Andy's Glasses

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

Gareth Bale is up for the world player of the year. If he beats off some weak opposition from  the likes of Lionel (who???) Messi, he will be proclaimed God. Master of the world. The most gifted Welshman since Harry Secombe, Gareth Edwards, Neil Kinnock. The best player since Pele, the most talented individual since that fat ugly Scottish bird won that useless pathetic tv talent contest.

As a true reflection of our multi-cultural land and mixed up world, nationality should be movable, transferable, saleable. It should be subject to corruption, bribery and whatever else it takes in modern football, as exemplified by the World Cup in Qatar.

I still can’t believe that anyone can understand Hungarian. Even Hungarians. Its a big joke. Speak total gobbledigook and pretend they can talk like normal people to each other whilst really sniggering cos its all rubbish. No-one could make sense out’a that. I don’t normally have this issue. Languages have a rhythmn, a tempo, so even odd ones like Korean or Xosa still sound like langauges rather than just noises.

Hungarian’s different. Its the linguistic equivalent of dragging fingernails across a chalk-board. It jars. It actually makes you want to cover your ears and shout ‘NO!! MAKE IT GO AWAY MUMMY’.

Though Budapest is fab. Mainly because of the bridges. I simply love a bridge. In another life I’d have been a bridgitect. Designing and building bridges. They’d all look fab. But wouldn’t necessarily work as I lack the engineering background. First person to step onto the thing and it would just tumble into the river/off the cliff/by the road. But they’d look fab.

Because its a fundamental European requirement for every city to have a fucking great river through the middle, you need to cross them. Hence the bridges. And they’re all different vintages here, and all different structures. Suspension bridges, girder bridges, green ones, Victorian style ones and a chain bridge. Which is the one in the attached pic. I have no idea how any of them stay up; its not my problem. Staring at them and going ‘wow!!!’, that’s my job.

Spurs job is to win football matches. And get the points on offer to the victors. Which is precisely what they did yesterday. Hung on in there in what has been described as ‘the dullest football match ever played everrrrrrrr’ and got a possibly undeserved last minute penalty to claim the spoils. Its not exactly the way I’d envisaged the season playing out but heh, free points is free points and ‘ya gorra be in-it-ta win-it’.

What’s Hungarian for COME ON YOU SPUUUUUUURSSSSSS?

I must ask.

Happy monday

A xxxx

What do we really know about Hungary and Hungarians??

The early Magyars were obviously savages and barbarians who raped, slaughtered, pillaged and were big on incest because that was pretty much the early (pre 1973) way all round this part of the world. Soon as they decided to have a Europe, in 637 ad, then the wars started. And, as dynasties went, the Hapsburgs were pretty damned good at it. Surviving until the war when, as with so many parts of Europe,  it all went to shit, they joined the wrong side, like Man City fans, and then the Russians took over and it got even worse.

Famous Hungarians? There’s only really 3.

1. Ferenc Puscas, great footballer in the 50s and 60s.

2. Liszt. As in ‘Brahms and…’ They needed a composer to rhyme with pissed and he just fit the bill perfectly.

3. Biro. Invented writing. With a ball-point anyway.

And that’s it really. Other than those involved in the slaughter and rape and pillage, which still happens nightly in Budapest. Which is why Mel & I have come for the weekend.

And to get away from the football because Arsenal won again and London can at times like this become intolerable.

And its wonderful here.

We’d literally stepped off the plane and hadn’t even made it to the end of that little tunnel to the terminal when we saw our first ‘serious’ moustache. Like, the real Franz Ferdinand job. (the emporer, not the band, obviously).  By passport control we’d seen three more. Big, bushy, waxed jobbies, brilliant. You could spend a lifetime in London without witnessing such incredible moustachage.

So we’d arrived in the city which used to be 2 cities. Buda, where they were rabid nasty racists, and Pest, the inhabitant of which were vile anti-semites. So they joined up, across the Danube, and called it Budapest and everyone can be both an anti-semite AND a racist.

Great city though, really beautiful and fab. Could be in Wales, its so lovely.

Happy delayed belated day (blame British Airways)

A xxxxx

When I was 14 I went to a summer camp. It was like a prison camp but with songs. And gels. Which is why my old mate Jem made me go. “My brother went last year and they let you loose on all these girls who can’t escape because you’re locked in!!”. Brilliant. So I went and spent my days playing football and my evenings with my tongue down someone’s throat. And that someone was Lisa. From Hull. Or, ‘Ool’, as they call it up there in Hull-land. We ‘were madly in love’ for the two week duration of face-sucking, grope-fest camp, had a tearful farewell, all ‘sealed with a kiss’ and ‘long lonely summer’ and ‘leaving on a jet plane’, even though it was actually a coach back to Victoria. And then we never made contact again. Never.

Scarred by this emotional trauma (??) I’ve never been to Hull. Its too painful. Like most cities up north. Painful.

And all this because Spurs are playing Hull tomorrow. I wonder if Lisa will be coming to London? To Tottenham?? I wonder if she’s now their biggest fan? Do Hull have fans? Like people who really like them, as opposed to a bunch of bored northerners who can’t find anywhere better to go drinking on saturday afternoons than the KC stadium. Maybe Lisa doesn’t live there any longer. Maybe she moved ‘up’ to Grimsby. The high life. Who knows?

Spurs must beat Hull. There’s no doubt, there’s no question, there’s no other alternative nor consideration. (Just like the West Ham game; SHUTTUP!!) Because I don’t care how flattering Hull’s current league position is, they have no right to be there. They are at best, next year’s relegation fodder, at worst, destined for a late season plummet to oblivion. So we must beat them.

I was very depressed after the West Ham game and then read just last night how (like I couldn’t work it out all by myself with a calculator and computer) we’re just 3 points from the top. Free points. Dat’s nuffink. We just need everyone else to lose, to score 17 goals and we’d be right where destiny is surely leading us.

So first, Arsenal need to lose at Crystal Palace. They lost to Dortmund in the week so anything can happen and although Palace might not be as good as the Germans ‘on paper’, they are English so there’s a good chance for an upset. The Times give the Arse about a 96% chance of victory today. I love an underdog.

Chelsea play Manchester City tomorrow in what some consider a ‘big game’, others just a ‘very expensive game’, as the oligarch’s rabble take on the oil-king’s pawns in the battle of the money launderers. A draw would be the best possible outcome for this horrible game. The combined wealth of the players on that pitch will exceed the GDP of 37.9% of the world’s nations. (Accounts may vary depending on which, er, ‘equation’ is being used or made up).

Liverpool host West Brom, which should be an easy one for the Scousers. But firstly there’s simply no easy games any longer, and also, that one time really intimidating statement that faces all players as they come onto the pitch, the one proclaiming just “THIS IS ANFIELD!”, has now been replaced with something more appropriate. It now states: “THIS IS ANFIELD. NO REALLY, IT IS. HONEST”.

Then there’s the always mouth-watering el classico too as Barcelona take on Real Madrid at the Nou Camp. Always a passionate and hate-filled affair, today might even see El Welsho, the one and only Gareth Bale, play some of the match. His first game for a while and what a game to be thrust into. Those bastard Catalans have been lampooning Gareth due to his lack of fluency in Spanish. Which is cruel. We never took the piss because he could barely speak English, did we?

Happy saturday, I’m off to drag the younger daughter onto the tennis court.

A xxxx