Andy's Glasses

So sang the Clash in 1982 on the Combat Rock album, one of my all time top-whatever. It was a protest against Iran’s banning of music. All of it. No music. Its subversive. Degenerates the masses. Corrupts the populus. Evil westernism. Ban it. And they did, as part of the Islamisation of that fine (??) nation. So when six ‘kids’, young adult types, posted a video of themselves dancing on a rooftop, miming along to Pharrell Williams’ ‘Happy’, they were arrested and are in jail. They were just having fun. Which is illegal in Iran. Fun is a crime.

How fucked up is any nation/religion/organisation that actually criminalises simple, innocent, inoffensive pleasure? Answers on a postcard, per-lease. Though I’m not questioning Iran’s right to ban what they want; its unfair to make judgments based on our more liberated views. But please, get a grip.

Rachida Dati, former French cabinet minister, now Euro-MP and also a muslim, she too was fucked up. But in a different way. A more modern way. A much nicer way. And thus she gave birth to a child. And, unmarried, she refused to name the father. How noble. Though when she eventually did pick a name out of the hat, the guy refused to admit responsiblity on the grounds that Ms Dati was at that time sleeping with 8 other men as well. What? All in one bed?? Some bed. She’s probably not a devout muslim then.

Rachida, in fact the first muslim woman to serve in French cabinet (though she’s so gorgeous it was inevitable, really) is now kind of defending Nigel Farrage and saying that he is not in fact ‘a racist’. Even though he looks like one, sounds like one, acts like one and certainly smells like one (they all smell of fags and beer, haven’t you noticed? go sniff a racist today). Nigel’s claim that ‘all Romanians are thieving bastards’ (my words, but however you choose to gild that lily, that’s what he said) has landed him in hot water. Where he spends so much time the only suprise is that he doesn’t wear a scuba tank over his suit.

And to be fair, (something I try NEVER to be when UKIP are involved), Nigel did refuse a European coalition with France’s Front Nationale party along with the equivalent (neo-nazis) from Holland and Greece, but only because he’d then have problems denying the racist card back home. The very fact that such organistions saw in Nigel’s lot a like minded group says a lot. Like Nigel. He always says a lot. Normally digging himself out of one hole or another with a blunt shovel.

And much as I really don’t want an influx of 2.6 million thieving, raping, organised-criming, Romanians and Bulgarians swarming our shores, mainly because we don’t have the room nor the houses nor the infrastructure to accommodate such input, I can’t condone outright bans on immigration. They’re oppressive.

Today is voting day, here in England. Not the big stuff, but local council elections and Euro ministerialisms. And I don’t mind who votes what, you almost have the right to vote for whomsoever you please. Almost. But as you place your cross on that paper, don’t endorse insidious racism, however fucking smiley and pally and matey it may seem.

DON’T vote UKIP today.

Happy polling day

A xxxx

Yaya Toure; best player in the league? Ground-breaking midfielder who is the new ‘complete’ player?? He’s big, very big, yet fast, and nimble, has quick feet, wonderful passer, goalscorer extraordinaire, moves like the wind, immovable force, the engine that makes Manchester City tick.

And a total fucking tosser.

Message to Yaya: if you want to leave Man City, just tell them. It will be hard, but they’ll get over it. Once they’ve spent the, what? 100 million? 120 million? that you’d command in transfer fees. But get over it they would. Because starting a fight with them over a fucking birthday cake is as stupid and childish as it is transparent.

Roberto Carlos was given a Bugatti by Anzhi on his birthday. Because that club was stupid and for a couple of years threw money all over the place to try and buy glory which almost succeeded before the owner cut the budget. Roberto Carlos probably got a Ford Focus for his next birthday. A used one. Such is life under Dagestani ownership. Where??? Don’t ask, I’ve never heard of it either.

