Andy's Glasses

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

We went to see a quite amazing ‘thing’ last night. It was at the theatre. But it wasn’t a ‘show’. Nor a play. And it wasn’t a concert or recital. Nor a ‘reading’. Nor a football match. Definitely not one of them. I’d have recognised it immediately.

It was a ‘thing’. Called ‘the pianist of Willesden Green’.

When I first heard of this I thought they’d made a play about me mate, Dom. He’s from Willesden Green and as he’s always been a bit of a nob I thought they’d just made a small typo with the title.

But its not. Its the story of a 14 year-old girl, a piano prodigy, who left Vienna in 1938 on the Kindertransport, alone, and arrived in England. Its her story. Told by one woman. Who is herself an incredible pianist. So the entire telling is accompanied by Greig and Rachmaninov and Beethoven. Which sounds like the midfield of Dynamo Kiev but its not. All the music was totally relevant to the story. And all played wonderfully.

And it is very funny and very happy and very sad and very moving and, as the general consensus agreed at the end, leaves you speechless. Its on at the St James’ Theatre in Victoria if you’re interested. Short run only.

Ok, that’s done, great, fine, reviews, culture, penis-jokes, all boxes ticked; LET’S GET TO THE FOOTBALL.

Today is a day of history. A day so momentous that the Premier League, in all its vast 14 year history, has never before seen its like. For on this very day, Valentine’s Day, no less, there are to be the two pretty much biggest games of the season. In about 5 minutes Arsenal (3rd in the league) host Leicester (1st). Then at 4.15 Manchester City (4th) face Spurs (2nd). There’s every cliché to play for. Combined this will represent a game of four halves! And at the end of the day: night will fall. It does that. And with it will come a new league table. Unless both matches are drawn in which case it’ll look pretty much the same and Louis Van Gaal will think all his Christmases may have arrived together to give him the faintest glimmer of hope.

Here’s what I think we’ll happen: Arse 1 Leicester 1; M.City 1 Spurs 2.
And here’s what I hope will happen: Arse O Leicester 3; City 0 Spurs 9.

Because although arguably if Leicester lose Spurs will be better placed to win the league (especially after beating City 9-nil, for gawd’s sake), I can only ever wish for Arsenal to lose. Its nothing personal, its just… its just what it is.

(Let us pray it is a very-) Happy Sunday

A xxxx

Who was the biggest genius of all time? Me? Isaac Newton? Stephen Hawking? That taxi driver who won Mastermind? Leonardo da Vinci? Charles Darwin? Elvis?

Or Albert Einstein? ‘The Boss’, as I call him. Because quite frankly, where true ‘genius’ is concerned, pure ‘understanding’ of things that most even clever people barely understood to be actual ‘things’, Einstein is peerless. His record always spoke for itself. He scribbled out a few formulae in a coffee shop in Switzerland and re-invented Newton’s gravity for the post-industrial world. Ironed out the basic over-simplicities so that those laws became truly universal, rather than relating to mere worldly things like falling apples.

He then applied himself to relativity and explained something that no-one even knew existed.

In the following hundred years, during which they’ve invented all manner of massive computers, incredible telescopes, amazing measuring equipment (like the 15km particle accelerator at CERN), several thousand doctoral dissertations have set out to test the great man’s theories using all this new-fangled shit. And no-one has ever managed to disprove Einstein’s work. Produced on the back of a fag-packet in the Starbucks of its time. But without free wifi.

Only one of his theories remained untested. Because it was pretty much untestable. Gravitational waves. Ooooooooh. What are them? I have no idea. Nor a care. But they’ve finally found one and guess what? Einstein was right. Both in predicting their existence and in the way they’d work.

He just did the maths. You wanna test it? Go ahead. Make stuff to test it, see if I care.

So they did. They built a couple of perpendicular tunnels somewhere in America. Each 4kms long and containing amazingly precise lazar beams. So sensitive that they could detect a gravitational wave when it ‘hit’ the planet. And when I say ‘hit’, I’m not talking like an earthquake. Not like a Mike Tyson punch. They were looking for a movement in the beams of so many hundredths of a wavelength of light. If you think ‘the smallest thing I could ever imagine’, then divide that by about a million and you’re in the right ball-park.

Einstein 3; the entire technology and scientific knowledge of the entire humanity; nil.

There’s some other ball-parks that need considering this weekend. Less sort of ‘scientificky’ more kind of ‘footbally’. But more tomorrow.

Today was about a new discovery, or confirmation, so profound, so massive and all encompassing that we can almost re-write or correct the entire history of our universe right from the first second.

Tomorrow is much more important than that. Arsenal vs Leicester; Man City vs Spurs. Wow.

