Andy's Glasses

This is Spurs new stadium. And its wonderful. It will become a beacon for the good, the holy, the noble and the brave. And they’ll have to be a bit brave as this spectacular edifice, this monument to sport and all its riches, sits basically in Sodom & Gomorra central. In the urban slum that is Tottenham. The last notable ‘wow!’ that the high road received was when Turjit Akbal put a new sign over his take-away depicting a rotating kebab. And it lit up at night. Until Turjit stopped paying his electricity bill. But as a kebab shop, it ticks all the boxes: its cheap, spicy, very tasty, is fab when you’re too drunk to appreciate the difference, and its quite near a general hospital.

And I’m happy that Spurs aren’t moving. They’re staying where they should, where they belong (among the massage parlours and fish & chip shops and used car part emporia), in Tottenham. Because for Tottenham Hotspur to play their home games in Esher would be horrible. Or Croydon, Southend or Walthamstow even. “We are Tottenham”, sing the faithful every week, “from the Lane” and thus will it continue. As opposed to: “We are Tottenham, from Ashton-under-Lyme”.

But staying is not always the easy thing it implies. Because if you build the new ground on top of the old one, you can’t do it whilst they’re playing. Someone would get hurt. Going up for a header when a 60 metre crane drops half a new stand on you. And so, the ‘seamless transfer’ is now not going to be quite as seamless. A local company (Arsenal fans) are appealing against the compulsory purchase order of their poxy, worthless little site, just to stall things. Bastards. And so now, it would appear, Spurs will be displaced for the entire 2017-18 season. Which is a bit of a problem. 20 matches, no fixed abode. We can either play them at a whole variety of changing venues, we could use Wembley for some, but not for all of them due to ‘other commitments’ and we can’t use the Olympic Stadium because West Ham, being hateful, vengeful swines, won’t let us. The only other option, the horror of horrors… MK Stadium, Milton (fucking) Keynes. 60 miles up the motorway, in godforsaken no-where-land, with barely a kebab shop in sight. What an awful thought. Who’ll pay the petrol money?

Though if you stay on the motorway for just a bit longer you can instead go to Manchester United to see their new, recently signed, 145 million quids’ worth of global superstars recently added to their ranks. Even though they’re still losing. And although money has never been a problem for them Mancs, the richest club in the world, (despite the Glazers’ best efforts) their year out of Champions League football will cost them dearly. Never mind; sell Danny Welbeck and you make up some of the difference. In fact, sell him to your biggest rivals (ok, so are Liverpool, certainly Man City, but in terms of pure hatred?), Arsenal for 16 million pounds. When the average football boot cleaner goes for £25 mil, and a hot-dog vendor for 32. Panic buying is one thing, but panic selling? I smell rats. And wish young Danny had come to Spurs.

Happy thursday,

A xxxx

People who use electronic cigarette devices are called ‘vapers’. They ‘vape’. They don’t smoke. Because instead of noxious shit and tar and dead leaves and stuff, WE now instead inhale our nicotine in a harmless… stuff. In fact not just harmless but I’d say totally beneficial to the vaper and all those around him. I base that on nothing. Except trust. Perhaps naive trust, that what I’m now doing is not only ‘harmless’ to me but to those around me, those secondary vapers. Rotten freeloading cheap bastards too mean to buy their own e-liquids, they sneakily inhale all my left-overs.

But more and more people are switching to electronic addiction aids so obviously the tobacco companies are hedging and getting into that market too. Rather than leave all those addicts they’ve nurtured over the years to the cashflow of others. But it is reckoned that thousands of lives a year will be saved from smoking related illness and death by using e-things. Which is good news. Particularly for me.

Yet now, in a similar vein to the tobacco companies, the anti-smoking lobbies are quickly becoming anti-vaping lobbies, worried as they are that they’ll all be out of a job if the world stops smoking. And their argument is that ‘we don’t konw enough about e-cigarettes and their potential to harm’. Even though learned professors have made quite remarkable claims for weaning smokers into vapers.

But the best argument made against e-cigarettes was that ‘a baby accidentally swallowed his mother’s e-cig cartridge!!!!!’ Genuinely made as a supposedly valid point against electronic cigarettes specificallly.

In which case we must seriously consider banning of the following items: buttons, coins, stones, caps from almost any container, scraps of paper, fluff, keys, earth, sand, screws and nails, nuts and bolts and dog shit. All things (but by no means an exhaustive list) regularly thrust into the mouths of babies by their own hands that are swallowable.

Babies under 1 live in an oral world. And they analise that world by shoving eveything possible into their mouths. Indiscriminately. How much of that analysis is useful is an unknown, but it certainly attracts parental attention.

Freudian psychosexual development theory which termed this ‘oral phase’ is more famous for its next level, the anal one. Because people who have problems leaving that level remain ‘anally fixated’ and become of the obsessive compulsive variety of humanity. Who we term, ‘a bit anal’ for that very reason. Though it should be mentioned that Freud was a touch weird and every action at any stage of life, according to him, was sexually-linked in some way.

The anti-smoking lobby are a bit weird too. A bit anal. If a baby eats a toaster, its not really the toaster’s fault, is it?

Happy vaping Wednesday

A xxxx

There are currently 650 electoral constituencies in the UK. Of which 59 are in Scotland. About, say, 9%. And if Scotland buggers off (‘devolves’) then those constituencies will simply cease to be any part of our political system. And if you work on the assumption that, since Mel Gibson wiped the blue paint of his face, no Scot has ever, will ever or would ever vote Conservative, then those 9% of our electorate represent a massive, possibly catastrophic loss to the Labour Party. Ok, there’s a few Scottish Nationalists up there, some who are even prepared to go against any kind of considered judgment and vote for Alex Salmond, but the majority of Scots are Labourites. So when Ed Milliband mouths off about being ‘better together’; he’s not necessarily talking about England and Scotland, but just about the Labour party. Because without Scotland; he’s fucked. Which is why there’s so much fervent interest by the Labourites to retain the Union. And that’s where it gets (almost) interesting.

You need to choose a ‘big hitter’ to represent your cause. You need someone with gravitas, with intellectual clout, with charm, with credibility, affinity with the public, someone you can warm to. And they pick Gordon Brown. The most unpopular man on any side of any border, ever. The only thing Brown has in his favour is that he is emphatically ‘not from London’, the place that for some reason, all Scots feel obliged to hate. Tony Blair would have been a better choice. He’s Scottish. Well, up north somewhere. Alistair Darling lacks the charm, and the correct coloured eyebrows to be the ‘main man’ and Neil Kinnock is Welsh and a bit dim. They should have picked Kenny Dalgleish.

Never mind; the ‘spare’ is on the way. In the age old tradition of Royalty, one needs an ‘heir and a spare’ and Princess Katie is once more in feto uterinis, or however posh people describe such a condition. Little George is having a sibling. And I couldn’t be happier if Spurs finished the season 4th. Ok, I would be much happier, but the world indeed loves a royal baby. And the pre-baby stuff too. Even if that involves, mainly, a lot of vomit. Because poor Kate doesn’t do well in her first trimester, not a lot better in the second and by the third when it starts to settle down a little, she has to do the hard bit and eject the creature from within. This little proto-baby, probably now about 3 inches long and looking like an alien from the deep, is third in line to the throne of England, Wales, Ireland and possibly Scotlalnd (to be advised). If (hypotherically) some bizarre tragedy took out Prince Charles, William and baby George, then Kate’s bump would be the king/queen of all he/she surveys. Even though all he currently surveys is Kate’s womb. They’d have to find a really big crown and wrap it round Kate like a belt. Or… no, don’t go there.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

I have but one question regarding the now seemingly distinct possibility that Scotland may gain the independence it (or some of it) desires. And its not a question about currency. Nor how long the North Sea oil will last (Alex Salmond says “almost forever”, people in the oil biz say “about 3 weeks”), nor whether the Queen will remain head of state there or if they intend to burn Balmoral to the ground in the ultimate statement. My question is whether our planned, Summer 2015 trip to the whisky distilleries will go ahead. Will the distilleries still be open? Will the borders be open? Will I need a passport, like travelling to France, Spain or any other hostile nation, or will it be like going from Italy to Germany with gates up and no-one there at the sentry post?

Ok, that’s about 6 questions and I’m not really done yet. Though most of the others are about the whisky, because its much nicer than Scotland and politics.

Scotland may devolve. Good word. And odd because of all British people half of the Scots haven’t yet quite evolved properly, so they’re going to miss out on the last of the Darwinism and go straight to devolution. Part of the revolution. For their intstitutions.

How many Scots voted for their football team to lose to Germany last night? Eh??

I’ve wanted to do the whisky tour for ages. So has Mel. She’ll drink anything. Preferably everything. She can’t help it; her dad’s Scottish. And I have lots of friends who are whisky connoisseurs, whisky experts, whisky devotees. You know; drunk snobs. And my problem is; I can’t tell the fucking difference. Give me Tescos 2-for-1 bargain basement Skoch (made in Taiwan so you have to be careful with the name) and I can’t distinguish it from the finest, 24-year-old, barely-half-a-malt, McTavish-Glenhoddle, made with the water that Scotsmen sweat off under their sporrans. (Eeeuuuwww). So I need an education in such matters. And driving round the Highlands with a bottle in one hand and a phone in the other getting progressively pissed all day (and all night) seems a great way to become a more rounded person. And peole say its very pretty up there too. Can’t imagine it myself with the nearest skyscraper about 700 miles away, but there ya go.

And if, as the polls are starting to indicate, their nation votes YES, will Alex Salmond become their chief? Will that smug, pompous little shit get his face on the postage stamps? Can we go back to hating Andy Murray in the way he should be hated? Can Prince Charles still wear a kilt? Can we watch old Billy Connolly videos? More importantly, will Scottish footballers be counted as ‘foreigners’ under the new team limits?

We must consider all facets of this debate.

Happy monday

A xxxx

There’s a bit in Monty Python’s Life of Brian where a man explains that he is no longer the leader of Popular People’s Christian Front, they were disbanded and replaced by the Popular Christian People’s Front, not to be confused with the Popular Front for Christain Peoples, who are a right bunch’a tossers…

And where religion and politics meet, its always a shambles. Which is precisely why sensible nations endevour to keep the two seperate, and other nations descend into ruination and/or totalitarianism.

And that is the problem faced by our poor British jihadis currently engaged in war in Syria and Iraq. They went to Syria to depose Assad. Violently and with much fighting and bloodshed. An innocent aim. Free those poor Syrians from an unquestionably evil man and fill the void with a previously unimaginably evil regime. Noble but naive, some might say. Oh, and illegal. Leaving Britain to fight wars elsewhere (unless you’re in the armed forces) is illegal. Punishable by removal of your testicles and the loss of one hand and one foot. Or it would be in the world they’re trying to create. Over here they just go to jail. Mamby-pamby democratic wankers that we are.

So they’re in Syria and fighting jihad against Assad, along with many other jihadis from a host of other nations, and get swept up in the ISIS ‘thing’ and start the beheadings and the genocide of entire villages. Line ’em up and shoot ’em dead; all you can find who aren’t devotees to the cause. Christians, Shias, Kurds, one head’s the same as another. All for a good cause.

And yet, within the ISIS (or IS, or ISIL, or popular front for head removals, or whatever they’re called this week) there is disagreement, there is infighting, there is aggro. Quel surprise, non? Different ideologies, different philosophies, different ways of cutting off a head. ISIS, Al Qaeda, Boco Haram, Hamas, same aims, different approaches.

So our boys, our good British jihadis, want to come home. “I didn’t go out there to fight among different gangs” they moan, “I went to fight and kill other people”. Shame. But they know if they come home they’ll be arrested.

And thus they present themselves almost as victims. Which immediately sucks in the loony liberal human-rightists who start to feel sorry for them, almost agree with their victim status and start saying things about how ‘you can’t make one rule for returning jihadis; there needs to be flexibility’. Which there should be, in the rope that hangs them, but not in anything else.

What can you do with these people? Volunteers in the most vile, bloodthirsty kill-fest the world has known since the Crusades, men who revere murder, participate in genocide, are sworn to inflict their evil on the entire world and are only returning because they (genuinely) feel that their status of ‘martyrs’, should they die in jihadist infighting, will be compromised. So they get less virgins, etc, etc, etc.

Oh, cry the liberals, we can ‘de-radicalise them’. Yeah, right. Put them in prisons where they can spread more poison whilst they agree they were naughty and won’t do it again. Show them the errors of their ways? That’ll work after a lifetime’s indoctrination in what most would consider insanity.

We don’t need them back here. We don’t want them back here. Bit late for them to decide they may have made a wrong decision. You can unscrew a lightbulb but a pregnant woman is different. Some things are not so easily undone.

And they’re mainly Arsenal fans anyway.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

I wish this was news but sadly the phrase: ‘the England football team is shit’ is older than my children, who are only in their 20s. They’ve been shit since Bobby Charlton retired. Since Bobby Moore died. Since Jimmy Greaves left the game to get a new liver. And no-one knows why. No-one can work out why putting 11 men on a pitch, men who week after week perform amazing miracles for their clubs, Peles one and all, when in an England shirt the play more like Pele’s mum. If he’d had 11 mums. Or even 10 mums and a goalie.

So if the players are good then it must be the manager. Surely? But we’ve had 53 team managers since 1970 and none have done anything with the team. All different managers, all different styles. From the ultra-conservative Ulrika-shagger, Sven Joran Eriksson, to the ultra-flair, free-expressionistic zen bhuddism of Glen Hoddle, the only consistency in the national game has been its inability to play good, nice, pretty football. Even shitty football that wins would do, but we haven’t had that either.

Ok, so the players are good, often quite brilliant; Gazza, Bryan Robson, Hoddle himself, Beckham, Linneker; and the managers varied and all previously successful in their club careers, then we must look elsewhere for the cause of the malaise, the epidemic that turns any overpaid superstar into a total clueless nob just by putting three lions on his shirt.

Captains. Hmmmm…

Last few captains: Rooney, Terry, Ferdinand, Gerrard. All immoral, adulterous, granny-shagging, drug-addicted scum. If only Ryan Giggs was English, not only would ‘that left side problem’ have been no problem but we’d have arguably had the finest left-footed sister-in-law-screwer the league’s ever produced in our team wearing the armband.

Why can’t they be more like Bobby Moore? Why can’t they be nice, neat, smart, untattooed, gentlemen who only ever wear suits and ties outside their game? Polite. Nice. Handsome. World Cup winning. And, according to a new book just out, the greatest drunkard this country has produced since Oliver Reed (George Best was Irish, Gazza came later). Bobby Moore was the pisshead’s pisshead. And always managed to drive home afterwards in his Jaguar. Which is a testament to his visuo-spacial awareness and physical qualities. Except when he ran his motor into a lamppost and got banned for a year, and when he rear-ended Harry Rednapp’s car and totaled his own one in the process.

We can blame people like Arsene Wenger. Foreigners who came to our wonderful game and did things like taking bacon sandwiches off the menu. Banned players smoking (except Jack Wilshere). Fed them proper, so-called ‘healthy’ food, like some French Gwyneth Paltrow. Gave them pasta. Forced vegetables and fruit into their diets. Made them exercise a lot. And stopped them drinking too much. Which, as we now know, was the cause of our nation’s footballing woes.

So if Roy Hodgson wants England winning again, wants to beat teams like (fucking) Norway by more than one meager penalty, having made only 1 other attempt on target, for the whole team, over 90 bleeding minutes, he must get them drinking once more. Its the only way. And get rid of Wayne Rooney while yer there.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

Hell hath no fury like a French tart scorned; so the saying goes. So if you add the total fury of all the Dantean levels of hell to the natural bitchiness of a pretty normal Parisienne, you end up with Valerie Trierweiller’s new book. Called ‘merci pour ce moment’. Its basically an attack on her ‘ex’, President Hollande, who played away, on his chauffeur driven motor-scooter, with his instantly recognisable shoes giving the game away. And in the book, which I’ve read… ok, even if it was in English I wouldn’t lower myself to enter the outpourings of a broken-hearted, scorned and bitter world of deceit and disappointment. I get that at Spurs. Yet never before has a ‘kiss’n’tell’ book been published specifically about an incumbent head of state. If France is still a state. Its in a state, but ‘what France actually is’ requires a book of its own. Yet the secrets come out. Hollande hates the working class voters; thinks they’re stupid, whilst preaching his ‘socialism’ for their benefit.

But Hollande likes women in his government. Another ‘ex’ is now back on the team, Segolene Royale, the mother of his 4 children, and minister for Green things, despite Trierweiller voting for ‘anyone but her’. And another woman in his government is also doing very well currently. Najat Vallaud-Balkacem, a name that just slips off the tongue, is education minister for all of France with a bee in her headscarf about equality. Ok, she doesn’t really wear a headscarf, in fact she’s rather a modern lady, certainly in attitude. So she wants a virtual ban on sexual stereotyping in schools. Equality begins, so she feels, by giving kids the choice to cross-dress, to have equal access to pink, she wants to ‘eliminate all gender differences between children’ but falls short of suggesting gender reconstruction available on the national health.

And speaking of the sexually ambiguous always makes me think of UKIP. Who now look set to actually have a seat in our parliament. Something that, for all their claims of victories and landslides and popularity, they currently lack. So they stole a Tory. Douglas Carswell had lived his whole life as a lie. He’d been raised as a Conservative man yet always felt that ‘it wasn’t the real him’, so he had to decide what to do. Have the gender reassignment (very painful, very expensive and you end up looking like a plonker in a wig wearing high heels) or join UKIP, the next best thing. So they’re having a by-election in October, in Clacton-upon-sea, his constituency, to see if those locals want to keep the treacherous bastard as their MP, now he represents ‘the dark side’. And according to polls, he is 34% ahead of the conservatives. Or 46%, 23%, 98% (sponsored by UKIP), or 57%, depending which poll you choose to ignore. And you can’t help thinking for any right wing Eurosceptic tory, moving to the Modern Fascist Party is a good personal move. Because I’ve never heard his name mentioned for all his years as a Tory nobody. But in UKIP he’ll be a front page superstar. Its like Mario Balotelli joining the MKDons.

Politics, politics, politics…

Happy thursday

A xxxx

Saturday morning, left home early, really early, 7.30 flight from Luton to Montpellier. Picked up by our lovely mates, straight to the beach, lying in the sun before 11. Fantastic. Short journeys, European trips, even with Easyjet, the only airline to fly into Montpellier now from London, but heh; it was all plain sailing. Even though we never had a boat.

Arrived back at the airport at 6 last night for a flight at 7. Easy-peasy; hand luggage, checked in, strolling through what is not the world’s busiest airport, breezed through security where there were loads of staff and no other passengers, ahhhhhh, what could possibly go wrong? What could happen to take that warm, post-holiday feelgood glow from our relaxed and calm minds and bodies?

Easyjet. That’s what can go wrong. The flights screens were showing our flight as ‘retarded’. What? We have a subnormally unintelligent plane? Is the pilot dim?? Maybe he’s just a Stoke fan, which looks the same thing. Oh, ‘retarde’ is French for ‘delayed’. Oh well, never mind, so we’ll go an hour late, still be home by 9, no problem…

Is it?

No information forthcoming other than ‘retarded’ and absolutely no-one to ask due to all staff on a general ‘hide’, not one announcement. So I went on the Easyjet website and learned that our take off time had been moved from 18.55 to 23.30. F-f-f-fuck me. Five hours. But hold on, people who’d checked in at the airport (we were fast becoming close friends, ‘the condemned’, as the normal British ban on all communication with strangers is suspended in times of crisis) had been told by staff that the delay was ‘just’ 3 hours?

They fucking lied. The Easyjet staff, not our new friends. Then an announcement came to say the delay was 4 hours as ‘our plane’ was on its way to London from Corfu. Oh, that’s ok then. NOOOOOOOO! Its not ok, it awful. The delay started at 10 in the morning in Greece (the details are just so irrelevant) and diverted landings and knock-on effects later, we’re in the south of France waiting for a plane to arrive in London from a Greek island.

Kids were crying, parents getting flustered, I’d finished 3 crosswords and was getting hungry. Never mind, accompanied by the usual total lack of announcement, Easyjet were providing vouchers for ‘food and drink’. So we wouldn’t starve. The voucher was for 4.5 Euros. And a sandwich when we finally boarded the plane was 5.50. Bottle of water 2.50. Which means the ‘voucher’ was not to provide vital sustenance for the masses but a token gesture of very patronising nature; of ‘throwing a few bob’ at the problem. Let them eat cake. Except the cafe at the airport had run out of cake and if they had any it would have been about a tenner.

Finally arrived at Luton; about 1.30 UK time. Which, for the purposes of car parks, is ‘another day older and certainly deeper in debt’. My pre-paid ticket inserted, the little screen told me I owed them £133. For the extra 5 hours? Actually that was the only ‘break’, the disembodied voice at Luton Car Parks told me not to worry and buzzed me out the gate.

The perfect ending to a wonderful little break.
They’ll be hearing from my lawyers. If I had any.

Happy tuesday

A xxxx

The good thing about France, other than the women, the food and the sunshine, is that it takes your mind wonderfully off all the awful things happening in the world. I read the Times but its not the same as when at home when all the horrors seem to be a constant. Over here they’re more fleeting, more peripheral to what we’re going to eat next, to what flavour croissant we’re going to get in the morning. And for a while, just a short while, you can forget about ISIS, you can ignore the Ukraine, you can stop worrying whether George Galloway will make a full recovery from his beating (yeah; really worried about that one), and you can even, almost, for just a second, forget that Spurs lost to Liverpool. Again.

But unlike murders, beheadings, military invasions and the beating up of rancid Scottish tossers who should indeed be beaten often and severely, the Spurs thing just keeps coming back to haunt me. Not losing a match, that’s nothing. But its symbolic. Symptomatic of a regular malaise. That we are capable of great football, of super wins, but continue to struggle against top teams. Thus being condemned to finishing 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, depending on how many teams happen to be ‘top’ in any given season. And the rot started Sunday, in our third game (not counting the Europa games; no-one counts the Europa games).

So to avoid the horrible thoughts we went to Sete, a gorgeous little fishing village perched on the Med with a canal running through the middle, famous for its oyster beds (I never knew oysters slept) and, believe it or not, fish.

But being a European place it has to have a bizarre claim to fame. Its the law. In Pamplona grown men run around naked (well, real men would, bloody Spanish tarts) with raging bulls. In Italy somewhere they have a massed tomato fights involving thousands of people. In parts of Croatia on the sixth sunday after the winter solstice they (probably) round up the pregnant goats and all the men called Jeorg and… well, whatever.

In Sete they joust. Like, mediaeval type Knight’s Tale kind of jousting?? Oh, that’s nice and normal. Except they do it on the water. Oh. Don’t the horses drown? Well they probably would, so instead they use boats on the back of which are raised platforms upon which the jousters stand with their poles poised. In the literal sense, not the metaphorical. That would be rude. Even for the French.

Hence the splendid statue of the pole-holder given pride of place by the jousting site where this event takes place every year before crowds of more than 25 people.

I love a Euro-quirk, I hate football.

Happy tuesday,

A xxxx

There’s an old joke. Goes like this:

so God made all the countries and as he was naming them he said, ‘well this country really does have it all. Its big, its beautiful, wonderfully fertile, has the Alps, the Pyrenees, hundreds of miles of stunning coastline and amazing (even by my standards, not willing to be immodest) beaches. Yes, it has it all. And its so perfect that I feel we must do something to counteract all that splendour. So we’ll fill it with French people. That’ll scare ’em off.’

And if a France lover is a francophile, and a french hater is a fracophobe, what do you call someone who adores France but hates the French (and remember, most actresses and the really really beautiful don’t really count as ‘French’, look; I don’t make the rules)??? You call such a person ‘normal’. Decent. Nice. You call him ‘me’.

We arrived early yesterday morning at Montpellier Airport Mediteranienne (see; they sound fucking pretentious even when they’re being normal) having taken off from Luton Vauxhall Nova Shithole Airport (London???) so early we’d barely gone to bed the night before. Or so it felt. As we drove in the drizzle.

Montpellier was immediately hot, sunny, and, even upon first glance (though we’ve been here many times) nicer than even Luton. Our lovely friends picked us up and took us directement to the beach at La Grande Motte. A quirky and wonderful place built as a testament to the potency of drugs in the late 60s and early 70s when the area was designed and constructed. Its filled with medium-rise buildings most of which are asymetrical. And I love it. When I first went there in about 1980 its the kind of place that jars when you look at it. Almost hurts your eyes. And yet with longer perusal (or stonger drugs/alcohol) you start to ‘get it’. And then the aesthetic softens and becomes a thing of beauty. In a quasi-ugly way. Bit like me.

Our friends have lived here, among the heathen, for 25 years. They have a lovely life. Their children are mainly French yet remain passionately English, particularly during sporting events. And yet even here, hundreds of miles away from the known bastards (in any language) of Paris, they find ‘the French’ difficult to live with at times. Even these nice, provincial, middle-class types down here. Pigs in lipstick, education on a Frenchman, plus ca change.

Everton 3, Chelsea 6!!!!!! Holy shi-ite. As they say in Iran, but not for much longer in Syria or Iraq.
Almost as profound is Burnley 0, Manchester United 0.
But most amazing of all: Manchester City (who never lose at home, haven’t gone goalless in 637 matches, etc, etc) 0, Stoke City (havne’t won at City since before the Boer War, never score a goal in any competitive matches, can’t hit a barn door from 2 fucking yards) 1. And Swansea are top of the league, or would be if they were called Aswansea.

Bon dimanche

A xxxx