Andy's Glasses

I’m going to Denver.

Colorado just this week legalised the use of cannabis for ‘recreational use’. Like 4 x 4 driving in the mountains; you can now do it stoned out of your box. Or deep-sea diving, marlin fishing, sailing or skiing. All recreations now to be greatly enhanced by smoking dope. Though good luck finding marlin in Colorado.

Much easier just to roll yourself a big one and turn on the National Geographic channel on tv. Marlin or not, that’ll take a good three hours of your life and you’ll have forgotten about marlin by the time the first advert for Doritos or Burger King comes on.

The legalisation of dope has always been an interesting question. Unless you’re Peter Hitchens who truly believes in his heart of hearts that the first puff of your first joint will take you straight to the psychosis ward, never to recover.

For normal people though, the ‘odd toke’ is just part of growing up, like your first time drunk as a skunk, your first fumbled sexual adventures, your first two marriages or your first 3-some with a nun and a donkey.

Bill Clinton did it (though ‘didn’t inhale’; like he didn’t ‘have sex’ with Monica Lewinsky), Tony Blair must have done it a lot to have ended up with Cherie, Ed Milliband, David Cameron, Prince Philip, The Archbishop of Canterbury, all stoners in their day.

And why not. It wasn’t so long ago that the demon drink was an illegal substance in America. Didn’t stop anyone drinking the stuff, just made the stuff they did drink far more likely to do everlasting harm. Instead of Smirnoff they’d drink ‘moonshine’ made by JFK’s grandaddy out of elderberries, used engine oil and distilled cow-dung.

So at least legalising it means having some control of the quality. Though not necessarily the strength.

The dope we smoked in the 70s and 80s had a ‘thc’ value of about 4. The shit they smoke today is up in the 30s. Which is a bit like comparing a green pepper with a habanjero chilli.

But heh; kids are going to smoke it anyway, and plenty of adults too. If you ‘need’ to get off your face then the only other option is hitting the bottle, which generally leads to hitting people with the bottle afterwards, throwing up, smashing up the town centre, fighting, being abusive, aggressive and a fucking nuisance all round, plus becoming an alcoholic and ruining your liver.

Whereas no proper stoner ever smashed up the centre of Harlow on a friday night. In fact they didn’t do anything more than stare at the walls, get really, really REALLY into some really really bad music and empty the fridge and larder.

So I vote a big ‘yes’. Even though it was not an election and I’ve never even been to Colorado so wouldn’t have had the vote if it had been.

Happy Saturday, maaaaan…

A xxxx

If you’re going on a nudist holiday, what do you pack in your suitcase?

The answer is: suncream. Loads of suncream. Very powerful, factor 250, viagra flavoured suncream.

When you walk along our beach here to the eastern (or possibly western, I have no idea, no clue and absolutely no desire to find out) extreme, you come across a rope barrier and a sign:

‘Nudist Beach; don’t cross over if this will offend you.’

Willy Beach. As I call it.

And to seasoned European travellers, this is no shock, no surprise, nothing new. Every beach in Europe has a ‘naturist’ section. Where we keep the fat naked Germans. And their knackwurst.

Topless bathing is de rigeur in France, Italy, Spain and nudist sections appear for the broad-minded exhibitionists who like to dangle in pubic. Sorry, public.

But this is not Europe. This is, to all intents and purposes, America. Where they don’t have topless sunbathing, they don’t do nudity, they maintain a prudish presbyterian puritanism that precludes publicly prancing penises and bare breasts. (I ran out of ‘p’s).

Many years ago we were on a beach in Cape Cod. It had been raining and then was suddenly lovely so we parked at a completely empty beach. Natalie was 4 and ran to the beach in her bikini bottoms. Rachie was 15 months and didn’t do anything really.
A life guard appeared out of nowhere to inform me that ‘topless bathing is illegal on the beaches of Massachusetts, so could I please cover my daughter’.

Ahhhh, I thought, this is finally proof that Americans can do ‘ironic’ when they choose and this is like a joke? Like a joke, but without the funny bit. Cos he wasn’t laughing when I did. He was the most earnest young man since Brigham Young.

‘But she’s four years old’ I informed him, in case he’d mistaken her for a 28 year old babe with a chest.
‘Yes, but she’s topless’.
‘Fucking right she’s topless; why wouldn’t she be???’

So rather than incur the wrath of the Massachusetts legal teams, I took off my shorts and covered her top half.

If only.

So how can Mexico get away with nudism without upsetting its major source of income?
And you can’t help but think that this is Bangkok syndrome all over again, where a fine, moral and beautiful place is raped, plundered and pillaged to provide what Americans want to have, but not in their own home.

This place is probably choc full of Bostonians running around with drinks in their hands and no clothes on.

Hypocrites.

Happy 2014

A xxxx

How is it a ‘tropical paradise’ if you can’t get Sky Sports 1??

You can eat as many meals as you like, drink all the Mai Tais and Mojitos, walk as many beers along the beach as your heart desires (not sure incessant beer-drinking when already 14 stone overweight is good for your heart anyway: I’ll check on that) but if Spurs are playing Manchester United it simply needs to be seen.

It wasn’t on in the rooms; didn’t have the channel. I went to the gym (yep, THAT fucking desperate) but it wasn’t’ on all the screens there and I was getting frantic.

Though ‘frantic’ round here is not the same as it is back home. Round here frantic is having to turn over to even up the suntan. Frantic is having to walk 40 yards to the next bar because this one’s run out of ice. Running out of tequila would be beyond frantic; that would be a NATIONAL DISASTER.

Anyway, finally heard that there was a screen here showing the match and I duly pitched up (at the Teens Club, funny I’d never found that building before) to find 6 Spurs fans and one ‘just like football, me’ which I read as ‘never spent this long with my girlfriend before and its FUCKING SUFFOCATING ME so I had to get away’.

And Spurs went 2-0 up as I walked in the door. And I cried. Before the first person had time to shout ‘stop that ya fucking girl’ Man United had pulled a goal back. Creating every Spurs fan’s favourite; the 25 minute panic. Can we hold on? Can we stifle?? Could we get a third goal? No to that one, very unlikely as we’d kind of chanced upon the first two out of nothing and it would be most unlikely to get a third. So we enter ‘HOW-LONG-LEFT? TIME’. And its horrible.

Manchester United had numerous penalty appeals turned down by the ref. To which David Moyes was indignant and appalled and felt cheated and held the referee personally responsible for the loss.

TOSSSSERRRRRRR.

You don’t lose matches because of penalty appeals rejected, Davey-boy, you lose because you don’t score sufficient goals to win. And although referees give more penalties to United at Old Trafford, its a bit much to just expect one to come along when you need one and ask the ref nicely.

Furthermore, if three Spurs players had pulled Ashley Young to the ground and ceremonially disembowelled him in their penalty area, the penalty would not have been given. Such is the little diving, simulating, cheating shit’s reputation that he could not buy a penalty for all the money in a Far East gambling syndicate. His reputation somewhat precedes him.

We held on, like we did in the same fixture last year, and continued our amazing away record and ‘kept in touch’ pointwise. All we can hope to do.

I left the teens club and had a new spring in my step. The flowers looked brighter, the sun shinier, the leaves greener, the air clearer. The world was just a better place to be in.

I love 2014 already,

Happy thursday

A xxxx

Men are brave.
Right??
I mean, if we gave birth we’d do it in the pub whilst playing darts. Or at White Hart Lane on match-day. Right??

No, probably not.

Men are ‘brave’ but mainly only in really stupid ways that run so contrary to any form of common sense that you could replace ‘brave’ with ‘dumb’ and would lose no meaning.

Douglas Bader lost both his legs but got straight (almost) back into his Spitfire to go back to fight the bloody Lufthansa. Sorry, Luftwaffe. Brave.

John Cleese’s Black Night in Holy Grail? Can’t get much braver than that.

Arnie Schwartzenneger’s Terminator lost all its metal limbs, most of its printed circuitry, was running on ‘auxilliary power’, with one flashing red eye and half a hand, yet managed to last long enough to shoot that mutherfucker other Terminator. Wow. Brave. And although the pedantic and anal may think that a cyborg is not exactly a ‘man’ in the usual sense of the word, I’m going to apply the official post-feminist, PC definition in this case; that if it ain’t got tits it ain’t a gel.

Morover, that poor, wreck of Cyborg stood as a metaphor for all that is great about manliness. And he didn’t even drink beer.

Ok, I’m man ergo I’m brave.

So I’d ‘die for you’, lay my life on the line, take one for the team, stand in the way of the bullet, blah, blah, testosterone-blah.

But if it hurts, mummy, I don’t like it.

Yesterday morning I was being my usual hero, in a pilates class on the beach. Something ‘went’ in my left knee. Holy shit. Painful, searing, agony. Inability to bend it more than 82 degrees (yes, I measured it so I could assess any later progress of the probably terminal lesion, haemorhage, tumour, thrombosis). So walking was fine, bending it beyond that and HOLY FUCKING SHIT THAT HURTS.

Having played football (at a brilliantly high standard… ish) for years and years, I’d never suffered with knees as everyone else did/still does. No, shoulder’s shit, back’s bad, knees not just fine but downright gorgeous.

And now, its agony to bend.
So this was my (typically heroic, non-over-reactionary, very logical) thought pattern:

Fuck
won’t be able to play tennis
nor swim tomorrow
going skiing in feb, have to cancel
more ‘fuck’
could be bad,
amputation below the thigh
peg-leg
pirate
parrott
Pistorius

So one twinge and the next thing I’m an Afrikaaner blade-running murderer.

Though agony it indeed was. Though 3 hours later, the pain just went; gone, all normal, bendy, fine and dandy. How bizarre.

Happy heroic 2014

A xxxx

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