Happy, slightly nervous Saturday

A xxxx

On the BBC they gathered a group of 20 people, ‘common members of the public’, to discuss ‘Europe’. The exit. Or not. Ok, they were northerners, from Stafford or some such, but they didn’t seem overly dense or homeless or anything you’d normally expect. And at the end, these fairly intelligent people with interesting points to make, were asked to sum up ‘Europe’ and the whole ‘exit’ thing, with just one word. And about 6 of them held up the word ‘confused’.

And I thought ‘yeah’, I can buy that.

I read two newspapers every day. Ok, from the back pages forwards, granted, but I read all the non-sporting stuff too. I’m addicted to tv news. And I love politics and I find most things interesting (particularly diets, evolutionary anthropology and women in wet shirts). Yet I too have no idea whether leaving Europe, as we’ll be asked to decide in June, is a good thing or not.

There’s all the emotive rubbish spurted by those with agendas. ‘Control the borders’. Reclaim our sovereignty. Withhold benefits from immigrants. A united Europe prevents war. Facilitates trade. Increases our value to non-European business partners. Blah blah, fucking blah.

And I too am confused. Not just confused but unqualified to make such a monumental decision. Its not my job. That’s why we elect a government. To either make complicated decisions for us or to educate us sufficiently and impartially to enable us to have a referendum. This isn’t a simple thing, like Scottish independence, which we all want, but its Europe. Its complicated.

This whole fiasco started with the explosive rise of Nigel Farage in the run-up to the last election. He shouted that the only way forward for England was to close its gates, shut the doors, deport the useless, exterminate the needy and leave Europe with its stupid ‘human rights’ agenda and all that tolerance and niceness. We don’t need it. Rule Britannia. Land of Hope and Glory; altogether now…

So in his panic to match any election promise, by any party, however peripheral or irrelevant they may be, David Cameron played his euro-card. “I’ll give you an in/out referendum on Europe and YOU can decide!!!!”

But we’re not qualified. Nothing like.

‘Europe’ costs us 13 billion quid a year. We pay 9.6 million pounds a day to be part of the union. The value of membership to our trade is 30 zillion a month. Who fucking knows what any of this means. What will stop were we to leave, what would carry on. Would the price of a new Audi rise significantly? Will I be thrown out of the lift queue at Courchevel? For not being European? Or not being Russian?

So please, Mr Prime Minister, I think, with just 4 months left to go, that its time to start educating the masses. I’m even prepared to include myself in that group. Just for once.

We need to be told.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

I think the best way to get your head around the current wave of pan-European protests about football ticket prices is to first view the phenomenon of ‘the Testimonial Match’. To put things in their correct perspective.

This is what happened; back in the day.

Kids would leave school at 14, they were grubby, grimy, smoked like chimneys and fairly dim. They would either go to work down the pit, for £1, 2s and 3d a week, or, if they were so inclined, they’d go and play for Liverpool, for £1, 2s and 9d a week. That was sixpence more every bloody week!!!. I’ll take it; where do I sign.

And these would be Billys and Bobbys and Nobbys Alfies and Johnnys. We’re a long way off from having a Yaya or a Mousa or a Wolfgang in the top flight of football. Long way off.

After 20 years of physical abuse on knees, groins and hamstrings, they’d ‘retire’. Ah, but I’m only 32. I’m uneducated, half-crippled, no work experience, never, and I can’t even speak proper. Wharr’am I gonna do???? At least for the next 14 years when the resultant concussions from 2 decades of heading a 15 kilo ball made of concrete takes its toll and renders me either completely stupid or completely dead? Wharr’am I gonna do?? Ain’t got no money.

Ahhh, we’ll give you a ‘testimonial’, say the clubs. We’ll play an exhibition match and all the fans will turn up to wave you goodbye AND you get to keep the entire game receipts as a little nest-egg. Now how does that sound, Billy/Nobby/Jimmy???

And thus they’d raise £22,462.94, which would represent the player’s entire retirement fund. But it was enough to buy a pub. Which was all they ever wanted to do. Job done. It was basically ‘a whip round’ by the fans to give something to the retiring player.

Someone was telling me how, a few years back, some magnanimous Premiership superstar donated his ‘testimonial money’, about 500 grand, ‘to charity’. Ahhhhh, what a mensch. No, what a disgustingly overpaid no-goodnik who sees half a mil as ‘pocket change’ and a tax liability. And furthermore, the concept of a ‘whip round’ to benefit someone who earns (in their playing days) 400 times per year what the average man on the street does, is somewhat anachronistic. To say the least.

And that, basically, is the nature of the problem. Clubs pay such outrageous salaries to players and its funded by people earning less than a tenth in a year what the players do in a week.

So Liverpool are putting up the price of some tickets to 77 quid, so they all walked out of Saturday’s game on the 77th minute. If they’d have had the sense to convert the money to Euros they could have stayed til the 98th minute and enjoyed their side conceding the late goal which robbed them of a win. The American fans at the Superbowl didn’t all walk out in the 14,000th minute in protest at their outrageous ticket pricing. But they’re Yanks so they don’t count.

Crystal Palace fans are bemoaning the same thing. Increased ticket prices; decreased enjoyment. Dusseldorf fans too. And Germans pay about 20 quid to see a Bundesliga match.

The fans fund the players. Excessively and ridiculously. Wayne Rooney earns more than Rooney Mara. More than Jennifer Lawrence. They should have become football players when they had the chance.

Cap player salaries. Its the only way. THEY EARN ENOUGH, FOR GOD’S SAKE.

Happy Wednesday

A xxx

Gwyneth Paltrow has been stalked for 17 years. The man wanted to marry her, also to kill her, blow her up, cleanse her of sin. He bought her clothes, earrings and stuff.

Oh, that’s not a stalker, Gwynnie, that’s called ‘a husband’. They love ya, they hate ya; its all part of the game (the game called ‘love’, as the song goes).

Yet this man did something no husband would ever be so brave, stupid or suicidal to do. He bought her a Weight Watchers cookbook. Holy shit. And buying her a diet book is a bit like buying Jihadi John a copy of ‘the joys of murder’. She knows how to diet. She’s invented more ridiculous eating crazes than anyone else alive. Though to be fair, most of the others are no longer alive due to either malnutrition or kale-extract overdoses. ‘Death by Slime’ will be the title of Gwynnie’s biography.

But meanwhile, she’s in court, trying to ‘consciously uncouple’ from the stalker of 17 years. That’s a long stalk. By a 66-year old man. Who is a ‘Christian’. The capital ‘c’ meaning not that he’s merely a Hindu, or a Jew or a Muslim, but that he actually is someone who buys into all that Jesus shit. Though obviously not to the point where he has any concept of decent behaviour or morality. Maybe he’d been a priest? They didn’t say.

I’d hate to be stalked. Though might allow La Paltrow to stalk me for a while.

Meanwhile Spurs are STILL second in the league. Just. But an inch is as good as a mile, ask my friends at www.extend-your-penis.com. And this weekend it could all change again. We could consciously uncouple from Arsenal. Its amazing. Leicester play at Arsenal on Saturday (for the runners’ up prize) whilst Spurs take their awesome away form to Manchester City. Top four teams; 2 games. Let’s hope there’s only one winner. And that they’re wearing navy blue and white with cockerels on.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

“WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT ON YOUR COMPUTER???” “OPEN THIS DOOR!!!”

“I’m just looking at porn, honest”.

“SHOW ME YOUR SCREEN NOW!!!”

“Look, I told you, its just lesbian anal threesomes with baseball bats and engine oil”

“WHAT’S ON THAT OTHER SCREEN; THAT ONE THERE!!!”

“Its nuffink; Kazakhstani choir boys with Catholic priests and donkeys, honest!”

“ITS NOT!!! YOU’RE LOOKING AT THE LEAGUE TABLE AGAIN, AREN’T YOU!!!!”

Spurs are second in the league. First is Leicester, second is Spurs. Tottenham Hotspurs. 2nd. In the league. The Premiership. Arsenal could overtake us today, but they’d have to win 17 nil at Bournemouth to do so.

But you know what? Even in this most glorious of times for MY team, I have to just take a moment for Leicester City. The team that so nearly weren’t even in the league this season as they so narrowly avoided the relegation that so many thought inevitable. Leicester, before the season started, were 5000-1 odds to win the league. Longer odds than given to any other team.

Their season looked so precarious that they dared not buy any players. Sensible. So they started the year with a team that cost, collectively, £22.5 million. And that’s the team they still have. That’s approximately Gareth Bale’s right leg. Not his left one; that’d cost you 48 mil. Its Raheem Stirling, but only from the waist up. And he’s not really fit to wipe Riyad Mahrez’s (400,000 quid, if you can believe) nose.

And this humble Leicester side went to the mighty Etihad Stadium to play 250 million quid’s worth of Manchester City superstars. The club where money is never, ever any kind of problem. They buy players like others buy a Starbucks coffee. Just because they fancy. Their books never balance, their bankroll limited only by the oil supply in the Emirates and they represent pretty much everything that is wrong, horrible, immoral and vile about the modern game.

But Leicester won. Didn’t just win, they thrashed Man City. Which was wonderful for Leicester and wonderful for Spurs. Whose win against Watford put us above the Mancs.

Second in the league. Pinch me again, but pinch me harder.

Obscenely happy Sunday

A xxxx

A few years back a parcel arrived at home for me. Addressed to me; my name, my address. Ooooohhh, I thought, must be my birthday!!! Even though it was in November and my birthday’s in June. So I opened ‘my’ package and in it was delighted to find half a dozen puke yellow polo shirts, size: ‘child small’. Wow! Just what I wanted!!! How could they know??? So rather upset, cos I really wanted the James Bond Dinky car, I phoned the mail order company whose name was on the invoice. To tell them a mistake had been made. I had never ordered, blah, blah, blah.

And was told: ‘ah, actually, that’s part of a fraud operation’. Holy shit. Jail time.

The way it works is that someone sets up a mail order account at an address that won’t flag up the credit police and orders something cheap and fairly worthless, like 6 puke yellow kid’s shirts, and the invoice is processed. But before payment is due, the dastardly fraudsters phone again and order 12 plasma tvs, 96 inch, and, er, can you send them to a different address please? Of course Sir, where would you like them? Because the fraudster’s account looks clean and fine and the computer says ‘yes’.

They put me, ‘free of charge’ on some register or other which would double check every transaction in my name from then on. Like the sex offenders register for people with higher credit ratings.

A few years later I received a call from t-mobile, my phone bastards. Well, they’re all bastards, mobile phone types. “Did you order the latest, state-of-the-art, all bells and whistles, £1200 Subaru Super-phone?” Doh. “Ah, we thought not, because normally you’re a cheap bastard who only wants free upgrades to a 4 year-old Nokia”. “But someone ordered it in your name and requested a different delivery address.” Fraud. More fraud. Andy fraud. “They even knew your password!!” I don’t have a password. “Oh, there’s one on the account, they must have set it up. Its ‘Manchester'”.

Manchester!!!! What is the fucking chance of that being my password? I hate Manchester. Hate the city, hate the people, really hate the football teams. Manchester; not on my watch.

Yesterday I came home to find a bank statement from the Royal Bank of Scotland. With whom I have never banked. In the name of ‘Mr Mike A Agha’. At my address. Where I’ve lived for 27 years. Where before that Mr & Mrs Block lived for 40 years. The account was opened with 100 quid on the 25th of January, and closed the same day.

So we phoned the bank; cos you can’t open an account without proof of address, and there’s no way Mike A Agha could have that. Mainly because I’d have seen him around. Even I’d have noticed a potential fraudster making a cup of tea with my kettle. Surely. But the bank simply didn’t give a shit. They don’t care.

But its not a mistake, not a typo, a clerical error or a computer glitch. Its fraud of some sort. It always is.

Where is Mike?

Happy Frauday

A xxxx

I have a cold. A stinking, rotten, bacteriarised, virus-laden, snotty, bunged-up fucking cold.

A man-cold.

Women don’t get them. They have no idea quite how severe such a condition is. Man-colds are medically proven to be very severe, incredibly life-threatening and rather miserable. But they only affect men. Clinically tested. The only functions that remain for the victim are those that enable the drinking of tea that someone else has made and the operation of a remote control device. And moaning. Lots of moaning.

Its not the dreaded ‘man-flu’, the world’s most horrendous of untreatable diseases, because I have no high temperature. Praise be to Jesus. But I shall refrain from Tai Chi tonight on the grounds that: a. I feel like shit and haven’t slept for two nights; and b. its unfair to share germs. Sharing biscuits is good, germs is bad. And I’d hate to infect one of my co-warriors with a nasty cold as I’m breaking their arm. Wouldn’t be nice. Unfriendly. And we only ever break each others bones in a friendly way. Its one of the rules.

But it could be worse (apparently); I could be in America. Where a vast majority of people interviewed are ‘angry’. With what? Do they have a man-cold epidemic over there? Presumably they interviewed women too? No, these are just plain ‘angry’. With the economy, with immigration and with Washington. Not the city, that’s very pretty, but with the people who make it famous; the government. Over 80% of Republicans don’t trust their government and over 70% of Democrats. Probably nothing to do with the more trusting nature of the latter, more that they have a Democrat president so it wouldn’t do too well to show too much distrust of your own party.

Fortunately for them all, there’s an election coming up in November. A ‘new broom’ will be employed to help Obama move all his golf clubs out of the White House and a new person will be installed. So this year becomes like an 11-month Superbowl build-up. The Iowa Caucuses this week gave Hilary Clinton a tiny lead over Bernie Sanders for the Democrat nomination. Bernie is 94 years old (well, he looks it) yet took over 85% of the under-30 vote from Hilary Clinton, who only gained votes from old people. Many of whom may even die between now and November.

And Donald Trump lost the Republican vote to Ted Cruz. A man who is barely an American. He is a Canadian. From Canadia.

So who will win the election? The comb-over xenophobic misogynist? The foreigner? The cuckolded ex-1st lady? Or the ‘socialist’ Corbynesque old man? (and remember, ‘socialist’ in America is about 3 feet to the right of Maggie Thatcher).

Watch this space. Or watch yer own space; this one’s full of germs.

Miserable Thursday

A xxxx