Andy's Glasses

Its been raining all summer. On and off. In that annoying way. And the rule is (yes, I have one rule, just one) that if its pissing down in the mornings I don’t take my bike to the station, I walk. If the bike’s there in the evening and its raining, I ride. Because I don’t mind getting wet. I just hate being in wet soggy clothes all fucking day. And I don’t do ‘protective out garments’ because you look like a paedophile.

Such was yesterday. Arrived at the station to find it brilliantly sunny and yet raining quite heavily. Ok, that’s rule 7, we ride home. And as I peddled my way home I started to do some calculations to explain a rather strange phenomenon.

That if I cycle in the rain (about 5 minutes of biking) I appear to get 38 times wetter than if I walk, which takes about 15 minutes. Surely, assuming constant rainfall (we must consider all variables here, this is frikkin scientific, innit?) I would encounter exactly the same number of raindrops in either situation, just encounter them 3 times more quickly on the bike. Its not like I walk between the raindrops. And cycling between raindrops would be strange verging on extremely dangerous. I have tried that. And got breathalised by a confused and concerned policeman.

So I performed some preliminary calculations to ascertain where the errant factor of 38 comes from and arrived at the rather elegant and scientifically valid conclusion that ‘God fucking hates cyclists’.

I need to think of other things. Like migrants. I’m still torn. I have a devil on one shoulder (we’ll call that demon ‘David Cameron’) telling me that we don’t want these pathetic, homeless, stateless, burdens on the economy in our midst and we won’t let them in to abuse our welfare state. And I have an angel on the other (Angel Merkel, in fact) telling me that Syrians, in particular, and everyone else there, are desperate refugees from civil war, from IS, from horror and death and should be welcomed to Europe from a humanitarian standpoint.

The problem is that the entire middle east and half of sub-Saharan Africa can’t all come here; there’s not the room nor the finances to support them. Though I’m not unhappy for them all to go to Germany. That way, as part of ‘Europe’ I’m being a humanitarian by proxy but don’t have to put up with all that inconvenience of having them here.

Does that make me a bad person?

Yours badly,

A xxxx

Its all about time. About timing. Because the clock never stops, it just imposes arbitrary constraints on almost every facet of our lives. That’s why my favourite kind of holiday is one where I take off my watch when I get there and don’t put it back on until I’ve missed the sodding flight home. Dammit. But the joy to wake when you’re ready, to eat when you’re hungry, walk when you want to, stop for a coffee just because you can, not because ‘yeah, I’ve just got 18 minutes before my next meeting/appointment/anger management session’.

Yesterday was the last day of the football transfer window. It opened at the beginning of August and ended 6 o’clock yesterday because Monday was a bank holiday over here and you can’t end a transfer window on a bank holiday. Jesus! End it on bank holiday? What were you thinking??

And so as the clock did its inevitable thing, ticking away, slicing off chunks of our lives and putting them in the bin, deleted forever. With every click the price of players went up. The deals got nastier, the prizes more sought after, the panic more apparent.

Manchester United are unhappy. They won their first few games but not comfortably (at Spurs we take ‘winning in discomfort’ much more philosophically) and they looked shabby. And they’d only bought 3 ridiculously expensive players so far, in Schneiderlin, Memphis (as we have to call him) and Old Schweiny, who was actually transferred from a Munich hospital to the Manchester General Infirmary where he’ll spend the rest of his 4 year contract.

So on Monday night Luis Van Gaal and his team secured a teenager from Monaco, Anthony Martial, for a mere £36million (rising to 58 mil on performance stuff), the next ‘next Thierry Henry’. Another will be along shortly.

Whilst on the other side of Manchester, the City side, the Gallagher side, having already paid almost 50 mil for Raheem Sterling, they coughed up another 55 for Kevin De Bruyne the Woolf of Wolfsburg.

Yet the most startling transfer was one that didn’t happen. David De Gea, the Manchester United goalie, didn’t move to Real Madrid for £30 million. Nor for 80 million or even 2 million. The move failed. Everyone was responsible, in an irresponsible way, for the failure of the most talked about, most protracted, most stupid non-transfer since Cesc Fabregas didn’t move back to Barcelona 3 years running. It was the Gareth Bale sage all over again, but they changed the ending. Thus David De Gea can stay at the club he… err… well, at the club who own him, with the manager who… errr… who he can’t stand and just play on like the true soldier he was never likely to be. Disgruntled players who want away? They’re useful.

Like Saido Berahino. West Brom kept him from predatory Tottenham. So he can tweet his unhappiness and share it with the team he no longer wants to be with.

Ahhhh, I love a transfer window. Can’t wait for January. Its only a matter of time.

Happy Tuesday

A xxx

Did you know that they now make telephones that you can carry around in your pockets? Don’t need any wire, let alone an annoying, twisted curly wire. Did you know that? Phones that are also capable of taking photographs, mainly of your genitals, to send to other people? Its incredible. Technology moves so fast that you no longer need to learn ‘cobol’ to use a computer. Wow. Whatever next.

I’ll tell you what’s next.

I just bought a ‘smart’ tv. Ok, everyone else bought one about 6 years ago but not me. Hah, not that old ‘you’re tv’s out of date because its black’n’white’ ruse to try to get me to spend money. No Siree. But eventually, a new tv is what you ‘need’. So it might as well come with as many initials as you can get for the money. HD. HDMI. USB. 3D. Ok, I didn’t want 3d because its stupid but enough acronyms that I had to get a new Sky box to go with it. Because I only watch 2 things on tv: News and Football. BBC and Sky Sports. That’s it. Maybe a bit of BBC4 because I love 20 year old rockumentaries. And the old sky box ran on coal so probably needed an update.

How ‘smart’ is this tv? Well I’ll tell you.

Because when faced with the tv and the Sky box, all under wraps and pristine, I just took out the instruction manuals to see how to proceed. And what they said was: “undo the box, then connect the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah… (continue for 63 pages of ‘blah’)”. I panicked. Don’t know a Scart port from a Big Mac. Not that this tv has anything so ridiculously primitive as ‘scart’. So I called The Brother. He Who Knows. Because he works setting up computer networks and doing technical stuff. Which is why I pay him the big… er… the big cup of tea, really.

And that was when I learned why the new tv was so ‘smart’. Because I read the manual and ran out the house screaming, whereas really, it only needed two cables. Just two. All the old ones from the old Sky box we just threw away, cast aside, ripped out the wall. The tv does the rest all by itself. Connects to the wifi, connects to whatever else it needs to connect to, as if by magic. Oh, and a smug brother, that helps too. One who makes it all look so simple that any normal person might feel stupid, pathetic and ludicrously inadequate for not just pushing in two plugs and saying ‘abracadabra!’

Now that’s smart. The ‘features’ of the advertised smartness are almost irrelevant. For some of us ‘plug’n’play’ is the only way things are ever going to work. That and Big Brother.

Happy viewing.

A xxxx

Jose Morinho after losing 2-1 at home to Crystal Palace yesterday: “We played well enough to win the match, certainly we played well enough not to lose it.”

Wise sentiments from the manager. But, actually, Jose, you did lose the match. So what do those fucking words even mean? That on a different day, with different players, a good head-wind, temperature 4 degrees lower, with more chances going in at our end and less at the other, then: ‘we would have won’? Is that what it means? In which case I’d like to create a second league to run parallel with the ‘old’ boring Premiership. The League of Should’a’beens. The League of Broken Dreams. The League of Just Deserts.

Spurs would be top. Permanently.

Take yesterday, f’rinstance. First half we struggled, couldn’t get going, Everton keeping possession, creating chances. But the second half we were dominant. Sublime(ish), majestic (almost), stunning (nearly). Yet failed to hit the net. Not once. Ok, Tim Howard was fantastic in the Everton goal, but so many squandered chances. Never mind, we’ll have bought six more strikers by Tuesday. One must be ok? Surely??

Meanwhile, its not really fair to gloat the failings of the mighty Chelsea… without talking about Liverpool. The biggest club in… Liverpool, if not the world. And they lost in a rather humiliating manner (0-3) to West Ham, who last won at Anfield in 1963. When Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters, later to become world cup superstars, scored the goals. The rest of the team were Billy this and Bobby that and Alfie Cor-blimey and Jimmy wossname and Ronnie and Reggie and Big Jackie and Little Albert and all manner of chirpy cockney… err… scum.

West Ham are doing brilliantly away from home. Played Arsenal and Liverpool and beat them both. At home they’re shit. Maybe that’s why they’re soon to be moving their home to the Olympic Stadium. Which they’ve stolen from the nation’s tax payers.

So there you are. The mighty fall. Very little gives supporters of teams suffering indifferent form the joy that occurs when big teams get shafted. We like to see them squirm, we like to see whether their managers man up and take the responsibility. We like to see the aftermath.

And if, like Spurs, you happen to be 15th in the league table, its comforting to have Chelsea just above you.

Ahhhh, happy Sunday

A xxxx

Sent from my iPad

Do you believe in democracy? I do. But only when it works in my favour. If Ed Miliband had won the election I’d have opted for Sharia rather than his, or Corbyn’s, brand of ‘total bollox’ rule.

Do you believe in justice? Punishment fitting the crime? A society based on a strong morality? Yet one that moves with the changes to the demands of the majority?

No, neither do I. But they gave women the vote anyway. Then they did away with the death penalty, stopped using torture chambers and started banging on about equality. Of all things. As if all people are basically equal. Imagine.

But we do all that because its what we believe in. Apparently most of Europe is pretty much in accord about those societal fundamentals. Its what makes us Europe. America, Australia, even undeveloped countries like Canada, where adultery was invented (on an industrial scale), all have similar values. Similar but not identical. Which is as it should be. In America they still have the death penalty. Its called ‘the right to bear arms’. And is very commonly used and very indiscriminate. They also have state funded death in a lot of states in accordance with their laws.

Does that make the democratic/Euro-Amer-Aus version of society the only way to be? Is it the best way to be? Is it the most advanced, civilised, evolved or correct way to be?

We think so, because we’re all brought up on that particular value system. The Greeks invented democracy (bit ironic bearing in mind recent events). The Romans invented baths. But there’s loads of people who choose not to shower every day. (Unfortunately many of them travel on the Northern Line).

Other countries run to their own laws. Unbothered by the vagaries of ‘democracy’ and judicial process, they opt for something different. Something more tribal perhaps. More feudal. Ultimate rulers. Local warlords. Sharia. Ways that are alien. Seemingly barbaric at times, apparently contingent on how much pleasure the 4th wife gave the Main Man the night before as to what punishment might be meted out today.

And these systems aren’t ‘wrong’ because there aren’t absolutes in such matters of society. They’re just ‘not as we understand nor would ever choose to do’ and thus can appear abhorrent to our wet and western way of thinkage. Where women not only get to vote but some of them are even allowed to work. Though obviously not at the same rates of pay as men.

In India they have a ‘caste’ system. Its awful. By my way of thinking. Condemning people, from birth, to a certain and pre-defined life path, by virtue of their parents. And recently, a low caste man ran off with a high caste woman, who happened to be the wife of another high caste person. Nothing Ashley Madison about this, it just happened. And off they ran. So the village elders have decided on a punishment to fit the crime. The low caste man’s two sisters are to be publicly raped.

That’s fair.

And just.

According to them. According to westerners it is simply appalling. The punishment is not only worse than the crime, but illogical, nonsensical and stupid. As well as kind of punishing the wrong people.

But its not our business to do anything about it. Other than be saddened and sickened. And also eternally grateful for what we know and understand as ‘civilisation’ but others choose to disagree or refuse to be enlightened about.

We can appeal to such people in those places. But they don’t share our views. Nor do they have to. The whole concept of fairness is based on your particular viewpoint. However fucked up that may be in someone else’s eyes.

Same with countries. When we interfere with Iraq, with Afghanistan, with Syria, we created a fucking monster. The void left by the whole Arab Spring was the vacuum into which ISIS flowed, Libya crumbled, Syria is in crisis. And all because these places weren’t run according to our ideals.

Yep, it really is a fucked up world out there. Or maybe in here, I’m not sure now.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

This time its from Melbourne. Where scientists (well, they always call them that, don’t they? but who knows, really?) analysed 88 studies of gender issues in the workplace and decided that ‘covert everyday sexism can damage women’s health’. The damage being depression and ‘deep psychological harm’ in an undefined way. And this is Australia. A land so subtle that chat up lines range from: “get yer tits out, Sheila, its yer lucky night!” to “wanna fuck?”

These studies were more concerned with constant workplace niggles. Digs at women, references to their attractiveness (“she’s a DEFINITE 9, that one”) to lower wages and difficulties in attaining promotions.

And they must stop. Now. We can’t have anxieties and possible depression caused by flirting at work. These ‘men’ must be stopped. Castrated. Put on bromides. Forced to abandon any ‘banter’ that could possibly be misunderstood as ‘sexist’, an umbrella that is growing by the day.

So whilst we’re talking about the need to reduce stress, I want politicians to act against people who drive at 25mph in the fast lane on a clear road. I want no supermarket queue at Waitrose, because its depressing. I want to pay less tax, earn more money, have more sunny days (like today… at the moment), more empty seats on the Tube, an end to roadworks, faster wi-fi and I want Spurs to win the league.

No, they’re right, its easier to try to stop men being men. And good luck with that.

Another facet of manliness is measuring dicks. We do it all the time. I never go to the toilet without a tape measure. But billionaires do it in a different way. They buy boats. But not just any boat. They buy a boat that is bigger than anyone else’s. That’s what Andrey Melnichenko is currently doing. Phillipe Starck has designed him a yacht (so far costing £300million and it remains an artist’s impression) that, at 142 metres is bigger than Abramoviches, bigger than the Sultan of Anywhere’s, bigger than big. Its fucking massive.

It is said that the best two days of a boat-owner’s life are the day he buys his boat and the day he sells it. I wonder if that applies to this excessive act of extravagant vanity.

Happy sailing

A xxxx

Terry Hallard is unique. He was at the Shoreham air show tragedy on Saturday. That was the worst air show disaster (they rank them; soon there’ll be a ’50 best airshow crashes’ programme on channel 4) since 1952 at Farnborough. And what makes Tel (I’m sure he won’t mind…) unique is that he was at that one too. Yep, he was 12 years old at Farnborough, when 31 people died, and he is now 75 and was there when 11 died in Shoreham.

So the question is: is Terry Hallard the luckiest man alive? Or the unluckiest man alive?? And for good measure: would you invite him round to your house for dinner? When he seems to have the rather odd superpower of making planes hit the ground very near him.

Another plane crashed yesterday too, a light aircraft in Quebec. That’s in Canadia. Not the good bit but the French bit.

So is this a sign that its p’raps not the time to get in anything that goes more than 3 feet off the ground, or do the statistics now fall so far against another plane crashing any time in the next 7 years, that there’s never been a better time to fly?

Whilst pondering that we need to discuss ‘ladies-carriage-gate’. Jeremy Corbyn sort-of proposed, more just kinda mentioned that for security and safety of women travelling on public transport, particularly at night or alone, they should have designated ‘women-only’ carriages on trains and tubes. Sounds reasonable. Yet the other 3 Labour leader candidates have lambasted this suggestion. Because a women’s carriage idea is ‘just putting a sticking plaster’ on the problem when what we really need is to educate men, particularly drunk men, that assaulting women, either physically or verbally, or even being suggestive or provocative, is simply wrong and must be stopped.

I don’t agree with the women’s carriage idea either. How you gonna pull women when they’re locked up in their own cage? But Corbyn’s idea, however flawed, is in fact an idea. And a pragmatic suggestion with immediate impact. One must feel that changing the entire male psyche of a nation who spend most evening in a state of partial intoxication may take a little longer to achieve.

Sticking plasters work, that’s why we have them. So, much as I don’t agree with Corbyn (ever!!!), I actually find myself disagreeing with his detractors more. Does that make me a closet socialist?

Happy thursday

A xxxx

Jermain Defoe, the (for the moment) Sunderland striker, is hiring a PA. An assistant. To help him run his life. I’m almost kind’a hoping that the first task of his newly appointed Person Friday will be to get him back to Spurs. Where he was. Twice before. And where, really, he belongs. Not necessarily where his heart lies. That’s in a numbered account in Switzerland. Probably next door to Sepp Blatter’s.

But Jermaine is rich, he’s famous and he has placed an ad for a Miss Moneypenny, for a Pepper Potts, for someone to help organise his busy schedule and pick up his dry cleaning. And so much more. Lots more.

For a mere 60 grand a year (its what he’s offering) he wants all of the above, sort out the mansion (which has both discotheque and hair salon, of course), become a bit of a Bilko in charge of his motor pool, service the dogs, wash the Warhols, do a Nigella in the kitchen, become his own private Ocado and possibly clean his football boots.

On top of all this, he wants to become a ‘global brand’. Jermain Defoe Inc. Complete with Facebook and other social media tie-ins. In short: he wants to be the next Kardashian. But smaller. Perfumes, ranges of clothes, perhaps music (well, he likes music, I’m guessing; how hard can it be to ‘get involved at the highest level’?). Maybe politics. He can’t spell ‘Conservative’ but would be ok with the Greens or UKIP.

JD (as the ‘brand’ will be known) scored a hat-trick for Sunderland last night. Probably just to impress the applicants for his job. Then he was led away by his posse of bodyguards, his agents, stylists, publicists, spokesmen and their assistants to his private jet to take him 40 miles home. Because that’s what being a global brand involves.

Oh, and the assistant must be female and she if she’s not better looking than Tom Cruise’s PA then don’t bother applying.

Come back to Spurs, Jermain, and I’ll be your PA.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

The latest wisdom to come out of Australia is that to avoid a shark attack you need to dress like a zebra. Sharks are famously scared shitless of zebras and will avoid confrontation with that most docile of cud-chewers at any cost. Have you ever seen a fight between a shark and a zebra? No, no-one has, those cowardly fish never go to the forests to find stripy horses. So if you choose to surf off the coast of Australia, or ‘shark-central’ as its known, it is advised to do it in a zebra suit.

Apparently sharks only see a dark shadow of swimmers/surfers against the sky and ‘mistake’ the person for their normal food. But their normal food is ‘meat’. More accurately ‘any fucking meat’ be it fish-meat, seal-meat, mammal-meat or human-meat. “Meat is meat”. That’s the tattoo sharks would all have if you could tattoo underwater. But if you wear stripes, as the shark comes out of the water to start lunch, it gets confused, visually, and says: “oh, sorry, mate, thought you were something else” and gently swims away. Bloody sharks…

John Terry seems to have difficulty staying on the pitch at present. He lasted 45 minutes last week before being substituted and just a little longer this week before being sent off for assault and battery. Though in Morinho’s eyes, ‘he did nothing’ and it was all the ref’s fault. That’s unusual. Pedro looking like a worthwhile addition to the squad, sadly.

Manchester City trounced Everton, previously unbeaten in 1 game. Possibly 2. But City looked very dangerous. Very good, in fact. Quite scary. They seem to have ironed out the creases that were very evident towards the end of last season and progressed back to the ‘fucking awesome’ level of seasons past.

Arsenal play Liverpool tonight. Is this the first 6-pointer of the season? I’m going to check with the points award committee and I’ll get back to you.

Happy Monday. Keep away from sharks. And zebras.

A xxxx

We’re having a heatwave in London. Almost 32 hours without rain. Yesterday the temperature rose to a whopping 30 degrees and even at midnight last night it was still 26 degrees of gorgeous humidity and sticky sweatiness. Lovely. We don’t get too much continuous sunshine here, you really need to go to the third world for proper weather. When you see pictures of global starvation and boatloads of migrants and desperate souls, the sun’s always shining nicely in the background. I suppose you can’t have it all.

Or, in Spurs case, you can’t really have anything.

Well, one point, but that’s not much. Not enough. Not what you really deserve. And its not about what you deserve on merit of the play, more what you deserve on moral grounds. Spurs deserve to be top of the league. They deserve to be great. They deserve to be brushing aside all who come before them. It would be the right thing to happen. But the bastards in football are insistent that you actually have to win games before they give you the points. Its not fair, but its the way it is.

So we went to Leicester. Well, they did. I stayed at home to wait for my new tv which didn’t (fucking) arrive due to courier meltdown. Never mind. Black’n’white’s good enough for the time being and 3 channels is more than enough.

We played badly, we held possession but did fuck all with it. We gave the ball away, missed chances and looked sadly in need of more players. About 11 would do the trick. Well, 10, I’m very happy with our goalie. Then we scored! Brilliant. 81 minutes. Too late for a Leicester come-back? Apparently not. Equaliser in the 82nd minute. Bastard foxes.

Lucky I’m a Bournemouth fan. (As of about 5 o’clock yesterday). ‘We’ won at Upton Park. ‘Our’ first win in the premiership, everrrrrrrr. And what a game. Ok, bit shambolic all round, nowhere more so than in West Ham’s defence, but 4-3 is a great scoreline. It says ‘chaos’. It says ‘panic and pandemonium’. It says ‘West Ham are being punished for conning the council and the government into sponsoring their lofty Olympic Stadium aspirations when they haven’t got a pot to piss in’. Scorelines can speak volumes.

Time for Daniel Levy to get his chequebook out, I feel. One week to go. Let’s go panic-buying.

Same old same old…

Happy Sunday

A xxxx