Andy's Glasses

Ok, we’ve done without football for long enough. It feels like fucking July round here. Ok, its a bit colder, nights a bit earlier, mornings a bit bleaker, frost a bit thicker, but the lack of proper football is interminable and awful. How can they do that? WHY can they do that?? Its abuse. It infringes my human rights. All that ‘friendly international’ bollox. Its not right. Its not real. Its rubbish. We need Premiership and we need it NOW.
Ok, we’re getting it but really… really…

I even had every intention (oh, that ‘road of good intentions’ is a slippery place) of gloating about the cricket, of paying to have “I ‘heart’ Stuart Broad” tattooed on every Australian in the land, but that’s all gone to shit now, dammit.

So we’re back. Football. Aaaaahhhhhhh.

And yet, and yet… its rather depressing. As if we didn’t have enough problems at Spurs, we’re playing Manchester City at just the ‘wrong time’ (don’t ask; I’m thinking when a ‘good time’ might be and can only come up with ‘when they’re all sleeping’) just as they’re shaking off the dodgy form of the early season, at least when they’re at home. Away they’re the shitty rubbish everyone wants them to always be, but at home they can be awesome. Even though they’re a bunch of overpaid mercenary gypsy types who define ‘home’ as the place where they pay you the most. Oddly, Spurs are better away from home. The Lane has been the place of two horribly tragic disappointments (so far) this season and will doubtless be witness to more wrist-slitting agony as the term progresses.
But I shall remain upbeat, optimistic, filled with hope and expectation and prozac and valium. Same old same old.

Arsenal play Southampton, 1st vs 3rd, bizarrely, and we want the Saints to win so we can stop the Goons from running away with the league. And we want West Ham to beat Chelsea (trust me; its political and pragmatic, not personal; both are hateful) Liverpool and Everton to draw because both are above us in the table (becoming less an exclusive club every week, sadly) and we want Cardiff to beat Manchester United because it will make Bridge-Meister Clive the happiest man in north London, at least until someone makes a slam against him.

The rest of the matches are irrelevant. I can’t be concerned with ‘that end of the table’. Not yet anyway. Few more weeks I may be very interested in it. But for now the battle for 6th place is all that is of interest to me and to those others who know right from wrong, good from evil, their lilywhites from their reds.

Spurs MUST WIN.
Not like 2 weeks ago, the week before that, next weekend, no, nothing like that at all. Though I’ve never heard anyone refer to a ‘must lose’ game ever.
Nothing else matters. This is more important than anything. Even if they find Ed Milliband was the gay lover of a drug-taking fat old bank chief…
well, that would be fun, but this is really important.

Come on you Spurs

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

What’s the purpose of a Mayor? What are they for? What do they do? What’s their raison d’etre??
Their alleged role is to represent the city to which they do their mayoring, to act as figurehead, spokesperson, head of the city council and mouthpiece for that entire metropolis. And all who sail in it.

Ken Livingstone, London’s first mayor since Dick Whittington, took his role as champion of the underdog and chose to demonstrate how open and accepting and multi-cultural and wonderful we as a city are by inviting as many terrorists as he could to have tea with him in City Hall. Anyone banned from the country, anyone wanted by the police, Ken would make them a nice cuppa Brooke Bond and open the chocolate biscuits. Which we’d fucking paid for.

Boris Johnson came with a slightly trickier past, having shagged his way round the posher totty of the right-wing journalistic world, whilst married to his poor, long-suffering, and brought his reputation for ‘laughs first, serious shit later’ with him. Though its served him surprisingly well. Some view him as a joke, as a buffoon, with his blond mop and seeming inability to take anything seriously unless its wearing a dangerously low cut top and ‘fuck me’ heels.

And then there’s Rob Ford.
WHO???
The mayor of Toronto. In name only currently, because he’s a sinner. Big time sinner. And Toronto is generally a very tolerant and forgiving place. Its simply too cold there to act otherwise. Yeah, I forgive you, can we go back to the lovely roaring fireside now?

Rob Ford was filmed smoking crack cocaine. Some might think this unacceptable for an elected representative of a major city. But I’ll give him some leeway because its not like he’s the head of a British bank or anything. Then he drove whilst drunk, arrived at council meetings pissed, bought various other hard drugs, offered oral sex to a female colleague (so he’s not all bad), though not, on record, to any male colleagues, so a bit of sexism going on there too, and he’s generally a fat ugly fair-haired slob with major problems. In fact he IS Paul Flowers without the moustache and the gay porn on his work computer.

But unlike Flowers, Rob Ford won’t resign. Instead he offered up the usual ‘get out of jail’ card for politicians: “I MADE SOME MISTAKES; THEY’RE PAST, LET’S MOVE ON”.
Fuckwit.

Tony Blair famously ‘smoked a joint when he was 19’ as did Bill Clinton who ‘didn’t inhale’ (waste’a someone’s dope that was then) when a student. Forgivable. The folly of youth. But Ford’s ‘mistakes’ are right here and now. They’re ongoing. His confession should read: I’M MAKING SOME MISTAKES, THEY’LL BE OVER SOON. But they won’t. You can cure addiction, you can cure a fat belly, but you can’t cure an arrogant, drug-addled piece of shit. It says so in all the medical books. And its time Canadia stopped being such a bloody nice place full of such bloody nice tolerant, nice, lovely people and banished this horrible man to exile. Montreal maybe, they’d hardly notice him among all those Frenchies.

Me mate Canadian Dave is beside himself with worry over his city (doh: Toronto; try and keep up). His mayor is giving hard drugs a bad name.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

What a revelation; what a story; what a life-changing, history-understanding, game-changing event of monumental…
Well, of monuments.
Stonehenge is in the news again. As it is at least once every thousand years or so. Because they’ve discovered something really important.
The stones, those fucking massive mega-rocks which make up the site, were originally thought to have come from Carn Goedog, some god-forsaken nothing in the middle of Welsh nowhere. But they were wrong. It has now been shown that they come from Carn Meini. Wow. That’s a whole mile away from the original site. Oh no.
The question as to how they then arrived at their present location, 150 miles away, seems to me a more interesting question. An even better one is WHY????
I suspect it was a proto-government-unemployment scheme, get the children off the streets, have them do something ‘useful’. Even though I don’t think they had ‘streets’ 5000 years ago when Stonehenge was born. Not exactly. Maybe it was an ‘internship’, to ‘help move a few stones’.

I’d have called UPS myself, but maybe things were different at that time. Maybe UPS didn’t have an office in Wales back then.
I reckon aliens done it. Used a tractor beam on their space ship and just ‘lifted’ them stones right out’a the ground; all 180 of them and then flying saucered them over to Wiltshire in 14 seconds.

The other theory is more interesting. If you take a look at the latest mobile phone technology, you get a lorra phone in a tiny space. Go back 10 years and some among us (nobs, mainly, plus estate agents, if there’s any difference) were carrying ‘bricks’ which only made very poor phone calls. If you extrapolate this back in time 5000 years, a mobile phone would be the size of Stonehenge.

So there you have it: Andy’s theory, Stonehenge was a mobile phone. The problem was, no-one else had one to receive the call. Details details.

Women are to be ordained at Bishops in the Anglican church. A brilliant moment for women. The reluctance for this apparently stems from Jesus having only male apostles. But he was gay, so of course he did. I read that in Mad magazine, so it must be true. And women Bishops is something we’ve waited for a long time. They look great in long purple dresses so why not?
Though as ever, when big issues occur in religious circles, some will be so opposed that they break away and become the ‘Old Anglican’ C of E and adhere to the ‘old’ and ‘proper’ values of men wearing purple dresses themselves.

At least, it would seem, there is no ‘glass ceiling’ up to heaven.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

How can you beat the Germans (or even their frikkin substitutes; how totally embarrassing?) if you don’t have the right team? If the players are wrong??

I mean: how can you beat the Hun with a team in which the players are called Wayne, Ashley, Kyle and Andros?
With surnames like Lallana and Jagielka. Even Gerrard sounds decidedly French. Unless its said in a Scouse accent. Then it just sounds horrible. Like everything else spoken in that tortuous, agonising mode of speech. Like words being vomited out in great pain. To the speaker and listener.

We need players called Billy and Bobby and Nobby and Jack. We need people called Tommy and Arthur and Alfie and Johnny. Proper names for guys who are proper English. I don’t wish this in a ‘UKIP’ kind of way but after all, this is England we’re talking about here. And that’s how we won the World Cup, back in 1827, with players of unmistakable Englishness in their names.

Wayne and Kyle are fine names. For two brothers from Mississippi out to rape their sister, Lu-Anne. Ashley is a girl’s name and Andros was one of the three mustkateers. Ok, that was, strictly speaking, Athos, but its the same root; taking its meaning from the greek work to tragically underperform and keep wasting crosses.
Ross Barkley is a cabaret singer from Newport Pagnell. Don’t go changin’.

Only Jack Wilshere is appropriately named to go and face the Germans. And he plays for Arsenal so is almost a Frenchman anyway.

And now for something completely different…
Monty Python are coming back. A reunion is being planned. And that is wonderful news. Or is it? Can you really go back to the early 70s when you’re now in your early 70s? The comedy which changed comedy forever provided a stepping stone from which the world of ‘funny’ then evolved. And its come a long way. Personally I’d be happy if they just show the old reruns every night.

Happy Wednesday

Adolph English
xxxx

Without wishing to sound in any way pretentious or hi-brow (read: what follows will be exceptionallly pretentious and hi-brow) one simply loves an art gallery. This one does anyway.

The works of the great masters; the magical skills of the artists; wonderful landscapes; fabulous potraits; naked fat birds romping round with cherubs; rooms full of Jesus and Marys with suitable haloes… ahhhhh. You can keep it all. Its bollocks, the lot of it. Constable painted the countryside with startling accuracy but my phone can provide a perfect image down to the millionth mega-pixel, so who needs him? Reubens thinks he invented porn and the entire Renaissance was a waste of time unless you’re a Catholic.

Yet I love a gallery. But the galleries themselves, the buildings. I’ve been to loads, all over the world. The Louvre is fabulous, I adore that pyramid, the Prado in Madrid, couple in Barcelona, the Getty in California, the Guggenheim in New York, I simply love them all. From the outside. I love the buildings, the grounds, the structures, the everything. The Musee d’Orsay is a recycled tram shed, the Tate Modern a depot of some sort and they are amazing buildings. Generally filled with stuff I really don’t want to see.

So I generally do galleries from the outside, only venturing in if there’s a particular exhibition that appeals; pop art or extreme expressionism verging on surreal, or if there’s a really good restaurant run by a burger chain.

I love art galleries; its the art that spoils them.

I went once to the Tate Britain; fabulous old ex-prison sitting on the Thames by Vauxhall Bridge. Rachie was doing a project on Toulouse La Trec and we ‘needed’ to go. We spent more time in the cafe than the gallery, coffee was sensational, fab cakes. And now they’ve redone the place. Internally. 45 million quids worth of ‘make-over’ and the interior now (looking at the pictures) looks so fantastic that I actually want to go.

I wonder if they’d take down all the paintings so I can have a proper, undistracted look.

England play Germany tonight in the World Cup qualifier of massive importance. Both in terms of football and in terms of national pride. Because whatever happens in the world of politics, in Europe, however nice anyone tries to be, whatever measures of friendliness between our two fine nations occur, I think it safe to say: WE FUCKING HATE THE GERMANS. Its irrational, its illogical, its not very nice and (apparently) they are our friends, neighbours and allies. Apparently.
But in football; WE HATE THEM. Maybe we always hate them and are only allowed to give vent to this in the footballing arena.
So even though international football generally depresses me and leaves me totally cold, tonight its a big COME ON ENGLAND.

glücklich Dienstag

A xxxx

I love a hypocrite. Simply love them. They’re what satire was invented for. Yet everyone has the right to at times act in a mildly hypocritical manner. Paul Flowers just abused that right.
Who?
The man who lives his life in reverse. A bit like the Brad Pitt movie about Benjamin Button who was born ancient at got younger with time (true story… ish) and died as a little baby aged ninety-whatever.
Paul Flowers worked in a bank. So far so good. For years. Well, four years, after leaving school. So can’t imagine he had some hi-powered executive role, more probably spent his days counting out the coppers and filling in mortgage applications. In those days when mortgages were still available. And banks still had money to lend.
He left that job to become a Methodist minister. Ohhhh, that’s devotion. And a Right Reverend didst he become. As it is written. (in the Times it is anyway). A man of G-d. An upholder of the spiritual and eithical side of life. Which he used (one can hope) in his role as a councillor in Bradford.
Then he went back to banking, this time to head up the Co-operative bank. Which is royally (as well as spiritually, ethically and anything-else-ally) fucked. So just last week he was up before a parliamentary committee answering quetions as to ‘what happened’ at Co-op central.
His answers showed he didn’t really have much clue what was happening at his bank, other than ruination of a once fine institution. Though he did stress how on his watch he did always ensure that the fundamental ethical principles of the Co-op ideals were upheld. Yeah, right.
So now, at age 63, when he should be putting on his slippers and curling up in front of a fire to read Dickens, the Bible or the Methodist Handbook (I’m sure they have one), instead he goes out buying class A drugs and partying the night away at ‘gay orgies’. Which really he should have been doing in his teens and 20s instead of wasting all that time in churches.
Apparently its unbecoming for the head of a bank, for a ‘Reverend’ who once headed up a drugs charity, to be seen on film buying crystal meth, crack and ketamine from some dodgy geezer in the back of a car. Though he had little choice; they don’t sell it in Selfridges.
The time for drugs, orgies and shit is when you’re 23, not 63. Its part of the university syllabus.
At least he had the grace to apologise for doing ‘bad things’.
His punishment will come in heaven.
Though that may be preceded by another dose down here.

Happy monday

A xxxx

I don’t think I’ll ever truly understand Americans. I’ve visited them, numerous times, watched all their tv shows, even lived there for a year, amoungst them, like Tarzan when he was raised by the wolves. I learned their strange and mystical ways (eating fat, mainly), loved their women (errrr…), accepted their culture (went to loads of night clubs) and worked there as one of their own. I even understand American Football. But the whole gun thing is just fucking weird.  – Read More –

So I’m talking to my (useless) mate Dom the other day and we get onto ‘best music EEEVVVVEEERRRRR’. Top ten stuff. Of ALL TIME. Wow.

Dom’s mired in the pre-90s because he’s so old and stuck in his ‘good old days’ on Hampstead Heath. I’m much more open and embracing and thus have 1 track from the 90s and 1 even from a few years ago. Just one.  – Read More –

It has come to my notice that there’s nowhere upon which to leave a ‘comment’ on my blogs.

Which is as it bloody should be. My word is sacred, you’re just nothing, nobody, unworthy, just rabble.

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