Andy's Glasses

A pamphlet dropped through my door yesterday. Nice one. Thick. Good quality. Full colour, gloss pages. It was entitled ‘Light for the Last Days’ and, quite frankly, it has changed my life.

I read the prayer on the back page (posted above) and immediately felt lighter, stronger and completely liberated. Because reading this relieves you of any moral obligation whatsoever. It eliminates completely the possibility of ever committing a ‘sin’. Because Jesus has become my ‘proxy’ where all sins are concerned.

If I get a parking ticket, I’ll return it with a message to ‘send it to Jesus’ because he died to pay for my sins. And I hadn’t even committed any back then. Though I’ve been striving to make up for lost ground since 1956. If I miss the toilet in the middle of the night, I’ll just tell Mel “weren’t me!!! Jesus did it”.

This ‘movement’?, ‘organisation’?, philosophy?? is the work of a guy called Tony Pearce. Never heard of him either. Possibly Stuart’s brother, possibly not. But he’s a busy boy.

He loves Israel, the Holy Land, the Chosen People and all the good things. The Messiah bit is problematic. He disagrees with the Jewish version of how and when ‘the Messiah’ will arrive. He sees Jesus coming back, and pretty soon, to save us all again. Even though He’s saving me every day. If I sin…

The Jewish version of the Messiah is different. He’s got a longer beard, and flies business class. On his air miles. And when he arrives it will signal peace and prosperity all around the world. So I reckon we have a little wait for him looking at the total shit-storm around the globe currently.

But Tony (as I call him, now we’re ‘brothers-in-Jesus’) has seen the signs of the apocalypse, and they’re kind’a right here, right now. And that’s the time for the Jesus-Messiah to make yet another comeback (that’ll be one more than John Travolta) and save us. Tony bases it all on the Bible and the prophecies contained therein. Some of us have problems with a literal interpretation of the Bible as ‘written by God’ because there’s no WH Smiths in heaven. But if cynicism is a sin, then I’m good with that, Jesus’ll sort it for me.

I do admire Tony’s commitment. I may… question? some of his conclusions and even apply a very materialistic type reductionism to an approach which is completely spiritual and belief-based. But he’s written books and leaflets and essays and lectures, all very generously available free. And he hands out pamphlets to Godless sinners in the hope of their salvation.

Shabbat shalom, Tony,

From

The Damned xxxx

So yesterday it was Gail’s, today it’s Starbucks. The CEO has left because of Israel. Gaza. Palestine. There was a posting by ‘Starbucks staff’ basically supporting the atrocities of October 7th. Legal action was taken about using the Starbucks name on such a post. Now he’s gone. There was also trouble by the ‘workers’ about, once again, ‘anything Israel’ in investment, procurement, banking. No mention to ditch their i-phones, heart-monitors or their parents’ life-saving drugs, all developed and manufactured in Israel, but principles should always stop short of inconvenience. Especially when you’re a dickhead. The CEO is a Hindu guy, but presumably that’s close enough to being Jewish or heading a ‘Jewish organisation’, even though it isn’t, for the cancel-brigades. Who probably account for the downturn in the coffee giant’s share price in the last year.

So where can I buy my coffee from? There is a nearby place still allowed to be open amid this seismic wave of BDS-inspired ‘book-burning’ (a considered metaphor as being the most extreme and fascistic of ‘protests’, also the most stupid and destructive) because its kosher. Therefore no-one in there complains about any possible links to Israel.

Today, as Lila and Joey are away and I’m not, we went to another of the wave of trendy coffee shops and restaurants who charge ridiculously. Well, they must be good, right? At those prices?? But I didn’t buy a coffee from Ottolenghi. He’s a fucking Israeli!!!! Ok, partnered with a Palestinian, but… he’s a FUCKIN ISRAELI!!! Although I didn’t go for coffee, I go for Granola. The best granola in the world. Certainly the most expensive. But is my latest addiction and it’s cheaper than heroin, cocaine or cigarettes. And until I discovered it, I didn’t ever eat granola. But this one…

It must be healthy because Ottolenghi is famous for ‘healthy eating’. Well, salads. Lots of green stuff. So, by extension, his granola simply MUST be healthy. Even though it tastes like it’s full of sugar. Though nuts? They’re really good for you. Especially when roasted with sugar. And oats and seeds?? I’ll live to a hundred. My teeth probably won’t, but there ya go. The best thing about it? Much like ‘a puppy is not just for Christmas’, so Ottalenghi’s granola is ‘not just for breakfast’. You can eat it any time. All the time. As long as you still have an income.

Happy Coffee

A xxxx

Twenty five years ago? Maybe more, McDonalds wanted to open a store in Hampstead. The local forces of retired Colonels, twin-setted bridge players, champagne socialists and minor aristocrats with major drink problems ganged up to try to prevent such a downmarket establishment ‘ruining the tone of their high street’. And with it, presumably, the entire ‘village’. Which unfortunately had long been taken over completely by the ‘corporates’, already ‘ruining’ what I remember as a Hampstead with really cool, independent stores. So Starbucks was ok, Costa, Gap, Boots, Tescos, all fine. But Maccy-D was a step too far towards ‘downmarket’. A bit ‘oiky’ for Hampstead sensibilities. Unfortunately, you can’t fight ‘big high street’ and McD opened. Albeit with no ‘golden arches’ and a seriously toned down frontage. Oddly it was never the busiest McDonalds around and closed down a few years ago.

And now the residents of the ‘sweet’… village? Town? Suburb?? Of Walthamstow are trying to prevent Gail’s opening a store in their ‘dead cool’, ‘hip’, ‘lefty’, ‘right-on to the point of woke’, high street. It’s the ‘anti-Hampstead’. Gail’s is too corporate but, basically too middle-class, too upmarket for the scum of E17. They want their greasy spoon cafes to have the dominant market for E-Coli and none of that hi-brow, poncey designer-eating rubbish at 14 quid a croissant, when you can have a bacon sarnie for £2.95 including ketchup.

Much as McDonalds wasn’t posh enough for the genteel of ‘ampstead, so Gail’s is too posh for the scumbags of Walthamstow. Too posh and a bit too… Israeli.

Walthamstow, just last week, hosted an anti-fascist protest which amassed thousands of people in anticipation of the Nazi rioters who never arrived. Traffic jam in Billericay. And the anti-fascists held up their banners and proclamations and flags. Palestinian flags. Lots. ‘From the River to the Sea’ type stuff going on. Singing in praise of Hamas. It showed the mind-set of the average E17 dweller and their sheep-like adherence to the prevailing and moronic alignment of The Left with a bunch of Jihadi Terrorists. Who would murder the lot of them if, instead of Gaza, they were camped out digging their tunnels in neighbouring Chingford. But this bunch of infidels don’t realise that. All they do is the knee-jerk: if it is or was anything to do with Israel, then it is the enemy. They’ve already stopped Walthamstow council having any investments in companies with anything to do with anything Israel and now they’re politicising a coffee shop.

I used to quite like Walthamstow. But if you can’t get the world’s best cinnamon roll there (Gail’s, ok it is about a fiver, but sooooo worth it), then fuck the whole borough.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

Lila and Joey have gone on holiday. They’ve taken their mummy and daddy to Cyprus. And left me behind!! Ok, August is not really my prime ‘go on holiday’ time anyway, in fact I’ve avoided it ever since my kids left school. They’ve gone to Cyprus. Which, as long as it doesn’t catch fire, like mainland Greece, should be lovely. And we’re here working away and enduring the tube when it’s 35 degrees outside. Although I took the electric bike into town yesterday which is ‘the way to travel’ on hot days in the City. And I’ve managed to trim the journey significantly on past records. Firstly because it’s August so there is really little traffic, and secondly because I have emphatically become ‘that biker!!’, the one everyone hates. The one who goes through every red light, who goes when all the pedestrian lights are green. Because that means there’s no cars moving and I can weave my way through a few dozen irate walkers. Because I know I’m safe. They’re not. There’s fucking madmen on electric bikes screaming at them to ‘GET OUT MY FUCKING WAY!!!’ Which is why although Google Maps reckons my journey should take 47 minutes, I can do it in 35.

I’ve always felt riding a bike to be a very liberating experience. That feeling that you can go anywhere you like (range of battery may vary). I get it to a degree in a car, but on a bike it’s ten-fold. Because driving in town is a miserable experience because of all the lights, all the stopping. And on a bike, literally nothing stops you. Roads blocked? Go on the pavement. Lights are red, go anyway. Lime Bikes are a bit of an issue because they’re not quite as fast as my bike. So they get in my way. But there are ways to overcome this issue which I won’t mention here in case Mel or the girls reads this. Because they wouldn’t approve.

And then in September, we’re going away!!! The kids all get sucked back to England to start school and Europe empties other than a few foreigners knocking around. The problem is: where? We had flights booked to go to Israel and last week I cancelled them. Because of ‘recent events’ we feel that wouldn’t be the holiday we need right now. British Airways send you a nice message. “If you cancel this flight we will work out what refund you’re entitled to within 7 days. The decision is final and not subject to negotiation, appeal or change. But we’re not telling you what it is until you get it.” Long as I get my air miles back I’ll be happy.

And mid-September is getting close. Closer every day, you could say, if you like stating the totally obvious. And there’s so many options. We’re narrowing to ‘a Greek island’, but there are about 400 of those, some of which aren’t even on fire. Or we could go and invade Russia. But everyone’s doing that.

Ahhhh, first world problems…

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

The term ‘gonzo journalism’ was used back in the 70s to describe the work of Hunter S Thomson in Rolling Stone magazine. It’s like journalism with no rules. It’s first person rather than 3rd a lot of the time and it doesn’t adhere to normal structure or protocols. Like evidential truths. Who needs ‘em? So I would say ‘I modelled myself on the great Hunter S.’ except I hadn’t heard of him until Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas came out which was a kind of autobiographical story of an excessive stone-head, boozer, smoker, all round bad boy. So bad they had Johnny Depp play the lead in the film. And by that time I’d already started on my ‘career’ of making news articles more interesting by inventing stuff, including myself in the narrative (yes, it IS always about ME) and replacing ‘truth’ with ‘funnier’.

The tennis I play is rule free too. Because all those rules slow it down too much, cause people to become overly conservative and allow way too much time for ‘ball bouncing’ and other useless exercises. My way is better. Uninhibited by lines, bounces, niceties or anything, it’s about the pure enjoyment of hitting a ball.

But yesterday tennis turned full Gonzo. I played the younger daughter. First time in quite a few months. And she is a hard hitter. So hard that she hit the ball over the fence 3 times during an hour’s play. My balls. One of which now lives with the fishes. As it landed in the fucking brook. The other 2 were retrievable. So she hits hard, I hit it hard back and then, she slams a ball in the direction of my head/heart/testicles. I’ll parry it and get it back, and she’ll volley it over and I’ll slam it back at her. It resembles a duel using tennis balls as the chosen weapon. All the shots would count as ‘out’ if left, in any ‘normal’ game of tennis. But this ain’t normal by any definition. That’s when it becomes Gonzo. Which you can tell by the width of the smiles as we attack each other.

Maybe they’ll include it in the next Olympics, where the break dancing used to be.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

If there’s one thing more depressing than the Olympics ‘opening ceremony’, it’s the closing ceremony. The purpose of the opening ceremony is to bore everyone to tears and incitement to suicide. It goes on for 13 hours and even if its not raining it can only be seen as some vanity-project of narcissistic artistic directors who, if its wasn’t for the Olympics, I would call ‘on steroids’. Such metaphors can never be uttered near any cyclist. Sprinter. Boxer. Athlete. I’d even test the horses. But at least, once that ceremony is over, we get two weeks of amazing sport to enjoy, get exited about, to follow and to cry about. Excessively. Ok, it’s also an amazing parade of amazing abs, flying pony-tails and incredible thighs, but this is not the place for such objectifying discourse. So I never look forward to the Olympics, then the opening ceremony makes it all seem much worse. But once it starts…

It’s just amazing. Captivating. And so I really don’t want it to finish. But it does and that closing ceremony will confirm that by rubbing salt in the wounds. Probably making me cry all over again.

Yesterday I found a new sport. But literally. They invented it for Paris and by the next Olympics it will be gone. Which is a bit of a tragedy. Yesterday’s final was won by Japan in the ‘goldfish on the kitchen floor’ competition. Or ‘break dancing’ as ‘they’ call it. Simply incredible. Two women hurling themselves around the floor like they’re having a severe epileptic episode, but controlled, gymnastic, athletic, and all in rhythm with the (obviously horrible, garage-type, hip-hop, terrible young-person) music. The Japanese woman out-flapped the Lithuanian but it was possibly the best thing in the entire Olympics. Because it was 10% physical brilliance and 90% attitude. Like Simone Biles in an MandM film. The two girls, competing for the gold, encouraged each other throughout, praised each other, applauded. There was love. I cried. Obviously.

An Englishman won a bike race in the velodrome. The place where all logic is suspended at the door, where gravity is defied, where if you think you understand what’s going on in any particular race, then you’ve got it wrong. But the power they use, the speed, the total spectacle is pure brilliance.

And finally, Katarina Johnson-Thomson-Fromson-Watson won an Olympic medal in the pentathlon. The ultimate statement of ‘you reckon you’re special for being great in a sport? Well I’m fucking brilliant in 5!!!!’

And the ‘women’s’ boxing. Hmmmmm…

You just can’t have men hitting women. It’s unfair, it’s unbalanced, it’s ridiculous and it’s downright fucking dangerous. I don’t care that Imane Kelif has ‘been a woman since her (rather gender-ambiguous) birth’, ‘she’ is a man in virtually every physical way… that is observable with clothes on. Which therefore renders the entire sporting competition ‘unsafe’. And renders the entire ‘Olympic committee in charge of such things’ (because there will be one, if not about 7), total tossers.

Otherwise: BEST OLYMPICS EVERRRRRRR!!!!

Happy final 2 days

A xxxx

(2 years ago today my lovely old dad died)

There’s a wonderful scene (they’re all wonderful) in Blazing Saddles where the baddies are recruiting people to attack and destroy the town of Red Rock, with arson, rape and murder as initial requirements. I never said it was a politically correct movie, just a brilliant one. And so a line of candidates is shown ‘for interview’. There’s evil looking cowboys (its a cowboy film) with bad teeth and big guns, there’s ’Red Indians’ with sharp knives and tomahawks, there’s Sumo wrestlers, KKK dudes and the wonderfully anachronistic (for a film set somewhere around the 1870s), Nazis.

And yesterday I saw this ‘call to arms’ for the ‘anti-fascist’ brigade they were calling up in case the hard-right Skinheads decided to turn up and pester asylum seekers or anyone else they fancied fighting. Which is, primarily, the police. On my own doorstep. Well, Finchley. A few doorsteps up the road.

I fucking hate fascists as much as the next (decent) man. Probably more so, if he’s not a Jew. Cos we have a ‘bit of a history’ with fascists. And the right wing scum, if any of them can even spell ‘right wing’ (though they can all read ‘Special Brew’), organised by Tommy Robinson and instigated by Nigel Farage (however much he denies), forgot to show up. Or were suddenly cowed by the quite serious sentences passed out to their ‘colleagues’ after the riots up north. Thus, not just in Finchley but right across the country were massive ‘anti-fa’ rallies, with no-one to ‘anti’. It was like turning up for a big Cup football match and the other team didn’t show.

But as I was marching towards Finchley I saw one of these posters and thought… ‘Zionists’… that’s me!!! But we’ve been promoted. No longer the quiet refugees seeking their own homeland to try and avoid pogroms and holocausts, oh no. Now we’re part of ‘the problem’. “Fascists, racists, Nazis, Zionists and Islamophobes”. Now I can officially join Mel Brooks long line of ne’er do-wells to go and wreak havoc in Red Rock. Just by being a Zionist. An organisation originally set up on socialist ideology. And now, according to some, part of the ‘hard right’ problem.

Just as it was conceptually flawed to make the tragic death of three schoolkids in Southport an excuse to pick on immigrants in general and Muslims even more generally, for the ‘other side’ to include ‘Zionists’ in their list of ‘baddies of the Right’ shows the very same paradigm of conflating separate issues for their own distorted value system.

So for any ‘anti-fascists’ reading this (as if), two plus do does NOT make 19 and Zionists are NEVER fascists. Unless there’s a good movie in the making.

Happy Thursday.

A xxxx

Elon Musk is a two-tier-tosser. Hah!! And that’s a scientific assessment. Because on one level he’s total tosser, then on the next level, he’s an even bigger one. And the worrying thing is; he constantly succeeds in finding new levels, with seemingly no limits. Bit like his wealth.

However, when he states, very strongly, that ‘Britain is facing a civil war!!!’, you simply have to sit up and take note. By saying “WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU???”

Because he may have talents, ok, he definitely has talents, quite incredible ones. All of which involve him in being in a science lab or a home office with absolutely no need to have any contact with other humans. Who he seems incapable of having any dealings with without causing upset, offence or anger. He’s a boffin. A brilliant one. Who told him that gave him the right to be ‘a statesman’? The man is patently ‘on the spectrum’ and thus will always have worn a ‘does not play well with others’ badge. And he’s an angry man. And a very right wing man.

Perhaps due to his South African roots, being a ‘son of Apartheit’, he hails from a culture of loud-mouth Boors which accounts for his sympathies towards Trump, Steve Bannon and the whole ‘alt-right’ thing. Which is fine. That’s all ‘over there’ where, if the Americans choose not to assassinate him, that’s up to them. But once he starts on MY sceptred isle, he needs to be careful. Doesn’t he know how powerful I am?

He doesn’t like Kier Starmer, well who does? The man’s a dick. But he’s OUR dick. And accusations from afar of having a ‘two-tiered policing’ system are as baseless as they are lacking in understanding. Also odd that he’s accusing the police of being overtly anti-white whilst everyone knows, even the police themselves, that they are institutionally racist. Reconcile that Mr Elon-fucking-algorithm!

Everyone is allowed to have an opinion. Even people who are so obnoxious that to make people actually listen to his opinion he has to buy the medium upon which to voice them. But by his aggression and his immediate knee-jerk defence of ‘white people’, even this current bunch of rent-a-thug Tommy Robinsonite scumbags, he’s really not helping.

If I drove a Tesla I’d set fire to it TONIGHT!!! Preferably outside Elon’s house.

Happy (?) Wednesday (as we’re awaiting the shit hitting the fan tonight somewhere very near us)

A xxxx

The BBC’s coverage of the Olympics is absolutely brilliant. Without doubt ‘the best in the world’. Because there’s no adverts. So even if the presentation was shit, which it isn’t, even if the production was poor, which it isn’t, the mere fact that you don’t get the 200 metres final interrupted to tell us about a new haemorrhoid medication, or the show-jumping cutting to an ad for tampons, the new Diet Coke, KFC’s latest ‘dead-bird-special’ or any other such annoyance, makes it totally unique. And every evening they have a ‘catch up’ on the day’s events. Of which there are always loads and loads and always across a fabulously diverse range of sports. So I call out to Mel “the Olympics is on, bring the tissues”.

And as the first woman crosses the finish line, or the first man jumps the highest, shoots the target, punches his opponent (or, topically, perhaps punches ‘her’ opponent), or rides round the velodrome, I start crying.

Its just fucking weird. I am unquestionably the most manly of testosterone-fuelled, macho, super-tough, heroic, ‘you wan’-some?? come on den!’, Nietzsche-esque ‘Superman’ geezer. And I barely cried at the end of ET. Hardly a sniffle when Bambi’s mum got shot, yet anyone on the Olympic podium reduces me to blubbering wreck. When they win the event it starts. In the interview afterwards it worsens.

Its not sadness. When Simone Biles fell off the beam I was dry-eyed. Mainly with shock because in her entire career she’s never once put one foot wrong. But I didn’t cry. But when Keely Hodgkinson won the 800 I was distraught. Mel was on the phone to my counsellor immediately but then they spoke to Keely in all her post-match emotion and adrenaline high and my sobbing reached a pitch whereby the counsellor couldn’t hear what Mel was saying.

And I know ‘the story’. Its always the same. “I’ve been working for this since I was 7. Possibly 9. Maybe 11. I’ve grown a lot as a person in the last year. I was mentally prepared. Its the most brilliant thing since the 1981 FA Cup Final.” Always the same, regardless of the sport.

Then they get on the podium and as soon as the National Anthem starts, I’m off again. It could be the result of 65 years a Spurs fan, so when anyone wins anything its upsetting. Or it could be just the sheer emotion which the Olympics generates. And it all seems to land on me. I have no idea why really. Nor do I care. Its an outpouring of… something?

Teary Tuesday

A xxxx

My window cleaner, Alan, today pointed out something interesting. Not a greasy mark on the window, something even more interesting than that. Whenever there’s a Labour government we have riots. Under the Tories, its all dead boring with very little violent civil unrest. Put a Labour man in Number 10 and it all kicks off. I’m not blaming Starmer, he’s not the one setting cars on fire. But if Alan the Window Man is correct, this is a terrible pattern.

We’re not precisely sure what the problem is, at the moment, what exactly is causing this great unrest, we’re hoping for a little clarity, or something that make a bit of sense, at least, sometime during the next 25 or so planned riots. Suffice to say: whatEVER the problem, throwing bricks at the nearest bobby is the way to solve it.

The catalyst for the rioting was the horrendous stabbing of the schoolkids in Southport. Then, rather than wait for any facts which may arise, sort of ‘informing’ people, as no-one wants that, the social media boys and gels went into ‘speculation and fake news overdrive’ to create a story in which the stabber ticked every ‘hate group’ box sufficiently for the far-right boot boys to be able to do what they do best. Which is add two and two together and come up with 17.36, set fire to four buildings and 13 police cars, then find a scapegoat for all the nation’s problems, in terms of what colour they might be, then attack the police in all major cities.

In this case they invented a ‘story’ for the stab perpetrator. Who, don’t get me wrong, is an evil piece of shit who should never see the light of day again. BUT… according to the tales spread before anyone who knew anything could get some truth out there, this man was a violent jihadi boat-person, a muslim arriving just last year. All of which turned out to be rubbish. But Christian Rwandans who were born in Cardiff simply lack the hate potential, so the narrative needed to be ‘adjusted’ for the sake of inflaming the masses. And giving them a ‘proper focus’ for all their pent-up aggression. Terrorists. Muslims. Mosques. Simple word association. Almost Pavlovian: someone with dark skin has killed a white person: burn mosques. The sort of quantum leap, guilt-by-association which is the hallmark of the far right. The KKK used it aplenty. Hitler found his scapegoats and engaged an entire nation in their persecution.

And this is where we are now. Driven by fictitious garbage to riot, attack the police and act against any symbol of immigration. And the fact that this is some long way from the initial alleged cause of the ‘protests’ becomes irrelevant. We’ve gone from nought to Krystalnacht in one week. Tommy Robinson, Nigel Farage, they must be very proud of our fine nation.

I’m thinking of joining the English Defence League myself now. Where can I buy some bricks?

Happy Monday

A xxxx