Andy's Glasses

Well this is exiting. This is cool. Just when you thought the season was over, that Liverpool had won the league (and if they don’t there will probably be several public inquiries, then several more and we’ll all have to wear black armbands for the next 25 years) up trot no-chance-Chelsea and bust it all wide open again. In fact Chelsea probably did a bigger favour to Manchester City than for themselves, but despite Morinho’s stupid protestations to the contrary, Chelsea have an outside chance if either City or Liverpool slip up, and if neither do then City win on goal difference. Again. Though Spurs still have a very outside chance, but nuclear armageddon has to happen (could happen; watch Ukraine) and the end of civilisation as we know it, and even then City’s goal difference is 58, Spurs is 4. So we need to score at least 30 goals in each of our last 2 games. Well, with our ‘strike force’ anything could happen. Yeah right. Morinho parked a series of buses at Anfield, which, to his credit, if not for the greater good of football generally, got the job done.

Everton slipped up, agaiaiaiain. Virtually gifting the coveted 4th slot to Arsenal. Who only have ‘easy’ matches left now. Really easy. Ridiculously easy. Only a bunch of tossers could possible drop even half a measly point against such pathetic opposition. No pressure at all then.

And then there’s ‘the other end’. The nether regions of the table, the shitty bit. Sunderland’s win yesterday took them out of the relegation zone for the first time in 6 years. Or so it feels to me. And to Gus Poyet. The ‘miracle’ he wished for seems to have started to happen and once again, goal difference becomes critical, with Sunderland’s much better than the other possible victims of the grim reaper’s scythe. Poor Fulham, conceding a last minute equaliser by Hull on Saturday did very little either for their mood or for their chances of a reprieve. You had to feel sorry for them. Unless you’re a Hull fan (one of the 7) in which case you’re over the frikkin moon, Brian.

Cardiff are almost gone and Norwich have a good chance of the drop too, with possibly Aston Villa if they really fuck up and those bottom teams start winning. It is statistically possible for West Ham to be relegated but then where would Spurs get their hatred from, and who’d be left to make gas chamber hissing noises at the Lane?

And those in-waiting to take their ‘rightful’ place at the toppest of top tables are Leicester, Burney (gawd help us) and… and…

Well, its always exiciting; the ‘and…’ Playoff bound. Most strenuous thing ever. Could be Reading. Could be QPR, again. Bringing Harry back to the scene of his former crimes. Who knows?

Very tense, exiting and… our season finished months ago.

Happy monday

A xxxx

So fickle Dutch fucker, Louis Van Gaal, is ‘all set to be new Manchester United manager’. Well may The Lord have mercy on him. And by ‘the Lord’, I mean Wayne Rooney here, there least likely ‘lord’ of all. Because the scummy Scouse striker and sometime granny-shagger has as good as admitted that he and a few others created ‘a lot of negativity’ during the Moyes months and must ‘accept the responsibility’. Damned right they should. Any player ‘under-performing’ due to some vague personality conflict with their manager, their boss, their superior, should lose their pay. Rooney gets the best part of 300 grand a week to play to the best of his ability. And in that rather simple contract, he failed miserably. Its not his place to question; he lacks the intellect, its not his role to make decisions about the management or anything else about the ‘club’ in general. His job is to kick a football. And kick it well, and preferably goal-wards. And he failed. Thus failing the fans, the club and obviously, the manager. Or ex-manager. And he failed intentionally. Which makes it all a bit sick.

So in strolls Giggsy, who has played for United since before he was born, the hero, the man of the club, and Rooney suddenly performs like an England striker once more. I love Ryan Giggs, he’s a class act. Except when he having an affair with his brother’s wife and took out a superinjunction rather than face the flack, which came along anyway. As the Daily Mail reminded us just the other day with its usual ‘forget the big picture here, let’s get reactionary about the irrelevant details’ approach. In which it almost declared Giggs unfit to manage a football club because of immoral behaviour in his past. By which logic they should just shut down the whole government right now and instil me as head of the nation, dictator, boss and tyrant as soon as I’ve gotten my Kim Jong Un haircut and piled on a few extra kilos round my belly.

But Van Gaal has been earmarked for Spurs. A proper team who treat managers with respect and patience. Unless they lose a few matches in which case they’re gone in 60 seconds. Yet suddenly, he’s Man United through and through. Or so he reckons. Because Carlo Ancelotti, miserable manager of Real Madrid and coaching superstar, has thrown his own hat into the ring at Old Trafford too. Which means that whatever happens Real will kick him out at the end of the season, for even thinking about leaving. Even though they generally have a bit of a managerial clearout at the end of each season anyway.

And so the merry-go-round keeps on its merry little circuits, with the few truly great managers getting rotated about the only clubs that can afford them.

The upshot being that ginger pairah Moyes may end up at Spurs. And I’d be glad to have him. The man has true quality and assuming that players are actually prepared to play for him, would be an asset anywhere. Except Man United, obviously.

Ok, lunch and LIverpool/Chelsea. My kind of menu.

Happy sunday

A xxxx

What’s the hardest job in the world? Manager of Manchester United? Culture Minister for Australia?? Head of tourism in Syria? PR agent for traffic wardens? Chief of morality at Chelsea Football Club?? What is it?

How about the job of making people think that Ed Milliband isn’t weird? Wow. That’s hard. And that’s the undertaking of David Axelrod, formerly head electioneer for Barak Obama, now tasked with the same job for New Labour and Ed. And number on his list: make Ed seem un-wierd. Easy as making air seem un-breathable. As making Kim Jong Un the poster-boy for free expression.

In fact for the general elections next year we have 3 imported ‘consultants’ charged with making the unelectable seem worthy. With making the voting public like objectionable losers.

We have a South African in charge of the LibDems. And good luck to him. We have our Aussie chap working on the Conseravtives and now its Axelrod the Yank for the Labourites.

My first thought about this entire practice is that if our leaders need to be turned into someone else before we’d be prepared to vote for them, then they’re not very good leaders to start with. And then why don’t we just get those someone else’s as leaders in the beginning? And in ‘changing the public’s perception’ of these party leaders, that is basically election speak for lying, cheating and fasle representation. The famous ‘pig in lipstick’ but taken well beyond the mere lipstick stage and up to the point where you make these people into seeming like something they’re patently not. Which is dishonest. And therefore not the best way to start getting people to trust you enough to vote you into a very powerful position indeed.

Whereas the head of the RMT trade union is also an elected post (though you probably only need 4% of the members to achieve a 51% majority because this is trade unions, not advanced maths) and Bob Crow died and there’s three really nice chaps eager to take that role. They also employ image consutants, but to make them look more horrible, more tough, more nasty, vicious, greedy and dirty. And unless talks this weekend bear fruit, the tube trains are going on strike on Monday night for 2 days, then again the following week for 3 days.

I believe in trade unions. I believe in the rights of the working man so that he’s not exploited. Unless he works for me. But I don’t believe in anyone’s right to bring London to a virtual stand-still, to cost the city millions and millions in lost productivity and to make my journey to work more difficult than it already is. Over an issue that will cost the union no jobs and no pay loss.

We should train up all our Bulgarians and Romanians recent arrivals as train operators. How long could it take? They learn quickly. It takes them 3 days to become a proficient pick-pocket so driving a train should be easy. And then just tell the union men not to bother coming back to work after their ‘days off’. What’s Rumanian for ‘mind the gap’??

Happy saturday

A xxxx

Japanese women live longer than all others. Fact. Scientists proved it. By, errr, counting how long they live. Probably. And they live longer than British women and even longer than the Italians, who are, apparently, ‘famously healthy’.

Maybe its to do with bound feet. Cutting off circulation at the ankles thus improving blood supply to other body parts. Maybe its all that nodding and bowing. A flexible neck is the path to long life. Isn’t that what they always say? No, actually they don’t. What they do say is, somewhat inevitably, ‘its down to diet’. All that raw fish, green tea and very low carbs and dairy in their food must therefore, increase their longevity.

Well that’s a lifestyle choice, and some of us would rather eat hamburgers and Easter eggs (not necessarily together, but now I think about it… hmmmm…) and die a little younger. With a smile on our faces. Rather than have your last words being ‘I’m fucking starving’. In fact I have no issue with Sushi, I quite like it. In a raw, fishy sort of way. But only as a precursor to a proper meal. A starter, an appetizer.

The Japanese eat about 25% less calories less a week than westerners; 96% less than Americans. Though they do a lot of karaoke. A hell of a lot. Therefore I think living longer has nothing to do with food, but singing really loudly, terribly out of tune, whilst sufficiently drunk to not be totally embarrassed by the abject misery you’re causing to others, may be more relevant.

Whereas my main concern is how Italians are described as ‘famously healhty’. They eat nothing but carbs and processed meats, heavy sauces, all washed down with pizzas the size of trampoulines and drink way too much. Yet Italian women lived second longest. Probably because most have murdered their husbands early in the marriage, or are Mafia widows, thus spend their lives enjoying stuff rather than looking after their men. Maybe its just that the Italian women look healthy; all gorgeously dark and olive-skinned and curvacious; all of them. Until they pass 30 and all that pasta comes back to haunt them and then they grow beards.

In an unrelated study, at Harvard, no less, they found that drinking 3 cups of coffee a day makes you 37% (and that is positively huuuuuuuuuge) less likely to develop type 2 diabetes. Amazing. I’ll never get diabetes because I drink at least 14 cups an hour. This study (sponsored by Starbucks… if only) didn’t mention whether ‘coffee’ included the high-fat, cholesterol-inducing, artery-clogging milk, that some people use, or whether the lack of diabetes is simply because this 37% of the subjects just died of coffee overdose thus, obviously, failed to become diabetic.

So the answer is: drink coffee with raw fish in it, instead of cream and sugar, and you’ll live to be 150.

Ok, that’s sorted, let’s just sort out Ukraine and Palestine and Bernie Ecclestone and we can all take the weekend off.

Happy, healthy, coffee-laden Friday

A xxxx

Society is changing. In fact its always changing, evolving, modifying, improving(??), adjusting, progressing. One way or another. Its just a form of evolution, without the reproduction. Good things get kept and passed along to future generations, bad things fall by the wayside, become extinct. Like wearing top hats. Like giving up your seat on the tube for a pregnant woman (you sexist bastard). Like toga parties. Like Wimpy Bars. Yet still we mourn the passing of some of the old ways.

But some things, particularly here in Britain (I use that word really as an inclusive way of saying ‘London’ but extend it just to include all the horrible bits), have changed radically.

Violent crime is down. Alcohol abuse is down. Teenage pregnancy is down. All to record levels of lowness.

And this is such a problem now in places like Harlow, Colchester, Wigan, Maidenhead, that emergency services are perilously close to being able to cope on Friday nights. Normal civilians are now prepared to walk through Manchester town centre on a Saturday evening without getting caught up in an immense brawl as drunken yooofs leave their pubs and clubs amid a hail of flying bottles, screaming punch-ups and the massed aggro of booze-fuelled northern scum. Even in the south.

The very fabric of British culture; fightin’, boozin’, shaggin’, is being undermined by an insurgent group of neo-puritanical tee-totallers intent on ruining the very essence of our nation’s way-of-life. And this should not be allowed to happen.

The reason for this change of immense proportions (violence is down 12%!!!) is not because alcohol has been made much more expensive, nor that disposable income has been at an all-time low due to the recession. If that were the case then to sustain this level of improvement all we’d need to do would be just ensure that young people never get jobs, which successive governments have almost succeeded in doing.

But no. They reckon the reason why ‘kids’ don’t drink as much as their parents did, don’t do drugs, don’t fight as much, is because they’re all at home glued to their fucking computer screens ‘living’ life in the virtual world and Frikkin Facebook, rather than getting out there and having fun. (For ‘fun’ read; falling down drunk and getting your head kicked in whilst you lay there).

Two young women have a blog and a book called ‘The Vagenda’ and its a feminist look at both society and the magazines women read in which you find an article on one page about ‘being happy with your body’, opposite an advert for breast implants. Ok, so its Germain Greer for the digital age, but has some good things to say. If you’re a 20-something feminist, lesbian or great fat ugly bird with halitosis. I’m going to start my own, in reply, called The Dick-tator, and it too will be aimed at the same market. Ish.

Happy Thursday,

A xxxx

I don’t think the late, great Kurt Cobain, when he penned those words, had in mind the current culture of sacking football managers, but its nonetheless rather appropriate. In fact I don’t think Kurt had ever heard of David Moyes at the time he wrote Smells Like Teen Spirit. I don’t think anyone knew who the pale and insipid Scotsman was unless they supported Dunfermline Athletic or whichever third rate Scottish league team old Moysey was then plying his trade for. (For the record, so as not to offend Dunfermline Athletic; all Scottish football is ‘third rate’).

David Moyes knew he was in trouble. He had been for months. Almost since the start of the season. When the league champions team he adopted (or rather, which adopted him) got off to a nightmare start to the season. Losing at home to both Manchester City and Liverpool is never likely to endear any manager to the crowd at Old Trafford and at that point, really, he was doomed. From then til now its just been about harnessing that anger, collecting evidence to focus all of the team’s shortcomings on one man and waiting for the inevitable coup de gras. Which arrived yesterday morning.

About a day after everyone else in the world seemed to know about it.

Which you would normally put down as ‘the grapevine’, or a minor leak, or an aggressive press. But not when the Glazer family are concerned.

At another time, having a terrible season would be put down to ‘adjustments’, to ‘teething troubles’, to ‘adapting to new ways’. But sadly we don’t live in those times any longer. Patience is zero. There’s just too much money at stake for any considerations of anything other than instant success and gratification.

Bizarrely, the Manchester United share price had been climbing steadily over the last couple of months as expectations grew that Moyes would not last the season. How odd. That losing a manager is not seen as a destabilising event but a positive move forward. Even before they know who the replacement might be. There again Man U. are listed on the New York Stock Exchange, where they know as much about football as they do about making proper tea or Morris Dancing.

And yet that may be naive to assume. Because the Glazers are all about manipulating funds. Its what they do. Their infamous ‘leveraged buyout’ of the club is still the main reason why the richest club in the world is cash-strapped and still massively in debt. But you can’t sack the owners. You couldn’t afford to. Abramovich couldn’t afford to.

News of the sacking yesterday thus raised the share price to an almost record high. A situation in which a lot of people can make a lot of money. Which is why the NYSE are investigating the ‘leak’.

I’d have bitten your arm off if offered David Moyes last year to manage Spurs. And not in a Hannibal Lector way. But he’s deemed insufficient for Manchester United. After just 10 months.

Football is such a hateful game. That’s why I don’t waste my time with it. I’d rather watch the royals at Ayers Rock.

Happy future career David Moyes. You’ll have to eke out that measly 5 million payoff and make it last. What with the price of coal…

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

How nice to have a long weekend. How lovely to know that the world (well, round here anyway) has officially stopped for 4 days to rest, relax, recuperate and re-incarnate. I passed on the latter. In fact I passed over on the latter, but that’s another story. This is how my 4 days of rest panned out:

out to dinner 1
out to lunch 1
friends over for dinner 1
alcohol consumed moderate to ‘don’t drive’
tennis played 2
Spurs matches attended 1
Tai Chi classes 2
Flower markets visited 1
Wuthering Heights 1
long walks 2
football watched on tv- not enough
coffees drunk- countless (though only 1 a day from My Waitrose; bless ’em)
lawns mowed 1
hours of paperwork that I’ve put off for 6 months- 3
studies tidied up- none (managed to avoid something this weekend at least)
ice creams eaten 1
Easter Eggs bought before they stop making them for another 9 months- errr… lots.

I mean; how restful is that? But on the ‘change as good as a rest’ principle, it scores highly. And rewarding. And I managed to do it all without the paparazzi interfering.

So my weekend was better than the Waleses. That’d be Wills and Catherine then. And I suppose we better include little George.

Whilst on their tour of the 3rd World (New Zealand and Australia) they have attended functions, been to galas, visited hospitals and hospices, had trips to the zoo, all accompanied by the massed ranks of the world’s press, recording their every move, every wave, every dribble down George’s chin, every wedge heel Catherine wears on the beach, and every curl on her glorious brunette head. And the deal is, as it always is, that they will be filmed, videoed, snapped, selfied and recorded at each and every step, they will pose and smile and sit and face those cameras constantly. BUT. And there’s always one o’ them. The quid pro quo is that on their single, solitary, only day ‘off’, that they be left alone.

So what do they do? Those uncultured, uncouth, slap-another-prawn-on-the-barbie, make mine a Fosters, cheers-mate, cork-hatted, Aborigine-killing, Republic-seeking Aussies? They send helicopters up and spy cameras with 90 foot lenses out to spy on the Royal couple. And His Royal Sprogness. Film them walking hand in hand. Video their normal, unroyal movements.

And that is simply not playing the game. We should disown Australia immediately. Cut them off from the Commonwealth. Steal their resources, rape and pillage, declare war and confiscate the Ashes.

Its an affront. Its not nice. And sanctions must be taken. But proper ones, not like the Russian ones where you treat them as badly as you can without disturbing the gas supply.

Yours indignantly,

Major General, Sir Andrus of Glenfiddich, VC, QC, WC

xxxx

Its rather ironic, possibly even a tad moronic, that I absolutely haaaaated English at school. Despised it. All that riy-tin they made you do, couldn’t bare it. Wouldn’t want to be writing all the time, would I? And readin’. Who needs it? I didn’t voluntarily pick up my first book to read until I was 24. (Exodus by Leon Uris, if you’re interested). And since then I’m never without a book. In fact the same book. Read it 19,426 times so far…

Now whether this English hatred stemmed from my mild dyslexia (how is any dissleksic supposed to spell that wrod?) that we didn’t know at the time, or whether this was attributable to the dire standards of teaching at London grammar schools, which managed to poison Shakespeare and every other wonderful book we ‘read’ at school, I don’t know.

I think it stems from the disappointment of discovering that the subject ‘English’ was all about words. Whereas I’d thought English class would be about eating bacon and eggs, hating Germans, revering Bobby Moore, drinking warm beer, singing the national anthem and getting Union Jack tatoos on your legs.

And for O-level English literature (which I failed due to total lack of enthusiasm and the discovery of ‘girls’) we read Wuthering Heights. Emily Bronte’s finest. In fact her only. Whilst her sisters were busy churning them out as fast as the cow operated the flour mill, Emily only contributed one. That one.

So here’s three sisters, stuck out on’t Yorkshire Moors, in the bleakest of bleak (I’ve been to Howarth House, years ago, Mel made me go), with nothing to do and nowhere to go that wasn’t a three-day journey and no-one to see who wasn’t either family or some dim-witted Yorkshire yokel, so they created their own fictional word of passion, of love, of pain, suffering, cold and ice and all those other rotten, nasty things that can collectively be termed ‘life up north’.

I studied the book for a whole year and yet had no idea what the story was. Surely it would have been advisable to read the bloody thing before dissecting it to shit under that sharpest of scalpels; Lett’s Notes. But no. Start with the dissection at line 1 so the story never really unfolds.

But last night we went to a ‘fringe’ production, over a pub in Islington, of Wuthering Heights. And it was bleak and it was passionate and basically, a girl’s in love with her bastard step-brother (before you go ‘eeeuuuww’; it was her step-brother, it was up north and it was long enough ago that incest was as popular back then as invading Ukraine is today), she marries someone else, dies in childbirth but haunts the bastard step-brother, who marries her sister-in-law in revenge, has a son, who marries her daughter, sings a wierd song whilst prancing round like Marcel Marceau on tranqulisers.
In other words, typical life in Yorkshire. Where Mel grew up. Hmmmm…

Great production. Even though Kate Bush never made an appearance. I love theatre pubs, they’re just great. Still not sure about Wuthering Heights though. its no 50 Shades.

Happy sunny, bank holiday Monday

A xxxx

I love this time of the football season. Its the sharp end. The business end. The time when aspiration becomes either realisation (Liverpool) or constipation (Spurs); when promise becomes delivered or reduced to more lies; when real men stand and get counted, and the preening overpaid ponces wither on the vine of also-ran-dom.

So yesterday, White Hart Lane was looking resplendent in brightly coloured kebab shops and fish’n’chip wrapping paper littering the floor. Ahhhh, home. Back again to the land of my people. And to welcome Fulham.

I don’t know about you but most teams give me an instant effect just at the mention of their names. Normally its a bad effect. Sometimes its a good one. Fulham is the latter. I like Fulham. The most inoffensive (and sadly ineffectual) team in the league. But possibly not for much longer. There’s something genteel, something pleasant about Fulham. Nice ground, lovely fans, nice team. Ahhhhhh. And ‘nice’ will get you??? a. nowhere; b. relegated; c. all of the above.

Because Fulham were not just bad but completely awful. They even made Spurs look quite good, and trust me, we aren’t. Not at all. What Fulham also are is very forgiving. We give them ball just outside our area because we can’t defend for shit, and they just pass it gently back to us to give us another chance. Again and again. Other teams are less forgiving, but not Fulham. And so, in their honour, we played like Stoke. But without any of the characteristic violence. Long balls down the middle, goals from set pieces, all scored by players deep at the far post, one yard out, who, when facing other teams, would never haver received the ball; it would have cut out yards before. But Fulham don’t like to defend too well, they like to give opportunities to others. And, for once, Spurs actually managed to take advantage of them. Free points, in da bag.

Chelsea weren’t so lucky. Though luck played no part of it. Just, according to the ever-more-hateful-with-each-point-dropped Morinho, horrendous refereeing. I used to have lots of respect, bordering on love for Jose, but not now. Its always someone else’s fault and his team were unjustly robbed by circumstances beyond their control. Bullshit. Chelsea were shit, couldn’t score goals and got beaten by a desperate and justly rewarded Sunderland. So Jose, I’m afraid you should just FUCK OFF AND STOP BEING SUCH A DICK. That should cover it. Chelsea have become the North Korea of the Premiership and that makes the little Portugezer Kim Jong Un. Not a good place for anyone to be.

Liverpool go top, Arsenal beat Hull to keep up the quest for that unimportant 4th place, and just in case you missed it (or care) Spurs won brilliantly-ish.

Happy wet Sunday

A xxxx

Tomorrow night Fargo is on tv. Not the movie, but a new, 10-part tv series.

How do they do that? Why do they do that?

Why take one of the most perfect movies ever made and ‘adapt’ it; re-work it, modify it, extend it, re-do and add bits on? Oh, for money, of course. Like Breaking Bad (didn’t see it), like True Detective (didn’t see it) and so many other tv series, they are massive and thus extremely lucrative.

I’d like to say that I’ve already set my record thingy and series linked it for Fargo.

Yet part of me, the purist, the artistic, the critical, the pompous, pretentious, movie-snob, tosser part, is totally opposed to this blatant exploitation of a true wonder of cinematic perfection.

Fargo is simply a wonderful film. Its dark. Darker than dark, almost black. It has sick moments (dead hit men in wood grinders) it has the best hero(ine) ever, in Frances McDormand’s oscar-winning heavily pregnant police detective. It has the wonderful William H. Macy as the nebach’s nebach. The man for whom nothing ever goes right. A plot that is simple and elegant, a plan that ‘can’t go wrong’ and yet it all turns to shit. And all in the frozen bleakness of North Dakota’s snowy wastelands. It even has Steve Buschemi at his most ugly, evil and nasty. And for a man who has made a career out of ugly and evil, that says a lot. Fargo is in my top 5 ever movies. Just don’t ask what the other 4 might be because they could become 40.

And so 20 hours of tv ‘based on’ a 100 minute movie. I remain unconvinced. So by monday morning I’ll either be totally hooked and addicted and saving up for the box-set, or appalled and disgusted of London, writing to the producers demanding my money back.

And although there’s so much more to discuss, Spurs are playing early today and we have to get going.

So happy Saturday, and may your best team win. As long as they play in blue and white at White Hart Lane.

A xxxx