Andy's Glasses

I only joined Uber, the taxi service thingy-app-wotsit and care home for ageing Toyotas, a few weeks ago. I don’t get a lot of taxis. But I felt I should get in the Uber groove. So I did. Not easily because nothing that happens between me and smart phone is easy. In fact I got guy in the O2 shop to do it for me. Even though I’m an EE guy.

So I was up and running. Ready for Uber. Ready to call. And I did. We were in a restaurant, paying the bill (not me, thank God, someone else f’ra change) and I gave the younger daughter my phone and said: uber me up, baby. Not in so many words. By the time we’d retrieved out coats and walked outside, there he was; the man of my dreams, Essem, ready to take us all home. Brilliant. And very cheap.

Like heroin; one hit and I was hooked.

Thus last night Mel & I prepared to go to the wedding reception, and trust me, I looked fucking gorgeous, I hit the Uber app. There were 3 drivers within 3 minutes of home and the price quote was very very cheap, as always. Bring it on.

Normally I might have driven to the West End, but parking… cold weather… high heels… plus they never named Park Lane after the easiest thing to do or find there. Otherwise it would be called Sleazy Fat Arab Lane. Mercedes Lane. Call Girl Lane.

Anyway. Me, Uber, app me up daddyo.

“PLEASE VALIDATE YOUR CREDIT CARD”.

Oh. What does that mean. Its the same credit card they held on file for the last trip. It hasn’t changed. It has a ridiculous credit limit. One that can certainly stand the £14.85p fare, I felt sure.

“GO TO YOUR PAYMENTS PAGE AND VALIDATE”

I eventually managed to find that place and it wanted to scan my card. No other instructions. So scan it it did. Rather clever, I thought. Then I went back to call the Uber and:

“PLEASE VALIDATE YOUR CREDIT CARD”.

I went to the page, did it again and

“PLEASE VALIDATE YOUR CREDIT CARD”.

Rinse and repeat for about 20 minutes. We’re now running late and I’m standing there shouting “JUST FUCK OFF WITH YOUR VALIDATE BOLLOCKS!!!!” at my phone. Still looking gorgeous though.

Eventually, having called the normal local taxi service; “about 30 minutes for a car, Sir, the usual unregistered Syrian Jihadi rapist”, we just jumped into the car and drove to town. Parked in a car park, for an eye-watering cost, in Shepherd’s Market, the one time scene of Jeffrey Archer’s long-ago dalliance of the oral variety with a very dirty person, and hoofed it, on me heels, to the Hotel.

It would have taken three Scotches to calm me down, but I was FUCKING DRIVING so settled for one and some chicken tikka instead.

Uber’s Ober. We’re done. Can’t trust them. Hate them. Sent them an email this morning telling how they RUINED MY ENTIRE LIFE. Don’t like to overstate things. Their shares will doubtless plummet as a consequence. Can’t be helped. They were worse than useless. They sent me to techno-Hell. A place I don’t do very well in.

Now COME ON YOU SPURS; this is the day of our destiny. Arsenal lost. Man City lost. Chelsea won but that doesn’t count, Leicester are top of the league, for God’s sake. We must win. We shall win.

Happy Sunday, except for Uber, may their car batteries all go flat.

A xxxx

Ah well, man plans, God laughs, as they say.

I should be in the West End, suited and booted, enjoying the third hour of my great friend’s son’s wedding. But it didn’t happen. A minor (ish) catastrophe at work (Mel’s, not mine) meant we had to call off the morning part of the today’s weddinginess. We’ll be there this evening, but this morning was not to happen. Which is a shame but…

Within 20 seconds of hearing about the cancellation I’d rearranged Tai Chi and tennis, so after fighting the wierd and wonderful snow-storm this morning (snow?? when yesterday it was still summer??? where the fuck is ‘mild’ when you really need it?) the sky had cleared by the end of martial arts madness to reveal blue sky and sunshine. Perfect for tennis. So you’d think. Until you realised that the winds I’d so revered the other day had come back to bite me right in my tennis court.

I did wonder, as Spurs Paul & I warmed up, why all the other courts were empty. ‘Bunch’a poofs’, he said, for which I had to reprimand him severely for lacking the political correctness that almost defines our time together. We played. It was a joke. The ball shifting laterally 20 feet from shot to bounce. Its a forehand; no its a backhand; shit, its hit me in the bollocks. Ooooofffff!!!!

I should be in a ceremony. Praying to Hindu gods. They have loads. Many look like post-nuclear elephant-human hybrids, many-headed monsters, horses that can play the sitar. I don’t care, I’ll pray to anyone. Or not. As I’m not there.

Last weekend I was in synagogue. Only one God there. Barely an elephant’s trunk in sight. The Jewish God is old and has a long beard. Smiles a lot. Has a pot belly. Loves his grandchildren.

But where was he when Paris was under attack? Where was the lightening strike at Jihadi John just as he was about to perform a beheading live on video? What’s the point of all that omnipotence and omniscience if you don’t use it? Its like taking a Ferrari to go to Sainsburys. Or a Range Rover to take the kids to school. All that wasted power.

God doesn’t do miracles, doesn’t interfere, doesn’t show off. Well, perhaps he should. Or She should. Whatever.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

They asked all the Times sportswriters to name their predictions for The Top Four in this year’s Premiership. Out of 8 writers, all but one had Spurs in that Top 4. Holy cow. I hate that. It puts me under immense pressure, gives me performance anxiety, it changes the game. I’d rather we just came ‘out of nowhere’. And yet… and yet…

With Chelsea in meltdown (must end soon, surely? in fact probably next weekend when they play Spurs) only 2 had the Blues in their list. One even had Southampton. None named West Ham. Because however well they start a season, it inevitably turns to shit and leads to a relegation struggle by March. We hope.

Starting this weekend when the Hammers pay us a visit. In a 6 pointer. At very least. A real must win game for us against a team who’ve beaten Arsenal, Liverpool (not that they’re much), Manchester City and all other big teams. Though lost to Bournemouth and numerous other not such big teams rather pathetically.

Spurs definitely have the talent. And we have growing confidence now, having gone unbeaten for 10 games, including the one at Arsenal where we really should have won.

And that’s generally the issue. The problem. When the final tally is made, the silly points dropped. The draw against Stoke when we were 2-nil up, the Arsenal game, others too where we just didn’t quite… when it just failed to… when another goal would have…

The would’a should’a could’as. The curse of White Hart Lane.

Yet I remain optimistic. But only with the aid of certain pharmacological enhancements.

Tomorrow we’re going to a Hindu wedding. Small affair. Just 650 people. In Park Lane. Kick off at 9.30am. Ends long after midnight. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, Bollywood Nights, dancing, saris and curry.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

Ken Livingstone is a tosser.

That’s no news to anyone. The former mayor of London, erstwhile radical and all round plonker, ‘Red Ken’, has a long and consistent history of being a total plonker. Long because he’s too old and is now a living advertisement for just the kind of involuntary euthanasia that people protest about, and consistent because he has consistently been wrong in virtually everything he’s ever done. The GLC was disbanded after his years at the helm because he is insufferable.

But what Ken has never been very good at is apologising. Nor at understanding that a simple but sincere apology at the time of offence is worth all the retrospective retractions in the world.

Years ago Ken was pissed off with a journalist on his doorstep and likened him to a Nazi. The journalist was Jewish, his family holocaust survivors and Ken knew both of those facts. He refused to apologise. The matter went to inquests, expensive and unnecessary, and Ken refused. Such fucking arrogance is sufficient to reinstate capital punishment. That and driving at 35 in the fast lane.

So yesterday, Ken is appointed by great mate, Jeremy Corbyn, another ‘red’ and overt anti-semite, to head up the Labour Review on the Trident missile renewal. A big bone of contention. The Scottish Nationalists and the Red Labourites don’t want to renew our nuclear capability. Because they’re all pacifists. Which you can tell because pacifists don’t know how to apologise.

The more normal Labourites agree with ‘the nuclear deterrent’ because otherwise we’re a vulnerable nation. Though granted, the world’s in a very peaceful place at the moment.

In an argument, Ken stated, with all due sarcasm, that opponent on the committee, Kevan Jones, obviously needed ‘psychiatric help’ for his views on Trident. Sadly, Kevan Jones has a history of depression and psychiatric episodes. Oh dear.

Ken refused to apologise, for a change, until Corbyn himself forced a reluctant apology. And a reluctant apology is worth…

The Labour party is in enough trouble without adding Ken into the already rather inflammable mix.

Jonah Lomu has died. If not the best, certainly the most spectacular rugby player ever to step on a field. And by all accounts a total mensch. 40 years old. What a terrible thing.

Happy but sad Thursday

A xxxx

Great Britain lives in the Dulux Paints 3rd Division (North) of world weather. We talk of nothing else yet ‘suffer’ nothing more than months of grey, loads of drizzle, mild, mild, fucking mild. A horrible word whose flexibility means its never far from our weather reports. Not too hot, not too cold, just bland, boring, moderate, dull, mild.

I suffer from weather envy. A terrible and debilitating condition affecting many Englishmen. Whilst New Orleans suffered HURRICANE KATRINA, over here, ‘winds in Nuneaton today reached almost 7 miles per hour. A local lady, Edith Maythorpe, almost lost her hat!!!! But it was retrieved by her neighbours Rottweiler. Who ate it’.

We never warranted Hurricane Reginald or Kirk or Zadie (they’re alphabetical, hurricanes, amazing that hurricane Derek never overtakes hurricane Eric, but that’s the wonder of weather), we just had sodding mild.

Until last night. When Barney arrived. Yep, a real name. A storm worthy of a title. The bubble had burst. Quite literally when I came out from Tai Chi last night, the weather bubble that covers four outdoor tennis courts had torn and was flapping around on the ground as if a group of giants was having an orgy under a giant bedcover.

And it was windy. Fuck me was it windy. Trees blew down, my patio table was rearranged half way down the garden and my car, so lovingly washed on Sunday, is filthy with debris from the trees.

Barney had come. And left once more, leaving us with another lovely, bright summer’s day. But in November. Very mild for the time of year.

I missed the England/France football friendly at Wembley last night. The match that simply had to be played, in defiance of the fucking terrorists. Not only played, but attended by Prince William, David Cameron and numerous other important people. Oh, and three battalions of artillery. Everyone present sang La Marseillaise, French, English and even foreign. It was very moving. Very united. Very defiant. And I was proud. That I, er, missed it totally.

Delli Alli scored a supergoal, Eric Dier was wonderful, Harry Kane amazing.

Defeat terrorism; support Spurs.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

As ISIS move their deathly way across Syria and Iraq, they not only sweep aside all who stand before them, but they also destroy wonderful, irreplaceable historical artefacts and monuments. Like the beautiful temple at Palmyra. Our history. The world’s history. Gone forever. Because it doesn’t align with the perpetrator’s warped and sick view of the world, therefore is unnecessary and evil. A reminder of a horrible past. So its gone.

There’s trouble in Bristol. Colston’s Girls School is under fire. Not literally but almost, as pupils are attacked, verbally if not physically, on the streets. Why? Because Edward Colston, the founder and funder of the school was involved in the slave trade. Among other things. So therefore, 350 years later… what? Burn down the school? Change the name? Destroy all links to that evil industry that died hundreds of years ago?

How is that different from ISIS? Getting rid of our unpalatable past. How does it help?

At Oxford they’re protesting about Cecil Rhodes. I don’t know why. But in his time in Southern Africa he probably did bad things. So some students want his statue removed, his building renamed. It doesn’t say whether they’ll give back their Rhodes Scholarship money and opt for a life of poverty and begging instead.

Again, ISIS would be proud. Destroy the bits of history that we’re not proud of, that were shameful, hurtful, that basically lack moral integrity as judged by today’s standards.

Well it doesn’t work. And it shouldn’t. History is history because that is what happened then. If we don’t like it now, tough shit. Nothing you can do about it.

The Royal family’s antecedents did some pretty horrible things to English peasants, but we don’t demand the Queen be locked up. Maybe we should. Alfred Nobel, he of the Peace Prize and many other wonderful gifts for worthy individuals, made his money out of dynamite. Should he be banned?

The Kennedy family made their immense fortune out of bootlegged liquor during the prohibition. Yet they are revered in America, a nation far less inclined to judge errors of the past. Perhaps because they’ve made so many.

Leave history alone. Good and bad. Its what we learn from. Its where we came from.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

I’m still ‘in Paris’. Can’t get away. Its all I read, all people speak about, its everywhere.

More details have emerged, none of them particularly pretty or nice, but as always, this kind of horrific event will always bring people together. The world, well, the civilised world, has aligned with France. Minutes of silence preceded every sporting event over the weekend, except the Brazilian Grand Prix. For some reason, even though Christ the Redeemer had been bathed in a tricoleur light show, those boys at F1 can’t add a minute anywhere. Impossible. The world would end if the race started 1 second late, let alone 60.

But generally, we’re all in shock.

Paris was ‘selected’ because the French are bombing Syria. But really that’s not the real reason. The real reason is that Paris epitomises our cherished values of a happy, liberal, affluent and free society. People sit and drink there all day. Coffee, wine, beer, water, whatever they want. And they sit beautifully. Parisiennes do everything beautifully. Even mourn.So an attack on a Friday night; party night, is the one that hits hardest. Because people were out having fun. Watching football, eating in restaurants, listening to a band. Attacks at work (9/11) or on the way to work (7/7) are horrendous. But attacking folks enjoying their leisure time, although the same tragedy in human terms, is a much more potent cultural attack.

I took this photo on the way to work this morning, outside the High Court. Because its funny, its eye-catching (as intended) and it kind of defines life in a free environment. Protesters. Moaning about euthanasia. Not whether we should allow it; I think we’re all agreed on that. But whether to amend our ‘assisted suicide’ bill to provide a little more ‘assistance’ than may have first been on offer. In the Dutch mode in which the actual decision can be made by a judge or a doctor, rather than just by the… the… errrrr… the victim/volunteer/suicidee him or herself.

No-one gave the poor 120 in Paris the choice on Friday night. Nor the 200-odd injured. Nor the thousands who’ll live with ‘survivor guilt’ or just the nightmare of the tragedy probably forever.

Death has many faces. Most of them really fucking ugly.

Happy monday

A xxxx

Christmas is just around the corner. Which is why today’s Sunday supplements aren’t so much magazines and sales catalogues. “148 pages of gift ideas!!!!” shouts the cover of the Times ‘Style’ section. Shoot me now.

Hate shopping. Hate Christmas. Bah humbug.

Never mind. We go away for Christmas. We always do. Because Mrs Conway needs some sunshine, Sunshine. Otherwise she gets low and miserable. I always thought living with me did that but apparently its living with me in the winter. There’s some hope in the summer.

Its not a heat thing, she don’t mind the cold. Prefers 40 degrees to -3 any day, but its more about sunlight. Vitamin D. Otherwise she gets SAD. Not just sad (unhappy, miserable, listless) but SAD (Seasonal Affectational Disorder). Oh, that one. Yes, that one. Any excuse to go find some winter sun.

The elder daughter used to go horse riding. Every (fucking) Saturday morning for about 8 years. The horsey years. When I’d sit in a fucking barn in the freezing cold, watching her fall off various ponies for an hour and thinking of Christopher Reeve. Nice, relaxing time. In a barn in Radlett. I’d have preferred a barn in Burnley but Radlett was (marginally) nearer. And one day as we walked through the stables, there was a little pony in its stall with a reading lamp. Odd, I thought, I’ve heard of talking horses (Mr Ed), but never ones that read. Oh no, said the stable lady, that’s a UV lamp for vitamin D. That pony gets SADS.

How the fuck would anyone know that? Mrs C speaks pretty good English (for a northerner), but little Rosie, or Hemlock, or Heart of Midlothian or whatever it might have been called, doesn’t. So how do they know? Is this a ‘why the long face?’ moment?

Anyway, taking your main holiday at Christmas, when its cold and dark and grey here for about 5 months, is great. We’ve always done it, even when the kids were little we’d drag them off to Thailand or South Africa or wherever the sun shone at that time of year. Poor things.

So we won’t be here for Christmas. We’ll be in Jamaica. Oh, that’s nice, people say, where abouts are you going? No clue. No idea. Don’t care. We’re going to the sunny bit and we’re going to stay there lapping it up. We won’t deviate, diverge or do anything other than digest. A lot of digestion, I’m hoping. Its not a fact-finding mission, its all about sun.

The only shopping I’ll do is for sun-tan lotion.

Happy Christmas,

A xxxx

We need to talk about Paris. No-one’s talking about anything else today. Not just because Spurs aren’t playing, but because what happened last night over there was a horror of truly horrific proportions. And worry.

You can’ help but worry. And think ‘where next?’ According to today’s extensive radio coverage, exclusively relating to precisely that, over 2000 French kids have gone to join ISIS. The issue though is the 500 plus who’ve returned. Couple that with the apparent ease with which ‘radicalisation’ seems to occur even among the ‘so normal’, ‘so intelligent’, so Manchester United supporting (Jihadi John) and you don’t know who is walking in our midst.

People who revere death above all else. People for whom ‘freedom’ means something very very different from our own Western interpretation. People who value neither the concept of ‘innocent bystanders’ nor the sanctity of historical and cultural icons that may lack specific relevance to their own beliefs.

So do you get paranoid about it? Cancel plans, stop travel, avoid the tube, don’t go to football? Or do you accept that if you yield to the threat then ‘they’ have won? In which case life must go on, in all its diversity and splendour.

Those of us sufficiently life experienced (read: ‘old’) to remember the good old IRA bombing days, know that you just carry on as normal. More carefully perhaps but as normal. You simply have to. What use are our freedoms if we can’t enjoy them?

Europe has received, over the last 6 months, about a million refugees. The vast majority of whom are Muslims. Which is fine. Most are the ‘wrong kind of Muslim’ for ISIS and thus have run for their lives. Others simply don’t want to live somewhere in which death and destruction are all that occurs. Where music is banned. Where children have no future.

But none of these people have passports or papers. They’re all unknown. And some, it must be assumed, are terrorists, finding, for them, easy and anonymous passage into enemy territory.

Francoise Hollande today said that the attacks last night were a declaration of war. Which will be responded to in kind. But he’s not fighting an enemy. He’s fighting an ideology. Which is sick, twisted, merciless, indiscriminate and positively evil.

The bombing of ISIS started because of the murders of innocents. Filmed live for our ‘enjoyment’. Because you can’t let them win.

Jihadi John is dead (as son-in-law posted: ‘may he rest in pieces’) but there are many ready to replace him.

The fight goes on. Today in Paris, tomorrow…

Sad Saturday

A xxxx

Sounds Shakespearian. The House of Lancaster hath fallen. Whereas in fact, its just another rugby manager losing his job. There’s only two options for national team managers at a World Cup. You either win the competition, like Clive Woodward did in 2003, and retire from the game, take a knighthood, become a legend and follow a lucrative career as a pundit. Or you fail to win, like Stuart Lancaster, get sacked, become a legend and follow a lucrative career as a pundit. There’s always a shortage of pundits. Like there’s a shortage of traffic wardens.

So Lancaster had to go. Win or lose, you have to go. If you win because you know you will never win it again, should you live to be 150. And if you lose because the World Cup is the defining moment of rugby, the aspiration, the dream. I think that rather than agonise over replacement managers it would be a far more positive move to simply ban Southern Hemisphere teams from the tournament until they… errrr… until they move north or learn to play more fairly. By giving others a chance.

And Jeremy Corbyn met the Queen yesterday, to accept his entry, as leader of the Labour Party, into Her Majesty’s Privy Council. Must have been a dream come true. She’s always dreamt of meeting the staunch Republican, anti-royalist Trotskyite lower-class scumbag and there he was, refusing to kneel before her, as he kissed her ring. A phrase that itself needs some elaboration to avoid some horrible images springing to mind.

Membership of the privy council entitles Corbyn to have access to all manner of state secrets. Just what you want of a man who counts Hamas, Hezbollah, the IRA and numerous other terrorist organisations as his ‘mates’.

Corbyn’s USP was that he holds very strong views, most of which any normal or sensible person would whole-heartedly find ignorant, stupid or just wrong, but heh, they’re his views, not ours. And that he was ‘honest’ about them, which he had been. His ‘honest politician’ persona got him elected. A man of principle. Who refused to sing God Save the Queen when first elected. Yet on Sunday at the Remembrance Service, he managed to remember the words, albeit in a very half-hearted way.

So already, after just a couple of months, Corbyn is no longer so ‘true to his long-held views’ but instead, he’s yielding to the weight of public expectation. First he sings the anthem, then he bows before Her Maj, what next? 2 Jags? An affair with Ryan Giggs’ wife? A new tattoo??

He’s blowing in the wind, like they all do. Bob Dylan was right. Even though he never knew Corbyn. And never wanted to.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx