Andy's Glasses

I am boycotting Dolce & Gabbana. As from tomorrow. To be ‘on message’ with all the latest hashtags, I will not be visiting their clothing emporia until this whole Elton-John-gate mess is cleared. up.

So today I’m off to Sloane Street to get six new suits, at £9,600 each, a new shirt, £872.48 and some ties, £(don’t even ask).

In actual fact, I can’t even afford the carrier bag. But I can dream…

In reality my dreams have never travelled too far past the Levi store, Marks & Spencer and Primark.

What Stefano Dolce should have said in reply to the question which would have presumably been along the lines of: ‘you’re a stinking rich poof, why ain’t you got no children? You can buy as many as you like with all your money?’ He should have replied: ‘no thanks, I’ve decided I don’t want any children. THE END’.

But no. He had to take it further, make it a moral issue, revert to his Catholic upbringing, invoke judgments from the bible, use values from the Spanish Inquisition to bolster his prejudices. So he slagged off gay men who adopt babies, who use IVF to create their own and he called such children ‘synthetic’.

We have synthetic children. They’re called ‘dolls’ and the girls played with them endlessly when they were little. And there are advantages. You can put a synthetic child in the washing machine once your (real) child has dragged it round the mud for an hour before pouring a tin of Heinz tomato soup over its head. For ‘dinner’.

Because we can no longer draw a line between gay couples and couples of different gender (I think that’s me, I’m not sure any more), to attack adoption and IVF for gays must attack such processes for all. Which is so ignorant that even a gay Italian dress-maker should have realised his error and censored his thoughts before spouting such inflammatory clap-trap. He then went further and even deeper into the New Testament to claim that children should be born ‘naturally’ and raised by that family.

And hell hath no fury like a person scorned. So Elton John, one of two fathers of 2 such synthetic babies, reacted as any self-respecting billionaire trumped-up be-wigged homosexual would do in the circumstances and flew off the handle, demanding a boycott of both Dolce and Gabbana.

Maybe there’s an agenda here, one that ‘we’ don’t know about. Maybe as so many gay couples are acquiring children, its become a bit of a trend and thus, like all trends, it will have its detractors who oppose it merely because it is fashionable. Bit ironic that D&G are opposed to something fashionable, but there ya go.

So its handbags at dawn for Elton and Stefano. Victoria Beckham has sided with Sir Elt and I, quite frankly, couldn’t give a shit one way or the other. But its all good fun.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

So I watched the game. The match. The big one. Spurs at Man United. And it was… it was… it was just fucking horrible.

I know what the rules are; I’ve watched plenty of football. Some (Mel) would say I’ve watched way too much. But the rule is: look for positives. And I looked. And I searched. And I watched more. I looked under the sofa. I tried the Sunday papers. But there were simply no positives to be found anywhere. We were just shit. In fact the nearest thing to a positive I could find was: at least we’re not Chelsea. We still play the game honestly and properly, with a minimum of diving around and hardly any ganging up on the ref. Maybe that’s where we need to wise up: more ‘gamesmanship’. Though a lot of good its done Chelsea this week.

So once again, I’m forced to ask the question: if there is a God, why would He forsake His own team at such a critical time of the season? When a win would have kept us right there in the mix for 4th place whereas the loss sets us totally adrift (some would say ‘and without a paddle’). Though in fact we have a paddle and his name is Harry Kane. Sadly he sank without much trace yesterday afternoon.

We are all aware that God doesn’t interfere with everyday shit. He’s too busy… er… well, he’s too busy. So when Boco Haram kidnap 200 innocent schoolgirls in Nigeria, He lets them be. There’s no bolt of lightning out of the sky to stop it. When ISIS beheads charity workers there is a distinct lack of Seas parting, plagues of locusts or burning bushes around to help. And when Wayne Rooney burst through the Spurs defence, having been gifted the sodding ball by one of our very own, I waited for the clouds to suddenly part, just as he crossed into the box, and that Godly face, beard and all, to appear and call down upon the Roonster to cease and dissist, IN THE NAME OF ME!!!!!

And Wayne would have stopped dead in his tracks. Because he’s a Christian. Says so on his arm, tattooed just under the massive cross on his bicep. You can’t get more devout than that unless you ink it on your face. Though one feels that he is that ‘Christian’ in purely some abstract, political sense, in that he lacks all and every trace of any remote kind of ‘moral fibre’ that you might normally expect a Christian to possess.

Its a ‘test’. A test of our faith. That we still ‘believe’ even after a trouncing by Manchester United. Because without faith, without belief, there’s just nothing. So its all part of His plan. His best laid plan. And, as He is neither mice nor man, He’s exempt from fucking it up. So you’d like ta think.

Happy sodding Monday

A Believer
xxxx

There you are, its true. Must be. It was in the Mail on Sunday. And it is simply the dream. The new answer to the question: “don’t you think you should go to the gym, you fat, lazy, worthless piece of male shit?” is simply “actually I was going to but its probably more beneficial to sit and watch the entire box set of Coronation Street going back to 1962; bring me some snacks when you pass with the hoover”.

The BBC, those hateful, hurtful, Clarkson-sacking bastards, have made a programme about calories and it shows that a man can burn 650 calories just watching tv for one hour, whilst a woman will only burn 270, and really ‘needs’ to be doing housework to get any significant calorific benefit.

This is possibly the best news ever, setting the female empowerment movement back 250 years. This, for men, is so wonderfully sexist-based-on-scientific-‘proof’; its the thinking man’s Sharia Law. Or maybe the drinking man’s Sharia Law. Its the slob’s manifesto.

Apparently there are variables. Its statistics, without variables there’d be nothing to manipulate in favour of whatever the test is trying to show. But the variables here are things like ‘size’. Big people burn more calories (doing nothing) than smaller people. So in fact, you could justify getting really fat and obese (“I’ll have a chicken tikka masala, pilau rice, three naan, onion bhajis and on the side, another chicken tikka masala and a pizza, please”) on the grounds that the bigger you are the quicker you will burn calories. Make sense? Does to me. I need to weigh more so I can burn more calories. Perfect sense.

Very frustrating that I only saw this after playing tennis. I’d have cancelled it and watched tv instead.

So today as I get comfortable to watch Spurs play at Old Trafford, I shall feel no guilt, shall merely enjoy the fact that ‘its good for my health’. But only if we win. Obviously.

Happy Mother’s Day (and if you need the slimy manufacturers of over-priced greeting cards to tell you when to love your mother, merely to create a market for them to exploit, you need shooting.)

A xxxx

They’re introducing 20mph speed limits on numerous roads in London. What would Clarkson say about that? If he wasn’t in jail (metaphorically) and persona non-grata, he’d be yelling about the freedom to drive dangerously, about the inalienable right of every man to drive as fast as his Ferrari can possibly go, how the namby-pamby tossers at Westminster should leave the fucking motorists alone. If we all drive at 20 all the time we might as well all be Prius drivers now that gay marriage is legal. But he can’t say all that. So I have to say it on his behalf.

Though its the reasons for this imposition that I’m concerned about. Its ‘to save cycling deaths’. Because we have many. Too many. Well, (as a cyclist myself), one is too many. And we don’t have one, we have hundreds in London and its awful. So those in charge, as opposed to those who actually know, have decided that if you slow traffic down that will reduce cycling deaths. Like fitting dentures to prevent Ebola. It looks like ‘something is being done!!’ but obviously not the right thing.

Virtually all cycling accidents occur when trucks and other big vehicles are turning left with a cyclist unseen on the inside. The average speed of a vehicle of that size and weight whilst turning left is about 8mph. Very few cycling accidents are caused in or by fast moving traffic. I’m sure there are some.

All that is achieved by slowing down the traffic, even more than it slows itself down almost all of every day on every road, is increased driver frustration, anger and subsequent irrational behaviour. So for every one minor cycling accident you may prevent, you’ll create 10,000 unexploded bombs in the form of erratic, angry road-ragers.

What they should do is build cycle paths. Like they have even in third world countries like France. Somewhere for cyclists that motorists can’t reach.

Alternatively, my own fear whilst cycling, my source of terror as I pedal to the station in the mornings is women driving massive four-by-fours to take little Jessica, alone in the vastness of the back seat, to school. These women are dangerous, clueless and aggressive. And if that sounds in any way sexist, IT FUCKING SHOULD.

Happy Birthday to Mel

A xxxx

We need to talk about Jose. The Morinho one. Little Portuguese feller. Works for Chelsea.

And the question is: pretty much as always: is he an inspirational footballing genius with revolutionary ideas and a quite truly amazing track record, or just a moaning little tosser who only sings when he’s winning and is the stand-out worst loser in the entire history of our national game, preferring to destabilise his own team rather than accept any responsibility on his own rather pathetic little shoulders?

Is his obsession with pre-match ‘mind-games’ his greatest asset or the route to his demise?

Chelsea played PSG on Wednesday night. In case you missed that bit. They already had that precious ‘away goal’ from the first leg in Paris. So all they needed was to not lose. Or not draw at home by more than 1-all. That’s all. Is that too much to ask?

Apparently so. Because Morinho has always been rather schizophrenic in his management style. Always been 2 managers. One is the bus parker. His really true comfort zone. He first used the phrase ‘to park the bus’ in accusation of others (see; bad loser, above). Yet from his early managerial days at Porto he has consistently been guilty of doing just that. Piling on a massed defence and hoping to score the odd goal on the break, never compromising the strength in numbers staying deep. The other manager is the creative one. The one who has at his disposal the best players that dirty Russian laundered money can buy and he lets them run wild and free. Eden Hazard, Diego Costa, Willian, Cesc Fabregas. Oscar…

So playing at home and starting at 1-1 for the second leg gives Morinho a problem. Do you defend the ‘lead’ that the away goal bestows upon you? Or go for broke and actually try to win the game, put the tie to bed, but leaving inevitable holes if you do??

Before the game there has to be the inevitable mind-fuck session with Jose accusing everyone from opponents to referees, from schedules to conspiracy theories, of bias against his players. And then there’s the culture of ‘gamesmanship’. Which is very different from cheating. In that what WE do is gamesmanship, what THEY do is cheating. Ahhhhh, now I see.

So Chelsea get Zlatan Ibrahimovic sent off after a tackle on Oscar in which the skanky little Brazilian lived up to his name with the performance. Then all the Chelsea players, as they always do, mug the referee into sending the opponent off. They always try. John Terry’s protestations that ‘he was just being the peacemaker and all the rest of his boys followed’ is as pathetic as it is transparent.

Ok, PSG down to 10 men; we can just sit back and relax, other than a few cursory forays and a hell of a lot of ‘gamesmanship’.

Didn’t work. They drew 2-all. Away goals still counted double, so Chelsea go out of the Champions League and Morinho immediately blames his lacklustre players.

Chelsea are still horrible. Morinho’s still a tosser. Plus ca change.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

The National ‘Elf Service is apparently inundated with people… errrrr… with people… turning up demanding to be… to be… to be… to be checked for possible altzheimers. They forget where they put the car keys and so immediately take a… errrr, black thing… light on the top… yeah, take a taxi to the hospital requesting testing for… dammit… for… for dementia. Its costing the NHS millions, causing 6-month waiting lists and fucking it up for genuine sufferers who can’t get appointments.

Everyone suffers from… errrr… from memory loss with advancing age. Fact. Only a very unlucky few develop dementia, of which alzheimers is the most common. And the most devastatingly horrible.

So I can only assume that this sudden rush of suspected cases is people who have just been to see the film ‘Still Alice’. The Oscar winning performance by Juliette Moore as a relatively young woman with altzheimers. Because when you leave the cinema after that, you are convinced you have all the symptoms. Mel & I left the film last night, got in the car, once we remembered where we’d parked it, and cruised the streets of South Hampstead looking for a hospital. But couldn’t remember where they were.

The acting in the film, from Ms Moore, from Alec Baldwin, even from Kristen Stewart, for once leaving her role as vampire-whore, is fantastic. Its a ‘good’ film, even an important film. But its just not a nice film. On the criteria that you come out from that movie and start making suicide pacts. You talk about death, dying and depression. It does give you a slight insight into the nature of that horrendous illness. But not much you didn’t know before.

Though obviously degenerative illness is a big Oscar winner this year, generally.

Clarkson’s disease is different altogether. Its a condition that, if you’re unlucky enough, you are born with. It makes you funny, a bit nasty, ever so belligerent, opinionated, stroppy, offensive as a way of life and terribly aggressive. The only known cure is death by Argentinian hit-squad or being sacked by the BBC. It turns out that the hotel catering for the day’s filming failed to prepare a ‘proper’ meal and offered Mr Clarkson a cheese plate. Cheese???? If they’d have just thrown a slab of raw meat at him it would have all been fine, I’m sure. But a cheese plate? DO I FUCKING LOOK FRENCH?????

And however much we all love Jeremy Clarkson, how would you feel if your husband/wife/child came home from work and told you they’d been punched by the boss for some minor bit of nothing? It is just plain wrong. And to make matters worse for the man, he was seen at Chelsea last night. Oh dear.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

How did we ever become so celebrified? Why is ‘celebrity’ the most sought after, the most revered, the most… most celebrated thing in modern society? Whassit all abaaart?

The front page of the Times today, like this one on the Mirror (but I couldn’t find a nice pic of the Times, its too hi-brow to go banding its cover all over the web, or too slow, perhaps), features the winner of the ‘ugliest man in Britain’ competition. Ok, it actually features Jeremy Clarkson. An official ‘national treasure’. But why on the front page of virtually every national paper? When there’s an election coming up in two months time, which is fairly important, when ISIS are using children to perform their executions now, the world has gone to shit, the economy is wavering and Real Madrid lost at home? So why Clarkson? Because he’s gorgeous? A face made for radio would be a good description. No, its because he’s a ‘celeb’ and therefore he trumps all else.

But despite the fact that it should be a little snippet at the foot of page 8, just under the dog-poisonings at Crufts, what is all the fuss about?

Jeremy Clarkson is a great journalist. Who has elevated himself into a pantomime dame of a bad-boy for the sake of the world’s most successful ‘factual’ tv programme, Top Gear. He plays a role. They all do. And Jeremy’s role is the ‘vox populii’ He says the things that we’d all like to but feel restrained by things like ‘decency’ and ‘suitability’ and ‘appropriateness’. Clarkson feels no such constraint in his role. He says what he thinks; gives it straight, calls a spade a spade. Or on one occasion, much worse. And now, buoyed by the rough, raucous, up-market-thuggish persona he has so long cultivated, he punched his tv producer in what the BBC (bless them) called ‘a fracas’. Pretentious tossers. Because the producer failed to provide food on the set for after filming. And Jeremy looks like he’s starving, doesn’t he? But maybe the producer guy is obnoxious, and deserved of a bitch-slap from Le Clarkson, but who knows. Jeremy was already ‘on a warning’ and thus went 3-and-out. Though only suspended as you don’t really want to bite the hand that feeds you, and Top Gear does generate more income than Gardener’s Week or Songs of Praise. Even combined!!!

I actually like the ‘Jeremy Clarkson’ that I read and watch. He’s anti-PC and for that alone he is refreshing. But he also is an outspoken justifier of selfish bastards who drive gas guzzling petrol monsters. And there are far too few of those around. In fact he is the living embodiment of the right of free speech. Though possibly he takes that freedom a touch too far.

This will only make him stronger.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

I might as well get in the queue now for the i-watch. Where should I stand? Which sleeping bag should I take? How many weeks do I need to take off work so I’m first in line?

I don’t need one. I don’t want one. But on the basis that I didn’t want or need an ipad and now can’t live without it and if a burglar wanted to take it I’d give him one of my children instead; ANYTHING but the ipad, then at some time I’ll ‘need’ an i-watch.

Don’t know why. It doesn’t do anything my current stuff does rather well. I can already tell the time on many devices we have, one of them which already occupies that very space on my wrist. I can already pick up texts and emails on computers, phones and ipad.

Ahhh, but this watch tells you your heart-rate and how many calories you’re burning. Oh, great, so as I watch Sunday afternoon football, slobbed out on the couch with a few beers, six packets of cheesy wotsits and a bumper pack of Waitrose jam doughnuts, I can watch the screen accelerate up the minus scale causing even greater depression than the football alone normally does. Apparently, after 800 calories taken in the watch displays: STOP FUCKING EATING YOU FAT BASTARD!!!!! ENOUGH ALREADY!!!!

I don’t need that.

The watch can tell you how far you’ve travelled (to the kitchen and back), it has a GPS tracker to tell you ‘HERE YOU ARE; JUST WHERE YOU’RE STANDING’, and it has i-pay. That canny device that allows you to pay people. From your sodding watch. Only works in America for now, the land where they still don’t even have chip’n’pin. Though they don’t need it. To counteract fraud over there they have guns. But we’ll have i-pay here soon. So every time you walk past a bus or a tube station, you’ll be throwing a few quid at all the machines without either knowing it or needing it. You’ll be paying for other people’s lunches as you stroll past Pret and buying all manner of things for the good of others just because you forgot to close the app. Its a very altruistic watch with a great range.

It also ‘taps’ you on the wrist when you get a message. So every time you’re offered a PPI claim or penis extension, you get a 450 volts through your arm. Feels a bit like a minor heart attack but you’ll get used to it. Or have a heart attack.

So bring it on. Where do I sign. Get me 2 because the claimed ’18-hour’ battery life will realistically mean ’20 minutes’ and even if its true, how can I go 6 hours every day without it?

Happy Friday. Sorry, must set the watch properly.

A xxxx

There’s a new programme on tv. Another competition. Songs ain’t enough. Voices ain’t enough. X-factor karaoke shit-heads is insufficient. Bakers. Chefs. Dancers. Britain’s got (very little) Talent. Maggot-eaters in Australia. Apprentices. Never enough.

So they’re doing one on artists. Painters. The next Chagall. A future Constable. Rembrandt for the Facebook generation.

I know this to be so because it came on after the news yesterday and I caught the title as I made a mad dash for the remote in case I happened to see even 4 seconds of such shite. Because that’s all it takes to get addicted. And I don’t need no more addictions. Having finally kicked the crack habit, ditched the crystal meth and watched the finale of last season’s Bake Off, I’ve been clean for 5 months, 2 weeks, 4 days.

What is so obsessive about competitions? Who really gives a shit that Ben’s pastry is a bit flat at the edges whereas J’Mal’s cover of Ain’t no mountain high enough was right out there and he gave it everything? Made it his own? I don’t care.

I’d rather they did away with all these talent competitions and just better spent the tv space by showing re-runs of Top Gun, Terminator I and II, The Graduate, Transformers (or absolutely anything else with Megan Fox), Kill Bill and the 1981 Cup Final Replay. Proper tv.

But competitions are the formula that tv companies see as easy and cheap ways to get viewers. Give them a cheap hit, an easy ‘high’ and they’ll come back begging for more, again and again. Like smoking skunk. And just like that, tv competitions can make you psychotic. Can lead to serious mental health issues.

Such as total fucking stupidity. Or perhaps you need that to watch them the first time. Which came first: the idiot or Celebrity Come Dancing on Ice?

Happy Monday

A xxxx

Every day I count my blessings. And then I count the good reasons for not going to Birmingham.

There’s never exactly a good reason for going to the ‘2nd City’ (phah! Chicago it ain’t) but I just like to make long lists of great reasons not to go there. Just in case I get the urge. And yesterday was Cruft’s dog show at the NEC. The 97th good reason of the day for not going to Birmingham. Great. I’ll stay here then. Where I belong.

And see what football might be on tv, as it was FA Cup quarter final day. Oooh, there we are, 5.30, Aston Villa playing West Brom. Local derby. All Brum affair. They’d played each other at Villa Park on Wednesday night in the league, Villa won (their first game in about 4 years) and then faced the Baggies again a few days later under the FA Cup banner.

So the West Brom fans walked to Villa Park; they aren’t allowed to drive, especially as most are drunk most of the time, and it wasn’t worth ‘splashing out’ the £1.20 for bus fare when, if you left early enough, there were 26 pubs to visit on the way.

Villa were 2 nil up. And when they scored their second goal some bunch of morons invaded the pitch in celebration. Then, at the end of the match, in injury time, an even bigger crowd of even bigger morons invaded once more. And this being Birmingham, the stewards couldn’t do much, the controls were pathetic and it all harked back to 1976 when such stupidity was rife. And why are they morons?? Because if people do pitch invasions, there’s a good chance the match will be abandoned by the ref, if there’s danger to players. And if you happen to be the winning team at the time, that’ll cost you a win and you’ll start again, another time, probably behind closed doors. So intelligent morons only invade pitches when their team are losing. Not winning.

Anyway, that was all quite by the by as the main event of the day happened 100 miles to the south at Loftus Road. Where once again, King Harry showed why he is unquestionably the best player in the country at the moment. As he beat QPR 2-1. Rangers feel they were unjustly denied two stone-wall penalties. But that’s only if you consider handballs preventing goals and flooring strikers with the ball no-where near to be penalty offences. I’m not convinced.

And it doesn’t matter. 3 points is what matters and so it was job done.

Just a mention of the top of the Championship where, with 10 matches left to play, there are 4 teams on 66 points and one on 65. Amazing. If I cared about the Championship I might even be excited about that. But all I care about is Spurs, and Harry Kane. Now he is a blessing.

Happy Blessed Sunday

A xxxx