Andy's Glasses

This is Mel in Vienna. Could be New York, Marbella, Ethiopia or Croydon. She sees some sunshine, a chink (I’m allowed to use that word in this context) in the clouds, a glimmer behind a wall, and she’ll turn and face it, anywhere, anytime. And smile. Because the sunshine makes her feel happy. Ahhhhhhh. I know, it sounds pathetic, but in fact its not, its good sense, good health and logevity. And animals as well as Mel and other humans, get depressed in the dark, dull winter months due to lack of sunshine. SADS. Seasonal affectation Disorders. Very sads.

We’ve had a long and varied stream of (worthless?) advice about sunshine. Its good for you. It’ll kill you. It’s great for the skin, it’ll ruin your skin, you’ll get cancer, you’ll live longer, you’ll be happier, its depressing, and on and on and on.

In the 70s we used to rub oil onto our skin. Sun protection was unthought of, the oil was to help you fry and moisturise your skin so you could burn it longer before going to hospital. And we went from Baby Oil, as an old girlfriend used always on the beach in California, to factor 50, in 30 years. Mainly because the Aussies invented a hole in the ozone layer to become paranoid about.

Well fuck them! New tests have shown that sunbathing makes you live longer. You shouldn’t, you should be a dried up prune with skin cancer, but its not the case. In fact they’ve shown that vitimin D (wot we get from the sun, as well as a tan) deficiency increases a whole range of the usual horrors, including melanomas. Go figure.

The upshot is; they really don’t know shit from shinola when it comes to the Sun. Or vitimin D. I’ve never been a pill popper, not vitimins anyway. But I love the sun, so I’d rather just go on holiday.

Like Kim Jong Un. Well, he went somewhere. The fat little leader of the North Korean peoples disappeared for 6 weeks, only to return yesterday without much comment. Rumours were rife that he’d died, he’d eaten so much as to become immobile, he fell and injured a leg. He could have been kidnapped but unlikely the ransom would cover the food bill for Little Billy 2 Dinners. Because apparently he has a ‘thing’ about Swiss Cheese. Very healthy stuff, even without sunshine. But his ‘thing’ is of an Elvis kind of nature; obsessive, compulsive and with no-one allowed to comment or suggest moderation. Not and live to see tomorrow from outside solitary confinement.

I’ve missed Kim. The world wasn’t the same without him. No, I didn’t actually notice either.

Happy sunny Tuesday (even though its wetter than wet out there)

A xxxx

I had to look on a map yesterday to find out where, and in fact what, Estonia might be. As a kid I learned my geography of England by the location of the significant football teams. A process that would seem, whilst in my expanded horizons, to be continuing today. The rule is: if they don’t play football there I have no need to know where it is. So I sat watching last night’s match and in the quiet bits, the boring bits, the frustraing bits, I learned about Estonia. So I had time to be very thorough and very extensive. Lots of time.

The ‘where’ is easy. Estonia lies on the Eastern shore of the Baltic, just below the Gulf of Finland. I never knew Finland had its own Gulf either. You see how educational football is? And across that gulf, to the north, lies Finland. The West Coast of Estonia is on the Baltic. To the south is Latvia and its other border, to the East is Russia. Or, ‘where the problem lies’.

Because historically Estonia has always fancied itself to be Scandinavian. It has belonged, at points in its history, to both Denmark and Sweden, and is filled with fair-haired people demanding free sex and charging 17 quid for a pint of beer. But in the mid-20th Century Russia developed other ideas. And poor Estonia, sitting in a very important strategic position, was swallowed into Soviet Hell along with so many other nations with the tragic geographical misfortune to be anywhere near that monster.

Flash forward, the wall came down, Pink Floyd rose to power, communism was difficult to sustain in a land flowing with billionaires driving Bentleys, the USSR split up and in about 1987 Estonia became a free republic once more. And it does ok. Its ‘rich’ for a baltic state, and part of the EU. Poor bastards. They thought they had it bad under the Russians. So now it can once more get in touch with its inner Scandanavian. Even though they’ve never made a tv series like the Bridge or Wallander, never written books like The Girl with the tattoo on her Arse, Do they not have murders in Estonia? That inspire ‘popular international culture’??

Tallin, the capital, is known as ‘the Las Vegas of the Baltic’. Which is a bit like being ‘the Knightsbridge of Burnley’.

With a population of under 1.5 million Estonians, England should have trounced Estonia. Annihilated them. Beaten them soundly and reassuringly. Yet that wasn’t the case. So the noble Estonians, seeing England in trouble, had the decency to have their captain removed from the field of play, to give Rooney’s boys a better chance, playing against just 10 men. Still not much joy from England. Who eventually managed the single, deflected, solitary goal from a set piece. Leaving Estonia to mourn.

But what places Estonia culturally and realistically as more Russian than Scando is the fact that they keep their fans behind bars. Metal meshwork separated the crowd from the pitch. Ya never get that in Stockholm. Nor Oslo, even Helsinki. But you do in most other ex-Russian countries because the people are monsters, racists, anti-semites and thugs. Which I base on nothing other than ‘gut feeling’.

How’s your gut feeling today?

Happy monday

A xxxx

Now here’s a funny thing. Two-and-a-half years ago, whilst walking round Ayers Rock (ok, ‘Oluru’ ya PC pedant) with Bulawayo Johnno, he told me of a film that ‘I simply HAD to see’. Yeah, ain’t they all. It was called ‘Searching for Sugar Man’ and its ‘brilliant’. Yeah, ain’t they all. He gave me a precis but to be honest, it was in the mid-40s, I was dehydrated, exhausted and jet-lagged, so his words just washed over me. As they always do even when I’m hydrated and in my own time-zone.

In the ensuing 3 weeks, 7 flights and 47 koala bears, the conversation was forgotten. But not lost. They never are. They’re stored. In a little cabinet in the corner, just above my left ear, called ‘shit and stuff’.

Fast forward to June this year and my birthday. Which you forgot, ya bum. But the elder daughter didn’t forget and her and hubby bought me a dvd. Called ‘Searching for Sugar Man’. Telling me they’d seen it and ‘its brilliant’. I rumaged around for that earlier conversation and found it. Hmmmmm.

Then I forgot all about it once more.

Until last night when amazingly we were in. And Mel said: be great if we had a film to watch. No comment from me. And she rummaged and came up wit this dvd. What’s ‘Searching for Sugar Man’?? she asked. OMG. A ‘sign’.

What a superb movie. Its a documentary about the most fabulous musician that no-one’s ever heard of. Unless you happen to be South African. Even though the musician in question is a Mexican American from Detroit called Rodriguez. And he wrote and sang fantastic songs. And sang them beaufully. But they weren’t 60s kind of songs as everyone else sang. Rodriguez was a proto-Bob Dylan and he sang songs about things that actually mattered. He was a working class kid who wrote about unfairness, about misery, about life’s little pleasures, about how its ok to question the establishment and complain about it. And unlike Dylan, you could actually hear the words. Sadly though, no-one wanted to. Rodriguez had the top producers of the day (Detroit was Motown, so music was right there) lining up to work with him. The record labels fought over him. And no-one bought a single fucking copy of his albums. Well, maybe his mum. An aunt. So after 2 albums, both commercial failures, rumours started that at a disastrous concert, Rodriguez had killed himself. Voilently (gun or fire, there were tales of both) and in full view of the crowd of… not that many. End of Rodriguez, the music and the man.

Except somehow, one of the 15 copies in circulation made its way to Cape Town. And its anti-establishment message just ‘hit the spot’ massively amoung the young whites who, under apartheit, hated their country, their government, the grotesque unfairness in which they were forced to live and their complete lack of any freedom. Blah, blah, blah, they estimate 500,000 copies of Rodriguez albums sold in the province. And he was a god. But only there.

The movie is the story of 2 South Africans who tried to find the true story of their hero and their 25 year quest to do it.

And its wonderful, its marvellous and fantastically feel-good and up-beat.

Now wouldn’t it be an ironic tragedy if the dvd only sold copies in South Africa and not the rets of the world? History repeating?? Don’t let it happen. Buy it today. You’ll thank me. And Natalie, and Bulawayo Johnno.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

After the news on tv last night came Graham Norton. If you don’t know Graham, its Johnny Carson meets Judy Garland meets Riverdance. Very funny, very gay, very Irish. And generally, I’m not the biggest fan. But he does pull in some majorly A-list guests to abuse and… and… well, what does he do to them? He talks to them sufficiently about their latest book/film/album to meet contractual obligations, chats about other interesting things that his researchers have dug up and then the rest of the time he just takes the piss. In his ‘harmless, you-wouldn’t-hit-a-gay-Irishman’ kind of way that would be endearing except I find myself in the position that I would hit him. Hard.

But anger management issues aside, I kept La Norton on because he had John Cleese as a guest and if he’d never done anything since the Dead Parrot sketch he’d be a God. But he did more. So much more. And is wonderfully funny. Who’d’a thought that? Also on was Kevin Peterson. The greatest cricketer since WG Grace. Since Garry Sobers. The best batsman since… no, the best ever. He said so in his book. Along with some interesting views on the rest of the English cricket team. And he is nothing if not passionate about England cricket. Patriotic as the Queen. Not Graham Norton, the real one. Except KP is as South African as PW Boetha. As Apartheit. As Oscar Pistorius. As biltong (texture of shoe-leather, taste of wet socks, delicious).

Yet as with most sportspeople, they simply aren’t very interesting, other than their sporting tales of hilarity. Which in a game as inherently funny (?) as cricket, truly leave the crowd in convulsions. Even though it looked like they were asleep. The revelations in KP’s new book about the bad side of the gentleman’s game are controversial. But no-one really cares. Even though as a batsman, on his day, he was incredibly brilliant. Though his days weren’t as many as the not-his-days.

The other guest was Taylor Swift. And I’m such a big fan I would definitely be a stalker at one of her houses, if I knew where any of them were. And I love her music. Its aimed at me. Teenage tales of unrequited love in the school yard. My boyfriend chucked me so I’m gonna burn his underwear drawer. Songs that all middle-aged married men can relate to. But I don’t care, I love the music. Though I’d never seen her speaking before. And it was awful. Because she is bright, clever, funny and highly intelligent. Who’d think such a thing? British songstresses are thick as shit. Cheryl Cole. Jesse J. KP’s wife (don’t worry, no-one can ever remember her name) who ‘sang’ with Liberty X, that wonderful, 10-minute wonder mime artists who won some early karaoke, Simon Cowell type show. But not like ‘my’ Taylor. Writing her own songs before she could walk. 20 zillion dollar contract for her 9th birthday. And truly wonderful. Talented. And although I still find room for Hendrix, Talking Heads, The Clash and so many other gritty, manly, stuff-of-my-generation music, I would find room for Ms Swift on my autochanger any day. As Shania Twain proved conclusively: if the singer is sufficiently gorgeous, country music can be almost acceptable.

Happy Saturday-almost-Sunday

A xxxx

It was always going to be a battle. There were always destined to be winners and losers. The victors and the vanquished. And the making of history. Though everything makes history; a trip to Sainsburys, having the car washed, taking a piss. We just need to be selective about what gets consigned to the history books and what is unworthy. And of course, how that history then unfolds.

And thus Wayne Rooney and Nigel Farage didst battle it out. Both engaged in foregone conclusions, it was always going to be a matter of ‘how big a victory’ and how it would be accepted. A battle for headlines.

Farage is today celebrating the first UKIP member of parliament, elected yesterday in Clacton-upon-Sea. A win that was never really in doubt. When the shit hits the fan, Essex man turns to the right. Even Essex woman, so it would appear, though many didn’t realise that they were actually allowed to vote. Being as they’re not like normal women who won the vote in nineteen-twenty-whatever. But in repsonse to David Cameron’s namby-pamby, wishy-washy form of government, trampled on by European legislation, failure to address immigration issues and generally being a bit of an upper class twit, the Tory ‘faithful’ (phah!!) abandoned their party in droves to hook up with UKIP. Whether this is yet another ‘protest’ vote, as it counts for pretty much nothing other than a statement of discontent, and those same good voters will change back to their customary blue rosettes next year, remains to be seen.

More significant in many ways was the result of the other by-election in Heywood & Middleton. No idea either, but way ‘up north’, in the Labour heartland. UKIP didn’t win there, but they came very very close, losing by just 617 votes. Yet really, this victory for Farage’s purple team is way more impressive than Clacton. Because to turn the tories of Clacton 10 degrees to the right is easy. Many conservatives see UKIP as ‘how the conservatives should really be’, the ‘old style’ conservatives, you know, white, English, racist, misogynist, xenophobic men. Whereas traditional labour voters have a long way to travel to hook up with Farage. They have common interests though. Beer, fags and McFlurries. And UKIP are less elitist than the Tories, and try to appeal to the common man. In most cases, the very common man. So their ‘very close second’ in that election is highly significant because it shows the massive discontent Labour have with their party and specifically with Ed Milliband, its hapless leader. The forgetful one.

Ironically, if this voting trend is representative of the next general election, Ed Milliband could actually end up as the beneficiary of so many new UKIPpers. Why that is really is too boring to bother explaining, especially as you’re not that bright, so just trust me on that.

But all is not bad news. England thrashed San Marino 5-0 at Wembley last night. FIVE NIL!!!! Wow. But that, oddly, is not very impressive. Sounds like it should be but San Marino are, officially, FIFA ranked, the worst team in the world. So there is massive disappointment that we didn’t score more, impress more, against a team of bricklayers, chemists and accountants. Our massively over-paid superstar representatives of the finest league in the universe, apparently underperformed. And none more so that Wayne Rooney. Our captain. Our leader. Our main scumbag.

So I make that Farage 1, Rooney 0.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

I hate shopping. I used to enjoy a troll round the high streets, back in the day, the boutiques round Carnaby Street, the novelty shops in Covent Garden, obviously any of the shops in Soho that had curtains on the window and an inflatable doll as the doorman. Then someone standardised the high street. Starbucks. Next. Boots the effin chemists. Phones For Us, Fones for You, AnyPhone, More Fuckin’ Fones. McDonalds, All Bar One, Pret. All the same. Every shopping centre, every road. Boring, boring, boring. No-one realised that you can’t actually standardise humans in the same way. Some of us want different things. Like inflatable dolls.

Then came the internet and the game was changed once more. In fact the game is almost up for video/dvd rental shops that were the dominating feature of every shopping parade for so long. No longer needed. Superfluous to requirements. Travel agents are a dying breed too. We book holidays online. No more ‘brochures’, no more having some smiling saleslady extolling the virtues of the Parador del Mar with its fine dining (congealed buffet), luxury health spa (broken cycle machine) and the artists impression of the magnificent infinity pool (due for completion some time in 2027 as long as the funding comes along). We now take virtual tours round resorts and by licking the app on the screen, you can actually taste the food to make sure its fresh.

The only stores to not merely survive but thrive in the post-internet world are those involved in computer-free activities. Gyms have increased in number by 114% since 2003. Why? They’re horrible places of pain and suffering. Whereas, ironically, fish’n’chip shops have also increased by a whopping, batter-coated 84%. Presumably they’re buying a take-away on the way home from the gym next door. So fitness and fatness are still worthy of the Great British High Street.

And up by a staggering 173% comes tattoo parlours. Once exclusively for drunk sailors and builders, now even the Queen has a tattoo. On her face. A great big ‘SPURS’ banner, just under her crown. If only. Though apparently she does have a ‘tramp stamp’. Well why not? She can afford it. And tattoos now cross the class divide. Samantha Cameron has one, and she’s posh. Wayne Rooney has loads and he’s a hairball.

This is a gap in the market. An opportunity not equaled since the Sinclair C5 (what?). Not since Betamax has something this big come along. Ya ready:

www.tattoo-yourself.com

You download the software and special, super 3-d ‘inkjet’ printer with needle attachment (patent pending), choose your design from the massive selection, or even create your own using our special programme guaranteed to misspell at least one word out of 7, for authenticity, and just insert the relevant body-part into the printer (which come in 5 sizes: Victoria Beckham, Cheryl Cole’s Arse, Small, Normal and Fat Bastard) and just 4 hours of sheer agony later, 3 hospital visits and a possible amputation for gangrene, you have your very own, personally designed and created, tattoo. Probably upside down. But there ya go.

Press 1 to go to the payment page and checkout

Press 2 for a lovely thursday,

A xxxx

Do you remember the Lib-Dems? Liberal Democrat Party of England, Britain and Cleggland? They used to be a soggy, minor force in politics before they vanished up their own trouser-legs in a rage of indignation and boredom. They died in 2015 when Nick Clegg’s mum decided to vote UKIP and Vince Cable was murdered by his vicar who deemed the act ‘a humanitarian mission’. Can’t fault that logic.

In a feeble attempt to try and gain some support from somewhere, from anywhere, bloody ISIS would do, except they can’t vote here and have issues with democracy anyway, Clegg said he was prepared to allow the building of a new airport runway somewhere in the South East. Maybe knock down the Houses of Parliament and have one there. Certainly not at Heathrow. Heaven forbid that the most logical place to put another runway should be the place to have one. Just because its everyone’s airport of choice, its accessible for London and it generally works is no reason to make it the international hub it cries out to be. No. Put the runway in Gatwick, a mere 7 hours of misery, train delays or gridlock from anywhere approximating ‘London’. Or Stanstead. Loads of land round there. Because no-one wants to fucking be in Stanstead; its too far away. Maybe in the middle of Croatia, loads of space there. We could have ‘London-Zagreb’ airport. Makes as much sense as ‘London-Gatwick’. But its all to no avail because the rest of the Lib-Dems said emphatically that they will have nothing to do with any more runways and vetoed the idea altogether. Although as they have nothing much to do with the management of our country, it makes no difference either way really.

Their reasons for deciding against another runway (assuming they get into power, yes, very funny, or are sufficiently represented in the next parliament to even have some minor influence over events) is for Green reasons. Too much carbon. They won’t sanction more runways until planes become more energy efficient. Using dilethium crystals, presumably, like they did on the Starship Enterprise. “I cannae get mooore pooower, Captain”. Bloody lib-dems, they want everyone to drive a Prius and business leaders to row over the Atlantic on canoes. Tossers.

The London Wasps rugby team are moving. Again. Ok, they’ve moved quite a bit in the last 20 years, but always near enough to London to retain their status as a Capital club. But now they’ve agreed a move to a new ground. In Coventry. Coventry. Horrible East Midlands town of no redeeming qualities, famous for people not speaking to each other. The last person of any interest to come from that city was Lady Godiva. Ahhh but its good for the club, good for the financial stability, good for everyone. BUT WHAT ABOUT THE FANS???? What about those who love Wasps and watch them play every match and wear their replica shirts and revere Lawrence Delaglio and don’t want to shlep a hundred sodding miles every weekend up the motorway? Never mind they’ll get new fans. Who ride naked to the ground on horseback then ignore each other for the entire game.

What a mess.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

Galliano is back. Hooray. The disgraced former head of Dior fashion designer with the stick-on dreadlocks and a distinct dislike of Jews is now chief dressmaker for the label Maison Martin Margiela. You know, that fabulous company who made a dress with, errr, like, hmmm, sleeves and straps and stuff. Anyway, Galliano’s their man. He’s ‘cured’. He’s controlled his alcoholism. On the wagon. I’m not sure if you can ‘cure’ anti-semitism, but the alcohol, thing of the past, mate. Because he was blind, rip-roaring drunk when, in a Paris cafe, he called a woman a ‘jewish bitch’ followed by ‘jewish c**t’. In case the ‘bitch’ comment wasn’t sufficiently offensive. Ahhhh, it was the booze talking. Love jews. Never had an anti-semitic thought in me life, your honour, honest.

Alcohol does many things. But mainly it removes (in sufficient quantity) inhibitions. It is not a drug reknowned for enhancing thought processes or helping create a political or social standpoint. It just makes the drinker more likely to voice an existing view, quite loudly, somewhat aggressively and a bit more extremely. The thought was already there, the booze simply liberated it to the outside world.

I hope his titty-tape loses all its sticky. Well, I generally hope that anyway.

And here we are, just weeks after the courts of South Africa showed the world how stupid they can be with legless sportspeople, back there for yet another man-shoots-woman case at trial. But this time its a British man, Shrien Dewani, on trial for paying someone else to shoot his lovely wife on their honeymoon. Allegedly.

Dewani probably looked into the old ‘shoot her through the bathroom door’ method of ‘assisted suicide’ now legal in South Africa, but found to his dismay that the honeymoon suite had glass internal doors, which would make the ‘suspected intruder’ plea a bit thin. Plus, unlike Pistorious, he didn’t have his own gun shop to hand. So they drove in pre-arranged taxi to a slum (sadly still very easy to find in Cape Town, much harder to avoid in fact) where they were ‘held up’ by robbers, blah, blah, blah, she ends up shot dead, he left playing the distraught and devastated widow. But the killers were caught (“can’t miss him, big black guy with a gun, officer”) and it transpired that they had been paid to put on the little show. Hmmmm. And we all thought ‘why???’ Well, I thought ‘why?’. Why would you marry someone and have them murdered a week later? Made no sense. Takes months to hate a wife that much. Well, at least 6 weeks. And it was all dull and drab and another protracted, boring trial and then one word appeared in the press yesterday which was a serious game-changer. ‘Bisexual’. Shrien Dewani was ‘bisexual’. And suddenly, the whole feel of the case has instantly changed. Its interesting, exciting. Male prostitutes, German ones at that, fetish sex, sleazy clubs, on-line shirt-lifting, its simply wonderful. If we could get Galliano into the picture it would be ‘the perfect crime’. For spectators anyway.

Happy tuesday

A xxxx

There are many ways to skin a cat.

What the fuck is that supposed to mean, other than for the sadistic felinaphobes among us? Have you ever skinned a cat? Ever thought about it?? No, can’t say its uppermost in my thoughts most days, but that’s the expression we’re stuck with so, like all good students, we must stick with it until something better comes along. Many ways to eat an aardvark. Many ways to hate Nick Clegg. Many ways to skin Nick Clegg. Many ways to start the universe.

And, of course, there are many ways to play football.

Arsene Wenger, stroppy, aggressive, violent, don’t-fuck-with-me, tough guy manager of Arsenal, has for years condemned teams for ‘not playing properly’, or saying Frenchisms like, ‘ahh, but that’s not football’, normally after a Stoke match. And true, those events can be a touch more orthopedic than regular sport, but that’s not the point. Wenger has always had faith, belief and total commitment to ‘the beautiful game’, to one-touch perfectionism and walking the ball into the net. He’s obsessed with never ever having any kind of ‘plan B’. That beauty will conquer all. That is his philisophie (note the foreign spelling) and it has not been without its successes. In terms of possession, Arsenal lead the league, always. Its what they do. Ok, sometimes its not best productive, like in the Spurs match, which begs the question of what’s the point of all that possession if you don’t do nuffink with it? Its chewing gum. Just goes on and on, is vaguely pleasant for the first half hour, but then just becomes something you do that leads to no satisfaction, no end point, no nuffink.

Chelsea are different. Morinho is different. He’s what we call a ‘pragmatist’. Which is like a ‘pugilist’ but much more so. You simply can’t beat teams like Arsenal (and there’s only really one or two others in the world who play in such a precise, definite and limited way) on their own terms. Which is what Wenger believes should always be the case. You have to find other ways to beat them. Namely; you have to break their rhythmn. You have to stop them passing the ball around so tidily. BUT, you’re not allowed to kill any of them. Which makes it more tricky. And Chelsea walked that fine line yesterday. The line between stopping them and killing them. Cahill almost crossed it, but there again so did Danny Welbeck for the Arse. And on Match of the Day last night, they spent 45 seconds drooling over the sublime skills of Eden Hazard and 7 minutes looking at really really horrible fouls that Chelsea used to ‘break up the play’. And you know what: its football. Every much as when Barcelona pass the ball 7,436 times without intervention.

Then there was Fabregas. Who applied the coup de gras to his old club with a(nother) sublime pass over the top for his new best mate Diego Costa to run on to and (obviously) score. We’ll never know whether (as Arsenal say) Fabregas didn’t want to return to the team wot spawned him and had signed the deal with Chelsea by January. Or as Cesc maintains, that Arsenal didn’t want him back. Either way, I wish he’d come to Spurs.

Talking of which. We won yesterday. Hooray. First for a long time. Deserved, undeserved? Who gives a shit. Not I, that’s for sure. And in highlights we looked great, breaking with speed and movement. The other 86 minutes apparently we weren’t very good. Never mind. One step at a time.

Oh very happy Monday

A xxxx

Yesterday was Yom Kippur. The Jewish day of ‘atonement’. Judgment Day, in Terminator speak. The day when all good jews, and numerous pretty bad ones, don’t eat for 25 hours. Our ‘days’ are different. Better. Longer. More jewish. Hungrier.

And the standard understanding of both the day and the fast is that you starve (like we in the West cannot afford a few lost calories in the course of an average McDonalds/Michelin-starred week?) for a day as a ‘punishment for those sins committed in the preceding year. Sort of a ‘short sharp pain’ leaving the page blank to act like a total scumbag next year, and still hold your season ticket for heaven when its all done and dusted. Yet that’s completely wrong. That’s a particularly Christian type interpretation. No disrespect to Christians. They’ll know when I’m disrespecting them.

But their world is one of ‘forgive me, Father, for I have sinned’, and three Hail Marys later (not in the American Football sense, unless the sinner happens to be a quarterback) abolution is granted, you’re back on track for that heavenly highway. Even if you stole a car, raped a dog and murdered your mother. The Chrisitian God is very fogiving. You sin, you confess, you’re forgiven.

Our God is well hard. And ‘atoning’ is more subtle.

Yom Kippur is not the ‘most important day of the jewish year’, despite the fact that its the only day when most of us are actually prepared to take the day off work. The sabbath is ‘protected’ by its own personal commandment. Observe the seventh day to keep it holy. And although that was officially removed by secular society after a petition to the Pope by Ikea, The Sabbath day is well holy. But Yom Kippur is different. The idea is not to ‘suffer’ a day’s starvation to repent, to be punished for sins. No. Its about taking yourself onto such a spiritual plane that you’re almost detatched from your own body, which thus needs not to eat, drink, wash or involve in animalistic acts, however much you want to. You enter such a spiritual place that you simply don’t require feeding. And whilst there, you think how you’re going to improve as a person for the next year. And it can be subtle. We, as a religion, never deal in the concept of ‘perfection’, in a truly ‘Barcelona in their day’ or Brazil 1970 kind of way. We know that ‘man is flawed’, woman too, though she can use Botox. And so sinning is allowed. Thank God. Because we’re humans and we fuck up. Some of us much much more than others. You know who you are.

So you pray on Yom Kippur. And you reach a plane akin to that of angels, almost heavenly, and from there, you find your better person. Or, for me and the Legend, you find out what is exactly wrong with Spurs back four, until the rabbi tells you to stop talking whilst others are busy on a self-improvement mission.

So today, having fasted, having cleansed, having discussed at great length the failings of our football team; I feel better. Lighter. Holier. And a bit sick from the traditional ‘break-fast’ or speed-eating competition that marks that day’s end.

Happy sabbath day for those of that persuasion.

A xxxx