Andy's Glasses

I don’t give a shit about Johnny Depp. Not a toss. Can’t stand him. Looks like he needs a good scrub. Never seen the attraction. He was brilliant in Scissorhands but then his career has been in nose-dive along with his love life. Divorced his long (Hollywood relative) term wife, blond skinny waif, married an American blond skinny waif and after just about 10 minutes started beating her up whilst simultaneously getting a divorce. Do I care?

Nor Europe. I’m so bored with it now. “If you leave Europe WE WILL ALL DIE!!!!! IN AGONY AND SUFFERING!!!!” Whereas “if you stay in Europe “WE WILL ALL DIE!!!! IN AGONY AND PAIN!!!!!”

Yeah, right.

So in the absence of football (I don’t count the Morinho inevitability, nor the 12 million a year), I thought I’d instead talk about my favourite subject. Me.

Because in about 2 weeks time its my 60th birthday. Fuck. Me. How the hell did that happen???

And its also our 30th Wedding anniversary. I’ve put up with that woman for three decades. How either of us has ‘survived’ relates only to your definition of ‘sanity’.

This pic is from back in the day. When we met. Back when we worked together. Ahhhhhh…

The day I started work for a long-gone company, Mel was there. I received a phone call: “Andy, its your girlfriend on the phone”. Which it was. And she was. Emphasis on the ‘was’. She’d called to tell me that, after going out for about 3 months, she’d been proposed to by her long-term ex and agreed to marry him. Probably a good idea if we kind’a finished, really.

I was thrilled for her. But really. She was a fab girl and we’d had great fun. But it was never a ‘forever’ kind’a thing. There again, I’d never met anything vaguely beyond ‘maybe tomorrow’. So, bizarrely, I was genuinely happy for the gel, and in part relieved that this relationship would never need to fizzle or end in a horrid, messy way. “Bye then, love you… til… hmmmm…”

Mel and I just kind’a sparked. She had a boyfriend. Long term and, because she was (and still is) a female, it was ‘serious’. Work was fun, and we had fun. Lunching together, talking, laughing. There was something there. The boyfriend thing wasn’t going well. So we started to kind’a ‘see’ each other at odd times. Which became ever more frequent. It was exciting. I had other girlfriends, decidedly non-serious in nature, but we found time.

Eventually the boyfriend proposed. She accepted. Says a lot that having anything to do with me will make you marry someone else. So we agreed to ‘cool it’. Break. No more. That’s the plan.

But, as they say, ‘man plans, God laughs’. So after a few months, by which time my then girlfriend, The Dane, had moved in, Mel & I bumped into each other on the escalator (I was walking up, she was standing, which is very important) at Bank station. At which point everything else really just followed its own momentum driven by inevitability.

She’s a very lucky girl.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

This is a picture. Possibly the funniest picture I’ve ever seen. And I don’t know why. Though it probably encapsulates virtually everything that is wrong with the Conservative Party at the moment. Again; no idea why. Its just a ‘feeling’. Yes, men have feelings too. We’re allowed.

Alec Sherbourne is an mp. Who has two ‘sweet’ (no other word is appropriate here) little doggies and I’m gonna assume, something of a weight issue. He’s big (ha, ha, haaaaa…) in the Remain campaign. And he made the papers today for throwing a tantrum in the restaurant at the House of Commons. Not that screaming is uncommon in the commons. But poor Alec was ‘attacked’ in the verbal sense by ‘Leave’ campaigner and fellow MP Andrew Bridgen. I tried to find a photo of him too, perhaps in a tutu, but none were worthy. None compared to THAT.

Bridgen started slagging off Alec because the latter (and fatter) was eating a breakfast of a toasted sausage sandwich. And a toasted bacon sandwich. Which to me is the perfectly balanced meal. One of anything is unbalanced, have two and the scales are redressed. Perfectly balanced, all the major food groups represented, except for the good ones, the healthy ones and the ones which won’t kill you before you get to 52, but they don’t taste of much anyway. And if you put ‘superfood’ of tomato ketchup on your high fat, carb-laden bacon sarnie, that’s one of your five a day, at least. Two if the cap falls off and it all blobs out.

And Bridgen, sitting there all ladylike with his soft boiled eggy, smugly and holier-than-thou-ly, basically accused Alec of kind’a being a pig. But deep down this wasn’t about food. It was about the referendum, it was about Brexit and Remain, it was about the entire future of civilisation and the British way of life. All neatly distilled into a metaphor about food. Well, the bacon’s always crispier on the sunny side-up of the street. His cup runneth over. As did his belly. And his plate was more than half full. No idea about his cup, they didn’t mention.

So two tories bitch-slap each other, verbally at least, in a row about Europe. The party’s divided, the government’s gone to shit, everyone hates everyone else, the other side is lying, cheating, exaggerating, dramatising, scare-mongering, doomsday scenario-ing…

We should have more referenda.

Happy well-fed Thursday

A xxxx

We’re going to Wembley!!!

That used to be the chant of successful cup semi-finalists at the end
of their match. You win the semi, you get to the final, you go to
Wembley. What a thrill. What a blast. The most exciting game in
football (the Cup final) played between the twin towers of Wembley
Stadium.

Then they ripped it apart.

Not just old Wembley, to build new, improved, uber-corporate Wembley,
but the whole cup thing. Ripped apart.

No-one gives a shit about the cup any longer. Its more a case of ‘oh
well, there’s no other football on, might as well watch the cup
final’. Rather than cancelling all arrangements, closing up shops,
suspending all of normal life for 2 hours because THE CUP FINAL is on.

I only went to one cup final at old Wembley. Even though it was in 2
parts. In 1981. The Ricky Villa final. The games were brilliant, the
goals wonderful, the ending the stuff of dreams for both Spurs fans
and undoubtedly for Ricky Villa, and the atmosphere was beyond
anything I’d encountered before or since. It was truly ‘magical’.

But now, to get to Wembley you no longer have to beat Kidderminster in
an unwanted replay in a 4th round replay in February. You don’t have
to fight game after game. You just rent the place out.

You want Wembley, giyyus 20 mil and its yours for the season. That’s
what they’ve said to Spurs so we’ll have somewhere to play when they
rebuild White Hart Lane. And next year too. We’ll still be at the Lane
but for Champions League matches we can use Wembley. It’ll be reduced
to about 50,000 capacity because of local by-laws, but if we play a
‘big’ team, we can use all 90,000 seats. Which you’ll kind’a need to
in order to pay back the 20 mil. I personally know 90,007 Spurs fans
so it’ll still be a bit of a squash, but heh, you take what you can.

Spurs are on their way to Wembley… (all sing along!!)

Happy Wembday

A xxxx

Not since Oscar Pistorius has there been a greater travesty by the legal system in a case of blatantly obvious self-defence. Why have they even brought this to trial?

Oscar maintained when it was his turn, that he heard a noise in the bathroom, leapt out of bed, not easy when you don’t have legs, but leapt he did, grabbed the nearest of his 173 fully loaded, high power assault weapons, failed (tragically; oh if only… sob, sob) to notice the missing blond from his bedside who could possibly have accounted for said ‘noise in bathroom’, and emptied the weapon through the door. One dead supermodel, one empty gun. Self defence. Even though she wasn’t actually in the room at the time.

And now we have the next tragedy. Mayka Kukocova had a fight with boyfriend Andrew Bush. He’d found a new girlfriend, Maria Korotaeva, a ‘model’, just like his almost ex-girlfriend. Found them on ‘slavics-are-us.com’ where you take East European ‘models’ on short term leases and when there’s a few miles on the clock, you just trade them in for a new ‘model’.

Sadly the old model had a gun in her hand. Allegedly taken from the eventual victim, who’d come to ‘end it’. ‘It’ being the relationship, presumably, rather than anything even more dramatic. Why you need a gun to end that is another question. But gun he(?) had. They fought. Then the killer (literally) line: “I didn’t realise I had a gun in my hand”.

I’ve heard the line ‘is that a gun in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me’, but I kind’a think if you were holding a (real) gun, you might realise it. Might. But not Mayka, cos that’s how it happened. So she accidentally shot him. Then again. And a third time, just in case the previous two accidents, errrr… well… weren’t accidental enough.

I believe Mayka. Totally. If that’s what she said, that’s what happened. Otherwise its just a crime of passion tantrum by some Russian(esque) bimbo pissed off about being replaced. And we don’t like that. In fact I don’t like the look of Andrew Bush. The perma-tan, the ‘middle-aged-Mohawk’, the selfie grin, the ‘wife beater’ vest, all that self-satisfied smugness. Not that I would ever judge by appearances. Never.

The case continues. But in Spain so we need subtitles.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

Iss science, innit. Physics. Mechanics. Fermodynamics. What goes up must come down.

So having gone all the way up north on Saturday, to darkest Yorkshire (its all dark, ooop there), we came back down to the real world. But instead of coming back on the arduous, tortuous, roadwork-eous, 50mph fucking speed camera-ous, miserable M1, we instead chose the A1. The ‘old north road’. The one that was so bad that the world’s first motorway, the M1, was built to replace, relieve, relax. Ironic. The 200 miles we traveled back down the A1 saw no roadworks, no hold-ups, no aggro, no frustration and only about 5 speed cameras in total. And its somehow prettier. Less concrete. Better view. Nicer way to spend 200 miles.

Also ‘coming down’ is the deputy leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party. Now resigned. Stewart Hosie. Who? Think Nicola Sturgeon in drag. Although Nicola Sturgeon already looks like a schoolboy in drag anyway. And Stewie was caught if not exactly with his pants down, or his kilt up, or whatever, being involved with political journalist Serena Cowdy. Who had just finished breaking up someone else’s marriage, another Scottish MP and seemed to be working her way round the Scottish parliament alphabetically.

I don’t care who she has affairs with. If she’s happy breaking up families its she that will rot in the hellfires of eternal damnation. Even though she’s not Scottish, so may not buy into that harsh Calvanism or extreme Catholicism that they seem to love up there almost as much as Whisky.

But apparently her affair with ‘the previous one’, Angus MacNeil (certainly not an Indian name, that one), involved ‘trystes’ (read: ‘shaggin”) at a London hotel, to the tune of £6350, which Angus charged to us. The taxpayers. To me. Personally. So he could get his leg over; I pay the fucking bill. Yet I suppose that’s part of the ‘anti-austerity’ that the Scots are always banging on about. Whilst they’re banging…

Jose Morinho is the new manager of Manchester United. Almost. Been paid £4mil, a pittance, just as a ‘retainer’ not to seek work elsewhere. And now the ‘Special One’ is to be the next guv’nor at Old Traf. But no-one bothered to tell incumbent (ish) manager Louis Van Gaal. His wife found out on the news and texted him when he was on his way back from winning the cup final. Ok, Luis has been a total disaster at Man U. FA Cup notwithstanding, he’s taken one of the world’s most attacking, exciting and great sides and turned them into Hull. Personally I was hoping they’d keep ‘their confidence in the manager’ and keep him for another year or two. Then that would be one less team we’d have to be concerned about. Shame.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

this is what ‘up north’ looks like. Ooooohhhh, you think, that’s pretty. And green and flowery and big and nice. And very wet. Obviously. Pissing down. Up norf, innit. And the hotel we’re holed up in serves as a metaphor for all of up north. Looks great from the outside, but you really wouldn’t wanna go in. Nice view though. Its like someone took a national park and stuck it in the middle of Coronation Street. Out here in the countryside between Barnsley, Rotherham and Halifax. Not a premiership team between the lot of ’em. Its that bleak.

Never mind. Its not a holiday. We’ve come up to pick up the father-in-law from Leeds and bring him back to civilisation for a week. So we thought we’d do an evening in the Dales, or Moors or whatever they call big green stuff up here.

But first you have to get here. Ah, that’s easy, just get on the M1 and ‘sail’ up for a couple of hours and you arrive. In theory. In reality we hit four lots of roadworks. 50mph speed limit, ‘average speed cameras’, the kiss of death. Normal speed cameras you can ignore, but those muthas; at your peril. Oh, and one accident by Nottingham; 2 lanes closed. Nice way to spend 20 minutes in the East Midlands rain. Tempting to pop into Leicester and celebrate. Even though they’ve finished the celebrations there now and moved them over to Thailand. As ya do. When yer owned by a Thai.

Yet here I am, near Halifax/Rotherham/Barnsley, watching the end of the FA Cup Final. Used to be the biggest game of the year. Now its, kind’a ‘nyeahh’. Don’t know how that happened. Probably to do with football’s obsession about the new holy grail: the Champions League. And you get that by playing league games, not cup ones. Cup only gets you into the Europa League. And no-one wants that. Unless you’re in it then its brilliant.

Oh well, I suppose dinner won’t eat itself, even in Yorkshire. Work, work, work…

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

Legend has it that Groucho Marx once sought membership to a posh, schprauncy Beverley Hills golf club. They refused him (in nineteen twenty-whatever) because they didn’t allow jews into the club. “But I don’t even play golf” pleaded Groucho, “I just want to use the swimming pool”. Sorry, Sir, that’s our policy. “Look, I’m only half-jewish; can I just go in up to my waist?”

Wonderful story, no idea whether its true or not, don’t care either. It makes a point. That for some reason the last bastion of Political Incorrectness (long may it live) is to be found in Golf Clubs. Ok, bit ambiguous; not the clubs you use to hit the balls with, or in Tiger Woods case, the ones your wife uses to beat the shit out of your car, but the Golf Clubs, as in the institutions in which golf is played.

They’re not workplaces, they’re not community centres, they’re private members’ clubs. And as such are not subject to the vast rules and laws, British and European, about equality. They have no equals. You’re either a stuffy, crusty old git with a tweed jacket and horrible stripy tie, or you go hit golf balls elsewhere. With the commoners.

To be a member at any ‘respectable’ Golf Club you have to be voted in. And, basically, if you don’t look, act, think and smell like those doing the voting, you ain’t gonna get in. So Groucho wouldn’t get in, because he didn’t pray to a different God to the one the Beverley Hills members didn’t pray to. Golfers don’t go to church, or synagogue, because they’re on the course at such times a praying generally occurs. I wonder how many black, Asian or any ethnic minority group members there might be in all the golf clubs in Britain? What about trans-genders? Where would Bruce/Caitlin Jenner play??

And what about women? Surely the wives and lovers of the crusty old farts have some time off when they’ve done all the ironing and cooked dinner? Can they play 9 holes??

Of course they can. But not as members. Only as guests. If they imposed such rules at my pole-dancing club it would be a disaster.

Muirfield Golf Club in Edinburgh is one of the best courses in the world. And, of course, doesn’t allow women members. Thus it has now lost its chance to host the Open tournament. A massive money-spinner for club and for the local environment, they reckon about £70million. But the club refused to change its ‘no women members’ policy. One member summed up the situation, and certainly the attitude of the Club when he said “if you’re a woman and you want to play here you’d better marry a member”. Good advice. Because a wife, as ‘goods and chattels’ of her man and keeper, bit like a dog, can go hit a few balls with him. Unlike the dog, who’d run away with the ball between its teeth.

The real problem is that women simply talk too much. About nothing. All those feelings, emotions, dilemmas, all those frills and colours and tampons, its just too much. I won’t stand for it. Not in my club.

Women wear dresses. But in Scotland, so do men.

Wear your ‘BAN THE BITCH!!!!’ t-shirt today, in solidarity with Muirfield and the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers. And other anachronistic fascists.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

The Government yesterday stated its plans to ensure ‘high speed broadband’ for the whole country. Just like gas, electricity, water, the access to broadband is now deemed the stuff of life. Which indeed it is. And this is great news for those poor wretches, currently hooked up to a modem with half a kilometre of wire and getting a ‘page’ on their screens every 10 minutes. Those in the western Scottish Isles. Welsh farmlands, outlying northern villages (they’re always northern) and other bleak and desolate places.

Like my house.

We have broadband. We fucking should have, I live about 5 miles from Marble Arch, which (so many think but no-one actually knows for sure) is ‘London’ from a signpost perspective. So “London 53 miles” will actually take you to Marble Arch. Anyway, London, awash with broadband, more phone signals and wifis round here than anywhere in the (un)civilised world. Brilliant.

And yet my broadband runs at about 1.5 thingies per whatever, when David Cameron is promising crofters from John O’Groats about 55 or more.

When BT introduced its ‘Infinity’ service, I was the first person in the world to apply. Textile workers in Bangla Desh, earning just 20p a day for making Beyonce’s t-shirts, already get about 75mps and their phones/tablets work just fine, thank you very much.

‘Sorry’ said the BT people, ‘you can’t have it yet. We need to put up cabinets and they’re not in your area yet’.

‘Well fucking build them then! What’s the problem?’

The problem is that I live in a conservation area. And the tossers in power (very small men with very small penises who’s passion in life is just to ‘obstruct’ because they can) won’t accept the standard cabinets. They’re not ‘sympathetic with the environment’. Like lamp-posts and phone cable pylons are, presumably, let alone manhole covers and the horrid grey power and water boxes all over the place.

Eventually they designed a ‘sympathetic’ cabinet. Great. But its not going to be put near my house. Fucking anti-semites! Why not??? Because its too expensive. The cabinets cost 7,000 quid each and your area is not marked for one. GRRRRRRRRRR!!!!

A committee was formed; its what you do in suburbia. In inner cities they go to the offices with machetes, round here we form a committee. And for about 50 quid each we could buy our own sodding cabinet. Great. End of problem.

If only. Then there were scheduling issues, then the cabinets were rejected by someone else, then our MP got involved, because that’s what happens just after the committee is formed but before the machetes come out. And Mike Freer MP writes to me about every week with ‘updates’. None of which ever say: “… and its coming tomorrow!!!”.

At last the government are addressing my problem at a national level. My human rights are being impaired. I can’t stream away Spurs games from Albanian mafia sites. They keep freezing.

Happy Thursday from the 4th World. (because the 3rd world has fab broadband)

A xxxx

I just read a great piece about Norway. Small country on the left hand bit of mainland Scandinavia. Has lots of fjiords. And blondes. And herring. Like all Scandi-countries. Probably has lots of murders too because its dark half the year and all that Scandi-noire stuff, Girls with Dragon Tattoos, Wallander, The Bridge, must be based on some kind of Abba-esque reality, surely?

Norway is not in the EU. Never has been. Goes its own way… ish. Is ranked 1st on some (probably meaningless) global prosperity index. And thus is the ‘model’ for maverick Europeanism of the non-EU variety. How ‘we’ could be, should we leave. Except…

Norway’s never been in the EU.

Twice had referenda, twice blew those Eurocrat bastards out of the water. And yet they trade extensively with Europe and have never once failed to adopt any European laws. And as ‘Europe’ is nothing if not the world’s most efficient and costly law-making machine, that amounts to 10,000 legal acts since 1994. Norway allows free, passportless passage from ‘Europe’ and allows Euro people to work there without visas. They are thus part of the Schengen Zone, which we aren’t.

So Norway would appear to be a totally EU nation in all but the fact that they’re not. They’re outside. And thus pay the EU £680 million a year. Whereas Britain, less of an EU adherent, but ‘in’, pay £8.5billion!!!! a year. That’s fair. 10,000 laws don’t come cheap. Even though we hate 9,999 of them and spend another 8 billion a year trying to overturn them.

Ok, so let’s become Norway. The best of all possible worlds. Aligned to the EU but not part of it and thus not robbed by it every year and bound by its often stupid rules, regulations and laws. I’ll change my name to Oleg, see if I can find a fjiord somewhere near Bromley, and fish for herring. Brilliant. Job done.

The difference is; we’re IN. Have been for over 40 years. And if we come out, our status would be vastly different from those Norwegies who’ve never been in. We’ll need to be punished. And in a way big enough to deter half the 27 other member states from jumping ship too. It would have to be shown that leaving the EU is like leaving the Church of Scientology, leaving the Mafia, leaving ISIS; generally not a great idea. And certainly not one without repercussions and costs.

And so although the Norway model is appealing, and Norwegian models are particularly appealing, we simply can’t ever be ‘them’. So indeed we have to look at the real costs of leaving. And no-one knows what they might be. Not a clue. Not Cameron. Certainly not Boris who’s totally lost the plot, not Farage, no-one.

Thus I look at simple short-termism. How will leaving the EU affect ME? And what will definitely happen, because its already started, is that the pound will fall and share prices will drastically drop. So my pension ‘pot’ will take another fucking ‘hit’. Maybe not quite as big as the one it took in 2008 but along those lines. And my holidays will become more expensive.

Selfish? Short-sighted?? Yes, all of the above. But as no-one can come up with any more rational and coherent reasons for in or out, that don’t predict World War 3, beheading the Queen, post-nuclear apocalypse, a world without croissants, that’s all I have left.

At least until tomorrow when it’ll all change again.

Happy pre-referendum days

A xxxx

I don’t do Eurovision. Never have. It was always and still is, way beneath me. I’m better than that. I listen to ‘proper’ music. Not nauso-pop played in ‘plink-plonk’ style by a troupe of lederhosen clad Germans, bearded Greeks in long dresses or Uzbekistani dwarves dressed as the Smurfs. Its crap. Its bollocks. Its an affront to the senses. If they’d had Frank Zappa on it, I may have watched. Talking Heads. King Crimson. Maybe the Clash. But Cliff Richard? Brotherhood of Man?? I made one notable exception. Abba. Nothing to do with the music; everything to do with Agnetha in skin-tight satin pants. I ‘listened’ to Waterloo with the sound off. Seven thousand, six hundred and ninety-four times.

But now the Eurovision has become seriously politicised. How did that happen? Its about music. Which is art. Which is escapism. From life’s harsh realities. They don’t write songs about single-parenting with no money in a dank council flat that leaks. Its not what Euro-viewers want. They want realism they’ll watch the News. They want tragedy; listen to Country & Western.

I had no idea that the Contest was even with us on Saturday night. Had a barbecue with some friends. Sampled a few nice single malts. Got drunk. Ate too much. Wonderful. It was only Sunday morning when I saw the winner on the News. And learned of the ensuing scandal.

Things I never knew about the Eurovision (mainly because I just don’t fucking care):
Australia is now part of Europe, but only for nauseating song purposes.
The voting is no longer solely with ‘panels of judges from each nation’ but now includes a populist, phone-in vote as well.
Terry Wogan is dead.

The three kind’a ‘finalists’ apparently, the three who were neck & neck as the last votes came in, were Australia (I know, I know), Russia and the Ukraine. It was so exciting some viewers even woke up. And so in a move destined to really upset Putin and the Russians (though to be fair, virtually everything upsets Putin and the Russians, unless they’re bombing people), Ukraine won. Not only won the contest but with the most terrible song ever. A 1944 song, allegedly, about the Russian invasion of the Crimea. Not so much a song as a lament. Its awful. Depressing. And, if you live in Ukraine, rather relevant. And a ‘terrible insult’ to the Russian people.

Good, they need to be insulted. Hard and often.

They evacuated Old Trafford on Sunday, half an hour before the kick-off. A ‘suspect bomb’. Endless talk of terrorism, the threat to our way of life, increase of paranoia in football fans, blah, blah. Then it turns out, having sent 50,000 people home for the day, that it was a ‘fake bomb’ used by the security people to test their anti-terror systems. They’d left it there. Forgotten to take it with them after the test. COME BACK!!! Oh, its too late, 12000 of you have already headed off for the 250 mile jaunt back to Bournemouth from whence you’d come. Terrible.

And yet: it showed the efficiency of the evacuation process; no-one died; they didn’t know it was fake until later; and the guy responsible made the most sincere apology ever.

I think Luis Van Gaal planted it to extend his career by three days.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx