Andy's Glasses

When I was a kid we didn’t ‘go on holidays’. We ‘went to the seaside’. Small difference but concpetually world’s apart. The whole world apart in fact because ‘the seaside’ was in England. You could probably find one in Wales, even Scotland. But the real one was in the south of England. No-one accused me of being worldly at age 6. But in the 60s that’s what we did.

And ‘the seaside’ embraced lots of things. Ok, sea. That’s pretty much a given, obviously. Sand in various degrees of stoniness, depending where you were exactly. Dodgy weather. This was England. Shops selling buckets and spades and lilos and all manner of brightly coloured plastic to which children are drawn like moths to a light, like dogs to shit. Though dogs seldom (to my knowledge) nagged their daddy-dogs incessantly to be bought shit. Like I nagged for everything bright and plastic and inflatable.

Then there was the other essentials. Beach huts. People rent them for a week, a month, a season so that they can… well, in order to… hmmmm… to enable them to sit in front of them. Beach huts being too small to sleep in, sit in or anything really ‘in’ other than store chairs and stuff. And I always wanted a beach hut, even though I knew not why.

Then there were amusement arcades. Slot machines. As much a part of the English seaside as anchor tattoos, as fish’n’chips, as wearing swimming trunks and wellies and a Liverpool football shirt.

Ahhhhh, the memories.

Package holidays made ‘going abroad’ cheap and easy. Then Freddie Laker invented a new type of aeroplane that was cheap to fly on and the world shrank. Marbella was the new Margate; Benidorm the poor man’s Bournemouth. America beckoned, Australia was nearer (until you got on the plane when it suddenly returned to the end of the fucking world where it had always been). Christmases in Thailand, New Years in Cuba. Snorkelling in the Galapagos, summertime in Italy, France, Israel, because the weather’s always nice and you get to eat that foreign muck and realise although decidedly foreign, ‘muck’ it ain’t.

So I haven’t been back to the English seaside in 50 years.

Until yesterday.

(to be continued… that’s exciting)

A xxxx

“They’ve treated Luis like a dog!!!!” said his grandma yesterday after the ban was imposed on her sweet little grandson. Well, actually, Mrs Suarez, they haven’t. Dogs that bite get shot. I was going to tell her that revelation myself but I couldn’t find the Spanish for ‘buck-toothed shit-for-brains nob’. I hope Barcelona are very happy with their next purchase.

Back in Europe, Juncker’s in so it looks like Britain may be out. What effect this will have on me personally, should it happen, I’m not sure, but what it will do is open up the duty free sales at airports for flights to ‘the continent’ once more. So I’ll save a fortune on Scotch. Get us OUT!!! (hic)

One very european is Theodora Sayn-Wittgenstein. She is a princess. All Germans have titles. If you’re not a prince you’re a count or a baron or some useless title which basically means your grandfather (when he wasn’t fighting with the bloody Nazis) owned a house somewhere in the Fatherland. Though Theodora’s family pad is less a house, more kind of Disneyland without the fun. Schloss-Berlberg Castle to give it the full 9 Deutschmarks. Anyway, Theo (as I call her) went to a reunion at St Andrews University in Edinburgh, a nice, genteel, posh place where royals from all over europe like to study, especially not very bright ones. Its where Wills met Kate, after all. And Theo, I’m gonna guess, somewhat into her cups, decided to remove her other cups, the ones holding her breasts, and stripped off. She then insulted muslims, became aggressive, fought off people trying to dress and control her and ended up handcuffed and arrested. As if a common criminal. This is disgraceful, everyone agreed. Not the behaviour, I think that should be commended, but arresting a woman for taking her clothes off in public and insulting people. What is wrong with the Scots? Where’s the freedom? Let them have independence if this is the way they treat royalty. Vote ‘YES’. See if I give a shit.

Some people are odd. Just odd. Not Theo, she’s lovely. But Luis Suarez is odd. He bites people which is very very abnormal behaviour. Punching is acceptable. Kicking. Even spitting, though vile, is understandable in certain situations. But biting is just not in any way ‘normal’. Similarly, Jimmy Savile. The reviled, de-knighted and thankfully dead DJ and loudmouth was simply fucking weird. He sexually abused anyone he went near. Anyone. Boys, girls, women, pensioners, the sick, ill and infirm, from 5 years old to 75 extends his ‘back-catalogue’ of atrocities. Even the old expression ‘anything with a pulse’ is inapplicable because when Jimmy found no-one alive to abuse he went to the morgue and took his pleasures there.

Ok, I just got rained off the tennis court, its now somewhat torrential and we’re off to Cornwall in the morning for the ‘best of the English summer’. God help us.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

Do you know the word peony?

If you do then, according to a survey, you are 96% more likely to be female.

If you’re a man and you know a peony, you’re probably gay, even if you haven’t realised it yet. Or a heterosexual florist.

I know what a peony is because I’m a totally reconstructed post-feminist superman. And because they are Mel’s favourite flower and only come out (not in a gay way) a few weeks a year and our household goes into panic mode in its attempt to buy up the entire national quota.

Half the men thought a peony was a little horse.

Because, according to the results of a word difference gender study, lots of words are very gender specific in use and consequent understanding. Why would a woman need to know what a ‘jock-strap’ is? Other than ‘oh its that thing Jimmy wears on his head when out drinking with his rugby mates’.

The study was on an American onlilne magazine, so that further explains the somewhat neanderthal level of responses. The average Kentucky farmer knows flowers only as things that get in the way of the crops. Though can name every single part of a tractor engine in latin.

Taupe was another interesting word. Is it a wig for men? A disabling disease of the left leg? Something French people eat with grits? A sheet for covering the 58 Chevy that’s sitting in pieces in the driveway?

The word most women didn’t get was solanoid. Which immediately will become the car-part of choice for unscrupulous mechanics telling females ‘ooooh, yer gonna need a new solanoid in there; that’s gonna cost’cha’ when all that’s really needed is a tyre re-inflating.

But heh, Europe is in a crisis. Not the football. England have left the World Cup, Spain are out, lots of others, like Bosnia, kind’of European but nowhere that most people could find on a map of Europe. But I’m talking about real Europe; the Union of European Peoples Who Fucking Hate Each Other. The EU. Who are about to appoint a new ‘leader’, kind of a president for the whole continent… and England. And being a bunch of like-minded democracies, the way to ‘elect’ this new leader is for Germany to announce him, then tell the other countries who he is, and don’t give any alternative, nor appeal, nor votes.

“Ze new leader vill be Jean-Claude Juncker”. Thus proclaimed Angela Merkel and thus the Luxumburger will head up the Union. Cameron hates him, but can do very little about it. Juncker is a federalist, which is awful, and a drunk, which is probably not true but when you’ve exhausted all other possibilities for a reconsideration, start making up personal shit. And ‘drunk’ is a pretty good bet for any European.

Luis Suarez banned for 3 months. Urugauy are appalled, Liverpool are disgusted. And the rest of the world thinks this ‘punishment’ for a serially bad person is pathetically insufficient.

Bite me.

A xxxx

For some the World Cup is a virtual feast of non-stop footballing wonders. For others, (well, for one), its an all-you-can-eat buffet. International cuisine. But the matter of Luis will be resolved today. One way or another. His sad plea of ‘we just banged into each other’ is in slight contradiction to the film of actual events. Yet it needs a quick resolution. And FIFA are not really good at ‘quick’. Nor really at ‘resolution’. Look at Qatar ’22. That worked well. Still is working well. But speed is of the essence so we can get on with the next course. Sorry, the next football.

Meanwhile, at home, David Cameron has once again fallen foul of the lawyers. So eager to extricate himself from any of the phone-hacking mess, even though he did employ Mr Phone-Hacker-Supreme as a spin doctor. The Prime Minister, eager to ‘apologise and put this matter behind him’ (as if) did so before the other charges against Andy Coulson have been wound up in court. Thus the Prime Minister is interfering with judicial process. Or ‘being a total nob’ as its known in the legal world. A bit like he did when he spoke up in Nigella’s defence whilst that case was still in progress.

And the usual suspects are once again calling for ‘more regulation!’ for ‘tougher punishments’, for ‘government interference’ with the press. For although hacking into murdered girl Millie Dowler’s phone was appalling and vile, hacking into a few B-list celeb messages about cancelled hair appointments and rearranged sessions with personal trainers is hardly the ‘ALMOST LIKE RAPE!!!’ that we hear about. And a press regulated by the government is not a free press. And if you don’t have a free press you don’t have a proper democracy. So for Sienna Miller’s voicemail from her mum telling her not to be late for dinner, we end up as Syria. Not a fair deal.

Phone hacking is illegal. Illegal shit is illegal even for newspapers. Thus they mustn’t do it. Or they’ll go to jail like Andy Coulson will, Rebekah Brookes won’t and Rupert Murdoch should. Regulation by the government means plonkers like Cameron would have control over what was printed about him. And that’s too high a price to pay for anything.

Without the freedom of speech I’d have to only say nice things about people. And that, quite frankly, would be impossible. I’d go to prison. And to be honest, you’re not that nice.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

what do you fancy? A curry? Chinese? Italian??

Luis Suarez. I mean: what the f***? But really; WHAT THE F***????

And at what point does a ‘moment of insanity’ in ‘the heat of the moment’, temporarily ‘losing it’ become a bit of a problem? A pattern. When does the odd isolated action evolve into serial offense? Whatever the question, we really need to talk about Luis.

18 months ago he bit a Chelsea player on the arm. Fortunately for him, there were only 97 cameras on him at the time so he almost got away with it. But it was a bite. Teeth marks. And we all thought: ‘that’s a fucking wierd thing to do’. Then they fished out footage of him doing the same thing when he played for Ajax. But heh, the Dutch are famously tolerant and, when it comes to football, notoriously violent. Luis received a ban for the Chelsea offence. Probably would have been a longer ban if the opposing team had been any other than Chelsea on the grounds that they are hateful and generally deserve whatever they get. And Luis redeemed himself last year by being the best player in the league. And went from hate figure to idol. Not an easy thing to do when you’re not David Beckham and you’ve already received another long ban for racism.

And we all loved Luis. Even when he personally destroyed not just the England football team last week, but the entire nation, I still thought that it was almost worth that pain for the wonder that was provided by El Suarez. But then it started. Not just the gloating but the statements of how Uruguay’s defeat of England was his personal revenge for our collective scorn when he was reviled by all and sundry. With some good reason. But heh, he’s (almost) human, he has feelings, and I allowed him his moment of vengeance.

Then last night he bit the shoulder of the Italian left back. Or the back of the Italian left shoulder. Images are blurred. And there are teeth marks and pain and suffering, even though Luis went down in apparent suffering clutching his teeth, as if the Italian had deliberately shouldered his mouth. Which, kind’a, wasn’t the case when you see it. And we’ve all seen it. From 26 different angles. So Luis is in trouble. Big trouble. He won’t be playing in this World Cup again. Nor for anyone else anytime soon. His chomping days are over. FIFA should give him a 6 month ban and allow him to play again only upon removal of his teeth.

Whereas Naomi Broady (who???) won a tennis match at Wimbledon. Being British that in itself is an unusual statement. But that she was there at all shows just how forgiving and wonderful the Lawn Tennis Association can be. Because although a young Wimbledon champion a few years ago, she was cut off from the tennis world because of the photo above. In which the then 17 year old was posing with a condom machine. And the LTA differs from, say, Ashton Kutcher, in that it doesn’t do pranks and it really doens’t do ‘humour’ in any meaningful way. So they cut off her sponsorship, left her high and dry. Like we have so many tennis champions in this country we can really afford to lose a few potential winners due to almost inapprorpriate behaviour.

Naomi is now 24, will probably lose to Wozniacki in the next round and is northern. But we should all be rooting for her. For freedom of expression, for fun, for showing the LTA that acting like the Taleban is rotten. And because slutty behaviour should always be rewarded.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

Wimbledon starts today. The best tennis tournament in the world. Well, the only one I watch, which means it must be the best. Right? I never watch the French, all that clay and 87-shot rallies, nor the Aussie, as its on in the middle of the night, and the same for the American, though that’s in the middle of the previous night, if ya get my drift. And Wimbledon is special. Its old, its on grass and its all white. This year very white. Because they’re no longer allowing coloured sportswear to be displayed by the players. No black shorts, red socks, yellow t-shirts, pink knickers. Just white. And anything that’s on display must be white, right up to the last 1cm band which can be decorative. Any inappropriate garments will be removed. Even the knickers. Though sadly replaced with something more suitable.

So now there’s conflict. Tennis and the World Cup. Forget the cricket, too dull and depressing to watch (where’s the rule that ‘England can’t win nuffink’? Where’s that written??), the New Zealand rugby tour is over now (played 3, lost 3) and there’s probably golf around, but who can be bothered when there’s proper, real, get sweaty and pant, sports on 12 other channels? I may have to suspend work for a bit to get it all in.

So Wimbledon, all white and green and lovely. Its as British (I use that word loosely, to mean ‘English’ as there’s nothing remotely Scottish, Welsh or Irish about that part of greater London) as the aristocracy. And one aristocrat is up for special mention today. Jamie Lonsdale lives on his family estate in Oxfordshire, just 1000 acres given to his ancestor, Lord Raglan, in 17-hundred and whatever, for… I dunno, fighting Prussians? stopping a revolution of peasants? stabbing Napoleon?? Who knows where these things come from in our wonderful and historic land? But incumbent Jamie is selling the pile. Land and all. To settle his divorce from wife number 1 who was one of Princess Diana’s ladies in waiting. Waiting for what? I have no idea, but it probably means something important to crusty old fascists. And he’s doing this, age 55, to marry his newly-beloved. A pole dancer. Not a Pole dancer, that could mean ballet, could mean all sorts of cultured, almost decent things done in a Polish accent. But no. This is a pole dancer, ‘actress’ and member of the ‘Only Tease’ website. Cool. She’s a bit younger than him. Well, quite a bit younger really, but that is the nature of true love. It has nothing to do with lust, with gonads, with dirty-old-men. This is love. A meeting of minds. And she apparently, don’t mind at all. I wish them luck and best wishes for their future. Or ’til the money’s all gone’, as it is known in some circles.

This World Cup is amazing. Belgium, like Argentina, all the ‘big guns’ were dull and boring and lucky to get through. Whereas Algeria against North Korea was fantastic. And the Yanks almost beat Portugal who look soon to follow England back to Europe even with the great (so he says) Ronaldo. The best player in his house.

Over 100 goals so far. And tennis now as well. Better check the batteries on the remote.

Happy monday

A xxxx

Call me naive. Call me unwordly, unstreetwise, unrealistic. Call me Rhoda for all I care. But I was actually shocked on Friday morning when my butcher, a good honest Spurs fan, told me of England’s error as he perceived it. ‘Should’a stuck one on Suarez’s injured leg in the first 10 minutes, got him off the pitch’. I thought he was joking. But no. He wasn’t, he was totally serious.

I ran this awful suggestion, which was still shocking me, past my mate Vaughan the sandwichmaker and not so honest Stoke fan (none of them are) who agreed wholeheartedly with this suggestion, this failure to cause injury was the undoubted cause of England’s downfall. But he’s a Stoke fan. His team ‘do what is necessary’, they ‘let you know they’re there’, they break fucking legs if that’s what it takes.

I later learned that on TalkSport radio Friday morning in the inevitable post-mortem debate, there was much talk of not ‘making Suarez aware of his injury’, as they apparently should have done.

Then I read that Daniel Sturridge ‘should have made more’ of the elbow he received in his face. Meaning he should have hit the ground as if he’d been shot and writhed around in apparent agony until the referee either awarded him a penalty or an Oscar. Or sent him off for ‘simulation’.

So now it comes down to the coach. For being ‘naive’, like me, and not showing his players how to act injured, how to look for any outstretched defender’s leg to hurl themselves over, how to apply suitable orthopaedic stress onto injured body parts (like we do in tai chi), for not studying x-rays of the opposing teams before matches to know which parts to target.

I’m not suggesting we wrap players up in cotton wool. Only Wayne Rooney before we send him home early so he doesn’t get damaged in the crate. But there is a line between the ‘physical side to the game’ and intentional wounding, or ‘grievous bodily harm’ as its called in court. The other side of that line, though equally blurred, is reacting to that physicality. If it hurts like a sonofabitch, you’re allowed to fall down and clutch it. But if you suffer a minor knock to the shoulder, falling down and clutching your face (Rivaldo) is simply unacceptable.

Our game (yes, its still ‘our’ game even though we’re coming home, because we invented it and England is still the home of football even though we’re shit) is being corrupted by cheating.

Though yesterday afternoon I had a unique experience. I found myself rooting for Iran. Against Argentina. The Argies were shit and boring and Iran, in the second half, realised that their South American foes were not in fact gods but just mere mortals who weren’t particularly that good. So they started to play the game properly instead of anticipating the armageddon that never arrived, and they were great. Iran. Who’d’a thought? Obviously not Leo Messi who put paid to the Ayatollah’s finest, eventually, but they did themselves proud. And with not a nuclear weapon in sight.

Happy, non-violent, unsimulated Sunday

A xxxx

I’ve noticed something. Done some tests. Made an hypothesis. Using very small sample numbers. Mainly; my family. And this is what I’ve found.

That ‘kids’ (young adults/late teens) don’t want to watch the same tv programmes that we do. Yeah, nothing revolutionary about that, I loved Monty Python as a kid, my mum hated it. In the days before remote controls (yes there were tvs BEFORE remotes) I could just cover the 12 yards of lounge space more quickly than mum, so I won. Though often with my brother holding her down, just in case she had a Carl Lewis attack or something. But there were programmes we all liked. And of course with only 3 channels to choose from it wasn’t like you could always turn over and watch Terminator like we do now. Ok, like I do now.

But the difference is that we default to dramas. Cop shows. Maybe hospital shows. Thrillers. Total detachment from reality. And our kids default to reality. Or a possible reality. In which groups of uneducated young people with loads of tattoos get really drunk and have sex with each other, with themselves and with each other’s friends’ partners. And talk about it. Endless fucking talking. Its only the accents that vary. Maybe its set in Beverley Hills, maybe Chelsea, Essex, the Welsh Valleys, the Geordie Shore. But its about relationships. Which could be worthy. Except they’re shallow, dim, wanky type relationships about things that are of no consequence to anyone except those unfortunate and pathetic enough to be involved in them. And evidently to the kids watching them.

Thank The Lord there’s always football to join the family together. And bring back NYPD Blue. The Only Way Is Wallander.

Chris Waddle, who himself was an active member of miserably failed England World Cup squads, so he knows from what he says, even though he says it in a very ‘3rd person’ way implying things were different in the 1980s, which they bleedin’ weren’t, Chrissy baby, blames everyone and everything for our nation’s failings in Brazil. The delusion that ‘the premiership is the best league in the world’ implies that its the Brits what make that so. Whereas in fact its just the money that does it by bringing in the the truly world class acts who obviously aren’t English/British. So what’s the answer? What is even the question?? As we have a massive population of predominantly obese football watchers who’d just love the chance to earn 300 grand a week to kick a ball around cluelessly. Just think of all the doughnuts you could buy with that. Other countries with tiny populations do so much better.

So here’s my solution. One I think would gain approval from Michael Gove, the education minister as well as the health department too.

Take all boys aged 5 to 18 out of normal ‘school’. They never learn anything anyway. Starve them, put them in the gym and teach them nothing but football for 13 years. Footballers have no need to read or write; they have agents for that, and it would free up loads of school places for girls, who do much better at education anyway. And with no male competition, the ‘glass ceiling’ in business and industry would be blown away as there’d be no boys/men to take the best jobs; they’ll all be playing football.

A win-win situation all round. And maybe then we could win the World Cup. Maybe.

Happy saturday

A xxxx

Last night, before the kick-off, I received an email from the letters dude at the Evening Standard, asking me to send a letter about the football, whatever the result. Like what am I: ‘letters-R-us’?? But that’s the way it works. You ask for letters and make it appear like they’re the spontaneous outpourings of a nation (London is a nation, isn’t it?) in the ecstasy of victory/desperation of loss.

I thought it would be appropriate to watch the match first and that turned out to be my first mistake. Should have gone to Tai Chi. Where there’s no Luis Suarez, and if there was you could inflict pain and suffering on him. As he deserves. Anyway, I sent the Standard 2 letters, which reflect my deepest feelings of sadness, of loss, of frustration and of course, of fucking inevitability. And I shall share these with you:

1.
England can still win the World Cup. Its simple maths. We need Italy to beat Costa Rica tonight. We need to then beat Costa Rica next week by a goal difference equal to the number of the moons of Saturn. We need gravity to be suspended for just long enough for all the other teams to fall off. Then a plague of locusts to descend upon Rio; maybe one or two significant earthquakes, and then a few points deducted from Italy and Uruguay for cheating.
Everything to play for; come on England

2.
I despair. Uruguay has a population one fifth that of greater London. Therefore, in London alone there should be 5 Luis Suarezes. Yet in the whole of England we can find no-one who can score sufficient goals to keep our (once) proud nation’s dreams afloat in the World Cup. Suarez had open-heart surgery four days ago. And yet he not only made sufficient recovery, against all predictions, to play against the team from where he calls home, but personally knocked us out of the World Cup, in all but some minor improbability. Yet I think we can be proud of… err… the way we… err… hmmm. There’s always Euro 2016.

What I didn’t say was that the buck-toothed Uruguayan sometime cannibal is a God. Nothing short of. And putting aside all the horribleness of yet another tournament failure, you have to just sit back and admire. And realise that, despite the obvious patriotic fraternalism that infects our nation during the World Cup, it is about football. Great football. Brilliant football. Unfortunately none of it is ours, but as an exhibition of the beautiful game this tournament has been magnificent. Even with Alex Song’s wonderful elbow-in-the-back and Beni Assout-Ekotto head-butting a team-mate (what is it about Cameroon? they should come to Tai Chi; they’re wasted at football) this has been a fantastic display of wonders. And none greater than tiny Uruguay last night. Two incredible goals. One a superb team effort with an almost unbelievable finish by Luis, and the second simply all about that man.

So now, as always, we must simply turn off the pseudo-nationalistic bollox and enjoy the splendour.

I’m still depressed.

Happy Friday

Angry of NW11
xxxx

In an opinion poll, 49% of people think Ed Miliband, the Labour Party leader, should be replaced. They don’t say with what. Perhaps a nice lampshade for the corner of the room? A salt-beef sandwich on rye? Flat screen tv? Though my initial reaction was: ‘what the fuck is wrong with the other 51% of people’??

60% of voters said Ed wasn’t up to the job of being Prime Minister. 90% thought he wasn’t fit to operate a microwave. One person from North West London wondered why the word ‘tosser’ didn’t appear anywhere on the list of questions when it seemed so appropriate to the subject matter.

I think the real problem with Mr Milliband the Ed is not that he looks and acts strange. Nor that he is perceived as ‘nothing even close to normal’, that he’s odd, wierd, has the charm of a waiter in a kosher restaurant, the communication skills of crab and the likeability of… of… of… of someone very unlikeable. No. The problem is that he will never be forgiven for stealing his brother’s birthright in the most biblical of coups when he stole the Labour leadership from under brother David’s nose. Even Cain and Abel went ‘wow!!! holy shit!!!’ when that happened.

Looking at the quality of our political leadership, it doesn’t bode well for the short-term future of our fine nation. Milliband, Cameron, Clegg(????). No wonder Nigel Farage has come so far whilst offering so little.

And so to the big dilemma. Of the day/week/lifetime… well, of the last 4 years.

Tonight England play Uruguay in the biggest match… of… quite some time. If we lose we’ll join Spain in coming home from Brazil in shame, with Wayne Rooney’s head returning home seperately in the hold of a dirty old cargo ship. If we win then the hope can linger for another week until we play Costa Rica. And as all Spurs fans know only too well; its the hope that kills. So this game is beyond big; its humungous. Its vast. More important than the Labour leader, than Syrian fighters, than war in Iraq, than curing the common cold.

But Thursday night is Tai Chi. Because I couldn’t go tuesday due to bridge (my other martial art) and I hate not going once in the week and again on Saturday. Because I might forget it all and return to being a wimp. More than that, Tai Chi is a life committment, its a state of mind, a wonderful place that exists half way between Beijing and the David Lloyd in Finchley. And I take it seriously, my allegiance to the dojo, to the philosophy (of hurting people really badly), to my grandmaster and my brothers in our common aim to make the world a much better, and slightly more violent, place.

But the football is just SOOOOOOOOOOO big.

Oh, help me Lord.

Troubled Thursday

A xxxx