Andy's Glasses

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

On Sunday Spurs pretty much reached their ‘do-or-die’ day with a visit to Burnley. Even though only the most sadly blinkered and optimistic fan would still have been holding out any hope, prior to that match, that our glorious team could somehow squirm our way into the top 4 and claim the Champions League slot that we so obviously deserve, that last hope, like almost all that have preceded it this season, was dashed against the mud in Lancashire. We failed to win. We pretty much completely failed to even turn up. Without wishing to put too much stock into a mere football match, my life pretty much ended when Paulinho’s shot on goal (I think it was ‘on goal’) after the only attacking move in the entire second half, missed the near post by just 30 or 40 yards. Half the Spurs fans, who’d travelled 200 miles just so they could later say ‘yeah, I was THERE when we drew nil-nil with Burnley, I was farkin’ THERE’, half of them were actually laughing, the other half, pretty much crying. I just sat there on my couch with my mouth open. Well, I was about to put some Easter Egg into it, but instead just sat there with jaw a’hanging.

Every year at about this time Spurs go into self-destruct mode and flop through the last 10 games or so like a group of salmon swimming upstream to die. Or a bunch of players looking for their next contracts.

Whereas Arsenal come good. From indifferent form they suddenly become simply unbeatable, at home, away, bloody anywhere. It may be the ‘lack of distractions’ since bowing out of European competition, but they suddenly become invincible. Bastards.

Chelsea struggle a bit, but only by Chelsea standards. Meaning they still beat everyone, they just don’t look quite so comfortable doing it. Whereas Manchester City have gone into ‘we stand by our manager’ mode as they lose the plot totally and forget how to win matches. And as we all know ‘we stand by our manager’ is a euphemism for ‘he’s out’.

Meanwhile in the Championship, which I love now because its not as painful as the Premiership, Bournemouth go back on top as Watford beat Middlesboro near the end of a truly epic season up there in the top three slots.

And tonight QPR play Villa to see who might be next year’s Championship contenders. I’d like to see Villa go down. Mainly because I’m a nasty old git. And I like QPR and feel just one more season (surely it would only be the one) in the top flight would be fun. And Chris Ramsey is a thoroughly good bloke, and Tim Sherwood isn’t.

Next year Spurs need to be top of the league at Easter. By 24 points. Then as we start our usual rubbish we might at least end up with the holy of holies 4th place finish.

Happy depressing Tuesday

A xxxx

They’ve just brought out Fast n Furious part 7. Its a franchise. A very successful one. Built on the formula of ‘drive ’em fast, crash ’em hard’. Never fails. Brilliant.

I haven’t seen any. Not in full. Nor will I bother with the new one. There’s no point. Not like ‘you’ll miss something’ if you just watch a bit when they come round on tv. As they all do, parts 1 to 6, fairly regularly. Its not a case of ‘understanding the plot’ because there are no plots. That’s why they’re so watchable. Just join half way through and enjoy them riding really fast cars really fast-ly. And crashing them. And giving smouldering looks. Lots of smoulder goes on. And if anyone asks you ‘well who’s that then?’ or ‘is that a good guy or a baddie’, just tell them to shut up and just watch the cars crash.

And to listen.

Not to the lines spoken, they’re banal, irrelevant and laughable poor. But to the cars. Listen to the engines.

I kind’a got hooked on the F&Fs when number 1 (or should it be number 0?) appeared late one night on a tv near me. Very near me. And just as the thought ‘oh, not Vin effin Diesel; he’s useless’ went through my mind and my finger poised over the channel-changer, Vin stepped back to reveal a monster. A real monster. In the best sense of the word. A 1970 Dodge Charger R/T. But not just any example. This one was big and black and had a big lump of supercharger sticking so far out of the top of the bonnet that you could only wonder how the driver could see where he was going. And we learned (see, you do learn some things in F&F movies) that this particular car had had ‘work done’. Not botox, exactly, more super-steroids.

And it was that point that the love affair between me and Fast n Furious began.

Because the Dodge Charger R/T was the most ridiculous car ever to leave a production line. Even an American production line in 1970 (when ‘gas’ was under $1 a gallon, would last forever and ‘global warming’ was something that happened every summertime in Hawaii). Because it wasn’t a ‘car’ in any normal sense. It was a 500 horsepower, 7-litre, V-8 drag-racer that had been slightly modified so it could go to Sainsburys once a week and take the kids to school. Very quickly.

And in that movie, Vin Diesel (well, his dad actually, if you are interested in the story) boosted this ultimate street-car racing speed machine up to 1000 horsepower. Which is a bit like giving The Queen another castle. Or giving Ed Miliband another bacon sandwich. Unnecessary and excessive. Doesn’t work with the Queen, Ed Miliband is unnecessary before you start and the Dodge simply oozing testosterone long before Vin’s dad jacked it up. But in cars, excessive is what its really all about. Who wants 4 cylinders when 8 will give you more power, more muscle, and much, much more NOISE.

I need a new hobby now the football’s gone to shit.

Happy bank holiday Monday

A xxxx

Me and my people. I was trying to explain to Mrs Pearly Queen here that I was in fact as much a cockney as she was. That I just spoke more properer than wot she done. That both of us were born within the sound of the Bow Bells, even though they stopped ringing in the war, rendering that definition of ‘cockneyness’ a bit more theoretical than when both of my parents were born, virtually up the clock-tower. Its just that I chose to wear civilian clothes rather than that particular vision of pearliness.

We went to Columbia Road for our twice yearly pilgrimage to London’s best flower market. In the East End. Where Shoreditch meets Bethnal Green. The land of my forefathers. And mothers. Proper Cockneyland. Salt of the earth. Up the apples’n’pairs. Awright love, gissa kiss den, why don’t’cha, stone da crows, my aunt Fanny. That’s how we speak there. Which is why no-one understands anything anyone says. Small price to pay for all that charm.

And the flowers are brilliant. And cheaper than you could buy them anywhere else. So why not buy more than any seven houses could need? I don’t know either; ask Mel. I just go for the banter.

But before you arrive, you have to get to Shoreditch. And although there was very little traffic this morning, as ever it proved to be more difficult than it should have been. For numerous reasons. The first of which is the Borough of Islington’s proud and oft-repeated proclamation of being ‘London’s first 20mph borough’, as if its something to be pleased about. And secondly because people actually adhere to it. They actually drive at 20mph. And not just Prius drivers but loads of normal people as well.

It says in the highway code, and I quote: “when you see a speed limit sign, either ignore it altogether or apply the formula – speed to drive = advised speed limit x 2 plus the number of beers you’ve drunk that morning”. Yet some drivers insist on adhering to these fictional signposts. Yet aren’t bothered about sending text messages whilst at the wheel. That’s a different law altogether, that one. Doesn’t apply on Sundays. Similarly green traffic lights mean ‘finish texting, at your leisure, then, once everyone’s started hooting, pull away as slowly as you can without stalling the car’.

I love Columbia Road, love a chirpy cockney, fucking hate all other road users.

Happy Easter Sunday

A xxxx

Well, they had it; ‘the debate’. All seven (???) political leaders saying how wonderful it would be if their party won the upcoming election.

So the first question is: why was Nicola Sturgeon, leader of the Scottish Nationalists, present and in fact according to most commentators, the winner of the debate, why the fuck was she there? Because she’s part of ‘Britain’. Even though given a choice (which she was), she would not be part of Britain. But she lost that vote, is still desperate for Scottish Independence (though not as desperate as I am for it) and now fancies her chances of aligning her deep-fried, batter-coated party with Miliband so she can detach her nation from Westminster. The ‘Westminster’ she loathes and despises. So a welcome addition to parliament she would be.

Similarly, why was that Welsh bird there? Can’t remember her name. (In fact I didn’t watch the debate, too busy at tai chi). She spoke only about Wales. Which is very nice. But useless for the un-Welsh. And if this debate was so ‘inclusive’ where were the Ulster Unionists? They weren’t absent just because we hate them. If that was the case then the Scots and Welsh wouldn’t have been invited either. Nor Ed Miliband on that criterion.

I’m not sure, but I’ll be fairly surprised if we have a Plaid Cymru candidate on my voting list here in North London. So why were they even invited to the party? And more importantly, this is NOT a presidential election. We are not voting for ‘Miliband’ or ‘Cameron’ but voting for a faceless party representative who does have a second home, paid for on expenses, near to where I live.
So I’m not really convinced of the validity of this debate in the first place. Other than to outline party policy and intention should any of them win a majority, which is very very unlikely.

I do take issue with Ed Miliband though. His horrible insistence that he represents ‘workers’ and will make their lives better, make Britain better. Well I’m a worker. He seems to think that unless you wear overalls and come home every night with a dirty face, you’re not a ‘worker’. It may also surprise Mr Miliband that even bankers work a bit. Ok, they do have 7 hour breaks for lunch and champagne, get chauffeured around from meetings to dinner at the Ritz and spend the rest of the time counting their bonuses received for investments in child labour in the third world, but they do work.

I find Miliband terribly, horribly, creepily, nastily patronising. He likes to ‘dumb things down’. To make things simple so that even we can understand him. Mansion tax will save the NHS. Bollox. Zero hours contracts are evil and must be stopped. Even though Unite, Labour’s biggest sponsor, uses hundreds of them. Hypocrite. And now, Labour will help ‘you’, the people, ‘the workers’ at the expense of bonus-laden, Ferrari-driving bankers. Simplistic garbage. If he wins I shall have to consider assassination. A Guy Fawkes moment.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

Ask any good Brit what ‘Easter’ means and he/she’ll say: ‘a four-day weekend’. Its biblical, innit? You get Good Friday off work, and Easter Monday, plus the Saturday and Sunday in between. We all love Easter. And we eat chocolate. Loads of chocolate. Which has no calories for the entire 4 days. A modern day miracle. Pig out. You know you want to.

And it is symbolic. Of course. Everything in religion is symbolic. So on the Thursday, Jesus had ‘The Last Supper’, then he was killed on the Friday, because the crucifiers wanted the weekend off to watch Roma vs Lazio on Sky. And he rose again on the Sunday. As ya do. If you’re the son of God. All ok so far? Jesus, born to a virgin mother, died and then was resurrected. Nothing unusual there then.

Jews celebrate passover. When the jews were led out of Egypt from their slavery, bondage and a whole host of 50 shades kind of things, through the Red Sea, which God parted for them, having first sent 10 plagues to the Egyptians to soften them up.

Its no coincidence that Easter and Passover coincide. Both are based on the Hebrew calendar and Jesus was Jewish. So The Last Supper was in fact the Passover supper, or Seder, as its called. Almost as we know it and celebrate it now, but with sandals. And the whole passover thing is not to eat bread for 8 days. Because the jews, in their hurry to get out of Egypt, didn’t have time to leaven their bread. They had to get out without popping to Waitrose for some ‘fast acting synthetic yeast’, so they had their bread flat and crispy. Or ‘matzo’ as its now known.

And Jesus too was into matzo. He even said to ‘leave the yeast out’ and bizarrely, in Holy Communion, it is ‘wafer and wine’ to represent the body and blood of Christ, not bread. Because it all happened at Easter/Passover time and a good Jew like Jesus wouldn’t want proper bread.

The Pascal lambs were sacrificed every Friday before Passover and thus a whole other symbolism has arisen where Jesus IS the sacrifice. But as that leads to implications of symbolic cannibalism every time I dig into Kleftiko, we’ll leave that bit out. All gets a bit Jeffrey Dahmer.

The chocolate we eat is eggs. And I love them. Cadburys ones. You can keep your Lindt and Suchard and Hotel Chocolat, I WANT CADBURYS EGGS. And I want them now. Which is good news cos you can’t get them for 9 months a year. Thus I ‘stock up’. Because nothing tastes quite as Easter Eggs. And again, passover is a very eggy time of year as well. Not chocolate ones, but real, egg-flavoured ones. Not as wonderful so you have to eat many more to compensate. Because eggs, coupled with matzo, increase the constipation that all must suffer at passover time. As it is written.

Happy Easter/Kosher Passover/Whatever/Both

A xxxx