Andy's Glasses

The Hillsborough disaster was a game-changer. Quite literally. It changed the game I loved. Or rather, it changed the way it was watched. As a consequence of Hillsborough, all top flight grounds became ‘all seating’. I hated it at the time and sometimes I still do. I watch in on tv whilst standing up, but crowd problems are rare in my lounge. But it was essential and inevitable and the disaster, back in 1986 was one that had been waiting to happen for years. It was just the catalyst that forced football to, basically, accept responsibility for the 30-70,000 people that would be crammed into their grounds every saturday. (Didn’t do Sundays back then).

Yet it wasn’t just that the grounds were unsafe fire-traps (Bradford City?) with no escape routes at all (Heisel?) but also that the fans were, not always, and not all of them, not very nice. The seating and rudimentary safety precautions that followed increased the costs, so prices went up, quite drastically. And this installed a more genteel edge to the game. The fights and riots that occurred at virtually every game kind’a fizzled out. No-one wanted to get thrown out of the ground having paid over a tenner for a ticket!!! Or even get arrested before the kick-off.

And whilst I will generally disagree with anyone speaking in Scouse, on principle, I stand in awe and admiration of those families who’ve fought for nearly 30 years for ‘justice’ for the 96 that died. The police lied, blamed the fans, across numerous inquests and inquiries, whilst all along it was Old Bill wot done it. Gross negligence. Manslaughter. And now their names have effectively been cleared. Which doesn’t bring them back but it makes everyone feel better about it.

And the policing along with the ’emergency services’ (over an hour for an ambulance) were horrendous. The death toll would have been far less if everyone in authority had behaved properly. Even just done their jobs.

Yet I can sort of understand, if not the cover up itself, though everyone wants to save his or her own ass, the behaviour of the police and others on the day. Because its all based on an assumption, a normally fairly accurate one AT THAT TIME, from vast experience in such matters, that ‘all football fans are thugs, hooligans, drunks and total scum’. So keeping them ‘penned up’ was what you did to keep rival fans apart. Forcing them with horses into channels. Treating fans as you would cattle, but much more dangerous cattle. Drunk cattle.

So when the shouting, screaming, panic and struggles occurred that day, the police would be slow to react. They saw it every week.

The completely unforgivable bit is doing nothing once they realised that this was in fact a serious problem, not just ‘fan aggro’. And nothing was how most of that force responded. Then they covered it all up. Blamed the fans. Continued to cover it up right up till a few months ago.

Is the ‘Naz’ in Naz Shah short for Nazi? Just askin’.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

On Sunday night’s news they announced that British Home Stores, BHS, was about to go into receivership. My first thought was: “are they still around??” I thought they’d gone the way of Woolworths decades ago. They were a store from my childhood and I curiously assumed they’d ended when I entered adulthood. I no longer needed ‘school trousers’ so didn’t understand that anyone else might. Apparently now they don’t.

So having realised that BHS did in fact still exist on many of the country’s best shopping streets that I strive so hard to avoid at any cost, this has now become the next tragedy.

And it is a tragedy. Always, when 11.000 people will lose their jobs. But that’s only part of the problem. There’s also the pension pot…

Like all companies, BHS had a large ‘pot’ in which the employees pensions sat. Hopefully growing, but as they say: ‘investments can go down as well as up’. Unfortunately, BHS offered ‘final salary’ pensions. These offer the retiree basically his income in perpetuity. As opposed to my pension which just offers to give me back what I’ve paid in, plus any ‘growth’. And there’s the problem. Growth.

My puny little pension pot dropped about 25% during the financial crisis of 2008. Shares plummeted, currency was worthless, there was pretty much no vehicle in which you could invest (legally) that wasn’t headed in a downward direction. So doubtless, BHS pension money went the same way. Direction: hell. Thus this 500 million pound ‘hole’ in the pension pot there is not necessarily because someone has taken the money away. More that the money has been invested in a way that didn’t, or even couldn’t, produce the level of sustained growth it needed to produce the arbitrary ‘projected target’.

Yet before anyone makes any other considerations, long before any facts have been properly examined, the first port of call is a scapegoat. Who can we blame? Ahhhh, there’s Philip Green. He’s a fat bastard billionaire, spends his greasy life cuddling up to Liz Hurley and Kate Moss, hobnobs with Simon Cowell, has not one, not two, but three of the world’s biggest private yachts, is based ‘offshore’ in Monaco, and he’s fucking rich. Even if I mentioned that, its worth repeating. RICH BASTARD. He used to own BHS, sold it for a quid. Bastard. Sold it to a man with ‘form’ in the backrupcy department. But before Le Green sold it, he paid himself 1.2 billion quid. Just, like, a bit of pocket money til his horse comes in.

And stating it in that way: BHS pensions down half a bil, Philip Green up 1.2… it implies the connection. It implies theft. It implies all sorts of bollocks that may or may not have happened but WE DON’T KNOW YET.

I don’t know Philip Green. I’m sure he is really, totally, irredeemably horrible. But put away the cross and nails for a while; let’s see what he actually HAS done before crucifiction begins.

Happy very late Wednesday.

A xxxx

The sun is out, the sky is blue, there’s not a cloud to spoil the view, but…

And the irony is; it really is a beautiful, good-to-be-alive, get-out-there, wonderful morning in London today. I actually wish it was raining, dull, grey, cold. Would be a better fit. Suit the mood.

Because last night was the tragedy at White Hart Lane. Spurs lost. Not the game, that was drawn, but lost the momentum, lost the chase for the top. Lost the dream. And I can’t understand why.

The first half was so impressive. It was typical of Spurs Nouveau, fast, furious and beautiful to watch. Then in the second half it stopped. Just like that. The pace, the movement, the pressing, just dropped off. I have no idea what the team talk was like at half time but it didn’t work. We dropped back and let them in. And struggled to get going. Whatever has been going so wonderfully well most of the season just stopped.

And immediately my mind raced to find the worst possible scenario following this loss (of 2 such vital points). Relegation? No, we’re safe. Dropping out of the top 4? Only if we can’t bounce back. Allowing Arsenal to overtake us? NNNOOOOOOOOO…

Chelsea next week. They hate us. Good. I’d hate to be liked by them. It would be like Kim Jong Un trying to ‘friend’ you on Facebook. Jeremy Corbyn taking you out for a drink. But that’s become a monumental game now. Don’t really have sufficient zeros on my keyboard to say precisely how many points are at stake. Pretty much all of them.

Never date a songwriter. Or marry one. Well, you can do, but NEVER, EVER break up. Or even be unfaithful.

Rumours abound that Jay-Z has been getting ‘close to’ one of his clothing designers. The extent of that closeness is unclear at present, but I think certain assumptions can be made, or ‘bootysumptions’ in this context, that its close enough to not see the join. So wifey, Beyonce, has on her just released album, tracks about the ‘affair’. Subtle tracks like ‘the muthafucka done shagged that bitch’. Well, that would be the title if I’d written it. Beyonce’s more subtle. Slightly. Though Beyonce has really ‘let herself go’ lately, (see pic).

Taylor Swift has charted her relatively short but vastly varied love issues on every album she writes. “Small Penis Blues” was revenge for some bust-up or other. “Halitosis Rock” was another song, another relationship over.

Revenge Rock. Its all the rage.

Miserable Fucking Tuesday

A xxxx

Yeah, a lot of nerves being shown at Leicester now. Right. We’ve been waiting for this. The pressure, the realisation of what they are probably about to achieve. The loss of their talismanic (and a lot of other ‘manic’ too; have you seen his eyes??? there’s something of the night about Jamie Vardy) striker. The expectations on their inexperienced shoulders. So they breezed over Swansea 4-nil. I won’t labour the new ‘force of 4’ but suffice to say; it weren’t a close match.

The most amazing thing Leicester have done is to manage to send their stress, troubles and pressures 100 miles down the M1 to Arsenal. I don’t know how you’d do that, didn’t know you could, but someone must have invented a new app or something and all the jitters that Leicester should be experiencing have fallen in Arsenal’s lap.

Which is itself not a bad thing, but just strange as this time of the season is so often Arsenal-time. And this year they can’t hit a rather porous Sunderland goal from 7 yards. I didn’t see that match. Mel, inspired by our Holland flower-power trip last weekend, went and bought an entire garden centre’s worth of fucking flowers. Well, bedding plants. Their entire stock. So that our driveway can resemble the Kuekenhof Gardens. And they needed planting. Bastard things.

Anyway, shame I missed that one. A Sam Allardyce team desperately trying to protect their goal in despair for 95 minutes whilst Arsenal play never ending circular passing games round the midfield. Nah, I’d rather do menial labour, thanks all the same.

And now Chelsea have come out as official ‘Spurs haters’. They don’t want Spurs to win the league. They really, desperately, horribly and probably violently, don’t want Spurs to win the league. They sang so at Bournemouth. They hate Spurs. Yeah, that’s news (stifles a yawn).

West Ham already hate us, for what, I don’t know. And I’m not unhappy about that. Better to be hated than ignored, as Oscar Wilde almost noted (probably an Arsenal fan; too gay for other teams). Arsenal hate us too, but in a more respectful way. I don’t know what that’s based on other than the nature of my dislike of them.

Its like Jesus. A man comes along who is so pure, so white, so right, so amazingly, unforgivingly good, that everyone hated him, other than his loyal ‘mates’, who numbered 12. His posse. Though they called Jesus’s gang his ‘disciples. Bit pretentious for all that supposed humility but we’ll forgive; its Jesus way. The rest of the people wanted him hit, hurt or preferably dead. They were jealous of his purity, his honesty and integrity, felt threatened by his whiter-than-whiteness.

So it is with Spurs. Another bunch of wandering Jews (metaphorically). So good, so lily-white, so wonderful and inspirational that other than the devoted (that’d be me, then), the jealousy and inherent nastiness and badness in other teams wishes us ill. Well, in the words of Jesus: FUCK ‘EM. FUCK ‘EM ALL.

We just need to keep winning. Tonight. West Brom. 37-pointer.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

Have you heard of Gematria? I’ll give you a clue, its not an East European country between Serbia and Albania. Its not a disease of the lower intestine of arthritic type. Nor is it a new form of yoga in which you eat kale whilst sitting in a sauna on your head.

Its about numbers. You assign numerical values to letters, like A=1, B=2… I’m sure even you get the idea. Although these really have to be hebrew letters, or it don’t work. So you look at a sentence, which may be (in Hebrew, but I’ll translate it just for you); “Blessed be the Lord who took us out of slavery and gave us Association Football. Amen”. And you add up, say the values of the first letters of each word… and that comes to… 64. Which is the same number as the sentence: “my penis is exceptionally large”. And so that must be true. God said it. In numbers.

I didn’t say it either made any sense nor had any use. It just is.

Because we love numbers. They help us understand the world. Even if its just to realise that the car wash bastard just short-changed me. Numbers tell us. So its only ‘natural’ to attribute superstitious (13!!!) or supernatural powers to numerical coincidences or sequences. Well, some of us do.

Yesterday in the Premiership, 4 games of football were played. For Man City this was an important day for their quest for a top 4 finish. So they beat Stoke 4-nil. There’s nothing significant in that alone. Everyone beats Stoke 4-nil. Though its perhaps rather significant if you are a Stoke player or fan, in that those numbers say: YOU ARE FUCKING USELESS; GET A GRIP AND A DEFENCE BUT NOT NECESSARILY IN THAT ORDER.

In the massive game between Liverpool and Newcastle, for the former as they chase a top 4 finish and the latter to try and get to 4th from bottom to avoid relegation, they split 4 goals between them. A somewhat better result for the Geordies than the Scousers.

Chelsea put 4 past Bournemouth and Southampton did the same at Villa.

Four matches, four lots of four. Teams playing 4-4-2 (made that up, just for effect).

Luis Suarez played for Barcelona yesterday, scored 4 goals. For the second time in a week. Shame he’s not very good. Even bigger shame he didn’t go to Arsenal instead. Though luckily, according to Wenger, they don’t need a world class striker anyway. Who does?

So now I’m going to spend the rest of the day translating all the newspapers to hebrew and looking for the number 4 in any way shape or form, and trying to work out how that can mean “Leicester will lose at Swansea”. I feel that’s good use of my time.

Happy Sunday (39)

A (1) xxxxx

Malia Bouattia has been elected president of the National Union of Students. Hooray for Malia! And a bit of a shame for everyone else. Because Malia is basically horrible. Nasty, evil, vile and, even though she’d probably disagree, a fucking racist.

Its not her fault that she won her election in the week of Passover. But its a bit of a game-changer for me at least that she did. Because on Passover even total lost-cause, lapsed atheists like me become just a little bit more Jewish. And in turn (because it comes with the territory) a little bit more paranoid and a little bit more defensive.

Malia is a very clever lady, no doubt about that. So clever that she can claim she is no anti-semite when she so obviously is. That’s very clever indeed. She’s no Islamist but seems to have such endless support for them and a never-ending stream of good reasons why she won’t condemn them, that she might as well be. She doesn’t have a bad word even for IS. On the grounds that ‘it would justify blatant Islamophobia’. ‘The I-word’; a word so potent and inflammatory that it can hardly even be uttered in polite company. And once mentioned it is immediately invoked. And she’s not very keen on Israel, I think it safe to say.

She refused to support the Je Suis Charlie movement after the bombing of their Paris office. On the grounds that it was ‘essentially to accept that only white people’s freedoms and liberties matter’.

And that’s where the racism comes in. Because what she’s actually saying is that only white people’s freedoms don’t matter. And that makes her a horrible bitch. In my mind, at least.

But its, once again, the hypocrisy that really grates. Malia and her family came to Britain from Algeria to escape Islamists in the 1990s. Because her father was an academic and an intellectual and such types don’t fare too well in an Islamist environment. So they came to Britain where everyone is free to be whoever or whatever they want to be. They came here for our core values and freedoms. Tolerance and acceptance.

Then she shares a conference with a man who advocates the stoning to death of adulterous women. The man being from ‘Cage’ the organisation which praised Jihadi John and thought the murder of Lee Rigsby fully justified.

So having come to Britain for its wonderful freedom, vile people, as exemplified by Malia, seem hell-bent (judicious choice of words there) on following strict Islamist values and having them thrust down our throats. The very values that saw her family flee in fear 20-odd years ago.

So as a hypocrite, an anti-semite, a closet Jihadi and an all round nasty piece of work, I wonder exactly what it was that appealed to all the students who voted her in.

Happy Saturday, Happy Pesach

A xxxx

Finishing fourth at anything generally gets you nothing. You can win a gold, silver or bronze medal. They don’t make one out of plastic, wood or shit. Which is all you deserve for such failings. Horses ‘win’, ‘place’ or ‘show’. They may ‘turn up’ and even ‘finish’ but its only the first three that count. Except in the Grand National but that’s special as half the horses in that race are dead by the end anyway. Brutal but true. Its top three, or nothing.

Except in football. Where in the Premier league that fourth place is coveted, revered and esteemed. It is a path to riches and glory. And sometimes pain and suffering but there’s always a downside.

The top four teams at the end of the season enter the Champions League. Where they’ll play the creme-de-la-creme of European footballing royalty. And it is very valuable. Millions and millions of pounds in the tv rights and extra matchdays just for getting in. Though teams finishing third and fourth have to play a ‘qualifier’ and they can be very tricky. You can get a team of Nordic ice fisherman from an Arctic place you’ve never heard of and they can beat you, and that’s that.

But the promise of the glory is simply massive. Every team wants to be in the Champions League, every player wants to play in it. Against the very very best. And Arsenal.

And at this time of the season it becomes real. Gritty. There’s an eight figure difference between coming 4th and 5th. Not to mention the incredible prestige attached to qualification.

Leicester are in already. Guaranteed a slot. Spurs should (may it please the Lord, it will certainly please me) get a place too. And hopefully at least 2nd place, so qualification is not required and we won’t have to go to fucking Siberia to qualify.

So two other places. And vying for them, Arsenal, Man City, Man United and possibly even West Ham and even, though its a long shot, Liverpool. 5 teams, 2 places.

It all becomes a battle of nerves. Who blinks first. The only top 7 teams who failed to win last weekend were Leicester and West Ham, who played and drew. So even the hopeless Man United kept hopes alive. Arsenal drew on the weekend but managed to beat West Brom last night. Liverpool are on a bit of a roll. The Klopp and the Kop seem to be happy. Man City alternate between brilliance and incompetence. Would you want West Ham in the Champions League? As representatives of England?? It would be like inviting a tramp to a ball at Buckingham Palace. But they are playing well.

But I will not ‘look down’. No. I still cling to hope of looking upwards. We just need another Vardy-inspired slip by Leicster. Or two.

Nervy Friday

A xxxx

This is Anders Breivik. Remember him? Lovely guy. Self-confessed ‘nazi’ and total fucking homicidal lunatic. Ok, a lot of Norwegians are a bit strange, all those 22-hour nights in the winter-time, too much seal meat and whale blubber in the diet, but Anders really went too far. He planted a bomb in Oslo which killed 8 people, then, unhappy with the poor ‘return’, went on to a youth camp and shot dead 69 kids. All the while giving his famous(ly stupid) nazi salute. Nice.

He’s been in prison since 2012, in solitary confinement. And although the cell is rather luxurious in comparison to the British Victorian offerings made famous in 1960s movies, he is alone for 22 hours a day. As opposed to being dead for 24 hours a day, as really he should be. But we don’t do ‘capital punishment’ in Europe. Its not nice.

But Breivik complained that his human rights had been violated by his imposed solitude.

There’s a old definition of the yiddish word ‘chutspa’, kind’a ‘bare-faced cheek’ and more, in which a kid on trial for the murder of both his parents claims leniency on the grounds that he’s a orphan.

This world of ridiculous irony is the one which Breivik’s lawyers entered into. A man who without a thought killed 77 completely innocent people, demands human rights for himself because he’s not ‘happy’ with his lot.

And ridiculously: he won. He can now have visits from his ‘girlfriend’. Ok, not a girlfriend in any normal sense. They were ‘friends’ online before the slaughter. And she’s ‘in love’ with him having exchanged hundreds of letters and the odd phone call during his incarceration. They’ve obviously never met.

It should actually be a crime to befriend a psychopath in any way shape or form. To ‘lurve’ a man with views that would make Goebbles shudder. But its not. I can only hope that she is grotesque beyond any acceptable standards of grotesqueness, has a beard, weighs 32 stone and is Jewish.

And happy birthday to Her Majesty the Queen. We had marching bands down Fleet Street yesterday, on horseback. I thought it was in celebration of the Stoke game on Monday night but apparently it was ‘just’ for the Queen. Like she’s short of parading soldiers in her life.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

So we were in The Hague (city in Netherlands, not William) and there in the Mauritshuis (no idea) was a collection of old masters. Among them, Vermeer’s ‘Girl with a Pearl Necklace’. So I thought. Ok, let’s go watch a porno then; see if I care. Mel was amazed at my willingness to go to what turned out to be a sodding art gallery. No, its Girl with a Pearl Earring. Ahhhhh, just one Ratner’s window short of a happy ending.

There were lots of paintings. Old ones. Some of which are startling, in their detail and accuracy. Some of which were photographic in quality and lighting, albeit at over 500 years old.

But they’re dull. Dreadfully dull. To me they fall into categories.

‘Laughing Cavaliers’, as I think of them, or miserable Cavaliers; any geezer with a beard and a haughty expression wearing a ruff and New Romantic clothing.

Then there’s the ‘cherubs’. The Renaissance obsession with chubby little naked boys with angels wings. Its as if it happened at the BBC in 1974, rather than Continental Europe centuries before.

Jesus and Marys. They were the One Direction of their day. Couldn’t get enough of them.

Bowls of Fruit. Ever fucking popular. As are flowers. The Dutch Masters loved flowers, as they would, but Jesus, enough already; get a grip.

Old Men. Too old to be Cavaliers, to young to die. Them and self-portraits. Great art. No imagination required; I’ll just paint my own face. Though not in an Adam Ant kind’a way.

And the Girl with a Pearl Earring. Which is a great painting. Especially as it wasn’t a portrait but an act of fantasy on the part of the old Master. What they called a ‘tronic’. A painting from the head.

And if you like this picture, google it. There will be 27 zillion images of the painting. At least. If you google ‘castrated parrots with grey beards eating profiteroles’ you get 52 million options. So Vermeer’s most famous…

Yet standing in front of it, and yes, crouching too, were ‘the tossers’. Trying to frame the painting perfectly in their sodding phones so they can remember it. Even though they knew it before they went there and can see pictures of it any time. But no, I have to have it on MY phone. It’ll look totally different to the other images taken by someone else. So I’ll just stand in the way for half an hour and line up the iphone…

You know that bit in Comic Strip’s Bad News Tour when (guitarist) Ade Edmonson says: “Jimmy Page was 18 when he wrote ‘Stairway to Heaven’, but I could play it when I was 14. I think that says a lot”.

That’s like these tossers with the Vermeer on their phones. “It took Vermeer 5 months and a date with Scarlett Johanssen to paint that picture, and I took it in 3/800ths of a second. I think that says a lot”. Yeah, it does, it says you’re a tosser. Now get out’a the way and let me look at some fucking paintins.

My problem with the ‘old masters’ is that they painted ‘things’. They painted ships and dogs and houses and trees and bowls of fucking fruit and they painted them very well. They just didn’t paint things I particularly enjoy looking at. Concepts. Ideas. Impressions. Harry Kane. Naked women with 3 breasts. Interesting stuff. That came later. I’ll go back next year see if its ready yet.

Happy Returns to the UK

A xxxx

I wrote a little something on the plane home yesterday evening. About the Dutch Masters. Because I know how much you love a good pitcher, a nice Rembrandt, bit’a Vermeer class. The Johann Cruyffs of the paintbrushes. Right?

But then in the taxi home from the airport something happened. That not only changed the intended content of today’s blog, but probably changed my life. Forever!!!

Never one to resort to mild exaggeration when rabid hyperbole is an available tool.

I was following the football on my phone. Yes, like a teenage tosser; glued to the screen. And Harry Kane scored a goal. 9 minutes gone and, according to the texts that flowed onto the BBC site, it was (to quote Robbie Savage? that’s never happened before) “a brilliant, brilliant goal from a brilliant, brilliant player…”

Tears welled in my eyes as we sped along the M40. The driver, in turn, was glued to his little screen, the sat-nav. And you couldn’t even get Spurs vs Stoke on that. But as he obviously had not the faintest glimmer about where he was going I left him to his screen. Which led him/us on a wildly circuitous route round the motorways to the west and northwest of London. But I kept schtum in part because I was ‘engaged’ with the football and in part because his ‘detour’ of about 40 miles did manage to avoid the roadworks shit currently clogging up Neasden.

We arrived home for the second half. I ran into the house, Mel is quite capable of sorting out a few suitcases, paying the driver, remembering the ruck-sacks, my mind was elsewhere. It was at the Britannia.

And that second half turned into an exhibition of the beautiful game at its most beautiful as Spurs relentless pressure and high speed counter-attacks produced three more superb goals. Ok, Stoke aren’t the prettiest team in the league, but they stood no chance. Pochettino’s tactics were so wonderfully deployed that it became almost cruel. Almost.

So I’d like thank:
Hugo Lloris; the best goalie in the world
Kyle Walker; the best right back in the country
Danny Rose; the most improved left back the world has ever known
Jan Vertongen; the masterful Belge
Toby Alderweireld; player of the year
Eric Dier; best holding midfielder in the land
Mousa Dembele; brilliant everything
Christian Erikssen; classist player around
Eric Lamela; most improved player on any planet anywhere
Dele Alli and Harry Kane; simply the best.

I’d also like to thank:

Arsenal football club for failing to play to the best of their abilities and for not beating Palace on Sunday.

Leicester City football club for dropping points, at last, and for losing Jamie Vardy for now probably two games.

Mauricio Pochettino for being remarkable and lovely.

Do we still ‘believe’? Have this weekend’s results rekindled that ultimate of dreams? IS THIS OUR FUCKING DESTINY?????

Come on you Spurs

A xxxx