly it doesn’t. The conference became a Momentum-driven hate-fest of the free market economy.

Watson’s speech stated that ‘capitalism is not the enemy; money’s not the problem; business isn’t bad’. And that pissed off everybody there. Especially Len McLuskey, leader of the Unite union and strong contender for ‘most hateful person of all time’ award. Len said that Watson’s speech had ‘no vision’ and showed ‘ideas of yesteryear’. A good criticism from a man representing a group based loosely on a satirical sit-com from 1972. The ‘Citizen Smith’ model, which indeed included the Red Flag as its theme tune, showed the true face of ‘anarchy’ against capitalism.

So they want to ‘out’ Tom Watson. They should speak to the Daily Telegraph, set up a sting, that should do it.

And then Sam Allardyce can become the next deputy leader of the Labour Party. He’s ideally qualified. Big, ugly and northern. Perfect. Oh, and currently unemployed.

The Allardyce ‘thing’ is still irking me greatly. I’ve seen the videos, I’ve read the transcripts and still can’t find anything other than a man ‘bigging himself up’ a bit to impress people. He never DID anything. He said he could do lots. He took nothing. He asked for nothing, other than a fee for ‘advising’, and even then ‘subject to the ok from the FA’.

This was entrapment, it was a stupid, meaningless ‘sting’ which showed nothing. If the victim hadn’t been in a very high profile position it would have been a nothing more than a minor embarrassment. But because the FA are a pathetic, testicle-free bunch of half-wits, they only make BIG, IMPORTANT decisions when they’re either wrong or meaningless.

They fly red flags at Arsenal.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

‘Be careful what you wish for’ is a useful expression. Because we all wish for things that may prove to be less than we’d imagined. But sometimes your wishes come true and yet lead to disappointment.

Spurs fans only ever have two wishes.

1. To finish above Arsenal (never happens)
2. To finish in the top four.

Because finishing there gives you a place in the coveted, the noble, the exclusive, the elite… Champions League. Yet getting into the Champions League isn’t really the point. Its WINNING in the Champions League that matters.

Until last season, Manchester City had twice entered the Champions League (yippee; we’re in, we’re taking our place with Euro-Royalty, yippee) and twice bummed out in the group stages, barely winning a match. At which point you’d rather be a Stoke fan whose hopes were never raised to such aspirations therefore experienced none of the tragic upset. Is it better to ‘never have loved that to love and lose’? I don’t fucking know, I’m not a poet, I’m a football fan.

In fact, I’m a Spurs fan. And we know about the capricious nature of the game more than most. We can piss away unassailable leads like no team before. We can wish for everything and get nothing, yet still keep coming back for more.

But we all remember the Champions League run the last time. Because it was brilliant. Gareth Bale at his absolute peak of unplayable-ness. Modric the Magnificent, Va-Va-Van-der-Vaart. Inter Milan at the Lane… ahhhhhhh.

That was then.

This year we started that (potentially) fabulous journey once more. With a terrible home loss (well, Wembley loss) to Monaco. At which point I started moaning. “What’s the point of a top four finish if you fuck up the group stages? Why did we lose a game we’d bossed? What is the meaning of life?” kind’a thing.

And so last night. To Moscow. No, not me, I went to Finchley to watch it at me mate’s house. But ‘we’, the team, went to Moscow, possibly the most intimidating place to play in Europe. But after an initial bout of inevitable nerves, Spurs settled down. And played proper football. Great football. Easy on the eye football. An early goal would have been easier on the heart, but such is life. But we were patient, controlled, controlling. And eventually it paid off. Come on my Son!! yelled… well, me, at the tv, when our favourite Korean scored the winning goal. I would have sung: “Oriental Harry Kane; you’re just an Oriental Harry Ka-ane…” but the words don’t fit the tune.

We’re back. On track. In the Champions League. With no worries, no regrets. And I think I’m finally learning the true meaning of life.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

I never turn on the tv in the mornings. Well, only if something BIG has happened the night before. The last time I turned it on was after the last general election. Just in time for the Leeds result which changed Ed Balls’ career from fat, loud-mouthed politician to fat, loud-mouthed ballroom dancer. To be honest, he’s shit at both.

But I turned it on this morning. I wanted to see what happened in the Trump/Clinton slag-fest over in New York last night. And slag each other off they indeed did. You said, he said, she said, they said. All manner of things. Denials, accusations, insults, histories. Like schoolkids in the playground calling each other names to try and score points with the braying hordes assembled.

We don’t do ‘head-to-head’ pre-election debates over here. Mainly because there’s too many heads involved. Where would you stop? Would the Monster Raving Loonies get a ‘head’? Would the Lib-Dems?? And watching what transpired last night with Hils and Don, I’m glad we don’t. You get the two people vying for the most powerful job in the world and reducing themselves to the worst kind of undignified tabloidesque monsters for the duration. Though in Don’s case, what you see is pretty much what you get.

What you don’t get is policies, ideas, visions of the future. There’s no time in between all the shouting and insults.

But what I also learned on the tv this morning, again, something that happened too late to reach my morning paper, was that Sam Allardyce has been a bit of a naughty boy. In fact, possibly, allegedly (though there’s shit-loads of video footage), an exceptionally naughty boy.

Sam was enticed to a meeting with some ‘businessmen’ to discuss various things, including the acquisition of British footballers by ‘third party’ agents who would ‘own’ them or part of them. Maybe a leg. A neck. A testicle. So that when the rest of that player is transferred for £57million, that little testicle might be worth a good few mil to them. Third party ownership. Banned by the FA. The farce by which Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano first came to West Ham, ‘owned’ by their agent.

And Sam told these ‘businessmen’ that there are ways to circumvent the ruling… lots of money to be made… I know how to do it… blah, blah, ain’t I fucking clever… blah, blah, blah.

These people offered him, vaguely, £400,000 to ‘assist’ and set up a meeting in Singapore with the ‘investors’ involved. At which point Sam did say he’d need to ‘run it past his bosses’, in reference to the FA, which is odd if any kind of ‘bung’ is involved from an illegal proposition.

But in fact its all a tabloid ‘sting’. The Daily Telegraph set it all up. The ‘businessmen’ were reporters and Sam was filmed all the way. Hah!! Gotcha!!!

The Daily Telegraph is the real loser here. What kind of fucking hi-brow journalism is that? Its the sort of shit that had the News of the World shut down for good. Take a man out and make him feel big and special and he’ll fill the role. He’ll SAY he can do anything, he’ll SAY lots of silly things. Its a testosterone problem, an ego issue. Doesn’t mean he’d do it.

I have no massive love for Sam Allardyce, nor a lot of trust, really, but The Daily Telegraph should be seriously ashamed of resorting to gutter sleaze, of ‘creating news’ and of acting like the Sun.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx