Andy's Glasses

Arsene Wenger has been royally pissed off this week (or, as they say where he comes from: ‘plus ca change’) because of tv scheduling. Nothing to do with Game of Thrones, series VII, being screened when he’s out at carpet-weaving class, nor that Alsace’s Got Talent will not be shown this year due to no talent being found in Arsene’s homeland. No, he’s pissed off because they’ve scheduled Arsenal’s FA Cup semi-final against Reading at 5.20 today. To be screened on BBC1. Whilst on Sky Sports 1 at 5.30 there is Chelsea playing Manchester United. What will fans watch? I wonder?? The romance and history of the world’s oldest cup competition in its nail-biting final stages? Or what could be an incredible game of football? I know what I’ll be watching.

Come Dance with my Gran, on channel 5. Its Tango week. Will Vladimir, the handsome, toned, skin-tight professional be able to lift Agnes Maythorpe from Pontefract, and her zimmer frame, in the finale? Thrilling stuff.

But I’m fed up with the Premiership. Other than Chelsea Man United which, doubtless, Mel will insist on me watching. Its all bollox. Its all rubbish. Ever since Spurs stopped winning and misery flavoured my weekends. So now I’m only excited by the Championship. Where last night Middlesboro’ beat Norwich to go top of that table. At least until Bournemouth and Watford play today. Not against each other but either can take top slot. But not both. I’m sorry. Football’s not like that.

My mate Ali is a ‘boro’ fan. Ethical-Hedge-Fund-Ali, for short. Though in fact he’s rather tall. And quite posh, even fairly intelligent and educated. Making him the most unlikely ‘boro’ fan around. No insult to ‘boro’ fans, of course. Not that any of them can read. So for him, it would be nice for Middlesboro’ to come back, for a short while, to the Premiership.

Yet I have allegiance too with Bournemouth too. And Watford is one of those ‘almost London’ places which is actually miles away if you happen to live in London but counts itself part of the capital for footballing, rugby and holidays in Teneriffe whilst talking to Mancunians (who actually live in Sale but can’t be bothered to explain the difference either) purposes. I have many friends who are Watford fans, even one brother-in-law.

So my loyalty is divided but really I don’t have that emotional connection and can thus just enjoy the final few games with the simple enjoyment that neutrality brings. And its all such a welcome relief from the elections which are depressing and give me ulcers.

Spurs are at Newcastle tomorrow and I don’t give a shit what happens. Though, of course, I reserve the right to be thrilled if we thrash them and distressed if we don’t.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

I don’t know who I’m going to miss more: David Cameron or Gisele Bundchen. Its a troubling thought as the German-sounding Brazilian supermodel (errr, that’ll be Gisele) retires from her career of posing, pouting and preening, just as Cameron is about to become the next ex-Prime Minister of Her Majesty’s Kingdom of, blah, blah, blah.

Whereas Gisele never missed an opportunity to put herself out there on the public stage (very few supermodels are recluses) Cameron is more shy about time in the public eye. But only when it involves televised debates with his rivals. Whereas he loves being filmed in tea shops in Burnley, car factories in Solihull, hospitals fucking anywhere.

No-one noticed that Nick Clegg was absent.

Yet every ‘opposition’ leader took the time to mention how ‘sad’, ‘disgusting’, ‘appalling’, etc, that Cameron was absent. Thus not able to ‘defend his policies’. So they slagged him off anyway.

Last night I was out being repeatedly hit over the head with a long stick. Or rather, avoiding being hit over the head with a long stick by some devious Chinese tactics of disarming such assailants and leaving them in a heap on the ground.

And I’m glad I missed the debate. It was bad enough hearing everyone on tv talking about it endlessly when I got home.

And this is how the debate basically went:

Miliband: Cameron’s a nob.

Sturgeon: so are you, Ed, unless you become Scottish reet nooow.

Farage: I fuckin’ hate darkies.

Miliband: with me as Prime Minister may God help you all.

Sturgeon: I’m much cleverer than anyone else here even though I’m totally smug and obnoxious.

Farage: can I smoke in here?

Miliband: we want to make Britain a place for workers to work and working men and women to work in a workmanlike way of working.

Sturgeon: we don’t want ‘Tory-lite’, Ed, we want ‘a new way’, though I’m not prepared to say, in any meaningful way, what that vague and worthless phrase actually means. And once we, the Scottish Nationalists, have made Britain greet once more, we can leave.

There were 2 other women there as well but I don’t know who they were. They were the political equivalent of the girls who used to be on stage with magicians, the ones who eventually had 16 swords stuck in the box in which they’d been put. If only.

This election has become horrible. Everyone too scared of saying the wrong thing to actually say anything right. So they just argue about nothing and then wonder why the voters are becoming un-engaged with the entire circus.

I’d rather get hit on the head with a long stick.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

So its happened; the manifestos have been announced. Those promises stating what the political parties will and won’t do ‘when’ they’re elected to power. Right. So the Green manifesto is not worth the trees that had to be destroyed in order to produce paper upon which to write the thing as they will never get to power, nor have any influence over those who do. So why do they bother? Why waste all those resources? How Green is that??

And manifestos are in a way ‘sacred’ in that once written they are pretty much there forever to either be adhered to or they’ll become the biggest rod ever to be beaten with. Like Nick Clegg and the abolition of tuition fees. Nick went into government and promptly the fees went up. Oh dear.

But that in fact set an unholy precedent. The only excuse for breaking a manifesto promise. And its fairly new in Britain. That ‘we are in a coalition government and therefore it wasn’t us; it was them’. And as we look pretty much set to have more coalition governments, whilst we have such uninspiring political leaders all sharing the same dreary goals, we better get used to such excuses. ‘Ahhhh, WE did want to stick to that promise but THEY wouldn’t agree to it’.

David Cameron and various of his many health ministers (there was an epidemic among them early in the last government) stood outside numerous hospitals stating how the Emergency Wards would never close. Then 3 weeks later 14 of them closed down. ‘Making the NHS better’. Ok, Dave, whatever you say.

Miliband once again stated that he will reinstate the 50% band for income tax and ‘keep it forever’. Like herpes. Only for wunderkind Chukka Umanna to then state that they’ll only keep it for a short while, then drop it. Well that’s not very Old Labour. Not very Ed.

I’m still struggling with Miliband’s division between ‘the rich’ and ‘the workers’. In his mind two mutually exclusive groups. No-one rich ever works, obviously. They got rich by… errr… by… well not by working, that’s for sure. You don’t get rich by hard work. And workers are all poor, in contrast.

Whereas the reality is that everyone works to better their lives and possibly those of others. And the harder you work, often, the ‘richer’ you become. So at what point does gain through hard, honest endeavour make you rich enough to become a Miliband hate-figure?

Big debate tonight. Dimbleby with all the leaders from all the parties. Except David Cameron who won’t play. Not because he’s scared. But because he’s too something else.

Happy thursday

A xxxx

The Chinese are in uproar. They are disgusted by the disgraceful behaviour of Lewis Hamilton, Formula One’s favourite dwarf and on-off, on-off, on-off, on-off… on-off boyfriend of Nicole Scherzinger. They accuse him of ‘sexist bullying’ after winning the race on Sunday in… well, somewhere in China, obviously.

After the race, on the podium, the winning drivers were celebrating. And they had much to celebrate. Lewis had won the race. His team was again successful. A 50 zillion pound payment was on its way to Hamilton’s (Luxembourg) bank account. So the drivers celebrated in the time-honoured way, by wasting 5 grand’s worth of vintage champagne. Spraying it all over themselves, each other and anyone else nearby.

And Hamilton spotted a cute little Chinese pit-girl and so chose to include her in the festivities, spraying her in the ear and head, which made her grimace a bit. But the Chinese are inscrutable and a grimace could well be the most ardent form of appreciation. Who fucking knows with those people? Who even cares? Not Lewis. He was just saying: ‘oh, what fun, what joy, join me in enjoying this lovely wine, but not necessarily in the usual way’.

And China has erupted in its displeasure and accusations. All of it. 1.6 billion of them all using the very few social media outlets that their nation’s strict censorship still allows them to use and accusing him of ‘sexist bullying’ and calling for him to be banned from China. Which is a bit like banning someone from Syria except he might need to go there next year to race.

So just to clarify the Chinese position. Slaughtering Tibetan Bhuddists is fine and dandy. Locking up artists for 5 years because you don’t understand their work and thus assume it to be anti-government is ok. Murdering political opponents is de rigeur. Imprisoning people without trial is perfectly acceptable. Making entire villages homeless because some property developer has plans for the land and has bribed the local officials is just ‘business as usual’. Blocking 90% of internet sites for the entire population (other than the government, doubtlessly) is for their own good.

But spraying a girl with booze in some perfectly innocent fun is FUCKING DISGUSTING!!!!! And shameful and cause for protest and banning entry.

Ok, I think we’ve got that.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

…Raheem.

The Liverpool fans haven’t yet ‘turned’ on Raheem Sterling. Even though their young superstar is at this moment still refusing the new contract that will keep him at Anfield. They haven’t gone into death-threat-mode like they did when Steven Gerrard spoke of leaving all those years ago. But it maybe just a matter of time. And of goals. Because Raheem keeps scoring them and that puts the fans in a bit of a quandary. How can you be outwardly hateful to someone who is so vitally important to your team? Ok, its arguable that no Liverpool player has ever been as important as Stevie G, but this current team is struggling to be a top 5 side. It is not blessed with a multitude of superstars and so to give Raheem a hard time would indeed be a case of stealing the hubcap that feeds you. (Liverpool mixed metaphor).

100,000 pounds a week may sound (to lower class, ‘working people’ type scum) to be a lot of money to offer a player. But he’s not a kid. He is 20 years old and only has one Range Rover. Which, in footballing circles, is probably cause for ridicule. I don’t know. And I’m not sure that the money is everything in this case. Ok, he could get more than his 5million a year maybe at Arsenal (who are desperate for his signature) or pretty much anywhere he chose, but that would also offer him Champions League football. Which is, as all Spurs fans know to their eternal and continued cost, a massive lure for talented players. Though with the destruction of Manchester City’s seaons continuing, perhaps he can achieve that with his Anfield mates.

Then there’s the off-field antics. Firstly Raheem was filmed smoking from a shisha. Ok, nothing really wrong with that, its only inhaling fruit juice, probably counts as one of your 5-a-day. And then yesterday he was filmed sucking Nitrous Oxide from a balloon until he virtually collapsed. Which, although not illegal, is a bit stupid. Though probably very funny, as laughing gas tends to be.

These events are just kids having fun. But they do go against the football club’s code of conduct. Quite rightly. So my question for Mr Sterling is not why he partook in such activities, I have no problem with either, but why be so vain, so mindless, so bloody stupid, to allow or encourage videos to be taken?

Though before we judge him too harshly, we need to assess his mind. In an interview for the Times they asked him what he’d read recently. War and Peace? Wuthering Heights? A Tale of Two Cities?? No, his reply was that he’d been reading a lot online about Kim Kardashian going blond.

Where’s the rule that all footballers have to be embarrassingly, almost terminally thick?

Happy Tuesday, whatever he (and his hateful agents) decide for his future.

A xxxx

On Friday, England suffered its worst smog attack of the year. Is it an attack? A situation?? A state of affairs??? Whatever, shit in the air and lots of it. Most of the country reached a whopping score of 9. Ok, that’s out of 10. Obviously. If it was out of 217 we wouldn’t even be having the conversation, would we?

And the summer always precipitates such conditions. Low or high pressure, possibly medium, coupled with isobars and thermo-things plus all that rubbish blown over from France and here we are in our little verdant isle encased in a cloud of pollution.

Fortunately, London, like most big cities, has so much fucking pollution normally that we hardly noticed. If you happen to be some poor sod from Lincolnshire who’s lungs are unaccustomed to the output of 50,000 diesel engines a day spewing out their filth, Friday was a bad day. For us here in the capital; same old same old. Though they kept warning people not to exercise outdoors and if short of breath… what? stop breathing?? Its a problem.

And its a good one to ‘debate’ (ain’ they all??). So yesterday, as Mel and I returned from our trip to the countryside (Mill Hill, London NW7 actually but it looks like the countryside, all green and with animals all over the place, and trees’n’stuff) that’s just what they were doing; discussing air quality on the radio. In my car. Which has a monster engine, shit-loads of cylinders and produces more carbon that a coal mine. Bit ironic, really. I’d have a car that emits even more carbon but they tend to be very very expensive.

So some guy, can’t remember his name, so we’ll call him TOSSER, for convenience, phoned in to suggest that everyone should be driving battery cars. Fair point. Oh, and that the government should give grants to allow every driver in the country to swap his turbo-diesel lung-clogger for a worthless piece of battery-powered shit. We’ll ignore the fact that batteries need charging, with electricity, which is currently produced by burning oil, and that these cars generally have a range of about 6 miles after which the ‘back-up’ 6-litre V12 cuts in otherwise you’d never make it home. And we’ll just think of the financial logistics of giving every motorist in the country a few grand to go buy a noddy car with a big(ish) battery.

Ok, I’ve worked all that out and it comes to much too much to even consider. We’d have to shut down 93 hospitals to pay for it.

So those that are really bothered about it really should, they owe it to their consciences, to swap over to battery power. And that in itself, even if its just 5% of drivers, will create an improvement. Will reduce emissions by about 5%. Should that figure be 75% of motorists, then the emissions will be reduced by that amount. Ish. Fine. Democratic. Then you can leave the rest of us alone.

Until they stop all air travel and stop cows from farting (the single largest source of worldwide methane output, for real) then leave me alone. I’ll go buy a mask.

Happy relatively clean-aired Monday

A xxxx

Where were you in 1968? Not born yet? Babe in arms?? Or just a kid? Like I was. But old enough to dig that groovy music scene. The Beatles, The Who, The Stones. And the Kinks. Ahhhh, the Kinks. How we loved ’em.

They were ‘earthy’. Real people (ie common as muck and spoke badly, dropping aitches and glottally stopping everyfing in deir wake). So we loved ’em. Still do really. Especially as their songs were full of London. Waterloo Sunset. Lola in a club down in Old Soho. It was all very well the effin Bee Gees (Australian born Brits) singing about Massachussetts, but they’d never fucking been there. Should have sung about Basildon. Even Brisbane.

So the inevitable stage show emerged. Sunny Afternoon. The story of the Kinks. And I missed it when it was on at the Hampstead Theatre, 10 minutes away, because it sold out so quickly and I dithered because I’m never sure about bio-shows. They can be great and enlightening or they can be just a concert by a lookalike impersonation band. By the time the reviews went ‘rave’ it had sold out. So we went last night to see it in the West End. At 6 times the price and 9 times the inconvenience. But I’m not complaining. Grrrrrrrrr.

I had to see the show. Because one night, several months ago, Mel & I went for a curry. In East Finchley. Great little place. And into the very restaurant walked Ray Davies, of the Kinks. All 72 years old but instantly recognisable by the gap between his teeth. Ray lives in Highgate. We live near Hampstead. As any mathematician will tell you, the shortest distance between two points is a chicken tikka massala. So we ‘met’ at the Quality Tandoori in N2. A mathematical inevitability. And ‘a sign’.

The show is actually great. Not brilliant, but great. Fun and frolics and the coming good of lower class Muswell Hill scum and transvestites and psychological issues (Ray) and trisexual issues (Brother Dave; as Ali G once said; he’s a trisexual; he’ll try anfink sexual) and sleazy management issues and, most of all, brilliant music. Performed brilliantly by a truly fantastic cast of multi-talented people.

By the time Lola was played by the entire ensemble, half the audience was on its feet dancing away. Hmmmmm, but its basically a play. Does one dance at a play? Though it sounds like a really good concert. Hmmmmm. Let’s go round the corner to Chinatown and worry about it over some noodles.

Happy Sunday. It will be a Sunny Afternoon indeed.

A xxxx

Whilst over here Ed Miliband is wondering whether he’s got the bus fare to take him to Rochester to make a speech (which no-one is fucking interested in fucking hearing!!!!!), or whether Ed Balls will lend him a tenner til Tuesday, over in America they’re also getting ready for an election next year. For which Hilary Clinton, being a Democrat and thus ‘voice of the populus’ and ‘grounded in reality’, reckons to win the presidency she can get by with a paltry $2.5 billion. What a frikkin’ bargain. Would it be cheaper if they chose a good lookin’ bird? I just wondered, in a fit of Neanderthalism very much out of character with the New Man that I really am, honest.

A woman president? Can you imagine such a thing?? They’ll want a non-white there next. Oh, right… ok.

Women are big in politics. I don’t mean ‘look big’, heaven forbid. I mean ‘important’. Because they now reckon that in London, all the marginals will pretty much (or ugly much, depending on the women) be decided by the female voters. Men are apparently less flexible whereas women, as we all know, change their minds about everything, on average, once every 9.3 seconds. Average. So the swings will be decided on the day, by our women, depending on issues like which candidate looks more buff; how easy it was to get a parking space outside the polling station; whether a child kept her awake last night; what’s for dinner tonight; headaches.

When did they let women vote?

Why did they let women vote??

Oh, I remember, Suffrage, all that chaining to the gates of Westminster, right, I think I missed it because the football was on.

So women get to decide on the outcome of the election, perhaps even disproportionately, and Hilary Clinton may become America’s first woman president. Maybe. She’ll probably have to beat around the Bush. Or beat a Bush at least because Jeb Bush, brother of George Dubbaya, son of George the First, is likely to be the Republican candidate. I wonder how much he needs to make it to number 10 White House Street? I wonder if he can count that high? Unlike his brother.

I’ve written to America, all of it, and told them I can get there for just half a billion bucks, but paid in cash to my gravesite in Geneva. I better brush up on my golf.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

Rules and stereotypes, the twin evils of our lives. The enemies of a true and free-thinking existence. Yet they are so entrenched. So were you to hear that the Queen is really into reggae, but the early, hardcore, Jamaican stuff, you’d be shocked. (She’s not, she’s actually into punk and likes spitting in her private mosh-pit at the palace). If you learned that Mike Tyson relaxes with counter-cross stitch tapestries whilst listening to Gilbert & Sullivan you wouldn’t believe it. Should it be announced that Kate Moss spends her evenings studying particle physics and loves playing rugby, you’d be amazed. Whereas I’d look to join the opposing rugby team. I love a ruck and maul with an ageing supermodel.

These things go against stereotype. And your first thought is ‘NO!!!’

So in my formative years I had very strict rules for myself. Or really, they were rules to create the image of myself I wanted to be and be seen as. And I only listened to ‘rock’ music. Black Sabbath was good, Led Zeppelin was cool, David Bowie you could get away with, even with all that gender ambiguity, which was way more profound in the 1970s, just because he was so brilliant. Abba were shit. No mitigation, no excuses, Scando-pop garbage. And if you found that your mate ‘Blaster’, heavy metal to the core, 10 pints a night, hair down to his knee-caps, if you found him secretly listening to Rolph Harris’s ‘2 Little Boys’ through his headphones, he’d be ridiculed, pilloried by his mates and humiliated forever.

And the main rule of any true rocker, or aged ex-rocker, was: NO COUNTRY & WESTERN. Especially for Londoners. For the inbred truck-driving masses of Alabama and Tennessee it was fine but Londoners didn’t need to listen to shitty steel guitars and singers bemoaning stolen cattle, the death of their favourite sheep-dog and wives running away with Vietnam vets. And it was hardly a ‘relevance’ issue. Ozzie Osbourne’s lyrics about devil worship and forces of evil were hardly ‘everyday life’ for a schoolboy in East London.

Ballads were for tarts, pop was for wankers, folk musicians should be beaten with sticks, anything to stop them singing.

But music can surprise you. Especially in oldER age. When perhaps you become more receptive to the content and less obsessed with the categories.

So now, having found that my reading ‘guilty secret’ is to indulge in the odd ‘rom-com’, but real, slushy, totally predictable, no-redeeming-virtue chick lit rubbish, so I find now and again I get really ‘hooked’ on certain tunes. And they’re not by Deep Purple.

It started with Shania Twain, probably 20 years ago. Then it continued with Taylor Swift. And now I’ve found a new track that haunts me. Miley Cyrus singing (and even I have to cringe as I type it) Jolene. The Dolly Parton ‘classic’ (or, ‘Auntie Dolly’ as Mylie calls her God-Mother) performed by teen-star car-wreck juvie-twerker. Performed in her garden. And its brilliant.

So there, I’ve confessed. My new(ish) guilty secret: pre-pubescent Country music. Can’t beat it. High school sweethearts, stood up at the prom, my boyfriend dumped me and rode off his dad’s Chevy. Apparently that’s the new meaning in my life.

Off to therapy.

Happy friday

A xxxx

Britain is a wonderful land, overflowing with fat bastards contracting infectious diseases. Its amazing there’s anyone left alive really. But a table comparing world thinness was headed by Bangladesh and other places where there’s no food other than a few cans of tomato soup for an entire village to share, provided by the World Health Organisation, sent over every 3 months. Japan was ranked 16th on the list, Germany 81st and Britain a terrible 111th. America was at 126 and the winner of the 2015 Undisputed Fat Bastards of the World award was Kuwait. Well done them. So we’re fatter than the Germans and Russians but need to hoover up a few more fatty carbs before we can overtake the States.

As for the infectious diseases, well, we have the NHS here, as anyone who’s listened to any party political soundbyte over the last few weeks will be only too aware. And so we get, as well as free health care, we get free infectious diseases. Go to any hospital with a sprained ankle and you’ll come out with MRSA which will knock you out for the next 2 years. Though it is free at the point of contagion and that’s the main thing. Heaven forbid anyone should take the NHS and actually make it work properly. Instead let’s just throw loads and loads more money at it until it eats itself to a disease-ridden death.

And the election run-up has got nasty. Even nastier than you’d expect. Its got ‘personal’. ‘Cameron’s a fascist’, shouts Miliband, ‘Farage is the new Hitler’, shouts Clegg, ‘Miliband is a tosser’, cries his wife. And now Cameron’s gone into ‘he stabbed his own brother in the back’ mode, which was almost inevitable. But Miliband really has a thing about ‘the rich’. A vague and curious bunch of imaginary friends that make up less than 1% of the population yet pay less than 0.01% of its tax. So Ed would have us think. ‘The rich’ are the natural enemy of ‘the workers’, who are dirty people living in mud huts in Cirencester. The rich all live in Kensington and don’t pay any tax because their hearts may be in Mayfair but their registration for tax purposes is in Lichtenstein. Bastards. Cheats. Tax avoiders.

I wanna know where I fit in Miliband’s Britain. I live in London, own a house and yet consider myself a worker. In that, errrr, I, errrr work. So am I to be part of the worker’s revolution here or am I ‘the enemy’ because I have a tax-free ISA and employ a few people? And therefore avoid tax? Because Miliband is a horrible and divisive person who has returned the nation to a feudal mindset based on the jealousy of his perception of inequality. With “THE NHS!!!!!” as his battle cry.

I hate them all and may declare myself as a non-dom for voting purposes. If I live long enough.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx