Andy's Glasses

Are you intolerant to intolerance? Do you have any right to be so?

When I hear about racism, sexism, homophobia, hatred of Spurs, I immediately raise my liberal hackles and think ‘why can’t people just be more tolerant?’ Then I think ‘fuckers!’.

Because I hate intolerance and tend to loathe those who lack tolerance and thus often find myself in the stange situation of generally hating people with strong religious beliefs.

For although Jesus teaches us goodness and kindness to all mankind, and the preachers of all religions bang on about acceptance and tolerance, what they really mean is being accepting and tolerant to OUR VIEWS. All other views are patentely WRONG, no debate, no nuffink, its written in the new/old testament/koran/torah/Mao’s Little Red Bood/Wisdens, then that IS THE WAY IT IMUST BE.

So to Phil Robertson, the ‘Duck Commander’ (don’t ask). He’s a hillbilly hick redneck millionaire who, essentially, as voiced on his, you guessed, own reality tv show, would put all gays into a big fire and light the first branch himself happily. Cos he’s a god-fearin’ Chrischin. And thus is ‘pro-life’ (another fucked up term implying something good and honest and worthy whereas it has just become another form of mysoginistic woman control wrapped loosely in a fancy religious wrapper. Phil also wants to marry his daughers off at 16. Which is probably, in that part of Alabama/Missouri/Mississippi, about 8 years after the incest started. But I make no judgments. Hmmm…

Should I be tolerant to Phil Robertson’s views? Respect them and his right to express them?? Or want him pilloried in the court of public opinion? Obviously he has loads of outspoken support in his own country. 50% of Americans probably agree with him, the other half are over here taking their Mojitos out for a walk.

And what about Nicolas Anelka? Journeyman French tosser currently residing in West Bromwich. For whom he scored a goal on Saturday and celebrated with ‘la querelle’. No, per-lease don’t tell me you don’t know a querelle when you see one. Its a reverse nazi salute. Its a reltiH lieH. And they’re generally used because the full Paulo Di Canio is banned the world over, except in Rome and at KKK meetings in Nebraska.

Now one might think that a black Muslim would have little in common with Hitler’s aryan dream, but you’d be wrong. Apparently.
And Anelka is defending his action (currently under investigation; I’m hoping for a death penalty; that’s how fucking tolerant I am) on the grounds that la querelle was started by his mate, a comedian, who has been banned from performing due to his rabidly anti-semitic rhetoric and holocaust denial. Thus was Nic’s protest ‘for his mate; anti-establishment’.

Oh. Nothing in support of the views held by said ‘mate’ then? In that case, as long as we can easily dissociate the sign with that signified, I have no issue. You’re free to go.

That’s good. So I don’t have to be intolerant to Anelka and la querelle then.

Happy confused day and

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL

A xxxx

I did a ‘stretch’ class on the beach this morning with Mel. She loves that shit. I was one of only two men. The other guy was probably gay. Even though he was with his wife. And I’m so assured in my heterosexuality that I can take the strange looks from, mainly the American men, who stand there sipping their Margueritas getting sunstroke whilst their kids are drowning unattended in nearby pools.

Today was a form of yoga. Which stems from the ancient Hindi word meaning ‘torture’. And its pretty much as impossible as it is impenetrable. The ‘how’ as difficult as the ‘why’. So as instructed, I wrapped my crossed legs around my right arm, lifted my left foot one inch above the ground and was told to put my chin down towards the thighs.
HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW THAT HE MEANT MY THIGHS? RATHER THAN THE LOVELY LOOKING AMERICAN GIRL’S TO MY RIGHT????

I got a slap for that one, like the yoga itself wasn’t painful enough. The slap was from Mel, the American girl was more than happy.

This resort is divided between the Brits (boozy, scummy, tattooed, more boozy) and the Yanks, (very boozy, scummy, different tattoos and hefty). So its easy to tell them apart. If their girth exceeds anything even vaguely approaching ‘normal limits of obesity’ then they’re American. If they’re just plain stodgy they’re British.

But there’s a cultural difference. A big one. Other than definitions of what ‘football’ is.

The British drink all day and all night. The yanks do similarly. But the Brits put their drinks down when they go for a swim or out for a walk (well; a waddle), and the Yanks don’t. Its like some statement of boozy patriotism. Aaah’m a ‘merican therefore aaah don’t put my drink down for nobody, no-how’, aaah-men. So they walked along the shore, feet in the waves, strolling along with a JD & coke in one hand and a Heineken in the other. Or they’re in the shallow pools. Sunglasses on head and drinks in hand. And I’m not talking about one or two (out of the hundreds here), I’m talking about all of them. Even their kids, emulating the parental example, take their fruit juices and cokes (never diet) when they walk with Ma and Pa.

Anyway, Spurs just beat Stoke. 3-nil and I’m a happy happy man. More happy than mere sun, sea and tequila could ever produce.

Happy happy Sundays

A xxxx

What’s the point of sunrise?
Ok, its biblical; let there be light, and there is light, every day, reaffirming our belief in a supreme being even after Zidane retired from football.
But sunrise is something you just take for granted, presumptuous fuckers that we (homo sapiens, early 2nd Millenium, face-lift version) have become.
There are times when you really ‘do’ the sunrise, but that invariably involves a rock, hill or mountain. Then some fucker wakes you up at 5 in great excitement and even though you really just want to punch that enthusiasm right off his face, roll over and go back to sleep, you get up and watch the sun come up and go: ‘yeah, wow, fucking great; now let’s go back to bed’. Like the rock wouldn’t be there 4 hours later. ITS BEEN THERE FOR 3.5 MILLION YEARS BUT I GOTTA GET UP NOWWWWWW!!!!!!
Ok, sunrise. Great thing. To be enjoyed. We did Ayers Rock, that was sooooo 2012.

But this morning we awoke early. Like really really really, half past four in the morning early. Definitely due to insufficient tequila abuse last night (and trust me; that will NOT happen again) or maybe because we’re just a couple of jet-slags.

Four in the morning here is 10am at home. Time to be up. Tennis time. Work time. Tai Chi time. Preparation for the afternoon kick-off time. By 6 we were on the balcony with tea (so British) and reading and watching the sun come up over whatever particular sea they have here in Mexico. Atlantic? Caribbean? South China?? I don’t know. Big wet one. And it was a beautiful warm, sunny morning.

By 7 we were in the pool swimming lengths.
Now Mel is a Swimmer. Her family evolved late from the fishes, like about 1972 or thereabouts. So she swims every day anyway. I don’t. Truth be told, swimming lengths for exercise is right up there with jogging, with going to the gym, with watching Arsenal, with having red hot screwdrivers stuck in my testicles (unless I’m in my rubber evening dress, then its different), as things to be avoided at all cost.

But I relent on holidays and swim with her. I’m no Mel in the water. But I did my best Rebecca Addlington and went for it. Ok, unlike poor Becks I don’t have body issue problems; I KNOW I’m fucking divine. And also unlike poor Becks, I don’t have much swimming style.

Yet for all my gloating about poor bastards stuck in flooding England, we had 6 hours of the most torrential rain here yesterday. Like biblical rain. Noah came knocking, type rain.

More forecast for today.

But am I complaining??

Happy saturday

A xxxxx

I’ve never been to Mexico before. Unless you count a day in Tijuana in 1981 when Paulchi & I walked across the border from San Diego, decided we needed neither hookers and drugs, nor hand-tooled, leather rifle cases and walked back to ‘merica and civilistaion.

Yet here I am, on the Mayan Riviera.

And I expected all Mexicans to look like Emilio Estevez, like Jimmy Smits, Selma Hayek and Eva Longoria. Possibly like J Lo (even though she’s Puerto Rican). But they don’t. They look short, squat and dark. Like Peruvians. Like Ecuadorians.
I expected some to look like the villains in spaghetti westerns, greasy hair and dirty teeth, but they’re not like that either. Their dentistry is fine and their trichology hygenic. And generally, they’re lovely and smiley and friendly. Like Peruvians and Euadorians and most other South Americans.

So from an anthropological perspective, one must assume that the taller, fairer, slimmer Mexicans are the reuslt of the Spaniards shagging the shit out of the indiginous population and creating the more European appearane of some of the population. Leaving the original mayans pretty much as they’ve always been since Montezuma exacted his revenge on whomosoever he chose.

