Andy's Glasses

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

The best name for any organisation in the world is ‘Dignitas’. Its just right. Perfect. Doesn’t say a lot yet speaks volumes. Other Swiss names are less noble, less dignified, less succinct. Like Sepp Blatter, for example. That says: bumbling buffoon, old git, stupid, stubborn moron. Whereas Dignitas is so neat. Yet they don’t advertise, they don’t employ a Twitter/Facebook campaign to increase sales, they don’t do excessive marketing of any description. Yet they are known by the world. As the place to go to get yourself dead.

And, unlike FIFA, Dignitas are trusted implicitly by everyone. You can’t just turn up and ask them to murder you, they wouldn’t do it. Oddly, FIFA probably would, but it would cost a fortune in bribes. But if you are a genuine, terminal case with a proven and tested irreversible medical degenerative condition, Dignitas will assist you in committing suicide in a clean, painless and yes, dignified manner, at a time of your choosing.

AT A TIME OF YOUR CHOOSING.

There’s nothing to fear but fear itself. Wow. That’s sooooo true, yet such a worthless truism. Doesn’t help you one bit. And we do have fears. Not necessarily of dying but of pain, suffering, incontinence, inability to breathe, to swallow, tubes sticking out of every orifice, of dying in a manner that is not just subjectively horrendous, but that is agony for all around. We don’t like to watch suffering in our loved ones, its horrible.

So this week a man of 52 took himself (and his family) to Zurich for Dignitas to help him to die. Because his tumour had worsened to the point that he could not longer use his legs and his hands were failing too, breathing, swallowing, all starting to fail. So HE made the decision that it was ‘time’. He didn’t want to reach the point where he was hospitalised, bed-bound, intubated and in constant pain. So he pre-empted it with a trip to the Alps. Because if you can’t swallow, you can’t take the suicide pills and its too late.

And I simply cannot understand why here in Britain we are so keen to prevent such a wonderfully humane and kind and helpful situation as choosing your own death so that its a ‘good one’ as opposed to agony for everyone.

Assisted suicide here is called ‘murder’. You go to court. They probably won’t, if the circumstances are as above, put you in jail, but you’ll go through the whole process and be dependent on a jury of your peers (not necessarily bright or enlightened ones) for continued freedom.

Yet oddly, the general consensus among regular people is to allow assisted suicide to take place here. Because that’s what should happen in a civilised fucking country. You shouldn’t have to be rich enough to go to Switzerland just to die peacefully and kindly.

So if the people want it, why are the politicians so unbelievably resistant and negative, throwing up non-existent moral arguments that no-one particularly cares about? Its not their place to do that. They are there to act for us in what we want. And they’re failing. Have failed. Still failing.

There must be checks, obviously. You can’t just get hold of a perfectly healthy but quite rich old spinster aunt and drag her screaming to her noble and peaceful end, that wouldn’t be right.

But to choose when to die; its the mark of civilisation and humanity.

Happy morbid Friday

A xxxx

… I smell the blood of a weasly little Swiss Mun.

Its all, finally, gone to shit at FIFA, the world governing body for football. Or rather, the shit that has been happening for the past quarter of a century has finally come to light. Thanks to that most unlikely of un-footballing nations, America. They may not know the difference between a ‘midfield diamond’ and a corned-beef-on-rye (hold the mustard) but they know about corruption when they see it. And at FIFA they saw plenty. The organisation is rife with it, and has been since 1991. Over a hundred million pounds paid out in bribes by various marketing companies for various World Cup rights, and that’s before we start on the votes and the bids.

Because let’s face it; there is no way on Earth that Qatar would be hosting the 2022 World Cup without some serious dosh changing hands under the table. Our four-yearly international footballing feast is a SUMMER COMPETITION. You can’t play football in 50 degrees. You can barely go to Tescos in an air-conditioned car to buy a pint of milk in 50 degrees. Human rights issues and jihadist funding actually take second place for once to the sheer impracticality of hosting a football competition somewhere where it simply can’t be played. And why would you? The World Cup is supposed to go to ‘footballing nations’.

Russia is a footballing nation. Its also a very horrible nation indeed. So the 2018 World Cup in Russia is also seen as a bit of an anomaly. How could that happen? Ahhhh, cross enough palms and anything can happen.

Fourteen FIFA executives are facing corruption charges. But not Sepp Blatter. Not Teflon Man. In fact the President of FIFA decided on the party line, which was to say how pleased FIFA are that this terrible corruption in their midst will now be cleaned up. Yeah, by someone else. And it begs the truly MASSSSSIVE question: what the fuck has the President been doing not to notice all the shit flying all around him for 17 years? Even if he is truly ‘innocent’ of any corruption, he must surely be the most naive, negligent and imbecilic President of any company ever.

Any decent man would swallow the bullet. But Sepp’s never been decent. He wouldn’t know ‘decent’ if it bit him on the wallet. He’s a tosser.

The Official World Cup sponsors are also, understandably, up in arms and putting pressure on FIFA. McDonalds, so a spokesman said: “takes matters of ethics and corruption very seriously”. Unfortunately, McDonalds isn’t so serious about the obesity of 2 entire generations. Whereas Coca-Cola, the other gut-expanding sponsor of this athletic event (lucky Americans don’t do ‘irony’ really) are similarly disgusted and feel the competition is now forever ‘tarnished’.

This is what you do:

1. Get rid of Blatter, now, today, right now, kill him if you have to.
2. Move the 2018 World Cup to England.
3. Move the 2022 World Cup to England.
4. Appoint Gary Linneker standing President of FIFA.
5. Get rid of FIFA altogether so Gary can go back to Match of the Day.

This may be awful but its not exactly a surprise, is it?

Happy Thursday

A xxxxx

Why does it always come back to Batman? He obviously had a much greater influence on my childhood than I first thought. What would Freud say? And would it be in German anyway?

But to summon Batman they used ‘the Bat Signal’. A beam of light in the shape of a bat which lit up the sky for all to see, glowing across the clouds. Massive. Couldn’t miss it. Unless Batman was in the bath. Or eating dinner inside the house. Or watching a movie. Or just ‘out somewhere’.

Today we’d use an app. A Bat-app. A Bapp. Whatever. Because its so much quicker and easier and, assuming Batman is never parted from his Bat-Smart-Phone, will get instant response. Even if he is in flagranti with Lois Lane at the time. (I know, that was Superman’s bird, not Batman’s, but everyone knows she played away). His phone would buzz, Lois would think it was vibrator time, and he’d be off like a… like a… like a man dressed as a funny bat. With Robin, who’d been sitting quietly in the corner of the bedroom, already in costume.

Because we like apps. Well, I don’t, I fucking hate them as some new form of techno-wizardry that hails directly from The Devil himself. But other people do. They love them. And in a world increasingly dominated by (tossers) people walking down the roads apping all the sodding time, Apps are how the world operates. And those who lack apps are destined to become the dinosaurs.

And the latest casualty is the Black Cabs. The Hackney Carriages of London Town. As iconic an image as you can get for our City. Now under massive threat by the advancing curse of the Uber. Which is set to be the Jurassic Extinction of regular taxis unless they wise up.

On Sunday we went out for dinner. Restaurant in Covent Garden at 8. But we had a drinks invitation first, in the West End. And we drank more than expected and it got late, so instead of the intended 15 minute walk (it was 5 to 8) I said ‘I’ll get a taxi’. But before I could raise in hand and whistle, Tory-Boy, the son-in-law, had flashed his app, summoned the god Uber and a Prius pulled up next to us before I could even say ‘what’s Uber?’ They send you a little map showing the precise position of your driver relative to you and stating ‘2 minutes away’. Its impressive.

Ahhh, but the Somalian driver hasn’t done ‘The Knowledge’ like the Jedi Taxi Drivers of old, he doesn’t have that encyclopaedic knowledge of every London street, passage, shop, brothel and alleyway, does he? Fuck no. He’s got a satnav, what more ‘knowledge’ does he need? Ok, he may be a jihadi rapist with a criminal record (‘save your kisses for me’), which no London Cabbie can, but he’s cheap. My mate Bobby took an Uber to a meeting in the City and it cost him 17 quid. Took a taxi home, exactly the same journey; £38.

So, as much as I love black cabs, and I do, they need to wise up a bit. Get an app or something. And they really need to become more competitive price-wise for longer journeys.

You can’t ‘ban Uber’ as a response to competition. You have to compete. Or become consigned to history. Sad but true.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

I know companies get very protective of their ‘intellectual property’, aggressively, litigiously so. Try and open a shop called ‘Apple’ and see what happens. Even if you actually sell apples and nothing else. You’d have fifty-seven Madison Avenue suits on your doorstep with injunctions and court orders before you could say ‘we’re open’. All charging YOU $2000 an hour. Because branding is everything and companies who spend zillions a year building up that brand don’t want to see it borrowed/stolen/abused by an innocent would-be shopkeeper from Grimsby who might actually be named ‘Ronald Macdonald’.

But there are limits. Or there should be.

Rhianna is starting a new fashion line. Another one. She’s got loads already but ‘needs’ a new one. And she’s calling it Robyn. Because that’s her actual, parent-given, birth name. I never knew that. Never cared.

But Batman cared. He always did. So DC Comics are in a ‘trademark war’ with Rhi-Rhi because they ‘own’ Robin, the slightly effete, symbolically gay, something-of-a-loser, sidekick to the Caped Crusader. So you see the problem? Robin. Robyn. Oh no. And DC Comics have complained that ‘the name is identical/highly related’ and that this ‘is likely to cause confusion or deceive the public’.

So you can see the problem. Someone may go on to Rhianna’s ‘Robyn’ site because they’ve been kidnapped and strapped to a table above which is a massive circular saw, slowly descending towards their navel and instead of being saved from sure death they’ll instead receive a little black strappy dress with sequins in size 8. When they’re actually a size 6.

So to avoid this terrible ‘confusion’ they need to simply announce that Robin with an ‘i’ only deals in underwear worn OUTSIDE his clothes and Robyn with a ‘y’ doesn’t generally wear underwear at all and if she does she wears nothing else with it. I hope that avoids an expensive and unnecessary court saga.

Just as importantly; England won the cricket. Amazing. I always knew and had total confidence in them. Even on Thursday when we were shit and on Saturday when it had all gone to darkness. Then in steps Ben Stokes, the new, improved, tatooed version of Ian Botham and destroys the New Zealanders. A century in 85 minutes and three wickets in the second innings. Flintoff reborn. I love cricket.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx