Andy's Glasses

Vitamin D deficiency comes about due to lack of sunlight and/or certain foods. Its particularly common in pregnant women, children under 5, people over 65 and Australian tossers who’ve spent 2 years hiding in the Ecuadorian Embassy in Knightsbridge. You can get rickets. Whatever the fuck they are. But Julian Assange can pretend he’s got just such a condition, anything to get sympathy. Also, you don’t get much fresh air inside the Embassy. Too many Ecuadorians using up what little arrives through the front door to make it upstairs to the Assange Appartment. So Julian is suffering from a cough, dodgy lungs, probably bad breath and I suspect the very comon, Irritable Aussie Syndrome. And it wouldn’t be much use stepping outside to get some air because during the summer months the whole of SW7 becomes a race-track for Qatari supercars and uninsured Saudi drag-racers.

And of course, before Assange could even take his first lungfull, he’d have a pair of handcuffs on his pale, skinny wrists by the bobbies who’ve been waiting for him for 24 hours a day, for 24 solid months, at a cost to ME, personally, of 7 million quid. The police would then drive the poor, sputtering wheezing hacking hack straight to Heathrow to be escorted to Sweden to face charges of sexual assault. Lots of charges. All bogus, according to Mr Wikileaks, and contrived merely to get him to Stockholm under false pretenses so he can from there be flown to Washington to face the death penalty for something or other that Americans kill people for. Maybe Texas. You don’t need a reason to kill people there. Nor in Ferguson Missouri, apparently.

I’m big on free speech. I make them all the time. Never take a penny. And I don’t like governments who lie to the public, forgetting the correct order of things which is that THEY work for US. But there are some things you simply have to entrust to those in power. Like spying. The whole clandestine thing. Secret Agents. Secret Squirrels. Victoria’s Secrets. Because it wouldn’t be right if the names of such people were made public. It would be dangerous. In fact, in the case of the Afghanistanis who covertly worked with the Americans during the war there, publishing their names, addresses and distances from the nearest Taleban beheading party, would pretty much be signing their death warrants. And for their families too. And that’s what Wiki leaked. Not sure if that was before he ‘allegedly’ raped a few Swedes or after, but whatever, I don’t like the man.

Come out Julian, all is forgiven. Yeah, right.

They set up a website for this most charmed and blessed generation of students, to help them when they do their almost mandatory semester/year ‘studying abroad’. So you do two years Media Studies at Barnsley Polytechnic and then bugger off to McGill, or UCLA, Princeton or the Sorbonne to learn how foreigners watch telly. Its ‘expansive’. Definitely ‘expensive’. Life affirming. Learn a new culture, a different view of the world, change perspective. Wow.

So what do these students ask of this most informative help guide for living abroad? About rents? Visas? Can they supplement their income by working in such places? Is it easy to get contraceptives in Spain? Is the quality of drugs acceptable?

No. The main questions were whether they could get iplayer to work so they wouldn’t miss the fucking Bake Off. Could you get British tv. Was there a way to see Eastenders in Korea?

I despair. I wouldn’t mind if it was Match of the Day, but Bake Off??? GO OUT AND GET DRUNK FOR FUCK SAKE.

Happy Thursday, wherever you may be

A xxxx

Part… 963, Culcha.

There’s very few places in the world that really do offer ‘everything’. I mean ‘everything you’d want’. Not necessarily buying little boys or beheading practice, but everything you might want to see or do of a nice nature. And London is right up there with so many fantastic opportunities. Ok, we don’t have ‘the seaside’ but they now have a few horrible beaches along various parts of the River, just for heaven’s sake don’t immerse any part of any toe in or you’ll end up with something that would make Ebola look like hay fever.

And we have trees. As many as you’d ever need in any one go anyway. Yes, you can go to British Columbia and see more trees than there are Chinese people in Hong Kong. Then what do you do with the rest of your time? Count them? I have a tree in my garden. There it is; pear tree. Cross ‘trees’ off the list and find something proper to do. If my tree is not enough, go to Hampstead Heath or Richmond Park and see as many as you’d ever need. Any more and it becomes needless repetition.

We have football. In London alone there are several big teams. Tottenham, Arsenal, Chelsea, Crystal Palace, QPR. There’s also West Ham. And a whole host of other lesser teams. There’s rugby, there’s cricket, in not one but two wonderful grounds; Lords and The Oval, where just yesterday the glorious and victorious England team beat those Indians. And yes, for sporting events only we do count south of the River as ‘London’. Just sporting events.

Then there’s culcha. So much fucking culture you barely need to get drunk to the point of vomiting. So much culture that you’d expect this City to be positively awash with foreigners all summer long. Oh, it is. And they get in the bloody way. But even though we don’t want to be a part of it, we’ll take their Euros all day long. And most of the night too. Museums, the best in the world and amazingly, all free. The proper ones are anyway. The silly tourist rip-off type London Dungeon and Madame Toussauds and Sherlock Holmes house (HE WAS FUCKING FICTIONAL!!!! HE NEVER EVER LIVED IN BAKER STREET NOR ANYWHERE ELSE. GET A GRIP. AND SAVE YOUR MONEY), they do charge, but half the galleries too; free at the point of entry. Without breaking in. We have multiplex movie popcorn vending establishments and we have lovely, decent, independent cinemas too which even show non-English films on occasion.

And of course, we have theatre. Not just ‘a theatre’ but an entire industry. Ok, most are crumbling old Victorian relics which need a bit of work to hold the ceilings up, but they are the theatres of Shakespeare, of Oscar Wild, or Lawrence Olivier, Ralph Richardson, John Geilgud, Judi Dench and Kristen Stewart. Well everyone turns up there eventually, regardless of talent. And if that’s not sufficient, we have ‘the fringe’. London’s ‘off-Broadway’, but as we lack a Broadway to begin with, we call it Fringe Theatre instead. And its for those who’d rather spend 12 quid to see rubbish than to spend 75 quid to see worse rubbish in Town. But sometimes there are little gems to be found.

Sunday night at the Gatehouse Theatre, a grandly named room-above-a-pub in Highgate Village, Mel & I went to see a show. Mel found it. I had nothing else to do, so followed along. With reservations. I don’t mean for the seating.

We saw ‘confessions of a rabbi’s daughter’. One person show. Musical. 85 people sitting round watching. And it was great. Really great. Different. Original. It was about a rabbi’s daughter, coincidentally, bearing in mind the title. And she’s about to marry a rabbi herself, to the pleasure of all concerned, including herself for whom this represents a lifelong ambition, when on the wedding morning she… she… she realises she’s in love with her (female) best friend. Holy. Shi-ite. One young woman, wrote it all, words, music, performed it, probably made her own prop (there was only one). Proper unsung talent.

And London has rainbows. This one arrived last night. Spectacular.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

Yesterday 3 magpies landed on the lawn. Just a few hours later Spurs won. In a ‘brilliant’ match (though reports may vary due to the pro-Arsenal stance of much of the so-called ‘neutral’ press) my boys grabbed the points at West Ham.

So are those magpies responsible for my team’s victory? Doh. I don’t even think my team are responsible for my team’s victory, that was really in the hands (and certainly feet) of West Ham’s collective ineptness and profilgacy, and so the world can hear Sam Allardyce’s excuses in the ‘start the season as you mean to go on’ kind of way.

Back to the plot. Must stay focussed.

Suppose I noticed that every match day magpies landed on my lawn, but 6 times out of 10 when it was 3 of them, Spurs won their matches. Could I then state that Spurs victories (may it please The Lord) are due to the magpies? Rather than to our clueless (on yesterday’s showing) players, or new, Argentinian and very exitable manager?

Of course not. All it would show was there was some bizarre, coincidental correlation between the number of magpies on my lawn and Spurs results. At which point, for the Arsenal, Chelsea and certain other big matches, I’d be in the park with a net hunting for little black’n’white fuckers to nail to my lawn.

And that’ because I’m a sports fan and we’re all stupid, optimistic against all logic and tragically superstitious. Anything for the slightest advantage the gods might bestow.

Because, as we learned: correlation is NOT causation. There might be some odd, random connection between magpies (shitting) on my lawn and Spurs success, but they sure as that shit ain’t causing it.

Every time there’s a hold up on the A1 my wife ends up with bruises. Do those hold ups cause her to spontaneously bruise? No, of course not. They’re not responsible. But I get held up, become very angry and do what any man would do, and she ends up bruised. (Please note; this is just an illustration, put the phone down, social services do NOT need to be contacted. Not at this point anyway). So again, correlation between hold-ups on the A1 and spousal bruising but not direct causation. Even though they both correlate to me.

Then there’s Anjem Choudary, leader of… well, various groups of horrible hate-mongering tossers, until they get banned and his job is to work out new names for those groups so they can carry on peddling thier evil legally again. He was previously a lawyer. Then stepped up the moral ladder to become a purveyor of terrorism. But he’s ‘clever’ in that annoyingly horrible way that legal people have of never saying anything with any substance in front of a camera. Sam Allardyce could learn a lot from him. But Sam is not who he preaches to. No. Choudary preaches to young, susceptible Muslims, lost souls looking for some ‘meaning’ in their lives. And he gives them a cause, a path, a view. And turns them into instruments of death, reduces them from humans to mere actions even if those actions kill the human within.

Which is why the guys who beheaded the soldier, Lee Rigby, in broad daylight on a London street, they were students of Choudary. The Maida Vale DJ who was filmed with ISIS holding up a severed head in Iraq, was one of the preacher’s prodigies. The handing out of ISIS leaflets inciting young Muslims to ‘join up and do God’s work’ was done by Choudary’s students.

The man himself never critisised the actions of his ex-students. In fact in all cases he spoke with pride whilst invoking the inevitable distance from them and their wicked and illegal actions. Because he’s a lawyer. And he knows that ‘correlation is not causation’ and to be illegal you need a causative connection. He’s allowed to preach that Britain should be a sharia state. That’s free speech. Which oddly would be banned under Sharia. I never said he had a sense of irony, just that he’s clever.

So for once, under any kind of ‘three strikes and you’re out’ kind of rule, we must look at the link between dire acts, poisoning of minds, death and destruction and the man with whom they seem to correlate. And surely, in a world awash with awful terrorism, special needs arise so that we can get that awful fucker off the streets and lock him up indefinitely so he can’t peddle his evil poison to others.

Otherwise, have a happy Sunday,

A xxxx

Spurs are third from bottom in the league. The relegation zone. The drop. But I don’t care because until 12.45 today the league table is a blank page, a clean slate, a tabla rasa for those of us so pretentious and trumped up that nothing other than the language of Caesar can truly…

yeah, right.
But the league is all zeros. Alphabetical zeros, if such a thing can happen. That’s my point. Burnley are the same as Manchester City. Leicester are equal to Liverpool. Spurs haven’t lost a match. All to play for. Nothing to lose. Ok, plenty to lose. Like the next 38 matches spread over the most important 9 months of any year. And it all begins today. Wow.

And if I’m honest, I could hardly be any less enthusiastic. Maybe that’ll change by 3.01 this afternoon. Maybe it’ll take a week, a month, but my enthusiasm is certainly, at this moment in time, somewhat dimmed. Maybe its the other things in the world that have caused my flagging spirits about the game I sort of love. Maybe the whole Gaza thing, the IS(IS) crisis, the Russian treachery, Robin Williams dying so horribly (is there a ‘good death’?? not at 62 there ain’t), followed by Lauren Bacall, the last of the true Hollywood mega-stars, maybe its put me in a place that’s temporarily detached from the Premiership.

How about the cricket? What cricket?? you may ask. Well, England, of course. Stuart Broad. Superman. Gets hit in the face by a cricket ball last weekend, a ball which ripped through the grid of his helmet to break his nose and inflict wounds that any jihadist would be proud to claim, and then 6 days later he bowls his brilliant overs at the Oval, black eyes and strapped nose and all.

Or possibly its just listening to the radio (as I do), to Talk Sport and 5-Live, endless droning on about Luis van Gaal, about how his greater success than David Moyes puts Man United in a different place. About how Liverpool have lost their bite (good pun, that one) when Suarez took his 3-month ban over to Barcelona, along with the 32 goals he scored last year, and replacing him with a few injured Southampton rejects. Hearing Arsene Wenger stating the ridiculously obvious in that ‘well, if we take points from the big teams we can win the league’ kind of way. How about ‘if we get more points than everyone else we will definitely be champions’. So all Spurs have to do, really, is score more goals in every game than they concede. And if they do that…

Alexis Sanchez is a great buy for the goons. Diego Costa similarly for the hatefuls at Stamford Bridge. If Manchester United do manage to sign Angel di Maria that will also be a brilliant addition to our league. Which is already (according to spokesmen from the Premiership) ‘the best in the world’. And Cesc Fabregas returns to these shores, fresh from being a World Cup loser with Spain and spending 4 years as a reserve at Barcelona. And not happy with the level of hatred he received wearing the red of Arsenal like last time, now he’s gone the whole way and will wear Chelsea blue.

It all kicks off today. Wow!!! Amazing. Can’t wait. I have my Daily Mail Season Planner open on the kitchen table and my best coloured pencils. I’m so excited that at 3 o’clock today I shall probably mow the lawn, have a nap or beat the wife.

Happy start to the season day. If only.

A xxxx

If you stuck an electric heater in your bathtub, plugged in (both heater and bath), you’d die the death of 1000 volts. So how can it be safe to drive a Toyota Prius in the rain? Same thing surely? Water and electricity do in fact mix, but the results are nasty. If ever I have the misfortune of travelling in a Prius I always wear rubber gloves and shoes in case it rains. And I suggest you do too. I also wear a paper bag over my head in case anyone sees me. Not because I feel stupid, hypocritical and laughably pathetic in a ‘hybrid’ vehicle, but because the car is just so ugly. Where’s the rule that hybrid cars have to be ugly? Ok, its written in Japanese, which I don’t read, other than ‘maki roll’. But when Honda brought out their own hybrid, they read that rule and stuck to its every word, so the car is just a Prius with an ‘H’ on the back. And the Japanese word for ‘plonker’ does begin with an ‘h’.

This week BMW entered the eco-friendly world of the hybrid with their quite stunning I-8. Its gorgeous, fast, fabulous, costs a hundred grand, has gull-wing doors, all sorts of wonder stuff, and does 135 miles per gallon. Or thereabouts. Because its ‘mainly’ electric. Ok, electric. But its battery range is quoted as 22 miles. That’s from here to not very far away. About 22 miles away, in fact. Then you get out and push until you die, which, for the average human is probably 113 miles. The car will in fact go like a fucking rocket, but then you have to use petrol, which is burning old carbon, and no-one wants that, so no, its 22 miles then push. And those 22 miles of quiet, smug, ecologically viable, almost replenishable holier-than-thou-ism must feel wonderful. Then you plug it in and wait, whilst lesser cars fly past.

The second (maybe third, I lost count) law of thermodynamics states that energy can’t be created (unless you’re God, he can do what the fuck he wants) it can only be transferred from one form to another. Solar radiation can be converted into electricity, movement can be converted into heat, blah, blah, physics physics physics. So the electricity used to power a Prius, or even a BMW, comes out of a plug. And has been generated by burning coal. More old carbon, planet destroying shit.

So someone just came out with a brilliant idea. Cut out the middle man. Why burn old carbon stuff to produce electricity to power a car, when you can just pour other carbon stuff straight in and the car will just go? Like magic! And for hundreds of miles before you ‘recharge’ with more fossilised remnants.

What happens to the 22 miles if you turn on the lights? Or play the radio? Does it mean the added consumption reduces the range?? So you can travel 22 miles in pitch black silence, or 4 miles of booming stereo and dancing to your own light show. Or ‘headlights’ as they’re known.

Electric power is fine if its for enhancing the petrol engine’s output, driving extra wheels, improving performance. But as an end in itself; total waste of energy. Literally so.

Happy friday

A xxxx

If you’re obsessed with alcohol you’re an alcoholic. If its drugs, you’re an addict. Obsession with France is called Francophilia and if you’re obsessed with staring at the screen of a mobile phone you’re known as a Tosser. A total fucking tosser. Whereas someone who walks down a crowded London street in rush hour staring at a phone is known as an Absolute Dipshit. I have yet to learn what to call someone who is obsessed with other people staring constantly at phones and generally wishing them harm, though I’m toying with ‘Gorgeous’, ‘Saintly’ or ‘Me’. Staring at phones is an evil and incites violent tendencies in normally level, calm individuals and should be done seated or in private. Like while driving.

What about people obsessed with pets? They’re called Fish Fanciers, or Dog Lovers or Sheep Shaggers. And now there’s a ‘cure’ for when poor Rover, or Tibbles or Fido leaves his mortal messing in the park to chew the eternal slippers in doggy heaven. Not a ‘cure’ in that ‘Pet Semetary’ way (if you’ve never read it, do so only with great care and if your heart is strong), but in a new, hi-tech, super-scientific, cloney kind of way.

As a dog-indifferent myself who would no more want to own a dog than own an Arsenal shirt, I can’t see what all the fuss is about. Dog dies, get a new one. Literally: same shit, different day. But I know others who get attached to not just pets, generally, or dogs, generally, or even ‘Staffies’ generally, but with their own, personal, man’s best friend who’s been with them since puppyhood. The dogs, not theirs, though these are not necessarily mutually exclusive. And when Bonzo finally goes walkies skywards, they don’t want just any replacement, they want Bonzo back. The same. Not just in appearance, but the whole slobbering, dry-humping, sunday-roast-eating, ‘smiling’ (yeah, right) package.

So they can now clone your dog. Take some dna from old Patch, insert it into an egg, surrogate it to… well, probably another dog, or bitch really and however many months later, out pops new Patch. Think of the smile on your children’s faces as they view exactly the same beloved creature, but all puppified and delicious and ‘the same’. Ahhhhhhh.

But its not ‘the same’. My wife is a clone. She has an identical twin, thus they are genetically identical. But they’re not ‘the same’ at all. They’re very different people. Always have been. And they were ‘naturally produced’ and ‘reared in the same environment’. Whereas these little doggies, genetically identical that they unquestionably are, will not be ‘the same’. You can’t insert a gene for ‘personality’; it don’t work like dat. And tests on mice have shown that although they look the same at birth (a fucking mouse; they ALL look the same, just before you tread on them, then they become a Rorschach inkblot) they’ve tended to become very obese. Hmmm. Maybe someone’s been cloning Americans… hmmmmm…

So clone at your peril. Or just don’t bother replacing Jorge the Tibetan, just take your phone for a walk every day. Its much more interesting and doesn’t shit on the floor.

Happy wednesday

A xxxx

Everyone’s favourite billionaire, Mike Ashley (do we have ‘favourite billionaires’? or just hate them all on principle and out of jealousy?), has upset everyone, once agian, because he’s invoking the infamous ‘zero hours’ contracts for his Sports Direct part-time workers which basically prevents them from taking second jobs. Even if they only get a few hours a week from Mikey-boy. The incredible thing about this will occur instantly to anyone who’s ever visited a Sports Direct. Which is that for those staff even have the one job is a miracle and goes against any logic or business sense. But two jobs?? Who the hell else would employ them? To qualify you need to: ‘have the ability to stand around wearing sports gear whilst being unhelpful’. A kind of multi-tasking for the decidedly unfriendly. And who’d have thought that someone of Mike Ashley’s standing would use exploitative methods for his (barely) human resource? You can’t help but think its somehow his revenge on the lowly shop assistants for the aggro he gets from his Newcastle players. They’re moaning about wanting a pay-hike on their ‘measly’ £65,000 a week, so he takes it out on his shop workers by paying them £4.37 an hour. Then cutting their hours. And now telling them not get another job as well.

And now Robin Williams is dead. Nothing specifically to do with Mike Ashley, I hope, though perhaps the actor’s suicide may be linked if it is shown he shopped (or tried to) at Sports Direct within 48 hours before his demise. Those stores certainly have that potential. But Robin was depressed and is now yet another tragic loss to the world.

Robin Williams was a comedian who became an actor. Nothing unusual about that. Except he was probably the best stand-up comedian I’ve ever seen (though never, sadly, live… no pun intended) when he was massive in the early 80s. He was fast, manic, mainly unscripted and fast. Did I mention fast? He was like the living embodiment of a cocaine habit. Which in fact was pretty much what he was. Though even when he cleaned up he was still the quickest funny man of them all. And all through his Hollywood years, all through the Mrs Doutbfires and Dead Poets Societies, he never lost his essential Robin Williamsness. In Good Morning Vietnam he simply reverted to what he was and his largely unscripted role was the perfect combination of the comedian he naturally was and the serious actor he became. I love that movie. And Robin Williams never sold his soul to the movie business in the way so many comedians did. Like Billy Crystal, Steve Martin, Eddy Murphy, who all became caricatures of themselves. Whereas Robin Williams was always Robin Williams, in the same way that John Belushi was always John Belushi, though sadly, not for very long, and Bill Murray is always Bill Murray.

Rest in peace Funny funny man. At least I know what I’m going to be watching on tv for the next 3 months.

Happy but slightly sad Tuesday

A xxxx

If you look at a map of the Middle East you can barely see Israel, being so small. Egypt next door is immense. Syria to the north is massive, Lebanon just big in a normal way. Jordan has some expanse and Saudi Arabia is vast. Move across to Iraq and Iran and even Turkey and Israel is literally dwarfed by the sheer volume of the Arab nations and their hundreds of millions of combined population, none of whom are, historically nor currently, in any way ‘pally’ with Israel. All of whom would really love to see that nation simply vanish.

So why are they all keeping so quiet about the current situation in Gaza?

Whereas here in the UK the entire population has been whipped up into a frenzy of Isreal-hatred by a biased and distorting press. Reports from Canada or Australia, they paint a very different picture. Of the very same events. Ok, they don’t have John Prescott over there (how sad they must all be) nor George Galloway, the poisonous one, nor Diane Abbot, Ed Milliband, Nick Clegg or Vince Sodding Cable. Any nation would be blessed not to have such luminaries of lunacy.

George Galloway has declared his constituency of Bradford ‘an Israel-free zone’. Because he’s taken Dead Sea face masks off the shelves in Boots and only buys hummus made in Wakefield and dates grown in Turkey. But has he banned i-phones and i-pads? The technology for which is all Israeli. How about every computer running a dual-core intel processor? Because every one of those sold (which is every computer built since 2 years ago) pays Isreal royalties. Has he banned pacemakers? Those clever little gadgets keeping the weak-hearted folk of Bradford alive; they’re Isreali created too. As are half the cancer drugs on the market as well as a whole host of other life-saving medications. Better not have any MRI scans either up there in Yorkshire, nor an ultrasound on your unborn child. All developed in Israel.

Even rabidly anti-semitic Lib Dem MP David Ward critisised Galloway and, in not so many words, called him a wanker. That was my interpretation of it anyway.

So why the silence, both verbal and in terms of possible military assistance, from all those powerful Arab nations, who you’d have thought would be rushing to their brothers’ side? All those nations who loathe democracy, who forbid free speech, who repress women, execute gays and therefore are the natural bedfellows of the British left-wing press. Hmmm… Is it just fear of American reprisal? Or is it that these nations actually see the bigger picture in a way that we in ‘the civlised west’ aren’t allowed to by that very same press? These nations fear America, as much for potential trade losses as military might, but what they really fear is the uprising of Islamic Extremism. As represented so beautifully by ISIS or whatever they’ve now decided to be called, who have invoked the wrath of even sleepy old Obama by mass-murders, evictions, beheadings and crucifictions across Iraq. And yes, innocent civilians may die due to American bombs but such things are inevitable and not (yet) just another example of American Imperialism from 6000 miles away.

Hamas are exactly the same as ISIS. They are internationally recognised as a terrorist organisation. They cynically arrange human shields because the results are so wonderfully media-friendly for them, particularly in England and France. But rather than being a safe, comfortable 6000 miles away, they live on Israel’s doorstep. And attack constantly. All day, and night, every day and night. With rockets made in Iran. Millions and millions of dollars worth of artillery, constantly. Not fireworks, not some home-made, mis-firing lame effort from Physics 101, but a rocket filled with explosives aimed not at military targets but at schools, hospitals, residential areas.

So Israel, as the only democratic, free, liberal country in the region, where women have rights, where gays can live (full stop) are hated by the press, and seemingly by everyone, for trying to rid itself of the evil that is Hamas. It would be like al Quaeda setting up camp in Cardiff.

What the BBC produce in terms of ‘news’ is one-sided and is predeterminedly ‘slanted’ with the assumption that Isreal is out to kill Gazan children. If you read or see reports from decent organisations its so much more even-handed, realistic and, dare I say, fair.

Never forget that Hamas were the ones cheering in the streets after 9-11.

No I’m getting off my milk crate; my legs are getting weary.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

There’s a new movie coming out called ‘What if…’ and it stars Daniel Radcliffe and its a rom-com. They’re calling it ‘when Harry Potter met Sally’. Which is rather clever. As poor Daniel, billionaire by the time he was 7, is now paying the true price of that precocious fame and stardom as he can never, ever cast off fully the robes and wand he used to kill Lord Voldemort. You have to think twice when you hear the name ‘Daniel Radcliffe’ but at the merest mention of ‘Harry Potter’ his little face, zig-zag scar and all, springs to mind.

And much as I love rom-com books (that’s the most tragic admission of this lifetime; almost pathetic really), I’ll walk twelve miles to avoid the genre in the movies. The films are rubbish. The books are wonderful and if I’m not crying by page 7 I can abandon it and download another. They’re all free cos they’re all shite. So any film with Matthew McGonaghey before Dallas Buyers Club, is off limits. Anything with Meg Ryan, Sandra Bullock, any limp pretty boy with a quiff instead of a personality, Richard Gere, Meg Ryan or Kate Hudson is not so much a guilty pleasure as guilty-as-charged.

And the young wizard from Hogwarts has apparently ‘re-ignited the rom-com flame’, and made it respectable once more. Yeah. Right. Pass the fire extinguisher. And rom-coms have a simple ‘plan’. Without being homophobic; Boy meets Girl and they fall madly in love. BUT; and this is what makes it a rom-com and not just slushy chic-flick bollocks, there needs to be ‘an obstacle overcome’. Typically they hate each other at first sight. They run competitive businesses. One of them’s married to someone else. One of them’s dead. Or, in the case of the original Harry/Sally and this new Potter flick, the ‘obstacle’ is that ‘your true love is your best friend’!!!! Oh my. We’ve been there and done that, and cried, and screamed, almost vomited and even had an orgasm in Katz’s Deli. And it was stupid then and it still is.

The only man that has a woman for a best friend is gay. No exceptions. Men are only friendly with women because they desire them. Single men that is, darling wife. Obviously. If men have no such cravings, there is no friendship. This is not me, this is how it is. Its historical. At times hysterical, (the rom-com bit), its evolutionary, its procreational. Except in Hollywood where anything can happen.

When Mel & I met she was engaged to another and I was living with yet another-nother (would have been odd if her fiancee was the woman I as living with; really odd. Though possibly fun). Real obstacles. And I suppose at times it was quite funny. Our own rom-com. But love conquers all. Except ISIS. For them you need bombs. Loads’a bombs.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

Its all hotting up in the football transfer market as the window of opportunity closes in under 4 weeks time. So come and grab a last-minute bargain while you can. There’s a 2-for-1 deal going on at Southampton, as there has been for about 10 years really. Great bargains to be had. Though all that’s left on their shelves currently is trainee left back and an ice-cream seller. Their manager left to go to Mecca. Or perhaps Jerusalam, as he jumped on the rotating door that is the Spurs job. I’m confident that ‘he’ is ‘the one’. Not like I thought about the previous 15 incumbents over the last 5 years. Their best attacking players went to Liverpool, their best defenders came to Spurs and everyone else there from last season is scattered about the leagues like confetti. Like parmesan on your pasta.

Because Southampton has become the growing fields for ‘home grown’ talent. Theo Walcott, Gareth (the holy one) Bale, Alex Oxlaide-Chamberlain to Luke Shaw, Adam Lallana, all wonderful, all super-talented Southampton kids, all gone on to bigger and (in some cases) better. The only decent player Southampton ever managed to keep was Matthew Le Tissier. And only because he was too fat and lazy to move his arse, other than to score a shitload of wonderful goals. That was in 1937. Or seems like it. If I was a Saints fan I’d be very depressed.

I’m a Spurs fan and I am very depressed.

This is August. This is ‘our time’. When we buy players from all over the world. Superstars. Big names. Players with reputations big enough that they can crumble upon arrival at the Lane. We should be out there buying up the World Cup galacticos, sweeping up the ‘debris’ after Rio, and bringing back a sackful of talent. Yet all I read is how we’ve failed to sign another. Then another. Then 4 more don’t want to play at Spurs. Even Chelsea are losing players all over the place. And now possibly Petr Cech may leave for the Bernabau, under threat from the unpronouncable Belgium keeper who’s been on loan for 2 years and now returns to Stamford Bridge a World Cup hero and wants his Number One shirt off the big Czech. Goalies are like princes; you need an ‘heir and a spare’. But in goalie-world no-one wants to be the spare.

So the season starts in just over a week and Spurs look pretty much like we did last year. Unless… unless… unless Mauricio Pocettino has weaved his magic upon the unquestionable talent that so miserably failed last year. Like a fairy godmother waving his magic want, turning Soldado back into a striker, Lamella back into a (fucking expensive) footballer, Chadli back into… whatever it is he’s supposed to be doing, because, like the rest of us, he never seemed to know either.

The football season. The thing that gives meaning to our frail and pathetic lives. A cause for celebration? Or misery??

9 days to go.

Happy thursday

A xxxx