Andy's Glasses

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

Do you go to a gym? You know, one of those places filled with mirrors depicting depressed and strained fat bastards, red-faced and half a squat away from a hernia? Gym. You know.

Well I don’t. I’ll keep my 125 quid a month to spend on dirty burgers and beer, thank you very much. Ok, and lattes, because I’m a true metrosexual. Though not as true as those vain bastards pumping up their abs, pecs and triceps so they too can look like they’re in advanced steroid abuse just before they go off the rails and murder their wives. I simply hate the discipline. I hate the ‘but you’ll feel so much better afterwards’ ethos. I live for instant gratification. Have no patience. No discipline. Never discipline. Not even for fun or 50 shades.

But we do our Tai Chi in a gym. So they have many implements of torture just lying around. And our guru, our grandmaster takes his responsibilities seriously. Though you’d never believe it to talk to him. And as I see it, our Tai Chi comprises three elements. He would see it as different facets of but one concept, because that’s how they see things in China and High Barnet, complete one-ness. But for me there’s three. First is the ‘forms’, the Tai Chi ‘dance’ that everyone’s seen and finds amusing, because they simply don’t understand. I do it every day and I still don’t understand. But at least one day I’ll be enlightened, whereas for you there’s no hope. The forms represent every action you need to take, but in a slow, stylised and exaggerated style. So that when you do get the chance to hit someone really hard, and then run away very quickly, your balance will be perfect, your strike assured and you won’t hurt your back. Because the second thing we do is the ‘applications’ of the movements. Basically; hitting each other. Or kicking. Head-butting. Stabbing. Nice.

And thirdly, because of who, as a group, we are, we do a lot of warming up, stretching out and stuff that lesser people would think of as ‘pilates’. We’re real men with swords, so we deride ‘pilates’, that’s for Gwyneth Paltrow along with drinking green slime. But as we’re mostly the wrong side of 50 (or even older!!! and still alive; who’d’a thought that possible??) you can’t just start doing high kicks without warming up and stretching out. How this would translate to your would-be assailant in the real world I don’t know yet. Just hope he comes at you so slowly that you have time to do a few ‘downward dogs’ before needing to defend yourself.

So last night we grabbed the exercise balls from the corner. Who fucking invented those things? What kind of sadistic, tortuous, spine-aching bastard thought up such a thing? They probably arose in Abu Graib. And they hurt. Whatever you do on them is just the same exercise you’d perform without it but just 20 times more painful and stressful. Like the pose depicted above. Its hard. Horrible.

And yet even I, exercisaphobe that I am, felt benefits and feelings of not exactly ‘goodness’, more ‘pain, suffering and agony’ but could see some value in such activities.

Off to France early tomorrow morning. Very very early tomorrow morning. Going to spend a few days with Mr & Mrs Oldest Mate, who are refugees out in the Carmargue.

Happy friday

A xxxx

Angel di Maria is a lucky man. He has risen from being an Argentinian slum-dog, working in the coal mine with his father when he was 10 years old, to becoming the most expensive footballer on these shores when arrived at the more modern slum that is Manchester. Ok, maybe its no longer the slum it was 30 years ago, but its fucking bleak up there. And according to Rory Smith in the Times, Angel will wear that revered number 7 shirt: “graced at Old Trafford by George Best, Eric Cantona and Christiano Ronaldo.” WHAT ABOUT DAVID BECKHAM????? Even Bryan Robson should be included in that exalted line-up too. Is Rory Smith an Anglophobe? Two England captains, two outstanding footballers, yet deemed unworthy for inclusion as Manc ‘superstars’. David Beckham, the most successful footballer of all time, the best known face in the world, a man who can be recognised universally by the merest hint of even a half of any of his 642 tattoos. Yet not worthy of inclusion into the list of nobility who wore ‘that shirt’. Which he wore from when he was a baby to when he was 50 years old and Alex Ferguson attacked him with a hairdryer.

Why do I care? Who gives a shit what happens ‘up there’?? I’m no Man United fan. And yet I do. Because the glamour and brilliance of that team has shone throughout the nation for my whole life. When they won the European Cup in 1968 (when it was worth winning) they played ‘for England’ and we loved them for it. And although I can resent Chelsea and Manchester City for winning the league through foreign investment, I can’t bring that level of resentment to United when they win it. Almost as if its their rightful place as it has been, again, for most of my life.

So you may think that despite what I said above, that I am some closet, hanging-on-the-shirttails-of-success (because I get none whatsoever from my team) Man U. fan. But I can’t be. Because when they lose it makes me happy.

Oh, what a bastard. How fickle. Yeah, get over it. Like you’re different?? The old schadenfreude kicks in as the newscaster reads “MK Dons 4, Manchester United 0” and I grin. OMG, they lost to not only a terrible, lower-league team, but the most hated team on the planet. If you don’t remember, the once great (hmmm) Wimbledon football club of Vinnie Jones fame, of crazy gang fame, got in financial woes, lost their ground to property developers and ended up half way to ‘up north’ in Milton Keynes. Such practices are acceptable in America, though not happily by the cities losing teams, but its not the British way. Our teams are ‘part of the community’ and are fated to live forever in the hell where they were born. Otherwise Tottenham would long ago have moved to somewhere nice and leafy and suburban, rather than living the life of royalty in a favela.

Yet Milton Keynes beat the Man United second 11. Or third 11. Doesn’t matter, that’s the team they chose. And if Luis van Gaal thinks that the sad and sorry Capital One Cup is unimportant and worthless, then he should speak to Man United fans as to how they feel to being not just beaten but totally trounced by a team whose collective worth wouldn’t keep the Mancs in bootlaces for a month. The fans who have to go to work today and face horrible grinning bastards like me.

This season is getting better and better,

Happy wednesday

A xxxx

I always thought the purpose of G-d was to make the world a better place. To instil morality that, according to those of a religious nature, would be lacking without a religious framework underpinning society’s laws. So any kind of ‘holy war’ has always seemed a complete contradiction in terms, even for one as ungodly as I am. But here in the west we have reached a balance between God and the state, with a separation between the two, one the domain of keeping food on the table and the streets safe, the other in charge of the spiritual. God won’t give you a parking ticket, David Cameron seldom performs a miracle.

So how does that line get crossed? What happens when the godly take over? Or try to?

The first problem is ‘which God?’ The Protestant one? Catholic one? Jewish one (he’s the oldest with the longest beard)? The Muslim one? Or one of Hindu’s 1200 odd gods? Some of them very odd with elephant’s trunks and bejewelled fingers on their 7 hands.

‘God’ for those of us who have some kind of peripheral interest in the concept, is a man-made construct. We invented him/her for some kind of understanding/accountability for things beyond our grasp. And as more and more ‘things’ became understood, God’s role inevitably took something of a back seat to the explanations of science and technology. We no longer needed ‘Him’ to provide rain for the crops; we had watering cans and hosepipes. The last big unknown, how we all arrived here, and why? can be explained by The Big Bang theory, but that in itself is just another belief, another construct, and if you like, you can call that ‘God’ for want of a better term. Just depends what you choose to believe.

But the idea of God is strong, is guiding and is essential for keeping order. In theory.

So which God would approve of mass slaughter in His name? They tried that in the Crusades and to be honest, it wasn’t very popular with the agnostics.

I saw a banner at a protest which read:
“no to democracy
no to secularism
yes to Islamic State”

It could have been just a little better, it could have read: ‘vote no to democracy’, then I’d have been happy.

Every religion has its own version of ‘thou shalt not kill’. Every religion should preach, above all else, tolerance and understanding.

Where the fuck did it all go wrong? And is ‘God’ happy with slaughter, genocide and horrendous actions in His Name?

For God’s sake have a happy Tuesday

A xxxx

No, its not a football score, that (sorry Dave) was 4-nil and iced the cake on the week for Spurs fans. Taking us ‘top of the table’, in that ‘yeah, really’ kind of way. Still looks nice though. In case you haven’t seen it:

BARCLAYS PREMIER LEAGUE 2014/15
POS TEAM PLD W D L PTS
1 Tottenham 2 2 0 6
2 Chelsea 2 2 0 0 6
3 Swansea 2 2 0 0 6
4 Arsenal 2 1 1 0 4
5 Hull City

I’ve already had a 6 foot by 4 foot photograph of this commissioned by ‘photobox’ to sit in the lounge. Let the season end now.

Anyway, the 2-1 refers to the movie we saw last night. Deux jours, une nuit. Only the French could make such a film. Though oddly its Belgium. As if there’s a difference. There’s no sex or violence (ok, one little, very un-glam punch), there’s no car chases, explosions, space ships, no cars turning into giant robots nor into household appliances for that matter. Any cars that are there just stay as cars for the entire movie. Unusual, eh? Nothing gets stolen, no-one gets kidnapped, no-one taps their heels together three times and ends up in Kansas. This movie is 7 million miles from Kansas. That should have been the title but there’s no French word for Kansas.

Its a simple tale of a working woman whose job is threatened by her boss who offers her co-workers a choice to either have their hard-earned 1000 Euro bonus OR keep Sandra (for that is her) in her job. Oooooh. That’s a bit of a moral quandry. And these are not wealthy people, these are good, honest-to-goodness, working class scum for whom 1000 Euros represents not ‘a good meal in Paris’ but a year’s utility bills, or dentistry for the children, or the ability to keep up house payments.

So you get the idea: its dull. A dull and unglamourous world filled with poor people in poor housing around industrial estates in middle-Belgium. And Belgium is pretty much all ‘middle’ really.

Yet the film is gripping, emotional but never slushy, fantastically interesting and brilliantly acted. Particularly by Marion Cotillard as Sandra. In fact its fair to say that you barely notice anyone else on the screen when she’s there, so luminous is her presence. Yet there’s no Gucci, Mischoni and Prada, there’s no make-up, there’s nothing fancy at all other than take-away pizzas and scuffed shoes. This is a movie sponsored by Primark and Matalan and Ford. Even though La Cotillard wears no make-up and didn’t (so it appears) wash or even brush her hair for the entire 7 months of the filming of this movie, she is simply gorgeous. In fragile unpolished and damaged way. And there’s very few of us that can get away with such a thing.

If you see no other foreign film this week, make it 2 days 1 night. You’ll thank me for it. And if you hate it; its your problem.

Happy wet, rainy, dull bank holiday Monday

A xxxx

No-one was more upset last night as Arsenal scored their late and completely undeserved equaliser against poor Everton, who had to listen to those horrible, nasty travelling gooners singing: ‘two nil, and you fucked it up… etc, etc’. OK, maybe the Everton fans were almost as upset, but when a striker as wasteful as Giroud actually manages to hit the net you know the game’s up.

Spurs meanwhile are not only 4-nil up against QPR at this moment, but currently TOP OF THE LEAGUE!!!!! Which I proclaim now because one goal by Rangers and we drop back to 2nd. I mean, we’re not talking real league tables, just proto-ones, but as a Spurs fan; you take it where you can.

Angel di Maria is going to Manchester United, for a mere 60 million quid and 200k a week. Just in case that wasn’t enough to live on, fill the car(s), feed the children and send some flowers to mum in Argentina every few months, his agents approached Manchester City to see if they wanted to ‘bid’ as well. Scum-sucking, bottom feeding, great fat jews. Even if they’re Catholics. Its not about religion, its a Mackayism. But is di Maria, wonderful player that he is, the man to turn round United’s fortunes? Smells like a panic buy to me, but only time will tell. And that is one commodity there is plenty of as we’re only in week 2 of the season. Though the way the press react to every goal or throw-in you’d think Van Gaal has to win today or he’s gone. That had Arsenal failed to draw yesterday that their season would have been over. If only.

So this morning, in honour of the football, we went down to Columbia Road to buy some flowers in the East End. Which are cheaper than they are in the west of town by about 50%. And its the coolest place in the world to be on a Sunday morning. You can even park free. Then we went for brunch. Brunch? Yeah, its breakfast but you eat it at lunchtime. And its bigger than breakfast. Much bigger. Great little place in Faringdon. Also achingly cool and fabulously indulgent. And all out in the lovely sunshine.

I love a bank holiday weekend.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

So there’s 2 guys ‘avin’ a chat darn the pub, right?

An’ Iain says: “‘ere, Malky, youse never gonna guess whooo they just signed to play on the wing. Only a faaaarrrrkin’ Chinky!”

“Naaahhhhh!!!” says Malky, “yer ‘avin a laaarf, ain’t’cha??? A frikkin Chinky? Ya know why, cos ‘is agent is a fat jewboy and once they sniff money… or food…”

This is the gist of what occurred in what passes for communication, between Malky Mackay and Iain Moody, when both worked for Cardiff City. And according to every report on such conversations, and there were many, with others describing women in a most un-feminist type terminology, with phrases like ‘the rack on that!’ and ‘well I would!!!’ and ‘not even with yours, mate’ being banded around like it was still 2013 or such dark ages. Because now we know better. That’s what the writers said. ‘People don’t use such racist, derisory, derogatory inflammatory terms any longer, now we’re all very PC and right on and equality rules the nation’.

Well oddly, I disagree. Conversations with ‘blokes’ simply do not adhere to any rules or structure other than ‘make him laugh, preferably as cheaply as possible’. And racism, sexism and virtually any other -ism will do the trick every time. And if they don’t, start on nob jokes.

So the moral indignation and righteous disgust at these two footballing stalwarts being engaged in ‘banter’ of a nature which flies in the face of all modern standards of acceptability is really just a load of total bollocks or otherwise complete naivety and ignorance of how people (errr, well, ‘men’) behave when alone and unmonitored. Because we are vile, evil, horrible, and perpetrate every variety of knuckle-dragging -ism that is possible to use. Those very same journalists are not monks. They don’t spend their lives writing columns of condemnation, they also go down the pub and joke with their mates, sometimes objectifying women or using quasi-racist expressions, even if used ‘ironically’. Go on; tell me otherwise and I’ll show you a liar.

And so we’re faced with a problem not of two men behaving very badly but with a problem of someone making a private conversation public and thus accountable. And another of how to then react to people who hold seemingly awful views WHILST IN PRIVATE after its made public.

I fucking hate hypocrites. More than I hate people who use racist or sexist terminology in a non-offensive way. Yes, it can be non-offensive, but that can only be viewed on ground level and not from up on a high horse. Bloody poofs.

And in fact I’d like to thank both Iain Moody and Malky Mackay for producing the kind of footballing stories that are re-kindling my love for the game (like that was ever going to take long, especially after Spurs beating both West Ham and the mighty Limasol in one week), because much as I love the game, its the peripheral shit and the politics that’s really wonderful.

Balotelli at Liverpool; but only if he promises not to bite anyone and to be a very good boy. Yeah. Gonna happen. Like asking Gazza to promise sobriety.

Happy Saturday

A xxxxx