No-one ever accused Yaya of being clever. That’s not his job. Otherwise he’d have taken over from Steve Jobs at Apple. So he has an agent. Just your normal bottom-feeding, blood-sucking, parasitical scumbag-in-Armani who performs some simple maths:

if Yaya stays at Man City, I get **% of his meagre £220,000 a week salary, for doing precisely, er, nothing. But if he goes to Barcelona, he’ll get a higher wage for me to plunder AND I get a hefty chunk of the transfer fee. Hmmmm. Which scenario leaves me with more cash…

So let’s find a reason to moan. A point of principle upon which escalation of bad feelings can reach crisis point and Yaya can leave. We can say ‘another team wants to pay him more’, but Wayne Rooney already played that card. Ok, let’s complain that ‘no-one loves me and I’m really sad’. That’ll play well in the media and create sympathy. Because everyone (under 7 years old) is miserable if all they get for their birthday is two cakes and no Bugatti, and therefore I’ll keep my pride intact.

Yeah, fucking right.

Two giants of sport retired from active service this week. Ryan Giggs and Jonny Wilkinson. Two of the finest left feet ever to grace the pitches of the world. Both were prodigal beginners, both worked hard, achieved greatness in their careers and were loyal to their teams and the games they represented. One of them shagged his sister-in-law but no-one’s perfect. Well, I suppose in a strictly moral sense Jonny W. is pretty perfect. Almost too perfect. Shunning fun and drinks with his mates to spend another 12 hours kicking a rugby ball between the posts. He was Mr Serious. Mr Totally-Focussed. But that can create an image of almost dullness. Whereas Ryan slept with his brother’s wife and then took out a superinjunction to have it banned from the media. Which didn’t go ‘that’ well otherwise we wouldn’t be talking about it today. But heh, everyone makes mistakes. And Ryan Giggs is allowed one. That we know of. I still love him. Not sure if the sister-in-law does.

Happy Wednesday, and belated happy birthday Yaya. McLaren’s in the post.

A xxxx

I try to be politically correct. I really do. But, despite all my efforts, its just so confusing, such a minefield, so complicated. Knowing who can be insulted and who can’t, what you can say about minorities, races, nations and even genders. Its all so full of mixed messages, and we need clarification. And by ‘we’, I obviously mean me.

I mean, Beyonce goes out there and twerks for all she’s worth, shaking that most magical of booties around the stage, and she’s ‘reclaiming her own body for the sisterhood’. Skinny waif Mylie Cyrus does similarly and she’s ‘being in charge of her own sexuality’, she’s taking feminism forward. Albeit in a very skinny, shapeless kind of way. I do like my feminists to be a bit more shapely really. But that’s just my politics.

So when Lithuanian Lil shakes her rather pert and slightly surgically enhanced butt around at Spearmint Rhino, she’s objectifying herself. She’s the horns of the devil. Or creating horny devils, whatever. She’s the ass-end of the misogynist machine, perpetuating female subjugation in a male-dominated, paternalistic world. The bitch. They why do so many men see fit to stuff 20-pound notes into her underwear? Ok, ‘underwear’ may be overstating a piece of pink string, but still. Why do they? Perhaps they think that, like the Ms’s Knowles and Cyrus, that Lil is furthering the feminist cause and these men, the pot-bellied, tie-loosened, half-drunk bond traders and corporate lawyers and Goldman Sacksers, they’re all devotees to feminism and the sisterhood and they’re supporting that worthy cause. Perhaps.

But when a woman finally breaks that ‘glass ceiling’ (which I think was only put there so you could look up skirts), she must NOT be acclaimed as the ‘first woman who ever…’ No. That’s implying that women are different from men. Oh, okay, not sure how that bit fits in. Or if its even allowed to fit in any longer. The assumption must be that she just happened to be the best person for that job and who happens to be a woman. Like an afterthought. She was going to be a man, but opted for femininity instead. Could’a gone either way.

Yet whilst on the beach in Israel, I conducted an extensive, longitudinal, factor analysis study of men and women. And I can confirm, not just with certainty but with a great deal of pleasure and relief; that women are indeed different to men. Wonderfully, curvily (other than those pretty curvy pot bellies at Spearmint Rhino), softly, bouncily, delightfully, tannedly, lithely, leggily, different.

And if that makes me an unevolved knuckle dragger then pass the fucking bananas right this way.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

To all our friends at Arsenal for their wonderful victory against Hull on Saturday. Well done to club, players, fans and everyone concerned with that team over the years.

That was the most sincere and difficult sentence I’ve written since: “I will never ogle, leer at or objectify women again, unless I really have to or am driven by forces beyond my control or that of my genetalia”.

So the Goons finally won something. Finally. Phah. There’s already jokes going round about “27 hours since Arsenal won a trophy; sack Wenger”. And a stunning come-from-behind victory which speaks volumes of the man that Wenger is and always has been. Because he has but one gift. And that is to give his players belief. That they can do it. Whatever ‘it’ may be in order.

I think it safe to say that if Spurs, or most other teams, had gone 2-0 down in a cup final, or virtually any match, they’d lose 4-1. But Arsenal, as the song goes, don’t stop believin’. They are the Premiership’s Streetlight People. (?????)

So whilst there is always much to offer in criticism about Arsene, he is unarguably a supreme motivator. The most important feature of any club manager. Skills and game plans can be taught by others, coaches do lots of the hard work, but getting your players into the right head space; that’s magical. Particuarly as the heads of most players is exactly that: empty space.

And massive congratulations to Athletico Madrid for winning La Ligua by ‘simply’ not losing at Barcelona at the same time the cup final was being played. Amazing that a relatively poor team with few ‘superstars’ that weren’t developed in house, could win in a league dominated so completely for so long by the mighty, massive, obscenely wealthy powers of Real Madrid and Barcelona. Their victory should give hope to all. It won’t, but it should. And the Barca fans (bless ’em) cheered and applauded Athletico after the match.

Me mate Dave, in one of our many poolside discussions of such important matters over the last few days, asked a great question. Who were Real fans rooting for in the Barca/Athletico match. Ooooooohhhhh, that’s a tough one. As Real hate them both. In fact as Real hate everyone who isn’t Real Madrid.

And yet, and yet, and yet… I kind’a want Real Madrid to win the Champions League final next weekend. For one reason only. Gareth Bale. I loved that boy like a son. Who then fucked off and abandoned those who loved him ‘just’ for money, success, trophies, glory, women, lamborginis and career and life fulfilment. Fickle bastard. Superficial sod. But because I still watch him play and because he is still the most exiting player in the world to watch (not ‘the best’ but on the ball, no-one since Zidane creates that frisson, that hackle-rising magic like Gareth at full tilt).

I read yesterday that to be a ‘true Real legend’ you just have to score in a champions league final. Several relative unknowns are ‘up there’ with the greats for doing just that and nothing much more, whereas superstar Ronaldo (fat Ronaldo, the proper, original, Brazilian one, not the Portuguese hair-gel advert) never reached that place in their hearts because he didn’t win ‘that final’.

Ok, last chance for sun and sand before we fly back this afternoon. Boo-hooo.

Happy (half of) Monday

A xxxx

Came home last night and, whilst trying to digest the biggest ice-cream ever consumed (and the best, if you’re at all interested) we turned on the tv. And because we’re in God’s own country, instead of the ‘Meet the Parents’ or ‘Grease 2’ or ‘Die Hard AGAIAIAIAN’, we were blessed with Django Unchained. Ok, lot of blood-letting, which doesn’t aid the digestion, but the wonderful Tarantino wit, the outstanding performances (I’d forgotten how revoltingly brilliant Di Caprio was), all make up for seventeen thousand litres of red paint in 12 minutes. And of course, best of all, they’re all shouting out ‘Nigger!!!!’ all the time. Which wasn’t censored, wasn’t cut, wasn’t anything, it just was. How can that be??? A travesty!!! A disgrace!!! Appalling!!!! Like going to Tottenham and hearing that excessive use of the ‘yid’ word!!!! Like social anthropological rape!!!

But its not. Its ‘istory, innit. And thus, in true historical realism, they said what was said then and it all sounds normal, though a bit louder than we speak today, and no-one complained because its like real life used to be. Hmmmm. A black ex-slave, wearing sunglasses that wouldn’t be invented for 65 years, riding round insulting white slavers. Yup, realistic.

So Jeremy Clarkson, the petrolhead’s motormouth, the guru of neanderthalism, the man worshipped by anyone who drives a V8 car and has a conscience, our Jeremy got in biiiiiiiiiiig trouble filming Top Gear. He decided to say a nursery rhyme to select between two options. “Eeeny, meeny, miny, mo” he started. No problem there, you can say all those words to Her Majesty the Queen. Though oddly enough, if you call Prince Phillip a queen, he’ll punch you on the nose. Then the next line, uttered, on camera, by Jeremy: “catch a ni- by the toe”.

OH!

MY!!

GAAAWWWWD!!!!!!

Did Jeremy Clarkson just utter the most unutterable of unutterables???? Did he really??? Rewind and confirm. Yes he DID!!!

So 25,000 phoned, wrote, emailed and tweeted to complain about this atrocity and demand Clarkson not just be sacked by the BBC but taken out and publicly flogged, like a… like someone in Twelve Years a Motoring Correspondent.

Such an overreaction. As always. Political correctness is just a bunch of tossers trying so hard not to offend people they really hate that they inflict their misery on everyone else. Ironically, or perhaps, justly, the only group of people you are officially allowed to really insult without fear of reprimand or punishment, is middle-class, white, hypersensitive, twin-setted, purple-rinsed, Home Counties church-going old mingers with too much time on their scrubbed and creamed-up fucking hands.

Happy Sunday, I’m off to watch Blazing Saddles.

A xxxx

I know, I know, England’s having a heatwave, hotter that 1936, sunnier than Bahrain, warmer than the toaster, eggs frying on car bonnets in Esher, blah, blah, blah. So it seems a bit ironic to book a last-minute break ‘to the sun’ whilst it seems to be more of a busman’s holiday leaving the sun to sit in the sun. Who knew it was going to be gorgeous in London? And really, going ‘away’ is not just about sun. Its so much more. Its about distancing yourself mentally. Its about the complete relaxation that you simply can’t get at home. And its about enjoying a different world, a different culture. And, as is generally the case, ‘culture’ means ‘food’.

They say that civlisation arrived when the human question changed from ‘what will we eat?’ to ‘where shall we eat?’. No-one kills goats any more to feed the family for a week, nor goes out picking leaves in the forests, when Tescos have them on 2-for-1. Ok, in parts of Africa and Asia and even South America there is poverty and starvation, which is a bad thing, and in many other places there is McDonalds, which is arguably worse. The old ‘starvation vs clogged arteries’ debate. But in the west, and even here in the Middle East, food is a defining feature of life. Certainly of my life.

So I’ve come here really, as I do most years, to spend my time eating ‘things in pitta, doused in chilli sauce’. And I’m not too fussed what those ‘things’ might be. Meat works. Tuna salad. Fellafal. Fruit salad. Fruit salad? With chilli?? In pitta??? Well, it just seemed a bit more breakfasty than more meat. Maybe put some yoghurt on it too.

But that’s only part of the story. Last night we did sushi, tonight its tapas. Multi-culturalism means different flavour restaurants. But before that we have our ritual. Well, this is Israel, and today is the sabbath day, so we need something spiritual. And that’s where the iced coffee comes in. A ‘special’ ritual for 5pm every day. When we sojourn down the beach, following the path of our forefathers, when they escaped from Egypt, even though we now use the boarwalk which only went up 5 years ago. And we trudge in the sand until we find an oasis (called Bell Bar) and there The Lord has provided sustinance for us. Or iced coffee as manna is now known. Because they do it here differently. They do it better than Starbucks, better than Costa, better than anywhere. Probably because they skimp on neither fats nor sugars, but they don’t have to. Holidays are calorie free. (I fucking hope they are or I’m in big trouble). And we sit in the lowering sunshine, watch the amblers ambling, the surfers surfing and the sand… er… lying there. And we suck wonderfully-flavoured ice through a straw. A slow business. But what the rush. We’re on holiday.

Ahhhhhh. Though may have to delay the ritual a bit for the cup final today. Or get them to put a screen up on the beach. Now that’s an idea.

Come on Hull,

Shabbat shalom, as they say in Knightsbridge,

A xxxx

Satnav is just another sodding screen to demand our attention. We leave our computers, occasionally, walk around staring at smart phones and then get in the car. And turn on the satnav. Well, you probably do. I get in with a map. And notes. Scribbled down from some direction site and relating to places I know. Because I resent satnavs and what they represent. I hate the fact that you’re just getting into American Girl and when Tom Petty implores: “take it easy, baby. Make it last all ni- IN 5O YARDS, TURN RIGHT!!” Oh just piss off, you told me that 300 yards ago, 200 yards ago and 100 yards ago, you’re like the worst, nagging wife in the whole world, now SHUT THE FUCK UP.

Yet they have a place, satnavs. Mainly when you’re going somewhere far and exotic, like Putney, or Oldham, and you haven’t been before. My girls had satnavs for their 18th birthday presents. At which point they simply stopped noticing where they were driving. Neither can now make it to the end of the road without assistance from the satellites.

But satnav is soon to become old news, yesterday’s toy, this generations 8-track, betamax, tape cassette, Leeds United kind of thing. Historical amusement value only. Because (apparently) you get ‘black spots’ when the satellite is blocked out and the instructions stop and you get lost. Which is tragic. Even though no-one I know who uses those things ever complains about it. Scientists are now working on, and have perfected, the quantum compass. Sounds impressive, its full of colliding atoms and physics shit, like a mini CERN for home use, and its 1000 times more accurate than satnav. How they arrive at 1000 times is beyond anyone without a PhD in particle mechanics and psycho-pedantics.

Now isn’t that fantastic news. The compass is currently 1 metre long and very heavy. Perfect for using on a bike. And I hate to imagine the cost. So don’t go throwing away your 75-quid Tom-Tom, which is 3 inches long and weighs nothing, just yet. Surely it can’t take long to minimise this thing. I mean, how big’s an atom?

Charlotte Leslie, MP for Bristol-somewhere, was, in a former life, a lifeguard. And a pretty damned fit one at that. Can I say that? Without accusations of chauvinism? misogyny? sexism? Rolph Harrisism? Anyway, she reckons that the skills she learned out there in the waves serve her well as a member of parliament in Westminster. Which I reckon is true. I mean, what is being part of the conservative party machine if not the saving of drowning men. If they’re not drowning under the weight of public scorn over expense claims, then they’re drowning under a heap of their own rhetoric and bullshit. Whatever floats her float.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

So here’s the quandary. Is it nobler in the mind to suffer the night flight over to Tel Aviv, arriving at some godforsaken hour and feeling like shit? Or to take a flight the next morning and basically lose a whole day of sun, sand and sangria? Not that we drink sangria here; it just alliterates better than ‘water’, ‘beer’ or ’12 year old single malt’. As time is precious we opted for the overnight, get 3 hours of uncomfortable, disturbed sleep, arrive feeling positively zombiesque, but at least arrive.

So to celebrate, we went straight out for ‘brunch’. What an underestimated meal that is. Positively wonderful. Its like breakfast (the ‘br-‘) but because it implies that includes lunch too (‘-unch’), you get to eat loads more. And Israel is brunch central of the world. They have a thousand variations of brunch here, all of them wonderful, all of them completely calorie-free because you’re on holiday and therefore going to burn off any kcals consumed by walking… to dinner later on. Or strolling along the beach for iced coffees. Again, completely fat-free and ultra-lite. Unless you count the calories or fat. In which case, get a fucking life.

My eggs Benedict came with a salad. Salad? For breakfast?? No, for brunch. The salad was the ‘unch’ bit. The pancakes came with fruit salad. Fruit? For lunch?? No, Mel always has fruit for ‘br-‘ so just added the most fabulous pancakes to unchify the deal. Add rolls, preserves, juices, coffee and I start to appreciate why they call this ‘the Holy Land’.

And I’m in here writing this because its just too damned hot to sit out any longer. I’m singeing. Cooked to perfection, like my eggs.

5 days of heaven. And the pic is the view.

Have a lovely thursday; wherever you are.

A xxxx

Normally this is a horrible time of the year. When the football season finishes. The hiatus. Mind the gap. But this year we have a World Cup to look forward to. Even though its going to be all late night matches because of the time differences.

And due to those late kick-offs (in UK time, as if anyone else’s time is important) they’re going to extend pub opening hours to enable unemployed drunks to watch the 11pm starting matches in the comfort of their own Lamb To The Slaughter, having already been drinking since about 6.30 that evening. So the government is sorting out these extended licences and they are working out the possible scenarios. And have decided that the chances of England getting into the knock-out stages of the competition are pretty remote. And that’s our own government. Another vote of confidence for English football.

But before that starts we have the inevitable ‘spring cleaning’ at football clubs. Which for Spurs, inevitably, means getting rid of the manager. Its a ceremony we perform every year. Gives us a clean start next term. Refreshes the parts. And also this is the time of year when the transfer market goes into a frenzy. Because if you wait til after the Cup to buy star players their stock may have risen and you can no longer afford them come August.

Tim Sherwood had to go. So said Daniel Levy. Because the players don’t like Tim, the board don’t like him, the fans don’t like him and even his wife’s not that keen. However, if you adopt an ‘appointment by popularity’ paradigm, surely Daniel Levy should be the first to go. Everyone hates the Chairman. And how about our director of football? What a waste of space not just he is, but the whole concept of such a role. And if you accept the importance of a Baldini then surely, after last year’s disastrous wasting of 100 million quid on worthless mediocrity, he should be replaced too, with someone who knows his backside from the bend in his arm.

We need a ‘big manager’ to keep the players happy, otherwise they’ll leave. The phrase “FUCK’EM!!!” probably best summarises my own feelings on ‘player power’, as we describe the throwing of toys out of prams by the world’s most moronic, overpaid divas that council estates and trailer parks can produce. Players so loyal, so devoted, so passionate about ‘the shirt’ that if that shirt is not in the Champions League next year, then bollox, I’m leaving. Rather than playing better to improve your club to the point where all deserve entry to that most hallowed of competitions, they’d just leave and go to Chelsea, who are already there. All the glory, none of the work. Great ethic.

But Brazil; wow. I love Brazil. I love Brazillians (especially those beach volleyball ones), I love the whole thing. The fact that the nation has essentially bankrupted itself building a bunch of stadia with no plans for after July. Maybe they’ll become shopping malls? Maybe a prison (honest, that’s one possible plan), maybe housing? And will it all be finished in time?? Are there enough workers left in that country to complete the works after so many have died in the construction so far??

Didier Deschamps has the right idea about the world cup. Its not about players, its about teams. So Samir Nasri, petulant little French shit, may be a great player but if he’s a sub he moans, whinges and upsets other player, so Didier has left him behind. In Paris. Or Manchester. Like I care.

Oh well, bit late today cos much to be done in order to escape. At the airport now waiting for flight to Tel Aviv. Taking our baby daughter to the seaside for a few days.

Shalom,

A xxxx

I’m a reader. I read a lot. That’s what tube travel was invented for. Not time travel, that’s something else. Not somewhere else, more sometime else. If you were a time traveller and there was a delay, would that mean that your British Timeways trip to 1776 is not leaving for 15 minutes? (and would that matter??) or that its only going as far as 1829?

Anyway, books, me, snob.

I don’t read classics. Anything by any Bronte, Austen, Dickens or anyone else on my set books from school, wouldn’t touch ’em. Nor Agatha Christie. Who wrote a hundred whodunnits. Or the same one a hundred times.
And I don’t read biography or autobiography unless its by/about a really good sportsperson. Or maybe someone who’d had multiple breast enhancements. I will read non-fiction, but only if its very sciency. Fermat’s Last Theorem. Chaos Theory. Stephen Hawking (I completely understood the meaning of life, the universe and everything whilst reading him, until I put the book down, then it was gone), even Richard Dawkins. Though my fave was the late, great Stephen Jay Gould. Who? Harvard professorial mega-brain who published 25 years of monthly essays in neat, bite-sized chunks of evolutionary biology, geology, history and philosophy of science, and all written with charm, wit and humour. Unlike Richard Dawkins who writes about similar stuff but with arrogance, smugness, dogmatism and an attitude so sneering that you repeatedly punch the book hoping that it will find its way to the author’s face. Not great if you use a Kindle.

Which I do. I love my Kindle, you can keep yer soddin’ paperised rubbish, I’m a e-man. And the best thing about ebooks is that there are free ones. So as I search Amazon’s vast ‘library’ for decent books to acquire, I also grab a few freebies. What’s to lose? Only pride. As these free books, often first time, self-published writers, and not always the best. So what? Out of every 10 there’ll be one gem. Maybe.

Free books tend to fall into categories. Or ‘genres’ as us pretentious book snobs call them. There’s the clumsy, clicheed cops and robbers ‘thrillers’, there’s slash-em-up horror, fantasy game-a-thronesesque twaddle, vampires and zombies, trying to be the next Twilight, and there’s romcoms. Loads of loved up twenty/thirty-somethings looking for ‘Mr Right’. Always written by women, for women, about women. And they’re all the same.

Girl bumps into a guy in Starbucks (all very contemporary, probably while she’s tweeting as she queues) who spills her coffee. “Why you clumsy, idiotic, stu-” his eyes were the biggest, blackest pools I’d ever seen, his muscles rippled as his white (and coffee stained) Armani shirt stretched across his maaaassive chest, the bulge in his trousers was like a third bicep…
Later the next day/week/whenever they meet again in a work/therapy/social situation and reinforce their mutual contempt and displeasure, whilst really admiring each other’s physical perfection. Ugly fat people have no literature. They don’t fall in love, they just fall over. So on page 1 you know how the book ends. All these books. But its the journey to that end that makes the book. The men are all beautiful, the women ‘sassy’ and cute. And they’re all in Seattle. I must visit that city one day and look at all the stunning women and bulging men all spilling coffee over each other. Maybe I’ll open a dry-cleaning business there.

So that’s it; my guilty secret. I love stupid, slushy rom-coms. But only if they’re well-written and funny.

Otherwise it has to be Stephen King; the Master. John Irving, a God among writers. Harlen Coben and Carl Hiaason because they write the funniest brilliant crime books. Jonathan Tropper, only 4 books so far but no-one does dysfunctional family better or with greater wit. Philip Roth is also a master. Ayn Rand (they’re ‘classics’ of a sort) only wrote about 3 books but as each is about 1500 pages long that counts as much more, and if you’re up to it, they’re quite amazing. Robert Harris is great, David Baldacci has his moments and so many others it would be like listing the entire World Cup squads for every country. And still there’d be no mention of Ashley Cole.

I’m off to the tube. Perchance to read.

Happy tuesday

A xxxx