Andy's Glasses

There’s been another ‘study’. And we all love one’a them. About gender roles in the home, this time. Oddly its been done by Oxfam. Though why they are spending money due to be sent to starving Africans on worrying about who’s doing the housework over here is beyond me. I don’t give to Oxfam, I don’t like them. So its your money they’re wasting, not mine. But even so…

They found that women spend more time doing housework than men. That’s worth 25 grand of anyone’s donations all by itself. A revelation.

But true gender equality, they feel, can never be reached until men and women spend equal amounts of time cleaning toilets. That’s their benchmark. Or skidmark, as its called in this context.

The fact that men (on average; of those surveyed, blah, blah, blah) spend 3 times as much time as women changing lightbulbs and taking out the rubbish is not viewed as ‘unequal’ in such an equal way.

Everything is based on an assumption. Basically that ‘there is no difference between a man and a woman beyond a penis and a few other bits and pieces; therefore they are the same, other than the extreme influences of cultural demands and expectations’. And that, as we all know, is so much bollocks. Women don’t have those either.

And its precisely this lack of testicles that creates the difference. Men and women ARE different. We should embrace those differences because they’re fun and nice and lead to all sorts of wonderful things.

Perhaps women are just better at cleaning toilets? They should be with all that practice. But maybe its a chromosomal thing? Like men are good at throwing things, parking cars, scratching scrotums (scrota, I know, I fucking know), women are good at washing up, having babies, changing channel during FA Cup matches.

There’s a workplace in London that is to give women ‘period leave’. When they feel pained and grumpy at ‘their time of the month’ they take a few days off. Presumably paid, not counted as sick leave or holiday. Just a couple days a month. 25 days a year? Well that’s equality. To balance this I should be able to take a couple of days off after Spurs lose a game and my hormones are all off balance. Its only fair.

Ok, I’m going out to wash my wife’s car. Or maybe I should give her the opportunity to redress that little imbalance too???

Happy Friday

A xxxx

Its a funny ole game. Thus spake Jimmy Greaves. Football! Phah!!

And what about pressure? That’s a funny ole thing too. And we went to West Ham with lofty aspirations and dreams of untold wonderness and we fucking blew it. Having beaten a host of teams that no-one expected us to, we played a game we should have won and failed to even turn up in any significant way.

That normally would have made me want to hit someone. As many someones as I could find. Which would have been Mel really as we were at home nursing her cold when the tragic news arrived. I could have gone out and hit someone else. Murdered a cat. Punched a brick wall.

But I didn’t. I resisted. I controlled myself. I was calm.

And I’d love to say its because of a new-found maturity, or spirituality, some yoga maybe, getting in touch with my yin and yang and moderating my psyche. But I’d be lying. The only reason I was ok was that Arsenal lost too. God bless Swansea. Especially that player who wrestled Mezut Ozil to the ground with two hands round his neck and a knife in his back, which was not given as a foul by the ref and the Swans subsequently scored as the Arsenal players stood around waiting for a free kick. Arsene Wenger’s training session today should start with the words: PLAY TO THE FUCKING WHISTLE!!!!

They didn’t. And Wenger of course blamed the referee for the team’s loss. Boring boring Arsene. Plus ca change. As they say in Upton Park.

A massed, collective sigh, emanating from the greater Leicester area could be heard a hundred miles away as it crept down the M1 to my house.

So now we await Saturday and see which teams turn up.

Adam Johnson’s going darn. Prison time for the sex offender. What a tosser of immense proportions.

And Julie Vangenberg is understandably pissed off at being constantly referred to as a ‘WAG’, as being Nicklas Bendtner’s girlfriend. She’s an actress. She has her own career. Doesn’t need to be associated with the self-proclaimed ‘best striker in the world’ even though when he proclaimed that, my late mother had scored more goals than he had. Instead, Bendtner should be referred to as the boyfriend of a lesbian vampire (her latest role). I love a worthless Dane.

Happy sodding Thursday

A xxxx

Politics is different over here. We really have no-one quite like Donald Trump. Well, thinking about it, there is no-one else anywhere quite like the Trumpster.

We have loud, screechy billionaire property magnates, we call them Alan Sugar. We have racists and bigots, we call them UKIP, or sometimes just ‘Wayne’. We have circus entertainers, clowns, comedians, but ours are actually funny. We have people with orange faces, OK, they’re normally women and married to footballers, or accompanying them to court for sex charges of some sort, but we have the odd orange man too. We have men with extravagant comb-overs, we call them ‘child-molesters’.

But we wouldn’t vote for any of the above. Never.

And yet America is falling over itself to put an insane and dangerous racist, misogynist xenophobe one big step closer to the White House.

“AAAAAHHMM GONNA MAKE AMEEEEEEERICCCCA GREAT AGAIN!!!!” he screeches at the caucuses. “WE’RE ALL GONNA BE SUCH WINNERS YOU’RE GONNA ATCHERLEY ASK ME TO LOSE A BIT… AND I’LL SAY NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!” He atcherley said that.

Tosser. As are all those who actually buy into such unsubstantiated drivel.

Though as if taking total control of the middle-American bible-belters isn’t sufficient for our Don, he also received an endorsement from David Duke. Former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. The ‘moderate right’ (or ‘moderate white’) and now the extreme. Trump refused to comment or reject the endorsement. Well, heh, a vote’s a vote, even when its from neo-nazi, right???

But Trump is the duck off whose back such things just slide off. Donald Duck. He is teflon man. And Americans are seemingly buying into his meaningless nonsense taken straight from some handbook on motivational speaking. All vim and vigour and no meaning or content.

“Shit!!!” thinks Bill Clinton, Barak Obama, George W Bush, Ronald Regan, George Washington, George (no ‘W’) Bush et al, “I never thought of making America great; how stupid am I? Missed opportunity there. Oh well…”

So instead of worrying about a megalomaniacal lunatic possibly becoming president of the world’s most powerful nation, I shall focus my attention on Upton Park. The Boleyn Ground. Tonight. 7.45. West Ham play Spurs. The biggest match EVERRRRRRRR. They all are now. I’m saying nothing. I’m too scared.

Happy MAKING BRITAIN GREAT day

A xxxx

How appropriate in the week following the Racist Oscars weekend that the ‘colour’ black should feature once more in the news. And not just any black. But Vantablack. The blackest black ever invented.

And invented it needs to be. Black doesn’t really exist in real life but has to be made. And its not a colour. Its the absence of colour (physics 101; the visible spectrum). Yes, white is made up of every single colour and black is nothing. Contrary to intuition perhaps but that’s because we’re humans and intuitions are worthless pieces of shit. And we remember mixing all the paints in our watercolour set and ending up with a horrible brown sludge then assuming that if we carried on we’d just get darker and end up with black. Well ya wouldn’t. Firstly your mother came and confiscated the paints which had managed to get all over the table, chairs, carpets and your grandmother, and secondly, you can’t just get black.

And thus ‘black’ becomes the holy grail for artists. No, I have no idea why either, but that’s the way it is. Without getting too technical (for the obvious reason that I lack the knowledge to do so), we see colours in paint by getting rid of all the other colours. Thus red paint simply (??) eliminates all the green and blue and yellow and the receptors in our eyes just pick up the red wavelength and we say “ITS A BUS!!!!” So for black you need to eliminate all the colours. The whole lot. Until you end up with something so dark, so dense that we actually see nothing at all. And that’s black. The absence of colour, the absence of light stimulation for our eyes.

The picture above is a sample of Vantablack which is painted on a crumpled up piece of silver foil. But you can’t see the folds. In fact you can’t see anything other than ‘black’. A black hole. Not in the Einsteinian way of sucking up entire universes, but a place from which no light escapes.

Because Vantablack absorbs 99.96% of light. At the Tate Modern there’s a bust painted in this stuff and it just looks flat and 2-dimensional because without reflected light (and 0.04% just don’t count for nuffink) we can’t see anything.

This pigment was created to cover stealth bombers and satellites. So Putin can’t see them. And now they’ve given it to Anish Kapoor to play with. And all the other artists are in an uproar about this monopoly. They all want to use it, though for what I can’t imagine, I’m not an artist. And if I got some I’d only ruin more white t-shirts. But like ruin them 99.96% more efficiently than the normal coffee stains could ever hope to do.

Happy Black Tuesday

A xxxx

I’m not quite sure if ‘this is the week that defines our season’ or if it already started last weekend, when we were brutally cheated out of the FA cup by Palace. Or if it really began on Thursday night with our wonderful win against Fiorentina? Arguably ‘the week’ began back in August when we lost our first match of the season at Manchester United. And thought: oh well, we always struggle with the big teams away from home, same old same old. Never mind, we’ll beat Norwich at home, Villa away, draw with Chelsea in January and end up 6th.

But that didn’t happen. No. Nothing like. Instead, a miracle occurred. An Argentinian has parted the Red Sea for us (a stunning metaphor; Liverpool, Arsenal, Man.U; red sea??) and we are, as of yesterday afternoon, in the most horrible position of ‘favourites’ to win the league. With the bookies if not the Arsenal fans.

Religious types, when asked why God doesn’t just do one little miracle, just to, once and for all show everyone that He is The undisputed Boss, just a little thing; a burning shrub, feeding just 25 of the original 5000, using Nigella’s cookbook, for under a hundred quid; slaying UKIP members’ first born, just a little miracle, so we ‘know’. But they answer that its all about faith and Man is unworthy. God doesn’t fucking grandstand.

Spurs fans are obviously worthy. Because we have been shown a miracle of our own. In fact every sodding week seems to bring its own miracle. Yesterday’s being the come from behind (what Spurs??? They don’t do that; they crumble and die) victory against the noble Swans of Swansea town. Pochettino has turned our fragile bunch of head-droppers into the most potent come-from-behinders in the league.

Our last two league matches have been won by goals from our full-backs. That speaks volumes. But just like my mother-in-law, who also speaks volumes, I have no idea what any of it means. Interesting though. And demonstrates the fantastically high-line, high-pressure game we’ve developed under Mauricio the Magnificent.

So now, in the week that could have been going on for about 5 months, we now face West Ham on Wednesday and then, next weekend… THE ARSENAL!!!!! In a match that’s fast becoming ‘THE MOST IMPORTANT FOOTBALL MATCH EVER PLAYED ANYWHERE IN THE CIVILISED OR UNCIVILISED (Spain) WORLD!!!!! It is a 19-pointer. It could be a league decider. It could decide the very fate of the entire human, and subhuman (UKIP) race. Its that big.

Yet West Ham are first. And they are the league’s most horrible team. Other teams are stronger, others more brutal, some much better. But none more horrible than the Hammers. Because they hate us and I have no idea why.

But bring ’em on, that’s what I say, just bring ’em on.

Unfortunately I shall now be wearing incontinence pants for the remainder of this season.

Happy, slightly nervous, very excited, mildly apprehensive, totally committed Monday

A xxxx

Well, no-one black, that’s for sure. The Oscars don’t do ‘colour’, aren’t interested in ‘minority’, I’m amazed that they even have prizes for women. But I suppose otherwise they’d have to do away with the ‘casting couch’ and other fringe benefits. So keep the women in. Just don’t pay them too much. You can always find another ‘babe’ to do some acting, when she’s finished ironing my shirts.

I’m not going to the Oscars tonight. Its a ‘protest’. Of course I was invited, they still let jews in, but I decided that the whole Academy thing is just too racist for my liberal sensibilities.

But its nothing new. When they filmed Zulu in 1964, the cast comprised of Stanley Baker, Michael Caine and 22,759 Zulus from South Africa. Yet the white men won all the awards. Which is almost statistically impossible. If not institutionally racist. I make no rash judgments or unsupported statements. Ever. Unless I choose to.

The only real surprise about ‘no black nominees’ this year is that anyone’s surprised by it. That people still ‘believe’ (not like Spurs fans ‘believe’; we do it different) that America is some wonderfully homogenous melting pot, land of the brave, home of the redneck, bring us your poor, your sick, blah, blah, wonderland of tolerance and equality. Well wake up and smell the JD on ice.

We, as Europeans, visit selective places in America, like New York, Washington, San Francisco, and unconsciously extrapolate from that tiny and very unrepresentative sample to the rest of that vast and sprawling nation. In which the races were still segregated in just 50 years ago. Ok, that was ‘darn Sarth’ but without wishing to use facile generalisations: a redneck’s a fucking redneck, whether he’s from Mississippi or Minnesota.

And before high horses start getting mounted (in that stiruppy way, I quickly add), we in Europe even hate most white people. Poles, Slavs, Bulgarians.

My main issue with the Oscars is that they are now, and probably always have been, terribly politicised. Awards aren’t given because of merit but because of fear of insult, because someone failed to win one last year, because of virtually anything other than who was the best actor, actress or movie.

So next year, we will be having the conversation about how great it is having 50% of nominees being representative of black and minority communities.

Then we can work on the police over there. And good luck with that.

Meanwhile, I’m voting for Jennifer Lawrence. Whether she’s in it or not. Whatever colour she might be.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

The esteemed Victoria and Albert Museum, no less, unless you just call it the V&A, which is much less, is having an exhibition of memorabilia from ‘the 60s’. An homage to flower power, but not exclusively a hippy show. There’s other stuff too. The ‘actual’ chair that Christine Keeler posed naked upon back in the Profumo scandal days. But really the tone of the exhibition is stated clearly on the tickets with: “warning! may contain sex and drugs and rock’n’roll”.

I was alive in the 60s but sadly, was too young to make much use of anything there other than the rock’n’roll. So I waited for the early 70s before embracing the rest as the freedom ‘invented’ in the 60s was still alive and well and thriving for us coming of age baby-boomers.

And embrace we did.

I didn’t know any drug addicts back then. But I didn’t know many people who didn’t ‘do drugs’ of some description either. Ok, maybe I exaggerate but low level druggage was fairly ubiquitous in London. Possibly because all the good music was created by people under some serious influences, so to really appreciate it you had to get onto their level. Had to. Compulsory. No-one undrugged was ever going to appreciate Pink Floyd’s ‘Ummagumma’ album, were they?

And when first Jim Morrison, then Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Bryan Jones and Keith Moon departed early from their mortal coils, thier deaths inspired if not perpetrated by drugs, for some reason this did not reflect badly on the use of recreational drugs. Perhaps we were all too stoned to make the connection.

And then there was sex. Ahhhhh, sex. It obviously wasn’t that the act itself had changed, more the attitude towards it. And mainly from a woman’s perspective. The prevailing understanding up to the 60s was sex was something men wanted and women somehow reluctantly ‘gave’ if they had to. Then that wonderful decade liberated women by telling them they could want sex too. Not necessarily with lurve, just the physical, the animal, the sensory enjoyment. That’s what we told them anyway. That we were setting them free. In just 32 seconds flat. Liberation may come easier, but never more quickly.

I’ll check out the V&A, if I can find a day without football. Them’s rare this time of year.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

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.