Andy's Glasses

Let me tell you about my pet hate. Well, one of them. I have so many I don’t think my hard drive is sufficient to even list them all in abbreviated form. But number one, numero uno, the Big One, the real thing is people walking along staring at their (ffaaaaarrrkkkin) phones.

THERE’S A WORLD OUT THERE, I want to shout at them, AND YOU’RE MISSING IT ALL, STARING AT THAT POXY PIECE OF TECHNO-SHIT. GET A FRIKKIN LIFE!!!!

But social norms dictate that I’m not allowed to say that, nor anything else. All I can do is push them when they’re walking down the crowded walkways at Charing Cross tube about to bump into me, tut a bit and mutter the odd, discreet expletive at them. But they’re oblivious to me. And to the rest of the real world. What’s happening in virtual space is far more important to them.

And now I know why.

They’re flirting. Chatting up. Having ‘relationships’. ‘Dating’. Because its all changed. The whole world. The whole ‘scene’. The whole ‘obscene’.

Meeting people used to involve going out and sort of, meeting people. Find someone you like the look of and work out the fastest way to get them naked. I’m being honest here. Honest to the horrible, single-minded, obsessed youth I once was.

The process would involve talking, humour, alchohol sometimes, meals bought, bars visited, Sunday walks, and generally very little football. Unless you were lucky enough to reach the ‘endgame’ during match of the day which was just visible over her left shoulder and hoping her parents movie was a long one. So you could whisper ‘I love you’, directing it at your favourite player so you didn’t have to cross fingers.

Today its different. Its more like pornography involving someone you ‘know’. But only really ‘know’ in the virtual world. Kids (according to a frightening article in the paper) talk and text whilst in their own homes. They send ‘selfies’ in various stages of undress and provocation, employ ‘sexting’ in place of ‘pillow talk’ and lead full and wonderful relationships without ever having to leave the solitude of their own locked bedrooms.

Fantastic. You don’t need to bother taking a shower before a date. Nor use make-up; you can photoshop. Its cold, its distant, remote and solitary. It lacks the sensation of ‘touch’ completely.

But this is all part of evolution. Started with the industrial revolution in… whenever that happened. First came the steam engine, then the printing press, next was the vibrating dildo and finally the i-phone. And all this bollox that passes for ‘social interraction’ in the post-millenial world.

The only problem is that evolution is totally dependent on procreation. The successful passing on DNA to the next generations. Survival of the fittest does not mean those who go to the gym more often. It refers to reproductive ‘fitness’. The more genes you pass on the more your own little quirks may be carried forward.

So unless children are to be born with a USB nob I really don’t know how far this current obsession can be taken. Its limited by its own stupidity. We can’t link the physical to the technical. Not yet anyway.

I’m off to the pub. Well, I’m going up to my bedroom to look at pictures of pubs on my ipad and texting my mates.

Happy saturday. Though not as happy as it was before rain stopped play on the tennis court.

A xxxx

Elvis Costello was never really a ‘proper’ punk rocker. He emerged at that time, in the late 70s, when Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious were spitting all over the place and piercing their ears on stage with broken bottles and being as outrageous as Malcolm McLaren (who, after all, was paying for all the drugs) told them to be.

The world was full of ‘disco’ at that time and Saturday Night Fever was a mission statement for a generation. But that generation couldn’t actually live up to the rather vapid and vacuous aspirations of all that glitter and glitz when the economy was for shit and half the nation was unemployed. So along came punk and, for the first time really, made music about ‘proper issues’. They politicised music. Ok, the Vietnam war had inspired protest songs but mainy these were sung by overweight moaning Americans so don’t carry such an impact.

Punk was British. It was ours. And it was nasty. It was rebellion, it was telling your parents and teachers to FUCK RIGHT OFF!!! Ok, it wasn’t necessarily ‘nice’ but really that was the whole point. Whass’a point of teenage anarchy if you have to be in bed by 10?

I was never a Sex Pistols fan, in fact, I fucking hated them and their attention-seeking, shreiking ways. But the Clash were something else. Classy but aggressive, strong and intelligent. A bit like me but without the glasses. Sham 69, the Stranglers, loads of bands, out of nothing, all loaded with talent and producing fab music. Which was relevant. Music had moved from teenagers in love to unemployment benefits and the deposed Shah of Iran.

And along came Elvis. The new Elvis. Elvis is dead; long live Elvis.

And this one didn’t sport a pompadour quiff like the previous incumbent of Elvis, nor a fluorescent blue mohican that everyone else wore. He looked like your bank manager in oversized specs. He wore a suit. And he sang like an angel. Albeit one who smokes 60 Lucky Strikes a day.

I heard ‘Alison’ from his first album and cried. It moved me in a way that I’m seldom moved unless Spurs are playing. Though generally then the tears are for a different reason.

And he was and still is prolific. Single after single, album after album, all brilliant, all evolving from the early punky roughness to something much more refined and elegant by the time Punch the Clock emerged. Then he got a bit up himself, started playing with string quartets and went all ‘classical’.

I first saw him play at the Hammersmith Odeon in 1980, when his Trust album came out. It was sensational. I saw him another 20 times between then and the late 80s. Always brilliant, always amazing value. As he only ever wrote sub-2-minute songs, over 3 hours he’d play 659 numbers. You never wondered what he’d play, he’d just play everything.

In 1981 I was in a record store on Ventura Boulevard in Encino, California, having a browse. I was wearing my ‘Elvis Costello: a tour to Trust’ t-shirt and he walked in. The man himself. He looked at me, looked at his face on the t-shirt, smiled and left. I was shell-shocked. Frozen. And never said a word. What would I have said anyway? I looooovvvveee youououou. Or I’m your biggest fan, honest. So perhaps for the best that I kept shtum. At least there’s some dignity in silence.

Tonight on BBC4 there’s one of their super documentaries about Elvis Costello’s life and music. Gotta be watched. There’s no football on so its a must see.

Happy friday

A xxxx

Its the end of an era. Life will never be the same again. A modern day tragedy.

McDonalds in Hampstead is closing.

Well who gives a shit? That’s what they serve; shit. Killer shit. Anyone who saw ‘Supersize Me’ knows that McDonalds peddle death to the masses. A quarter pounder with cheese weighs… er… well, about a quarter of a pound. But contains half a pound of fat. Normal laws of physics are suspended with that burger chain’s ability to sell fat, salt and sugar. They have produced a nation of fat bastards. In fact several nations. Heart attacks in waiting.

Yet it  tastes so good.

I stopped eating McDonalds years ago after the first ‘big cholesterol scare’. Well, it scared Mel, didn’t bother me much but I immediately stopped my serious McDonalds habit which was, at 3 or 4 visits a week, probably a bit excessive. Cholesterol came down, a bit, and all is well once more.

But Hampstead and McDonalds was never a good fit. Hampstead has serious pretentions and is filled with tofu-eating, champagne-socialist ‘liberals’, who are also full of shit. But a different kind of shit to that sold with fries. In paper containers which decimate rainforests and create endless litter. Such was the resistance to the store opening that it took 12 years of court battles before the first burger was ever sold there. The purchaser was pelted with organic tomatoes, free-range eggs and alphalpha sprouts.

I love hamburgers. I love food generally. But particularly messy food you eat with your hands. And although Maccy Ds do not produce the finest specimen of the genre, they do produce a pretty good facsimile that is cheap and available everywhere. Comforting at times even, when you emerge from a rainforest in deepest darkest Ecuador a thousand miles from civilisation to be greeted with those golden arches. So that immediately after your indignation about the ruination of the world’s natural beauty by corporate greed shitheads, you can wrap yourself round a Big Mac and enjoy its universal consistency.

But there’s a problem with the closure of McDonalds Hampstead. They sell ice cream. Really fantastic ice cream. Dirt cheap too. So rather than buy low-fat fro-yo type uber-vegan low-cal vegi-un-cream frozen desert, next door for just £14.65 a scoop, when Mel & I walk on  a summer’s day (remember summer?) over the heath into Hampstead village, that’s where we head. That in fact is our ‘carrot’, dangling in front of our sun-baked, sweaty foreheads as we trek. Ice cream. From Maccy D. And now its gone.

Fucking Hampstead tarts

Happy thursday, eat well

A xxxx

I’m a very ethical shopper. I only buy clothes made by unemployed, replenishable, single-parent transexuals paid a decent wage by a UK-based, tax-declaring company in a wonderful, bright, cheery environment with massages provided every hour to relieve any strain the workers may incur.

My socks alone cost £97.50 a pair. I’m saving up for a shirt. Maybe next year. With a mortgage.

Meanwhile Primark, the low-cost fashion outlets, declared sales up 22% and turnover now 4.6 billion. Primark. Who manufacture in sweatshops in Bangladesh, paying non-living wages to impoverished paupers in such unbelievably sordid conditions that one of their factories burned down last year and everyone died because there was no fire escapes and the cost of a fire extinguisher (£22.74) would have increased the market price of a t-shirt by 0.000000000000000003p. Unacceptable. They employ children, beat them with big sticks, abuse the women, keep them locked up for 19 hours a day and force them to watch x-factor re-runs.

So essentially, we all have a firm set of ethical beliefs and considerations we use, particularly at dinner parties in Hampstead. And we’re evangelical in our hatred of abusive practices and the companies who perpetrate them. But the next day the kids need loads of new clothes so off we trot to fucking Primark.

Ethics are just too expensive to put into practice.

Is diving to get a penalty for your football team ‘ethical’? Ashley Young, a famous swan impersonator, last night did that very thing. Again. No-one touched him but down he went as if his legs had been removed simultaneously below the knee by a chain-saw.

So a big debate today about the whole diving issue. How refs can’t see everything, how touches can have a big effect on a fast moving person, blah, blah, blah.

The upshot is really quite simple when it comes to whether a ‘simulated’ plummet to the ground is ‘acceptable’. If its done by one of your players its fine, when done by anyone else, he’s a fucking cheating scummy diving immoral bastard.

Simple. And elegant. Almost. Bit like me.

Happy wednesday

A xxxx

The opposite of good is bad.

The opposite of short is tall

The opposite of heroic is…

Well what? Cowardly? Sensible?? No schmuck???

We all love a hero. Every movie has a hero. Douglas Barder climbed back into his Spitfire are losing both his legs to fight the Hun once more. Gary Cooper faced the badies at High Noon because a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. Clint Eastwood only played heroic characters. And we loved them all.

Sporting heroes are the stuff of legend. Bert Trautmann playing in the 1956 cup final with a broken bone in his neck. Why? What motivates such behaviour?  Because he was a German? Some Neitzean Ubermensch? Because he was stupid?? To prove what, exactly, and to whom?

JPR Williams, famous Wales fullback and doctor (ahhhhh, those days of amateur sport…) cut his face playing, went off, stitched himself up on the touch line (with a fountain pen and bootlace… ok, maybe not) and played the match out.

Maybe its a ‘man thing’ along with staring at legs on the high street; something so inbuilt, so innate, so hard-wired that we all have it, us Men. But we don’t. When Jesus famously ‘turned the other cheek’ he gave the less heroic a noble ‘out’. Bless him.

And so to Hugo Lloris, the Spurs goalie. Collides with Romelu Lukaku (that’s a footballer, not an asteroid) and gets whacked with the Ivorian’s knee so hard on the head that he loses consciousness. The collision was of sufficient power that Lukako then limped off to have an ice pack applied to his knee. Oh, that’s hard, ouch!

But Lloris pushed away the medics, laughed at the stretcher they’d brought onto the pitch, sent the now-raring-to-go substitute goalie back to the bench, told his manager to fuck off and insisted on finishing the game.

A brain scan performed the next day showed two things. That there was no damage and that Lloris was definitely French. But the French aren’t heroes? Never. They lie down and get invaded by everyone and anyone. French children are all given white flags by their godparents at their Christenings. Its a tradition.

Lloris should not have been allowed to play on. French or not. It was not about heroism or ‘manning up’ or any such knuckle-dragging bollocks. Its about common sense. He was concussed, therefore he was not in a fit state and he could have fucked up and let in a goal. And concussed people are famously not great at making judgments, particularly as to their own health. The manager should not have given Lloris a decision that was not his to make.

Thought the real crime was the referee booking Lukaku. What a nob. Accidents happen; its a physical game. A simple, unintentional collision on the pitch. And since when is it a crime to attack a Frenchman? Not in this country, thank you very much.

Happy heroic Tuesday

A xxxx

I’d like to make a plea on behalf of Gwyneth Paltrow.

Well someone’s gotta do it. That poor (well, in some ways) woman is reviled by the press, hated by her peers, ridiculed by her own mother (I made that bit up, just for effect), pilloried by anyone and everyone who eats normal food, doesn’t spend $14,000 on a ‘casual’ wear outfit and fails to perform yoga for 9 hours a day.

And its simply not fair.

I’d like to start by saying that my wife is the most perfect woman in the world. Totally and utterly (parallel parking aside) the personification of the perfectionist paradigm for something beginning with ‘p’. She is my soul mate, my partner, lover, best (and probably only) friend and the the most wonderful person ever, till death us do part, blah, blah, blah.

But I am allowed to look at other women. In the same way I can look at a beautiful car, a stunning house, a wonderful piece of art, or anything else I can’t afford. I can’t help looking, it comes with that pesky y-chromasome. And those women who’s appearance I most admire are generally dark. Sultry brunettes, olive-skinned and… and… and…

Nicole Scherzinger. Penelope Cruz. Selma Hayek.

Not so dark that facial hair becomes too much of a problem. Nor hair on the back. Moustaches are tolerated within reason.

But then along came Michelle Pfeiffer, so many years ago, all fabulously Baker Boying and amazing and I abandoned my favoured stereotype. Temporarily. Until along came Gwynnie herself. The movie Emma introduced her and by the time Shakespeare was in Love with her so was I.

But this is purely about looks. That divinely fragile, delicate, ultra-feminine outer-casing. I don’t care what’s inside. I’m not interested in character, personality, how much they do for charity, nuffink. This is strictly 2-dimensional adoration. I’ve got a wife, thanks very much, this is merely something to look at and admire. The ultimate objectification of women. Well someone’s gotta not only do it, but own up to it.

Gwynnie married her rock star, spawned 2 little Gwynettes (I don’t know their names but rather than look it up, I’ll guess at ‘Karma’ and ‘Daffodil’) and then totally went off the rails. Not the normal rails that other rock stars and movie icons go off, but the other one, the one less travelled. She went… healthy.

Rather than sex and drugs and twerking and drunken knicker-flashes falling into a taxi outside Nobu, Gwynnie instead opted for a life of purity, of a type of living so clean, so pure, so fucking sanctimoniously aggressive-vegan, that she has become a hate-figure. But why? Just because she refuses to give her children things to eat that actually have any taste? Is that so wrong? Because she avoids meat, eggs, gluten, dairy and some kinds of water? Because she drinks only green slime and is boringly evangelical about it? Because she does yoga for 6 hours a day? If she’s hungry she’ll eat a wind farm. She has devoted her life to tantric tedium and we should admire her, not bury her.

But now she’s moved back to her native California. The place where superficiality is all. Where you are judged purely on what you look like. Which is where she should be. Back in 2-Dimensionland. Where we can admire her without having to listen to or read about all her bollox.

So please, leave poor Gwyneth alone. She still looks fab. Just don’t speak to her.

Happy monday

A xxxx

Its here. Its arrived. The answer to all our troubles, cares and woes. No more recession, no more financial insecurity, no more banks screwing us over, bankers getting squllions of pounds in undeserved bonuses, no more massive national debt, underpaid firemen going on strike on Guy Fawkes weekend, no more corrupt politicians, tax dodgers, gangs and crime or Arsenal being top of the league. It all over.

We’re getting a new bridge in London. Not just any bridge; a Garden Bridge. Wow. Its a bridge across the river, but its full of trees and shrubs and bushes and shit. Brilliant. So I can mow them down when I speed across it in my usual desperate haste to get OUT OF SOUTH LONDON as fast as possible back to the reassuring niceness of the northern shores.

Oh. Its not for cars. Its for flowers. Oh. Whass’a point then? Well if its not for cars, why not just build 3/4s of a bridge and stop it 50 yards short of the South Bank so only those in the north can use it. And we can stand there waving insolently at the massed rabble on the other side who are denied access.

But some would say ‘that’s not really the point’.

I love bridges and I love London and I’m even rather partial to a park or two; so this seems like some kind of heavenly thing.

Therefore, despite the 150 million pound estimate (ergo: it will cost 450 million), I think its a brilliant idea. It’ll be like the High Line in New York. Which is a disused railway line that runs over the Meatpacking District which they’ve converted into a fabulous walkway  full of all that greenery and stuff. But that one only offers wonderful views of Manhattan, whereas our Garden Bridge will have views of London as it crosses between the South Bank Centre (the almost acceptable face of Sarf London) to the Temple and on towards Covent Garden.

Its a lovely morning here, so I spent an hour and a half at Tai Chi kicking people veeeerrrrrrrryyyyyyy slooooooowly, then tennis in the sunshine, which was indeed unexpected, and now I’m going to dream of bridges over the Thames.

Work, work, work.

Then football. And rugby.

I’m living the dream.

Happy saturday,

A xxxx

What a lovely picture in today’s paper, taken at an event in Beverley Hills ‘to protect the world’s oceans’. How noble is that? You’d expect the picture to contain people in scuba gear, holding spear guns with which they could fend off Japanese Whalers, Chinese rhino-horn poachers (what? rhinos don’t live in the sea?? no shit…), ozone depleters and people who drive gas-guzzling cars. And other bad types. But no. This was a posh do. Probably (guessing here) to raise money. And Beverley Hills isn’t on the ocean anyway.

The picture showed Carly Simon, Jane Fonda and Melanie Griffith. Allegedly. Because you’d never know it by looking at them. They looked (and dressed) like 3 teenagers. Wearing death masks. How tragic. Maybe its written into the oceanic protection rules that you should never knowingly not have cosmetic surgery performed at every possible opportunity.

Jane Fonda looks great. For a woman of 117. She even looks vaguely like Jane Fonda, sort of. Whereas Melanie Griffith doesn’t look like Jane Fonda at all. Nor, unfortunately, much like Melanie Griffith.

But Carly Simon.

Carly Simon.

Like every other red-blooded (nothing homophobic about that phrase at all) male fortunate enough to get a copy of Carly Simon’s eponymous album when they were about 14 years old, I fell madly, deeply, passionately in love with the album cover. There again, most 14 year old boys fall ‘in love’ approximately 47 times an hour. Anyone will do; the girl at the bus stop, a picture on a poster, dinner ladies at school, its a hormone problem endemic in the species and is often associated with a chronic inability to walk past any mirror without staring in it until someone shouts at you. Who’s so vain?

But Carly now is this reconstructed blond thing and I could just cry. But since I had my eyes done my tear ducts no longer function properly along with 3/4 of my facial nerves. Small price to pay for beauty.

Wheres hero of the week (read: total fucking NOB!) is Christopher Philips. He’s a kick boxing coach. Who dressed up in full Ku Klux Klan regalia and carried out an execution. Of a golliwog. Remember golliwogs? Not content with merely perpetrating this cruel (and some would probably say totally fucking pointless) act, he had the presence of mind to film it and put it on youtube. Thus will Wolverhampton’s finest member of the ‘West Midlands Infidels’ enter her majesty’s prison system. And have to reply to the hardened jailbirds’ questions of what he’s in for by admitting to murdering a child’s toy.

I never said the world made sense.

Happy friday

A xxxx

Tests have now shown (apparently; they’re always showing something or other; do these ‘testers’ really have nothing better to do??) that left handed people are far more likely to be schitzophrenics than right handers.

Schizophrenia (/ˌskɪtsɵˈfrɛniə/ or /ˌskɪtsɵˈfriːniə/) is a mental disorder characterized by a breakdown of thought processes and by a deficit of typical emotional responses.

[1]Common symptoms are delusions including paranoia and auditory hallucinations,disorganized thinking reflected in speech, and a lack of emotional intelligence. It is accompanied by significant social or vocational dysfunction. The onset of symptoms typically occurs in young adulthood

David Cameron is left handed. Barak Obama is left handed. So several billion mega-tons of nuclear armaments lies in the (left) hands of people who are likely to be delusional, paranoid and emotionally stunted.

Some of my dearest and closest friends are left-handed. Well, they were until I read the paper this morning. Now I shall rethink my whole ‘friends’ thing in the interest of my personal safety and welfare and that of my family.

Oddly though, ‘handedness’ is not quite such a cut and dry phenomena. Lots of people write with their left hands but play sports right handedly. Some are totally ambidextrous. Or ‘part-time schitzos’ as it will now be known. Rafa Nadal plays tennis left handed but is in fact right handed. Presumably this is so his favoured hand can do the more important job of releasing his constant ‘wedgies’ from his poorly designed underwear leaving him only the left one to hit the ball with. Ryan Giggs is very left-footed but writes right-handedly.

This all serves to complicate things. Most people have degrees of ambidexterity. I deal playing cards left handedly. I never knew until bridge lesson number 2 when Guru Clive pointed at my dealing, leapt up and screamed that terrible fact at me. As if I was eating a baby, worshipping the devil, voting conservative or displaying a Milwall tatoo.

So now that tiny little single facet of my otherwise total right-handedness will make me paranoid that I may end up paranoid.

I fucking hate those 2 words: “tests show…”

Tests show that Spurs have won another football match. Just. Oh my but really really ‘just’. On penalites, loads of penalties. Like we win most of our matches, but more of them. Penalty shoot-out in the cup match last night; 8-7. Fifteen penalites to get the winner. So now we’ve advanced to the quarter finals of the Total Waste of Time (unless you win it) Cup. And it only cost us 120 minutes, plus penalties, of physical, mental and emotional exhaustion.

And our left-handers won’t cope with that very well at all.

Happy thursday

A xxxx

Even been to Cheddar Gorge? Its in Somerset and its really beautiful. Like a mini version of the Grand Canyon. The Petit Canyon, peutetre. Its big, jagged, rugged and naturally magnificent. A bit like me. But fatter. Its half owned by the Marquis of Bath (hippy nutcase who has up to 75 ‘wifelets’ at any time; perhaps not such a nutcase then?) and half owned by the National Trust. Thus is very protected under some kind of Listed status, World Heritage Site, you know; the usual deal  they have to do to stop Tescos building a hyperstore there.

His Lordship wants to put a cable car up the gorge. For tourists. Not for Tesco shoppers. But he only controls the southern half so needs agreement from the National Trust to take plans any further. Otherwise he could only build it to the middle and then stop it in mid-air, which involves gravity problems. And gravity is even more dogmatic than the National Trust. But not by much.

The problem is that tourist numbers are dropping. Which is indeed a shame because its a place to stand and stare and go ‘wow! that is fucking BIG’ and then go for lunch. The Lordship feels that a cable car could bring those pesky foreingers back in droves, bringing their not-so-pesky Euros and dollars and yen with them. And roubles. Shit-loads of roubles.

But its the eternal dilemma; is a cable car an improvement or an eye-sore? Will it help people admire the magnificnece of become a horrible distraction from it? The Niagra Falls debate. Beautiful thing of wonder turned into a cheap and nasty Disneyland ride. Even the Grand Canyon itself now sports a silly ‘skywalk’ thing.

I think tourists are declining because the younger generation don’t like natural beauty. They like looking at little screens. So why not turn the Gorge into a video game? A real, first-person-shooter, grand-theft-auto game in which you strut round the gorge killing the Marquess’s wifelets as they try to run away with the family silver. Produce an app. Then the Gorge, in all its original, unspoiled splendour will live forever unchanged and beautiful (not counting all the blood and flame throwers) in the virtual word and Tescos can build a megastore to provide funding for the area that the contentious cable car may or may not have done.

Then we can get to work on that Welsh coastline and start building some proper roller coasters to relieve the otherwise endless boredom of all those natural beaches.

It just needs some thought, that’s all, then the answers are all so simple.

Happy wednesday

A xxxx