Andy's Glasses

Pugnacious Arsenal midfield moron, Jack Wilshere, has complained after the Football Association found him guilty of misconduct at the Arsenal FA Cup celebrations. What he did, or said in this case, is largely unimportant. His justification is far more interesting. In that he feels hard done by for this punishment (a fine, in all likelihood, probably in the region of £9.95 + vat, for someone who earns 100,000 a week) on the grounds that ‘he was just having fun and enjoying himself’.

The old ‘it was just a bit of fun’ plea. As used by gang rapists, bullies the world over, queer-bashers, those who taunt overweight schoolgirls to suicide, and possibly ISIS. Just a bit of fun.

So it all becomes a matter of whether one man’s ‘fun’ can be considered as such when it is at the expense of someone else’s displeasure or misfortune. Jack kind’a misses that point. If its fun for him then the world is a happier place.

Well think again, Jacky-boy. Because what he was chanting was that ‘Tottenham are shit’. And when I heard that I was stunned and shocked. Because Tottenham are lovely. Everyone knows that. They are God’s own team. They play in white, they are filled with fine, upstanding men who perform acts of charity and kindness on a regular basis. Normally by donating the ball back to the other team when they have it, but again, that’s not the point there.

The point is that I was shocked. Maybe Spurs are shit? I pondered this deeply (whilst eating a pizza) and found that because of Jack’s words maybe I need to reassess the longest love of my lifetime (other than my parents). And I’m now in turmoil. Full emotional, psychological and mental melt-down (fortunately it doesn’t affect my appetite) just because of Jack Wilshere having ‘a bit of fun’. What a total bastard.

David Cameron is also going to be fined for saying something stupid in the heat of the moment. He was just ‘having a bit of fun’ when he declared that any minister supporting an exit from Europe would be sacked. Stated clearly and unambiguously. Until the next day when it all became a case of ‘misinterpretation’. Of course he didn’t mean that, no, not possibly, just a ‘misinterpretation’, silly mistake. Here, have a U-turn, with my compliments.

Be careful what you say. And have some fun while saying it.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

There’s a great line in the old Country classic, ‘stand by your man’, in which Tammy Wynette shrieks (she always shrieks), that you have to forgive him, ignore his failings, give him a blanket pass, ‘cos, after all, he’s just a ma-an’. He’s just a man. So what can you expect? He’s just a man. A simple sentence loaded with prejudice, preconceptions and stereotype. If a song had the line ‘well, she’s just a woman’ it would be banned. Sexist. Discriminatory. The Sistahood would be up in arms. You can’t say: ‘well, she’s just a woman’ in mitigation; its not allowed. Even if the engine’s just blown up in her car (oh, is that what that little red light saying NO OIL!!!!!!’ meant?) or recorded Celebrity Come Dancing instead of The Greatest Champions League Goals, because she hit the wrong button. Never mind.

Never mind??? Yes, mind!

And now Andy Puddicombe has crossed another line. A very contentious one. Because he’s written a book on coping with pregnancy. By using ‘mindfulness’. Or ‘headspace’ as he has termed his catchphrase in previous books on the merits of sitting cross-legged for an hour to defy everything from anger to cancer, from anxiety to a 17-inch gash on your thigh. He’s one’a them. Which is great, because we need self-help meditatory gurus like we need more sugar in our diets.

And all this whilst the Women’s World Cup is being played. So its relevant really. If women can claim a stake in the last bastion of masculinity, ie football, then men have every right to tell them how to be pregnant.

Why shouldn’t we? We know loads about pregnancy. Particularly the ‘how to get there’ bit. After that, ok, it is a bit blurred for most of us, though there’s lots of throwing up and moaning and requiring sympathy when the cricket’s just entered a critical phase. So its only logical that a man should tell women how to ‘cope’ with the mental, emotional and physical distresses that pregnancy can instil.

Which I have no problem with, in principle. Pregnancy is an understood concept. It can be expressed in flow charts and timelines and thus can be addressed in a scientific manner, by either man or woman. Its not like women can claim exclusive rights to being pregnant. Oh, ok, they can then. But men can still help them. Mainly by giving them small tasks to distract them from their discomfort. Making cups of tea can be very therapeutic; washing up and making beds is gentle exercise as required by mother-to-be and baby. Even cleaning the car can have benefits in the pre-natals.

So don’t tell me that a trumped up little shit of a new age tree hugger can’t tell women exactly what they’re feeling during pregnancy. Sexism works both ways, you know??

Happy non-gender-bias Monday

A xxxx

Went to see a movie last night. Called ‘Listen up, Phil’. Yep, this is no Hollywood blockbuster, which is great, I’m sufficiently smug to prefer art-house over ‘blow-up-the-house’ any day. So we went to our local Indy movie-place and took our seats. There were, I reckon, 40 people in there. About 200 empty seats. And they were the lucky ones. The people who didn’t go and see the film. Sitting at home watching Barcelona, out drinking pale ale, those in other cinemas seeing other movies, those jammy 200 bastards.

It started well, a bit Woody Allen, a bit dark, a bit gloomy, about a writer having published his second book and deciding he was ‘a success’ and ‘followed the dream to glory’ even though that patently wasn’t the case. So he went round to anyone who’d ever doubted his abilities or his choice of life and told them what fucking assholes they were. Not in a very nice way. If there is a nice way to do that, Phil didn’t find it. Nasty.

And if you can’t sympathise with the central character who is arrogant, vindictive, vengeful and horrible, then you have to look elsewhere. But wherever you look there are only characters you’d get off a bus to avoid. Yeah there were funny bits, but it was 1/10th Woody Allen and 9/10ths Kim Jong Un. Not great numbers.

Highly recommended.

Meanwhile, in Berlin, Barcelona won the European Champions League final, beating Juventus 3-1. And I’m glad. Even though I haven’t watched it yet. Firstly because I love Barca and, but for a capricious quirk of geographical randomness that had me born in the Tottenham end of Hackney, I would definitely have emerged instead right on The Ramblas (probably in one of the brothels, but Barcelona’s Barcelona, right??) And secondly because had Juventus have won, it would have been only by stifling the entire match into total suffocation and kicking the shit out of everyone. Which, as a tactic, has certain merits, but it should actually be a crime to try and inhibit the creative flair of Iniesta and Messi and Xavi et al.

And at a time when FIFA are showing how fucking ugly our sport can become, Barcelona are the constant reminder of how fantastically fabulous that game can actually be. And for that alone they are the most winners of the biggest prize in football.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

“What was it that first attracted (tall, blond, slim, young) you to that old, short, fat, bald but exceptionally rich ****?” so once asked ‘Mrs Merton’ of Debbie McGee, the wife of Paul Daniels. Fantastic question. And funny because it speaks volumes. It makes judgments.

Ok, so this is Irina Shayk, the ex-bird of Christiano Ronaldo. Who (Irina, not Christiano… that we konw of) ‘allegedly’ once had an affair with Sepp Blatter. This has been denied, but who cares about that. Its too wonderful to ignore because we’re all intrigued by the affairs of others. And we like to make judgments.

She’s only after his money.
She’s a power-whore.
I’m not surprised; he’s so hunky.

Except Ronaldo has loads of money. Millions and millions. Surely, after your first 10 million they all start to look the same? And also surely, other than hidden funds which we’ll doubtless be hearing about pretty soon, Ronalds is much richer than Sepp.

And much hunkier, if you like your men stunningly fit and sculpted with a six pack and bulging muscles and loads of hair gel. Sepp obviously uses far less hair gel.

Ok, Sepp is powerful, in a way. Or rather, he was. But Ronaldo has sufficient that doors will open for him, restaurants find tables, underpants get sold.

So we need to think what it is that Sepp Blatter, at 50 years Irina’s senior, could offer that the preening Portuguese ponce couldn’t. Or didn’t.

Maybe it was romance, cuddles, affection, something simple like that. Sepp held her hand whilst they watched Downton Abbey together, Ronaldo preferred to watch it from his exercise bike whilst peering into a big mirror.

Maybe Sepp serenaded her with his experience as a wedding singer? Maybe she gets off on his slightly accented version of ‘Tie a Yellow Ribbon’ and it makes her feel all warm and wobbly. Just makes me feel like vomiting personally, but I’m not a Russian supermodel.

Or then there’s the more obvious. The top 2 reasons as voted by… er, me. Firstly that Sepp is hung like a fucking donkey whilst Ronaldo had his testicles removed when he was 19 to stop the hairs growing on his chest thus saving 35 Euros a month in waxing and he’s hung like a budgerigar.

Orrrrrr, as I’ve long suspected (of absolutely any man who hangs out with a really beautiful woman) Ronaldo is gay and the relationship merely a sham, a cut-out, a convenient cover for him. And when he put on his clever disguise as a vain, narcissistic tosser to roam the back alleys of Madrid in seach of rent boys, Irina went in search of the type of solace only an ugly, corrupt, septuagenerian tub of lard could provide.

Its so obvious really.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

Ok, you have two choices. Firstly that the universe was created in the ‘big bang’, from nothing, and expanded from an infinitely dense singularity, or single point, containing the entire mass of the known universe, to become just what it is today. Or, you can add God to the equation, say ‘He done it’ and do away with all the maths.

And some find it hard to imagine the ‘big bang’. Everyone does to some degree. Because it begs the questions: but where did that singularity come from? what was there before it? why did it explode? is there any tv footage of the event so I can picture it better?

Yet if you add God into the mix it gives the flexibility to ignore most of the science, which is good, but it doesn’t answer any of those questions. It just changes them to: where did God come from? what was here before Him? why did he make Jupiter so fucking big?

Because we have serious problems with concepts such as ‘infinity’. And beyond. The universe is not infinite, we now know. Its much smaller. If the world is 2 billion years old, rather than the 6000 years old claimed by the Old Testament, you can work out the size of the universe. Its ‘easy’.

At the big bang There Was Light. Shitloads of it, and it travelled, unsurprisingly, at the speed of light. 186,000 miles every second. So in one day light travels by 186,000 miles, x 60 minutes, x 24 hours, which is about 270 million miles. So in 2 billion years… add 3… carry the 9… its a fuck of a long way. Which we reduce to ‘2 billion light years’. A light year being the distance travelled by light in one year. Its definitely beyond your railcard limit.

Nothing can move faster than light. Einstein’s theory of Relativity produced an equation that showed if you did travel faster you’d end up with the square root of a negative number. Which wouldn’t sit well after lunch. Because they can’t exist in the real world. So you might pop up somewhere else. Or in another time.

This happened to me once when I was a student. I left my girlfriend’s house and went to the pub in Bethnal Green. Only to wake up the next morning in a bedsit in Denmark Hill with someone else’s girlfriend. With no memory of how I got there. ‘No!!!’ I pleaded to my soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend, ‘I must have been on a bus travelling faster than the speed of light and just kind’a warped into that blond’s bed!!!! Honest!!!!’

It can be a problem. You never hear the bullet that kills you. I learned that in Western movies. But its true. If someone fires a rifle off in the distance you see the barrel flash, then a second later you hear the bang. Because light travels much faster than sound (only 760 miles per second). That’s why we all count when we see lightening strike. The time between that and the thunder is the difference between the light and sound of the same event reaching you. So you know how far away the storm is.

So if we travelled faster than light we’d arrive somewhere before we’d seen it. Like women driving. It would be awful. Catastrophic. But then we’d be able to reach the end of the universe and see once and for all what lies there. Could be just nothing. But what would ‘nothing’ look like in that place? A hole? A gap? A vacuum? Another Emirates Stadium?

I’m going now, I have a headache.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

Sepp has resigned. The ancient Swiss tosser has fallen on his sword, despite the ‘resounding success’ of being voted to continue as president of FIFA just last Friday. Which itself was a meaningless endorsement of a flawed and failed man by the very cronies responsible for the current shambles in World Football.

No-one should hold a position of power for 17 years. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. So true. And so relevant. Which is why Spurs Paul told me just the other day how two terms as president should be ‘it’. Sepp overstayed his welcome and has either retired because he feels ‘its the right thing to do’ as he is figure of contempt and hatred in the entire footballing community, or because now the FBI are ‘interested’ in his activities and it’ll all come out. Maybe that he wasn’t just the most totally incompetent and blinkered CEO in the history of everything, a naive but noble blind man, but maybe because he was involved in a more active way. We shall see.

And we need a re-vote on the World Cups for 2018 and 2022. And rather sharpish, I reckon.

Meanwhile we lost the cricket. But ‘drew the series’. Of two tests. Why have just 2? I know the Aussies are chomping at the bit to start the Ashes but couldn’t we have squeezed in a third test against New Zealand just to avoid the result of 10 days of cricket producing a tie?

Never mind, there’s always rugby. And there’s always headline-grabber (for all the wrong reasons) Danny Cipriani. The ‘wonderkind’ who blew into our lives as ‘the next Jonny Wilkinson’, the skills, the precocious talent, the sweet left boot, when he was very young. Then he ran off with Kelly Brooke and you couldn’t really blame him for that. But a series of ‘disciplinary issues’ have wrecked this young career. Which has had more restarts than… something that’s been re-started a lot. Dropped by England for nighclubbing when he should have been training, then fighting with teammates. He was exiled to Australia, where ‘discipline’ is a bit different as biting, kicking and head-butting are just ‘no problem, mate’, but he crossed the line and was suspended in Melbourne. He got hit by a fucking bus, for God’s sake. Whilst on a pub crawl in Leeds. And now… and now…

He played for an England team on Saturday against a Barbarians side (who weren’t very good). He was brilliant, he was the star, scored two tries, kicked hundreds (ish) of points, governed the whole show in a total rout as England amassed 72 points. There was instant talk of inclusion in the World Cup squad (not the Sepp world cup, the other one) at either outside half or full-back.

Then, that very night, he was stopped for drink driving. What a plonker. Stuart Lancaster, rightly, doesn’t play people in trouble with the law or with the RFU. So in all likelihood, Danny has shot himself in the foot. For the 19th time. Shame for him, shame for us, cos we love Danny.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

We need to talk about God. He’s becoming a bit of a problem.

The Church of England is in a crisis. Again. This time its falling numbers. While you can’t get a season ticket for the Emirates without a 20 year wait, you can join any church in the land today, at no charge. Because they’re all empty. And not only that people aren’t going to church any longer, most people in England don’t even classify themselves as ‘Christian’ any more. They’re just ‘people’.

The problem is that we don’t really need God any more. We have smart phones instead. And computers, we have the O2 Arena, we have the British Museum, cars, air travel, bars, restaurants, flat-screen HD tvs and everything. Why do we need God?

Gods (plural) came about to explain everything that we didn’t understand. A thunderstorm? The gods are angry. An earthquake? Now they’re really pissed off. Four sheep die? You didn’t pray hard enough. The gods were the scapegoats, in a way. They were the causes for all the shit that happened ‘back in the day’.

Then the Jews invented monotheism. One God does all. A kind of Tesco Superstore of gods. And someone wrote the bible. Which instead of just writing down an ethical code of conduct, chose to represent that code in a (very long and protracted) allegorical tale. Moses came down with the stone tablets just to copy Ed Miliband.

But then tragedy occurred. Enlightenment. Along came Galileo and da Vinci and Isaac Newton and they started to explain stuff. Like the world, and how it worked. On a natural, physical level. Using the maths started by the Greeks. The Ancient ones who back then knew that if you spend 874 billion Euros and only earn 263, the Germans will get pissed off, even if the gods don’t. Stuff the modern Greeks seem to have lost.

Then came Faraday and Darwin and Einstein and they were all game-changers. They took the power from God. How dare they. They explained things in the way of a BBC weather girl; this is what’s happening, and this is why.

The religions realised that understanding posed a massive threat to their power. Which is why, rather than embrace man’s wonderful new knowledge, they repressed it. “The world is round?? How dare you? God made it flat, so flat it is, as everyone can see. Lock that man up for 20 years as a heretic”.

Yet God, according to all doctrines, is ‘omnipotent and omniscient’; he sees all and can do anything. But instead sits round all day watching cricket and eating cornflakes out of the box. Because He doesn’t actually ‘do’ anything. People pray like mad (in so many ways) and yet genocide happens, murder, plagues, FIFA, death, destruction. Ahhh, but that’s because He gave us free will. Or ‘enough rope to hang ourselves’ as its now known.

So forgetting the question of why anyone would bother praying to someone/thing that never does anything, as a matter of principle, we live in a post-technological world where everything is known. How it started, how it works, the stars, the planets, a tea-cup, Shroedinger’s Cat, everything. Except death. The one remaining mystery. The great unknown. The last God.

I’m happy with church-goers, with religious types, and I’m happy for them, because they get comfort from telling God how wonderful He is 200 times a day (He might be a bit lazy but I don’t think he’s so vain and narcissistic that he needs that, really). They choose to put God as the final cause, as what makes it all happen. That’s their choice. The world is either just like it is because that’s the way it is, or you can say its because God chose it to be so. All that does is add another level of unknown. To my mind. It doesn’t answer a question, it just asks another.

But heh, what do I know? To me religion means chopped liver and bagels. And I’m a deeply religious man.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

Ok, the football season ends; same difference.

The penultimate game of the entire season, Arsenal had a lucky win over Villa at Wembley to retain the FA Cup and to celebrate it they caused an almighty traffic jam round the whole of Islington, parts of Haringey and half of Hoxton. Or, ‘an open-top-bus-parade’ as they call it. In which thousands of non-Arsenal fans had to endure hours of gridlock just because of a football match.

I went west instead. To Richmond Park. And it stopped raining for long enough to pop into the Isabella Plantation and see the last of the fantastic rhododendrons still in bloom. Pretty heavy traffic going that way too. And I’m going to blame Arsenal for that as well.

The last remaining match is the Champions League final next saturday. Juventus against ‘my’ Barcelona. That’s exciting. And then, because its an odd numbered year, we have no wonderful international tournament this summer. Just cricket. And a bit of tennis. And lots of scandal.

The FIFA ‘thing’ goes on and on. They should just burn it down; I’m bored with it now. Shut down the whole organisation and start again. And try to do a bit better next time.

In the latest development, Sheikh someone-or-other, a former prime minister of Qatar (did you know Qatar had prime ministers? Implying some kind of democratic process?? Who’d’a thought…) has pulled the somewhat inevitable ‘racist’ card. Accusations of corruption when Qatar won the bid are ‘racist’ and ‘Islamophobic’. Well, it had to happen. And this person also bemoaned that ‘such accusations aren’t levelled at Russia’. Well, actually, they are. Russia should never have won a world cup bid either. Hateful nation, cut off from the rest of the world due to their excessive actions and extreme genocidal tendencies, the subject of sanctions and embargoes and yet they get to host the most prestigious sporting event in the world. Nonsensical. Or about as ‘sensical’ as playing football in 50 degrees of Qatari desert.

Qatar is a poor choice of venue because the massed football fans from across the world cannot drink alcohol there. Nor can they kiss other men on the street without getting arrested.

Its nothing to do with ‘racism’ but everything to do with what’s right. 2000 workers on the Qatari stadia have so far died due to the complete lack of health & safety considerations or just from the heat. They reckon that will double by 2022. The previous record (oh yes, there are records for everything) for deaths in World Cup preparations is 6. So Qatar’s winning massively on that score.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

… come back another day. Preferably one when I’m not going to play tennis.

London is wet this morning. Very wet. Ahhhh, that’s good for the lawn, the flowers, the water supply. But its pretty much shit for anything else. Certainly won’t be much good for the cricket, unless it happens to be dry up in Yorkshire at Headingley. But as Yorkshire is the wettest place in England (based on nothing but prejudice, contempt and the Londoner’s view that the rest of England is a great big, wet, windy slum), I doubt they’ll be bowling many overs there today.

Yet in a month’s time we’re going up to Scotland. Oooohhhhh, Scotland. If they’ll still let me in with my English passport, my London number plates and my horrendous attitude (see ‘slum’ etc, above). And I’m quite excited about it. Mainly because we’re driving up there and I’m hoping that they don’t have speed cameras in Scotland. That’s the main reason for going. The other is that other than 3 snowily frigid days in Edinburgh about 15 years ago, I’ve never been there.

This is part of the new policy of ‘seeing some of Britain’ which only started last year with my first ever trip to Cornwall. Mel had been when she was about 7 and once every 40 years or so is about right, I reckon. Lovely though it was. In fact it was wonderful.

But did you know that Scotch comes from Scotland? Amazing but true. I’d never realised that. I thought that Loch Sporran Single Malt was made in Korea, like everything else. But no, it actually comes from Scotland. Well ‘china’ comes from Dresden, Delft, Wedgewood and they ain’t in China, are they?? Anyway, we’re going to drink some Scotch in its natural environment. As opposed to in my lounge, where it normally gets drunk. As do I. So drinking Scotch/fast driving, they just go together perfectly.

We’re also stopping off in Liverpool for a night on the way (again, never been there before) and then on to Hadrian’s Wall, see if we can make it a bit stronger, higher, put some barbed wire on it, run an electric cable. And then up to Scotland itself. I see myself as a kind of Bob Geldoff in Live Aid, in all those film clips, visiting the third world places of misery and deprivation trying to understand their plight and let the world know such places actually do exist AND NEED YOUR HELP.

I’ve looked up some useful phrases to use with the locals up on the Island of Islay. Like “DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH????” And I’m piling up the cds to play very loudly in case there’s any bag-pipers up there sneaking round and catching us unawares. I’ll just drown him out with some Bruce Springsteen. Because if you listen to bag-pipes for more than 20 seconds you either die or go insane. That’s a medical fact and explains a lot about the rise to power of the Scottish Nationalists.

So I’m really looking forward to the trip, and I think the Scotch people will really like me and my Cockney Charm. Just don’t mention football, goal-keeping, the Crankies or deep-fried Mars bars. And I suppose I should remove the effigy of Nicola Sturgeon that’s currently hanging (in every sense) from my rear-view mirror.

Bonnie Sunday

A xxxx

So this afternoon Arsenal take on Aston Villa at Wembley. The FA Cup Final. Biggest game of the… month. Used to be the biggest game of the year, then it got devalued by crass commercialisation of other factors in the game and now no-one cares. Unless they’re in the final. So to celebrate this event, I’ll be at the Alexander McQueen exhibition at the V&A.

Because I’m a new man. And thus will happily forsake football (well, happily forsake Arsenal) in favour of a retrospective of a truly inspirational fashion designer tragically taken from ‘us’ at the height of his career. I miss him every day.

I have no idea what he made. I know he never made Levi jeans, nor anything sold in Marks & Spencers. The stuff he made was ‘creative’. ‘Artistic’. Art forms that cover the human body. Particularly the female body. Even though he was gay. Still he produced wonderful creations that beautifully adorned a size zero anorexic. I don’t know if there was a general market for women who want to walk round wearing a Picasso on their backs, or an off-the-shoulder Manet with a split thigh.

The thing is, you have to book these events in advance. They sell out. So we (ie: Mel) booked it months ago. And ‘May 30th’ meant nothing to Mel at that time. Nor me, really. Only later it became evident that there was ‘football conflict’. As there is virtually every Saturday and Sunday throughout the entire year, some Thursdays, many Tuesdays and Wednesdays and the odd Monday.

Yet I’m happy to go. Not because I’m a McQueen devotee, but because the V&A do the best exhibitions ever. They did the Bowie one and it was mind-blowingly spectacular. So I have high expectations. I want holographic models, multi-media presentations, I want the ghost of McQueen talking directly and personally to me.

And I won’t check the score at Wembley any more than I absolutely have to.

Sepp Blatter re-elected? What a fucking joke. As is FIFA.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx