Andy's Glasses

Adam Johnson is a bit of a tosser, really. He joins that (somewhat massive) club due to improprieties of a very naughty nature.

The Sunderland (and, apparently, England) winger ‘groomed’ a ‘child’. And then either did or didn’t involve in some kind of sexual activity with her, depending on who you believe and how you define ‘sexual activity’. Its all a bit Clintonesque at that point, with lines drawn and then blurred in very indistinct places.

So Sunderland sack Johnson, as they had to. Eventually. They should have sacked him last year when they found out he’d been ‘snogging’ an underage girl.

This sort of thing is rife. Particularly with ‘superstars’. Like Adam Johnson. Who, whilst being no Lionel Messi, nor Brad Pitt, nor even Tony Blackburn, is sufficiently in the private eye to attract followers, devotees, people who have his poster on their bedroom wall and swoon whenever he falls over running down the wing at the Stadium of Light.

So Johnson would leave the club after a match to find hosts of kids screaming his name and calling for autographs, selfies, any kind of attention, recognition or memorabilia. And these kids are vulnerable. They perceive glamour and want to associate with it. They create heroes and demigods and basically prostrate themselves before them. And they are naive.

So whilst these screaming fans don’t all stand around waving their Id cards, passports or birth certificates around, they are there to meet, to speak to, to associate with, ANYTHING, with their gods.

And it must be very difficult for these ‘stars’ who, in the case of footballers, are generally not overly bright or self-controlled, to protect themselves. And I don’t mean by wearing a condom, that’s too late.

A decade ago Graham Rix, the former footballer and then Chelsea coach, went to prison for having sex with a ‘child’. She was 15, she’d stalked him at a London hotel, she looked 21, acted 31 and I reckon, in all honesty, ‘he didn’t know’.

Adam Johnson did know. She told him. Many times. And yet he courted her, despite the pregnant girlfriend at home, or perhaps because of the pregnant girlfriend at home, and groomed her for the sexual activity that may or may not have then followed (the case continues). He even looked up ‘the legal age of consent’. WHO DOESN’T KNOW THE LEGAL AGE OF CONSENT??? Doesn’t he read any newspapers? Any article about the BBC over the last 30 years would have told him that. Yet the fact he even looked makes him cynical and abusive.

Jimmy Savile, Rolph Harris, Greville Janner, Adam Johnson. Add in Tony Blackburn and they have a 5-a-side team.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

Well, Europe or not, us British folk are simply the best at music. Always have been. Last night at the Brit awards, the British swept the board. Funny that. Other than Justin Beiber who won ‘the token Canadian gesture’ for being a silly little tosser that no-one likes. The sympathy award. In fact it wasn’t British people who won the gongs but a British person. Adele. Who won them all. Because she is simply the best. Without parallel in the modern music industry. And she’s a Spurs fan. I was in tears. Well, I would have been if I’d have seen any of it. (A girl from-) Tottenham lifting four trophies in one night. The dream.

And Chris Martin won an award and ‘dedicated it to all the refugees’. What a man. ‘Because they could be us and we could be them’, as he put it, obviously in honour of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. And I’m sure none of those refugees (can you get ITV in Calais?) felt in any way patronised by this multi-squillionaire muso with homes in 6 countries and a few jets to take him between them. In fact the next fragile, rapidly deflating dinghy that lands in Greece with 150 more people on board than it was designed to take, will dedicate their safe arrival to Coldplay.

But they’re still building robots. Artificial Intelligence. There’s a new one. He(?) is called Atlas and he’s a big bugger. Stands not just like a man but like a defensive lineman in the NFL. And he does ‘tasks’ like stacking shelves (worth $3billion of anyone’s money) but he can also resist bullying. Yes, if you hit him with a big stick, he just gets up again. Amazing. And doesn’t even need counselling afterwards.

And that’s the issue. They build robots but want them to be ‘thinking’… er… humanoids? thinking people?? thinking things. So you have all that fantastic technology, governing jointed arms and legs and opposing thumbs and all the great stuff that evolution worked out for us, plus superhuman strength, limitless energy (like your mobile; possible problem there) and armour plating. And they have them sweeping floors or stacking shelves. Because they’re basically fucking stupid. You can’t build a brain, however many circuits you have at your disposal.

So the answer is: just build the robot suits, all the joints and helmets and shit, lightweight, missile-proof and probably armed with all kinds of firepower, and wrap it round a human. Who CAN think. Ok, who might think evil things, but then you don’t have the stumbling block of the oh so illusive Artificial Intelligence.

Build Iron Man!!!!

And give it to me to try out. I’ll be good, I promise. I won’t just cruise the night sky above the North Circular blowing up Nissan Micras doing 38mph in the fast lane, I promise. I won’t shoot all the nobs and wankers glued to their phones. Ok, there may be some collateral damage but I’ll really try to be good. And I want Gwyneth Paltrow to be my assistant. Not much to ask, surely?

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

Arsenal have always been ahead of the game. They lead the way. So as the rest of us are pondering whether to leave Europe or not, Arsenal last night pretty much guaranteed their own personal exit from anything Euro-esque.

Or, rather, Barcelona guaranteed it for them.

And I am biased, I warn you now. Not because I have any resentment of my north London neighbours (my shed is filled with axes, all red-and-white, and three grindstones) but because I am a proud and noble Catalan. To the very heart. Barcelona-Man; tis me.

Not because I was born there (my part of Hackney hadn’t been annexed to Spain at that time), nor spent much time there (2 trips, neither longer than 3 days) but just because in my soul, that’s where I am. Its not just the flamenco suit I bought there (pink and flouncy, size: ‘Girl, age 8-12’) nor the fact that I can’t speak the language at all. No, its in my blood. The football. Barcelona style. And style is what they have.

Going right back to when Johann Cruyff played there. Gary Linneker. Neeskins, Ronaldo (the ‘proper’ one, the fat one), Luis Figo, Maradona. They all graced the Nou Camp. Along with supporting casts so prodigious, so skilful, so wonderful that at all times they have been ‘the team to watch’.

I didn’t watch it last night.

Firstly it was on BT Sport and I don’t subscribe ‘on principle’. Though I’m not precisely sure which principle I’m referring to there. But more importantly, it was bridge night. And bridge is sacred. Hmmmmm. Lionel Messi… 6 spades, vulnerable… hmmmmm.

So I combine the two and play bridge like Lionel Messi. Or like he would. With style, grace, panache, unbelievable skill, close ball control (???) and a smile.

Yet I realised last night that in a partnership game, I am a fucking awful partner. I’m horrible. Which is why I don’t partner my wife but instead my (lucky, lucky) sister-in-law. To protect marriages. So when we first started learning, we split into non-divorcable teams and we’ve stayed that way.

And partners are odd and fickle beings who do unpredictable things. The rules of bridge dictate that you never scream or shout at ‘partner’, nor physically abuse them in any significant way (a ‘stare’ is not physical abuse, I checked with my lawyer). But I do. I can’t help it. “WHY DIDN’T YOU PLAY THE FUCKING ACE?????” I gently enquire during the inevitable post-mortem of one hand. “JESUS; DIDN’T YOU SEE HE WAS VOID IN CLUBS?????” And that was whilst we were winning.

So I apologise to my partner. It’ll never happen again. Unless you lead away from an ace, play ‘third hand not-very-high’ or forget the suit I lead.

I wouldn’t shout at Lionel Messi.

Happy Wednesday.

A xxxx

The picture is the athlete and Arsenal fan, Kelly Southerton’s tv. With the remote buried in the screen, thrown by her when Flamini gave away the penalty last night. She should learn bridge to calm her down.

Politics should be about policy. That’s how it got its name. And ironically they named it in Greek. Ironic because the Greeks, so influential in our language, represent the best and the worst of the whole ‘Europe’ thing.

Should I stay or should I go now? Asked the Clash in 1979. Don’t leave me this way; I can’t survive. The songs say it all. Ok, they were intended to be about lurve and relationships, but Europe is a relationship. Albeit a rather loveless one with all the sex happening with the French in sleazy hotel rooms in Brussels.

But the in/out referendum is a big thing. On a scale of ‘big things’ and ‘not such big things’. Its massive. And like most people, even most informed people, I don’t know enough to decide. So I need help in understanding the full extent of all the implications of a ‘Brexit’ (pukey term, that one).

Yet what I’m seeing and hearing and reading is so much posturing, positioning and politicians out to make personal gains.

Like Boris. A man I trusted sufficiently to vote for twice as London mayor. Ok, because he’s funny and the others are dreadfully dull, but mainly because he seemed to shoot straight. Yet now, tempted by the lure of potential prime ministership, Boris has turned Judas on his old schoolmate David Cameron and gone to the dark side. The Outers.

“Nothing to do with personal ambition; its the best thing for London” he cried. And yet when you read the letter imploring continued In-ness signed by a hundred very influential business leaders, you kind’a start to wonder.

So I’m starting to fall more heavily on the ‘in’ side of things. Which started the moment George Galloway turned up for the outers. On the grounds that whatever is viewed as in any way beneficial by the world’s most horrible, vile and evil man, must be bad for me.

Thus the ‘debate’ has become one of personalities with their agendas or the emotive issues with their predictable cry to arms of ‘immigration!’ and ‘sovreignty!!’

They gloss over the important issues. Will I have to queue longer to take a flight to Rome? Will my pizza crust get soggy? Will they still subtitle French films in English? And most importantly; will it affect how many Champions League places are given to the Premiership???

Because undoubtedly the very best of what Europe has to offer is on view tonight at the Emirates when Arsenal take on Barcelona. Exemplified by that most European of things: three South American forwards.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

So you’re walking down a busy street, rush hour, packed with pedestrians, not much space, and the tosser coming towards you is staring at his phone. Walking straight at you. There’s no room to manoeuvre, crowds everywhere, and he’s staring at his hand. What do you do? What are the protocols? The etiquette?

The simple, elegant solution is to punch him repeatedly in the face and then when he looks up, probably a bit startled by all this violence, and rejoins planet Earth momentarily, you kick him in the bollocks. Not because it’ll get you home any quicker but just because it really is what he deserves. And it’ll make you feel much better. May even make him slightly more cautious about his phone addiction next time. But that’s doubtful.

I have a real thing about obsessive phone staring. Every time the traffic light changes to green and the cars don’t move you just know there’s some tosser phone-staring. Even though its illegal to do so in a car.

And now in a few countries they’re actually going to try and implement the same ban on phones when walking along the street. Or, and this is for real, have ‘phone lanes’ on the pavements where all the tossers can amble along in their oblivious-to-the-world state, banging into each other, holding up all the other tossers, playing Candy Crush at their leisure, away from people who actually have somewhere they want to be.

In Hawaii they want to ban phones at crossings. Because people get run over when they’re Whats’apping their mates instead at watching oncoming vehicles. As they deserve.

But evolution takes its toll, as always.

A study in Israel has shown that keeping a phone in a trouser pocket seriously fucks up a man’s sperm. Seriously. Nothing to do with the porn he may be viewing. The proximity of the phone with all its ‘radiation’ and shit, to the testes, caused abnormal sperm in almost 50% of those tested.

The scientists thought this was a problem. I think its brilliant. Its God’s way of sifting unworthy populations. If the ‘tossers’ (as I call phone-starers) have abnormal sperm they will reproduce less than ‘normal people’. And over a few generations this should eliminate the next generations of phone addicts, by natural selection. Ok, assuming that being glued to a smart-phone is an inherited characteristic, but heh, we’ll take what we can.

So perhaps, when you next see such a tosser on the street, instead of hitting him (plan A and always worth a try anyway), give him another phone to keep in his trouser pocket. Hit them in the gonads. Let Darwin take care of the rest.

I’m not talking about football.

Ever again.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

Reaching the end of your playing career? Fed up with winter Tuesday evenings in Scunthorpe? Want just one more little ‘earner’ before retiring? Go to China. The Chinese Super League. Its paved with gold.

This is what’s happening. All our (one-time) talent is upping (walking) sticks and moving to China. With a population of 1.6 billion, just think of tv rights if you could get even 10% of the buggers into football!! And to do so the Chinese are importing as many big names as they can. Well, they have quotas of overseas players but they’re in big demand. Didier Drogba could almost look Chinese anyway. And he’s there. Along with Nicolas Anelka, Freddie Kanoute, Yakubu, Keita and many others.

You watch a game in the CSL and an hour later you want to watch another.

Now they want John Terry. And as no-one else does, that’s a no-brainer. And also Wayne Rooney. Ok, bit early some say to label the Roonster as a has-been but, a few recent goals aside, he is not a shadow of the player he once was. So the 500,000 pounds a week may look like quite a lot of money for Wayne. But he won’t go. Never. He won’t leave his family, the council flat he still keeps in Toxteth, all those granny ‘massage parlours’ in Wallasey, oh, and his wife, Waynetta, and the kids.

But Wayne also wants to overtake Bobby Charlton’s goal-scoring record and become Man United’s all time top scorer. He’d also like to become, like Bobby, Man United’s nicest man ever, but the odds on that one are much longer.

Meanwhile, what a great result at the Emirates yesterday as the Arse failed to beat Hull. A thrilling (zzzzzzzz) nil nil draw. And oh so topically it brings the question of ‘the cup replay’ in the very week everyone’s saying they shouldn’t have them any longer. Play extra time; have penalties; toss a coin; play til someone scores or someone else dies; but no replay.

Even Hull have four matches scheduled in the next 20 days. Arsenal have dozens. League, champions league, loads of matches. What neither team want is a replay. Wenger, never a man to spare his moaning, has always wanted fewer matches, winter breaks, he’s always wanted to wrap his delicate little players up in cotton wool for periods of rest and recovery. And now they have to shoe-horn in a cup replay.

Strange move by Bournemouth yesterday; playing the second team. The Cup is big. Just about. Though maybe not as big as risking relegation. Who knows why such decisions are made?

Spurs play today. We’re gonna win the double. In colour this time.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

Ahhh Europe. Sorted. All resolved. Fantastic. The way forward. The future is bright. And its all thanks to Dave. Our mate. Our pal. He went over there and he sorted out all those pesky foreigners can came out a winner. Got what he wanted. Exactly. Maybe even more.

And the odd thing is; they all got what they wanted too. Perhaps even more. Brilliant.

So David Cameron is proclaiming it a massive victory.

And so is everyone else.

A win-win-win-win-(carry on 28 times)-win situation.

So if that is even possible, WHAT THE FUCK HAS EVERYONE BEEN ARGUING ABOUT FOR 2 SOLID YEARS????? What a total waste of time and money. My money. If everyone can apparently win then everyone obviously wants the same outcome. So where was the problem? That needed 48 hours of solid discussion at the very end of this incredibly protracted ‘debate’?

You always have to be careful when both sides (or even 28 sides) all claim victory. Because its impossible. Therefore they’re all lying. Or some of them are.

Dave created his ‘special status’ for Britain. We get all the benefits of Europe (that’s… er… trade stuff… err… croissants… errrr…) and yet we get to control almost everything. We can keep out smelly European types, deport Polish builders, arrest Romanian pickpockets, and retain the right (if not the actual ability) to stop sending child benefits to families who’ve never been here and are currently living in Estonia.

The Polish PM said, quite clearly, though in Polish so no-one’s really sure, loosely translated as; “what the fuck does that ponce know anyway? He thinks cabbage is something you eat, as opposed to everything you eat. He’s an over-privileged rich kid who’s never had a job in his life and yet he wants to close the UK Social Security payments office in Warsaw. Motherfucker. I hope his kitchen cabinets fall off his walls. Then he’d start to appreciate Polish workers”.

Never happens in football. Only one winner there. Except in a draw.

Now we just have to decide whether we want in or out.

Happy Saturday.

A xxxx

Shane Warne is on one of those enlightening and morally uplifting ‘let’s take a bunch of hasbeens out to the jungle and humiliate them’ shows. Australia’s best ever spin bowler (according to his mum), former Hurley-shagger, sometime cricket commentator and poster-boy for ‘New-thatch!’ hair transplants is with a group of other ‘used-to-be’s on a show where they force them to eat slugs and worms, swim naked with electric eels, swallow handfulls of maggots, sleep next to an inflatable Jeremy Corbyn, wear an Arsenal scarf for an hour and listen to ‘Reg’ from Mumbai telling you why you need to change your power supplier. Difficult stuff. Testing a man’s mettle.

Shane’s ‘trial’ was to dip his head into a tank full of snakes. Wearing only protective eyewear. And his shorts.

“IF THERE’S ONE THING WOT REALLY SCARES ME SHITLESS!!!!!” shouted the big Aussie, “ITS FRIKKIN’ SNAAAAAKES!!!!” (I have no idea if all or any of those words were uttered but they so easily could have been.)

Whereas actually, what really scares Shane, like all Aussies, is excessive sobriety, losing cricket to the Poms, wearing a suit, losing his hair or acting in a civilised manner for more than 3 minutes.

So in went Shane’s head, to the tank of wriggling, slithering, writhing horrors, and he got bitten on the face by an Anaconda. Which isn’t poisonous. So that’s fine.

NO, ITS NOT FINE. ITS HORRIBLE, VILE AND REVOLTING AND THE STUFF OF NIGHTMARES FOREVERRRRRRR!!!!!

Because maybe snakes are Shanes ‘biggest fear’, as he claimed, but they’re certainly mine. No reason in particular. But I’m not sure you need a reason for a phobia. That’s the point of phobias; they’re irrational. “Oh, don’t be silly, that 6 foot long FUCKING LETHAL FUCKING COBRA is more scared of you than you are of it”. Wanna bet?

When we travelled round Australia a few years back I always picked the hotel room on the highest floor. “Oh, don’t you want to be near the pool/beach/lump of rock/kangaroos/whatever???” No, I want to be as far away from the snakes as possible. Snakes hate stairs. Scientific fact. And they get claustrophobic in lifts. So yes, room 3904 will be fine, thank you very much. Its not a problem in Berlin, Paris, Iceland. Ground floor is fine. But anywhere hot, anywhere even vaguely tropical, that becomes snakeland and I want altitude.

So I wish Shane’s face better (something I’ve always thought) but for me it would be the psychological wounds that would never heal. I’m not sure mine’ll heal even now having only read about it.

Happy snake-free Friday

A xxxx

They held the Grammys the other night. Now renamed the Taylor Swifts as she seems to win them all every year. And quite rightly. We love high school country-rock about teen romances gone wrong. Its what country stars sing about whilst they’re waiting to grow old enough for their dog to die, the wife to leave them, to lose a couple of legs in some war or other, to become an alcoholic, to be a beaten wife; the normal adult side of country & western. And who better than Taylor? Certainly not Kanye West, that’s for sure.

And after the awards come the parties. Music companies and musicians rent spaces in LA, BIG spaces, and host extravagant parties akin to those by the Russian Tsars in War & Peace but with less fabric in the clothing and more drugs.

Paul McCartney turned up at one such gig, accompanied by Woody Harrelson and several other BIG names.

Sir Paul McCartney. The man who invented music as we know it. A Beatle. One of only two left anywhere in the world. If rock has royalty, Macca is the King, the Queen and the entire court. He is a God.

So they turned him away. Wouldn’t let him in. Not famous enough? Not ‘big’ enough? Not on the clipboard nazi’s inevitable ‘list’. Paul’s comment as he walked back to his limo was a wry ‘how big a VIP do you need to be?’

But really, the doorman was actually doing him a favour. Should a man that old really be out at nightclubs in the middle of the night? Wouldn’t he be better off at home with a cup of cocoa waching Newsnight? Maybe touching up his roots? Not doing the white man’s overbite grooving it away with adopted-for-the-night grand-children.

Tomorrow is E-Day. Like D-Day, when the fate of Europe was decided back in 1944, but the next one. E-day. Europe Day. When all 28 of the European Union people get to vote on whether David Cameron’s demands for our continued EU membership are acceptable. Whether we can refuse in-work benefits to European immigrants. Whether we can be exempt from parts of the Human Rights act. And most of all; whether we’re allowed to stop the ridiculous situation in which a (f’rinstance) Polish worker over here, currently on benefits, can claim child support payments for a child who has never been in this country, and have them paid directly to Poland. Easy peasy. And fucking daft.

David Cameron is suitably stressed out because he wants us to stay in Europe but if those pesky foreigners don’t agree to our (quite reasonable, if you’re British, downright outrageous if you’re French/German) terms then we, the nation, may vote to leave the Union, come June.

Finally; gambling; the disease. We love a gamble. Its everywhere here. Online, booky shops, slot machines, we just can’t pump our fivers in there quick enough. And guess what? Its a problem!!! People are actually addicted to gambling!! Who’d’a thought?? Such a nice, pleasant, harmless (phah!) pastime. Folks sit at a gaming machine and only stop when their money’s gone, their shopping budget for the week is blown, their cards are maxed out and they’ve sold most of their children. And its all sooooooo easy. And so unregulated. When the football stops for half time on tv, the first thing you see is Ray Winstone imploring you to put twenty quid on Wayne Rooney to score the next goal (15 to 1), or Scunthorpe to get the next corner (8 to5) or the ref to blow his whistle in his left hand (17-8 against). “Isss soooow eazy, innit, kids, just nick yer mum’s credit card, hack the password on ‘er phone an yer away. Go’worn, get startid naaaar”.

Thanks Ray

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

Ok, I’ll admit that when I wrote my ‘expected result’ for the Man City/Spurs game yesterday at 1-2, I thought I was being a tad optimistic. I didn’t really ‘believe’. I believed we had a good chance. I believed we could win the match if all went well. I believed that if we did it would keep us above the Arse. But I didn’t really really ‘believe’ that my team could win the league. Otherwise I’d have wanted Arsenal to win against Leicester because it would put us nearer the top. I was the footballing equivalent of an agnostic. Not a believer, not an unbeliever, just a fucking hedger.

But now I’ve seen the light. I’ve had a revelation. Of almost biblical proportions. The Lord hath spoken, and He did it in broken English with an Argentine accent.

I have but one rule. And that is: we woz never robbed. The offside goal that wasn’t. The penalty we didn’t get and should have. The sending off undeservedly. Its just so much ‘shit that happens’. And if it happens to Arsene Wenger (when he doesn’t win the game) then, like Jose Morinho, its part of some deep, dark refereeing conspiracy. So thus, when it happens in our favour, as it did yesterday, its just part of the game. Though as it happens, if you throw up an arm when blocking the ball, you run the risk of giving away a penalty. If the ref sees it that way. And he did. 0-1 to Tottenham.

But then it became 1-1 and I was studying the table again and adding various points to various teams and none of them looked particularly pleasing.

And so. In the 83rd minute, substitute Eric Lamela played a beautiful through ball to Christian Eriksen. Who kept his cool (I certainly didn’t, I was going ape-shit) and slotted home the winner. The Etihad erupted. Well, one little corner did, the ‘away fans’ bit. The rest went surprisingly quiet. Our couch erupted. My phone erupted.

And it was like a light had shone through the dark.

Of course we still had about 10 horrible minutes to endure, all the while seeing flashbacks of Arsenal’s 95th minute winning goal scored just a few hours previously. But survive we did.

Free points. Never felt so sweet.

So we’re still second. But now only by 2 little points.

And I believe.

Ecstatic Monday

A xxxx