Even more fascinating is the food on offer here. Ok, we’re in a ‘resort’ so Mexico ‘proper’ is banned and turned away at the gates. So the food they give us is Anglicised mexican and european. And American. Because Mexico is almost the 51st state of Unitedness. They take dollars here, they have starbucks, and subway and all other ‘delights’ of US ‘culture’ (a phrase which is almost a contadiction in terms).

So now, at almost 11.30 I’ve had 3 of my 5 a day. Coffees that is. You can’t get fruit or vegetables here and who fucking needs ’em? And later on I shall get in touch with my inner mexican (called Miguel and not short and dark at all) and sample at least 19 different types of tequila.

But for now, I’m hot and steamy and in need of a swim.

How’s London today?

Like I give a shit. (never one to gloat)

Happy whatever day it might be; I’m on holiday so don’t give a shit,

A xxxx

London is ‘blessed’ with 3 airports. Luton, which is about 70 miles from London, and has that inbred rustic feel to it since they shut the Vauxhall factory down and left the place to the ‘natives’. Its about as ‘London’ as Beirut. Yet is convenient to get to.

Then there’s Heathrow or The Big One, as I call it and really our only ‘proper’ airport, even though its famously lacking in the runway department.

And lastly (by a fucking long way) there’s Gatwick. The airport time forgot and people wish they could. But every now and again, some bizarre and horrible convergence of travel arrangements leads me back to the airport that is geographically, emotionally, conceptually and culturally; Hell.

From north west of London just getting there is a mission. Though today, at 6 in the morning, Boxing Day, I can’t really complain about the traffic, because there simply wasn’t any. The bad side of which is that you arrive at Gatwick that much earlier. To learn that your flight is delayed by 3 hours. How 1972 is that? What is it, ‘retro week at BAA’??

Ok, shit happens. This delay due to a power cut 2 days ago that they haven’t quite caught up with yet. Great. So that’s 5 hours to spend at Gatwick. The second prize is an entire day. And as there have been days and days of loooooonnnnngg delays, this is no massive disaster.

And its all very 3rd world here and lacking in the gleam and lustre that Terminal 5 at Heathrow has. The shops here are just that much more kind of ‘tired’. As you’d expect in the south of not just London but all of England. The people just that little bit more recessively genetic.

So today’s picture is not the expected one showing sun-kissed beaches and tropical seas, but instead, the lounge at Gatwick North Terminal. Or, ‘home’ as we call it.

Happy, unexpected cos I thought I’d be on a plane, Thursday,

A xxxx

Another year over. Almost. Christmas symbolises a kind of ‘getting ready to welcome the new year’, a process that gives a week of reminiscing about the old one before the new one starts. Which also means most of the journalists can have the week off as all the papers publish for 7 days is lists of who did what in 2013, who died, who starred, big events. All of which can be prepared nicely in advance so that ‘Fleet Street’ can have a nice break. Or spend the entire week in a drunken stupor. Which, for journalists, is a bit of a busman’s holiday anyway.

So Mandela died. In case you’ve been asleep for 4 weeks and missed all the excitement. Murray won Wimbledon. Spurs sacked another manager. We made ‘nice’ to China. In exchange for the promise of 57 zillion quid in investments. The ‘arab spring’ turned into the arab winter. Oscar Pistorious killed his bird. A future king was born. A new pope was invented; looked like all the others, little old man wearing a white dress. Jennifer Lawrence won an oscar; she’s so fab she could have won the European Cup or a Nobel Prize. They bombed the Boston marathon. Nice. And I gave up smoking.

Wow. That’s a big one.
The easiest way to give up smoking is never to start. But I managed to miss that opportunity when presented to me, at school, behind the cycle sheds, and instead opted for a life in Marlboro-land. And smoking was so socially acceptable in the 70s that doctors did it, in surgery, politicians would inhale publicly, the Queen would give her speech with a Dunhill in one hand (ok, I made that up), and you could smoke on trains, buses, whilst playing football, in cinemas, people’s houses, even restaurants and pubs. What a smelly fucking world it was. But I embraced my inner fag-hag and managed to defer all attempts by family and children to make me cease and desist.

And yes, I had become vaguely aware of certain health implications that concerned the wellbeing of smokers, but it was what I did. Smoked. ‘Because I loved it’. Love… addiction… same difference.

Intellectually I wasn’t a smoker. Heaven forbid. My body’s a temple. Which only used smokeless fuel. Its stupid, pointless, expensive, daft, limp and quite frankly insane.

So I smoked when I wasn’t being intellectual. Which is in fact most of the time. Yet I knew deep down that some day I’d quit. Just not ‘today’.

Then they invented electronic cigarettes as an aid to stopping smoking and on June 20th I started sucking on little electric devices. e-cigs. When I didn’t have one handy pretty much any electronic device would do. I’d suck on an ipod, ipad, phone, tv, pc, anything that carried charge. But it worked and haven’t smoked ‘properly’ since that fateful day.

The e-cigarettes carry nicotine. But no tar, no shit, no rubbish. Thus I’ve managed to convert my addiction really nicely. I no longer suck on paper; just plastic and metal. And that’s good.

Do I feel better for quitting the weed? I never really suffered with coughs or breathlessness anyway, so rather than ‘better’ I just feel ‘morally superior’. Do I suffer mood swings and tempers? FUCK OFF!!!!!

So have a lovely happy Christmas. I’m off to Mexico tomorrow morning to put Mrs Conway in the sunshine for a few days, but you may be hearing from me. Though it may be in Spanish.

Manyana

A xxxx

the following contains scenes of violence and brutality and there’s bad language from the start.

We’re all used to such warnings before news reports and tv programmes. They’re all over the tv. 20 years ago you’d have work out all by yourself that a report from Syria in the wake of a bombing would probably include wounded, bleeding people. Or that ‘flash photography’ may be present on the screen, causing epileptic episodes in millions of viewers, leaving the lounges of Britain full of flapping, thrashing people, writhing around like landed goldfish.
Its all part of the nanny state set up by that nice Mr Blair. Leave nothing to chance, everyone must know what’s going to happen up front. ‘Diary of a Call Girl’ “may contain sex scenes”. I should bloody well hope so.

But unusual to get such a warning before a football match.

But last night it was rather appropriate. Bad language is a given in football and, even though you can’t hear most of it, advanced lip reading skills are seldom required to interpret remarks made at referees. But violence and assault? There were Somalian pirates curled up behind the sofa, scared to look at Arsenal play Chelsea because it was so violent. It was the Reservoir Dogs of football matches. It was Kill Bill part 2. Sadly without Uma Thurman.

And yet without those battlefield scenes it was the dullest match ever played.

So much hope. So much hype. The Battle for the Top. The Pride of London.

Yet what evolved was the slickest, smoothest team in the land and the (2nd) most potent attacking force (even with Torres) decided to re-enact Saturday’s Tai Chi class when we were all kicking the merry shit out of each other. But the footballers did it at full speed.

Unbelievable that only 3 yellow cards were shown and no-one was sent off in a match that degenerated into a virtual brawl after countless episodes of tackles so high that ears got damaged.

A truly awful game.

A better man than me would have gone and done something different, or changed the tv channel. Yet it was, in a way, a mesmerising contest of two battle-weary generals rallying their troops on suicide missions. And in such terrible weather conditions that Arsenal couldn’t really be Arsenal and Chelsea thrived on becoming Morinho’s parked bus.

Spurs have a new manager. His name is Tim Sherwood and he’s a fucking Arsenal fan. He has no managerial experience whatsoever, doesn’t even possess his ‘pro-badge’, was the worst midfielder Spurs ever had and he loves Arsenal.
I’m right behind the new boss. Has my full support.

Like I have a choice.

Happy Christmas Eve

A xxxx

previously on THFC Blue…

After Gareth went ran off to Spain to be with Christiana, Daniel was bereft and Andrea the Very Beautiful was trying everything to make him happy once more. She brought in loads of hopeful replacements but it just wasn’t having the desired effect and Daniel became miserable. Ok, even more miserable than usual.
Daniel threw Andrea out, telling her never to return, and ‘take that poxy four-and-a-half million quid’ with you when you leave! And that was the end of Daniel’s 14th marriage in 8 months.
Little Timmy moved into the big house, eager to please Danny, but a whole gang of chirpy cockney shitheads came over and ruined the honeymoon.
Would Timmy last the weekend?
Will Daniel miss AVB and call her back (bringing her cash with her)?
Will Danny ever find true happiness…

During the Swansea/Everton match Gary Neville made an interesting comment following Swansea’s last substitution. He said (translated directly from the original ‘northern’): Laudrup’s changing to 4-4-2; that seems to be the default setting when you need a goal.

So tell me, precisely, when a team doesn’t need a goal? When they have too many? When they don’t really want to score??
Thus did Tim Sherwood go into the darkest recesses of the Spurs storeroom and dust off Adebayor, the Tempermental Togon.
And its been so long since he’s worn a Spurs shirt that he must have thought he was playing for a new club and thus went into ‘impress mode’. A condition he’s only ever used in 3-month bursts. But yesterday it was used to great effect in a true man-of-the-match performance, alongside Soldado who was so much more comfortable with the big guy beside him.

More importantly Spurs looked, for the first time this season, like a proper Spurs team. Attacking with speed and movement, creating opportunities and dominating possession. Against a high-flying Southampton team who themselves look pretty good and have quite a little wealth of talent. Not as expensive as our talent, of course, but few are.

I’m still not happy with the AVB sacking but we were not privy to the atmosphere, the discord and the negativity that his presence may have been causing. And we never will be. Nor can we do much about it.

Liverpool beat Cardiff and yet Malky Mackay is still in charge of the Welsh team there, to everyone’s surprise, especially Tam Vincent, the horrible Cardiff boss. Thus Liverpool went to of the table.

Later on Man City used one of their 2nd 11s to beat poor Fulham and went second in the table.

Manchester United beat West Ham but that was never much of a question as they quieted that fucking chirping.

So tonight. What a game. Arsenal against Chelsea. If Arsenal lose they can have made the plummet from top to 4th in one weekend, and Chelsea go 2nd. If the Arse win they return to top slot. Its all very exciting. Its all very close.

Spurs can still win the league.
And Santa Claus IS real.

Happy monday; joyful, delirious, delightful, victorious monday

A xxxx

Here’s an interesting fact (may be true, may be fabricated, you’ll never know). For Mandela’s funeral and ensuing festivities, ITV sent 17 people over to South Africa to cover the event.
The BBC sent 120.
What the f–???

Because they don’t care. Because its public money (my frikkin money, let the truth be told) and they’re happy pissing it away on ridiculous golden handshakes to parastical ex-executives, and on sending a batallion out for Mandela week. Its what they do.

But what they also do is make better tv than anyone else. Much better tv. Particularly documentaries. Which are free from over-sensationalisation, free from hype, free from adverts, free from all the other bollocks that we have to put up with on other channels.

So when I find myself in front of a tv at midnight on a saturday, that screen will often find iteslf showing BBC4. Virtually always about music. And last night it was about ‘albums’. Those great big, clumsy, flimsly things we used to play but who’s real purpose was to provide the perfect surface for rolling a joint. Which was, as I found out last night, almost essential for the progress of the development of albums. How wonderfully circular was that? And circular were they.

Until the mid-60s everything was about singles. Get 2.5 minutes of the catchiest, sing-along-est, chirpy, happy rubbish and it will sell. More importantly it will be played on the radio. They didn’t do ‘long’ on the radio, particularly American radio before FM.

So last night I learned the wonderful tale of evolution in music.

Whilst singles told quick, fast-food, sound-byte tales of love and break-up and dead dogs, albums allowed proper stories to be told, allowed for a high degree of self-indulgence by the musicians but the freedom paved the way for progressive rock and longer tracks linking together to provide a continuous narrative.

But before that could happen, there had to be a vehicle for album tracks to be heard, and one FM station in San Francisco did just that, playing long, intricate tracks into the night when only the stoners were awake (or, what passes for ‘awake’) to listen. Soon radio stations all over the musical world were doing similar, including our own pirate radio ships where John Peel was introducing my generation to album tracks.

Sergeant Peppers’ was one of the first albums to tell a continuous story, followed by albums by all and sundry, from the Stones to Jimi Hendrix to everyone, playing proper, head-banging, psychedelic type music. Thus drugs weren’t invented by Nigella, but came about to provide the catalyst for proper music to be developed; to enhance the reception by the music listening public.

Led Zeppelin made their eponymous first album and became the biggest band in the world by NOT releasing singles.
Dark Side of the Moon came out and was yet another game changer.
Carole King’s Tapestry album paved the way for singer-songwriters to join the domain of the progressive rockers.
Deep Purple, Yes, Jethro Tull, Emerson Lake & Palmer, The Small Faces, all album bands, all long tracks. Even King Crimson. They played 21st Century Schitzoid Man on the programme and I was transported back in time.

Mike Oldfield had written an album. 2 sides. 2 tracks. No-one would produce it. Until he found a record shop owner called Richard Branson. Who set up a production company and the rest, for both Oldfield and Branson, was history.
Thus if it wasn’t for Tubular Bells we’d all be paying much more for transatlantic travel.

What goes around comes around.

Happy Sunday, even though its nearly finished.

A xxxx

Oh my lord, Nigella’s going to go to jail! She lost the court case. So now, instead of serving pig’s belly wrapped in a chocolate jus, with crustacean sauce, snail-shells and lark’s vomit, she’ll serve 3 to 5 for… for… for…

No, wait a minute, she wasn’t actually on trial. Not at all. She was merely a witness. Phew. What a relief to all concerned. Particularly to Nigella, probably.

Yet it felt like she was on trial. For drug abuse, for smoking, toking, snorting, spliffing, ingesting, powdering, inhaling and drugging herself up to those gorgeous, dark eyeballs (though agreed; not quite so gorgeous when all red and slitty), being a wanton woman, an unfit mother, a total slapper, a crack whore, gutter slag, child abuser, necrophiliac, pornographer, thief, carjacker, mugger, racist and Tory voter. Everything except being a Chelsea fan. So there’s hope for everyone, however low they may appear to have fallen.

There’s winners and losers in everything. And the real winners in this case are the Grillo sisters, who’s life became one big lottery win after another, every week, as they spent hundreds of thousands of Saachi’s money. And the courts said; fine, take all ya want.

Yet in a way Nigella emerges in a very odd way, a winner too. Because in the battle of the public image and support we stood by her. The fucking Prime Minister stood by her, even though it was a stupid thing for him to do. Not that he’s a stranger to ‘stupid’. He works with Nick Clegg, for god’s sake.

The moment Charles Saachi’s evil, dirty, hooked, wrinkled, claw-like, gnarled hands wrapped round Nigella’s soft, delicate little throat, she won our hearts and he became The Evil One, the Devil, Beelzebub, Fagin but with more money, Quasimodo without the French accent, Elephant Man without the trunk, pathos and sympathy. He is The Bastard. Who, having failed at murdering his (then) wife, set out to destroy her in the court of public opinion. And that failed massively.

Because we all still love Nigella. Even when she’s high on skunk with white powder all over he noise that definitely is NOT icing sugar.

Who reads biographies? Or worse still, autobiographies?? Justin (fucking) Bieber has published his second memoir and he is 18 years old and has done precisely nothing of any merit except having lots of tatoos and buying a shit-load of expensive cars, showing that you can indeed take the boy out of the trailer park but…

I’m not a big fan of the entire biographical genre, but if I have to read a bio, it will probably be a sporting one. And now, it would appear, I’m not alone in this.

Alex Ferguson’s autobigraphy (yeah, I’m sure he wrote it all by himself, right) sold 560 thousand copies. Maggie Thatcher’s sold 25 thousand. Mo Farrah’s 30 thousand and Salmon Rushdie’s just 14 hundred. For a man who lived 10 years in hiding under a ‘fatwa’ and married four times. How fucking boring is that?

Piers Morgan’s autobiography was definitely self-written and is described as ‘not a book but a boast’. How uncharacteristic of the world’s biggest and most annoyingly moronic ego. Who happens to be an Arsenal fan. Apropos of nothing.

Almost 2000 people bought it. Or He bought 2000 himself to outdo Rushdie.

So before I write my own memoir (volume 1, of 19), I’m going to play some more tennis. If it ever stops raining. Then it can be a sporting memoir.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx