Andy's Glasses

Went to see my brother yesterday. And realised that I’m now fully conversant with the protocols for and at the Royal Free Hospital. Like; don’t even try to park within 500 yards of the place, it’s impossible. Like, if you take the lift to the 4th floor you end up in ICU reception and need to be buzzed through security doors to the wards, which in turn have their own security doors. But the reception desk is not always… ‘manned’? Can I use that word??? In Scotland I’d be arrested for even thinking of it. Anyway, you need a ‘person’ behind the desk, of unspecified religion, race, gender, sexual preference, football team supported, political affiliation or preferred chocolate bar, to ‘buzz’ you in, and at weekends and evenings such a person is absent. So you have to wait. Either for the next day’s shift to start or for some staff member to come from the wards into reception, when you barge them out the way and make a break through the open doors. Whereas, if you take the stairs, they bring you out on the ward corridor, the ‘other side’ of the reception doors!!!

The problem being that the ICU is on the 4th floor. and the stairs are very steep. So that’s how I can justify all the cake and chocolate I’m going to eat to replace all those calories burned on the way up. But here’s the weird bit; you go to floor 1, then 2 , then 3 and then, just as your thighs are burning and your breath coming short… you arrive at floor… nothing. Its not marked. Just a door with ‘no entry’ on it. Not ‘4th floor but you can’t come in’, not ‘danger: nuclear waste facility, you will grow extra limbs if you enter!!!!’, nothing. Yet it is a floor, so why don’t they number it? Possibly its just there to persecute the stair climbers by giving them a false sense of arrival. Bastards. Then another flight to the (nominal) 4th floor, even though we know its really the 5th.

Then we see the Brother. Yesterday, sitting in a chair. Holy fuck. That’s a good thing indeed. Still wired up like the NASA space centre but sitting. But this is the official progress report.

1. Stay alive. Check
2. Keep alive. Check
3. Regain consciousness. Check
4. Speak again. Check.
5. The ultimate sign of real recovery, at least for the time being, the true indicator that ‘he is back’. Complaining. Moaning. Impatience. Check, check, and check again.

And glorious that he is. All three. He hates sitting in the chair, and now he can let us know. And rather than my usual response which might be: stop fucking whingeing you ungrateful fucker, instead I just appreciate how massive an improvement it is that he can feel uncomfortable and express it and smile lovingly.

Onwards and upwards

A xxxx

Lila is 7 today. She’s (absolutely nobody’s) April fool. She’s so bright she’s found a way to monetise losing teeth. Her first of which fell out yesterday. She was duly compensated by the ‘tooth fairy’. And has been sitting in front of the mirror with a pair of pliers since then adding up her potential gains. Ok, maybe not the pliers. I would.

So that’s massive excitement, birthday, first baby tooth departure and she’s flying off to Florida to see Mickey Mouse this very day. Which should hopefully act as some compensation for her going to see Spurs on Saturday. Poor child. Social Services should offer guidelines.

Because Spurs were, by all accounts, both professional and fan-based: total shit. Appalling. An agonising game against ‘easy’ (they’re always ‘easy’ until kick off) opponents, which Spurs, eventually, didn’t so much ‘manage to win’, as ground their opposition down to lose. At the ‘11th hour’. Well, the 86th minute. Yaaaayyyy!!! We won!!! But at what emotional cost? This is where all those ‘mental health issues’ start.

But if an 86th minute winner is not late enough for you, you should have gone to Brentford to see Manchester United (remember them? Used to be a ‘big team’, arguably ‘the biggest in the world’, now they’re hoping to stay above Brighton so they might overtake Aston Villa). United scored in the 96th minute of an until then goalless game. Only to have Brentford equalise in the 99th minute. Such minutes simply didn’t exist 3 years ago. I don’t’ know where they actually get them from. You can’t just manufacture time, can you?

The funniest result of the weekend, though probably not for residents of Tower Hamlets, or those with sympathies for them, was at St James’ Park. Where West Ham took a 3-1 lead against the Geordie Saudis, and Moyes was actually smiling and smugness and arrogance was all over the pitch, wearing claret and blue. But then things changed. Personally I reckon a text came in from Mohammed Bin Salman himself, threatening to cut the right feet off the entire team if victory was not immediately forthcoming! Which, oddly, it was. 4-3 to Newcastle. Shame on West Ham. Not shame ‘for’ West Ham because they’re horrible.

And then came ‘the match of the season’ as it was cracked up to be. As Pep Guardiola called it: ‘the final!!!!’, even though we don’t have Premier League ‘finals’. Liverpool had beaten brighten in the earlier kick-off to go top. So when Manchester City and Arsenal strutted out on the Etihad grass, it was a kind’a ’winner takes all’ scenario, with the winner going top. And it was the perfect match up between the two best teams of the moment, a definite ‘goal fest’ in the making, a game to define all the glories of attacking football. What actually happened 90 minutes of paint drying, duller than dishwater mutual neutralisation which had me asleep within minutes and with nothing worthy to bother awakening from my slumber for. For entertainment Watford Leeds was in a different league. Ok, they are in a different league, but you get the point.

Happy Easter Monday. Jesus rose up from the dead. Spurs only have to rise above Aston Villa. Which would you put your money on?

A xxxx

I went to visit the boatman yesterday. He’s moored up in Runnymede, (out near Windsor, where they signed the Magna Carta, you remember, surely?). I didn’t want to visit, no-one does, but I needed some ‘work done’. And in a former life, Mr Boat-person (not presuming nuffink), before he became aquatic, ran garages. For cars. And I needed a job doing on my mid-life-crisis, and a thirty mile blast round the motorways seemed like a good way of getting it done. Although you don’t so much ‘blast’ round the M25 as… stumble?, agonise?, crierch??, though really it wasn’t too bad.

And the job was: change the number plates. Which, I admit, in a little car park down by the river, looks a little on the dodgy side. But it was legal. They’re my ‘vanity plates’. Well, actually, and obviously, they’re Mel’s. But I want her name on my car for all to see. So they’ll know the love, the contentment, the happiness of our life together. And if I get flashed for speeding, (which I probably did on the way home), they’ll think it’s her.

And by then it had even stopped raining. Then the sun shone on the world. And all was wonderful! Except I was busy changing the details on my insurance, really quickly. It only takes ten minutes but if the car was nicked during those 10 minutes I wouldn’t know how to report it. And that cost £5.50. ‘Admin fee’. I thought it meant they were going to pay me as I was the one who did it, but turns out I had to pay them. For… well, ‘ad-min, innit?’ Then last but not least, I had to go to the DVLA and ‘put’ the number on the car. Then, and only then, could I enjoy life on the river.

Which started with shooting an empty beer can on the shore with an air pistol because… it deserved it? Or just because; ‘why not’? Lunch was in a local pub, right on the river, The Bells of Ousley. Lovely place. Now a ‘Harvester’. And as harvest brings to mind fields of wheat, ripened apples coming off trees, digging potatoes out of the ground… we had the ‘vegan special’. Which, in a Harvester, consists of meat. And more meat. Then more meat. Oh, and a few eggs. But even they had meat underneath them. Even the ‘salad bar’ in a Harvester is meat. The ‘vegan’ bit was the chips and onion rings. And you need both because… because you do. That was two of our ‘five a day’ right there. All nicely fried.

It was wonderful. I’d eat it every day, though if I did I probably wouldn’t have many more ‘every days’ left.

Then I drove back on surprisingly empty roads, top down, sun (ok, and a bit of wind) on my face, trying to keep the speed down even though I had the reassurance that Mel would take the hit if I got caught.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

This weekend is the annual ‘Boat Race’. There’s only one. Which counts, the rest no-one gives a shit about. And that’s precisely the problem. Shit. In the water. More specifically, in our rivers, streams and seas. Loads of it. To the point where there is a warning on the River Thames, the nation’s only ‘proper’ river, by virtue of it running fru Luundun, which none’a de others don’t. The warning is for e-coli, the horrible bacterial infection. Which is such a problem in ‘the River’ that they’ve said that the Oxford and Cambridge boat race teams really shouldn’t throw their cox into the water after the race, as is tradition. Because he (or she) will possibly be dead before they resurface. Ok, so they could take a spare one, for the ride home, as they’re only small, but that misses the point.

Our waterways have basically become the nation’s toilet system. Because the water and waste companies get confused about that particular bit of multi-tasking and confuse the water with the waste. And thus, in times of stress, or even heavy rainfall (this is England, FFS, we ARE heavy rainfall) the shit gets dumped… anywhere. Rivers, the Sea, waterways to a massive extent. The actual magnitude of which is the real issue under discussion. Well, I’m discussing it, everyone else thinks it’s too gross, but I care for my environment in ways you wouldn’t even know about.

Because they seem to be measuring the quantity of shit dumped (yes, very funny…) not in kilograms, pounds and ounces or tons. But in ‘hours’. Last year they dumped waste for 3.6 million hours. Their limit should be just 1.8 million hours. Ok.

What the fuck does that even mean. Let’s get a bit graphic. I take a dump, that takes approximately 42 seconds. I’m good. Efficient. So if you allow, say, a minute and half, even two minutes with a good groan and push, then 3.6 million hours, divided by 2 minutes… that’s sixteen trillion tons of shit. Maybe 3 billion. Let’s just say ‘a lot’. Even ‘a shit load’. Because really, for any meaningful understanding, we need to know how much effluent is being siphoned off every ‘hour’. But we’re not told. Just the number of ‘hours’. Which is bit like telling everyone how big your penis is; in amps. The units are simply wrong.

The water companies make simply humongous profits. Yet bemoan sorting out this sorry, sad and soiled mess. I’m thinking of going on a toilet strike until this dire situation is rectified. Not sure how that’ll work out but that’s the meaning of most strikes really.

BOYCOTT THE BOG! NOWWWW!!!

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

So we’re all preparing for World War 3: the Final Apocalypse!, which will in fact be filmed live on YouTube, according to the law, and starring… well, all of us, really. I was going to play Schwarzenegger, but due to my recent shrinkage, I’ll now play Tom Cruise instead. The ante was upped on the weekend with an attack in Moscow by ISIS (allll-eggggg-edly) in which 134 innocent Russians were brutally murdered. How on earth did they manage to find 134 innocent Russians? Who knew there were that many? But murder them they did. Putin immediately blamed Ukraine. Well, why not, he blames them for most things. Then ISIS not only claimed responsibility but showed video proof. So Putin changed his tack and claimed ISIS did it ‘on behalf of Kiev’. Because he needs to maintain that narrative for ‘his people’ lest they think him to be a murderous, tyrannical warmonger sending their sons to their death in Ukraine.

It is now suggested that the attackers were part of what is known as ‘ISIS-K’, which is very much like ISIS but a bit more… K-ish. They come from Afghanistan and they fucking hate the Taliban. Because they’re too… errrr… well, murderous, too hard-line, right-wing-Sharia, Islamist, fundamentalist Muslim… which is a bit different to ISIS-K who are more… hmmmm.

ISIS-K perpetrated a suicide bombing last year at a mosque in Kabul in protest (they ‘protest’ a bit differently over there, less posters, more Semtex) against the Taliban. And they hate Russia. Not just because everyone hates Russia, but because of the military aid Putin gave to Assad to try to rid Syria of ISIS. Ok, while they were there they murdered tens of thousands of non-ISIS Syrians who happened to oppose Assad, but their stated mission was ‘destroy ISIS’. Or, at least halve them, so they became just IS. So there’s ‘history’ there.

But attacking Russia? I mean… it’s Russia! The meanest, nastiest, lyingest, vile-est, warring-est, nuclearest, biggest horrible nation on the planet. Its like a flea attacking an bear. And yet Russia can’t retaliate. Because like Hamas, like Al Quaeda, like so many of these similar yet disparate groups, they exist nowhere but everywhere. They are merely an ideology. And even Putin can’t bomb, destroy or put troops into an ideology. If there was an ‘Islamic State’, he’d have a target, but there isn’t. The four dudes wot done it appeared in court looking in… not the best of health, after their ‘interrogation’. One was missing an ear. Another was unconscious in a wheelchair. The other two looked ‘worse for wear’. Russia doesn’t have a ‘no torture’ agreement with anyone. And how much sympathy can you feel for four deluded morons who’ve just murdered 134 people? And who would torture you without a moment’s hesitation.

Everyone else seems to have missed this massive point along the way, but Putin will now get it. That Radical Islamic organisations are there to promote death. They live for it. Ironically. And stirred up by religious fervour, there are no limits to the death they’ll spread. Israel alone is not allowed to defend itself from the repeated threat of ‘total annihilation’ of all its people. The UN ‘won’t allow it’s. But they can’t stop Russia.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

Today is the Jewish festival of Purim. That’s nice. What’s Purim? Ahhh, it’s a celebration. Of… well, pretty much a celebration of the Jewish condition. Purim basically means ‘Tsurus’ or ‘Aggro’, as most Jewish festivals do. You see, its all about King Ahasuerus and Queen Esther…

This was in ancient Persia in about 400BC!! Yes, BC, before the dinosaurs. Almost. And Persia was still called Persia and was a great place to be; enlightened, a home of education, philosophy, architecture and all the wonders which ceased suddenly when the Clash released ‘Rock the Kasbah’ and Persia turned into Iran. They banned culture, imposed draconian measures on their population, wrapped the women up in black and re-introduced all those lovely biblical activities like beheadings, stoning, industrialised misogyny, all under the heading of ‘God’s will’.

So the King sacked his old Queen (literally ‘old Queen’, not a reference to Quentin Crisp or Ian McKellen) and chose Esther as his new one, after she won a beauty contest. (I’d be interested to know if they still have beauty contests in modern day ‘Persia’). Pretty much like they choose Queens today in most countries. Esther heard about a plot to kill the king and told her cousin, Mordechai about it. The King’s head dude, Haman, was a real mutha who wanted to kill all Jews. Esther saved the day, and her people, Haman was hanged and we survived until the next catastrophe.

Which run in a pretty much unbroken line up to today. Always someone wanting to kill all the Jews, normally, but by no means exclusively, Iran.

Thus Purim celebrates survival. As does Passover and… possibly some others. And just think; if we didn’t have Purim, there’d be no Blazing Saddles! Not one Woody Allen film would exist! The Jewish Chronicle would just be ‘The Chronicle’ and ‘andysglasses’ would just be ‘glasses’! What an horrendous dystopia that would be.

It’s traditional to tell the story of Purim and every time the name ‘Haman’ crops up you shout and boo and bang bangy things and make lots of noise. You also dress up. Mainly as Queen Esther but I couldn’t get my dress zipped up so I’m dressed as an old man in tennis gear instead.

Happy Purim

A xxxx

Great news! They’ve just brought out a(nother) new Ghostbusters sequel!!! That is precisely what the world needs, right now. Definitely. In its seemingly ongoing quest towards self-destruction and insanity, not helped by Putin ‘winning’ his election and Arsenal sitting top of the league, this could be the solution for all the world’s troubles!!!

Ghostbusters is my favourite film ever. One of only about 273 which carry that worthy title. From the soundtrack onwards, it was just one of those films which ‘hit a spot’. Top dead centre of your funny bone. Well, mine, don’t know where yours is. It introduced Bill Murray to the world even though ‘Stripes’ which preceded it was a pretty good vehicle for his incredibly morose, dry, laconic wit. But Ghostbusters sent our Bill stratospheric. Ground Hog day elevated him to ‘national treasure’ (not sure which ‘nation’, that’s not the point) and then Lost in Translation made him a god and enabled Scarlett Johansson to become the Marvel superhero she was destined to become.

I’d first seen him when I lived in California in 1981 and someone showed me one of the 57 tv channels (we only had 4 at home) which showed old (crap) editions of the early ‘Saturday Night Live’ shows, from 1977, 78, 79, featuring John Belushi, Chevi Chase, Dan Aykroyd, Steve Martin and, yup, Bill Murray. They were brilliant shows, with an incredible cast in their early, pre-fame days, and Murray was magnificent.

But according to reports, he ain’t so magnificent in Ghostbusters part-whatever, as he and pre-octogenaric Dan Aykroyd zimmer their achy way around a bunch of cheap special effects.

Never mind, I’m sure you can get all those SNLs on YouTube.

Which our dear and beloved Princess of Wales might do as she enters her chemotherapy. She’ll need some laughs. Probably won’t get any from Harry and Meg.

And I simply loved her ‘statement’ yesterday. Because I read the entire thing ‘between the lines’ and it was simply brilliant, unarguable and bold. This is what it really said, if you just delve underneath the really posh delivery. It said:

“I’ve got cancer you bunch of headline-hunting, glory-seeking, meddling, interfering arse-wipes. So you can take your ‘fake photo’ bullshit and your endless speculation and conspiracy-theorising and all the absolute garbage you’ve been thinking, posting, printing and publishing and stick it anywhere you like as long as its nowhere near me or my family. Sincere thanks for all the loving messages, and as for the rest of you, you can just FUCK RIGHT OFF AND DON’T COME BACK’.

Well done Kate. And good luck.

A xxxx

It’s a spring day. Round here. Do I care that it’s snowing in Eastern Scotland? Pissing down in Plymouth? Windy in Wokingham? I wish I could say I do, but alas, I never said I was a nice person, just a guy who likes good weather. And, yes, I am English, so I’m allowed to discuss the weather, endlessly and if possible, gloatingly.

I didn’t know that today (possibly yesterday) is the official ‘first day of spring’, because that can’t be declared until you have a witnessed account of a Druid sighting. The spring Equinox is like a bat-signal and they all dig their way out from wherever they’re buried and head, like baby turtles heading along the beach to the sea, towards Stonehenge. Their spiritual home. A random but aesthetically pleasing bunch of mysterious rocks down in Hampshire. And once there, in all their… funny attire, they… errrr… they do what druids have done for thousands of years. Which is… to act in a Druid-like way. Then they’ll bugger off from whence they came and we will hear nothing from them until the Autumn Equinox in September. They just can handle days with unequal hours of dark and light. And who can blame them?

But where do they go? You can’t just live for 2 days a year? Its impossible. Yet you never see them otherwise. Maybe they die off at the end of the equinox after laying their eggs, like fruit-flies, and it takes precisely 6 months to hatch out a new one. In adult form, fully dressed in their white robes. It’s a mystery.

Meanwhile, I just saw The Brother and, other than the fact that he’s lying in bed plugged into 47 different things which enter or leave his body from a whole variety of places, and other than the fact that he’s basically the end product of an entire raft of technological wonder, he seems perfectly ‘normal’. We chatted, we laughed, ok, we coughed a bit, it all seemed so wonderfully ‘normal’. His consultant was there and even HE was so much more positive than previously. He was long on the good stuff, short on the usual caveats. So maybe Rich’ll be out by September and we can go to Stonehenge together in our white robes!!! Ok, or not necessarily, but thinking to the future is a big thing. A very big thing indeed.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

So my quest to rid the world of the obesity crisis has hit a minor stumbling block. Another one. A ‘hitch’. Because having worked out the evils of ultra-high-processed foods, single-handedly (I always read the newspaper alone), that was the ‘quality’ aspect of our foods totally sorted out. We now need to work on the ‘quantity’. Ahhhhh, stop the porkers binging. It ain’t rocket science, eat less, you’ll probably lose weight. You do da maffs.

So you can do the fairly obvious, like cutting out snacks (I’d rather die!!!) or eating smaller portions at mealtimes (is that all I get???) or, you can opt for something trendier. Something a bit more zeitgeisty, a touch more ‘Hollywood’, the Jennifer Aniston way, and opt for a ‘fasting diet’. They’re all the rage. The ‘5-2’ or the ‘4-3’, in which you only eat numbers which add up to 7. Ok, that’s not true. You eat for 5 days and starve for 2. Or if you’re a real blimp, opt for 4 days eating and 3 of fasting. But that really wasn’t quite a stupid enough idea for some, or perhaps, it was hard to monetise, so they came up with the concept of eating only during an 8 hour ‘window’ during the day. Not, like, non-stop for 8 hours, I appreciate you have to breathe now and again, but you have breakfast at, say, 10.00am, dinner at 6.00pm, and then you stop. Nothing more. And nothing before 10. 8 hours, yer done.

The pounds flew off. No-one knows where they went but collectively there were some 4,794 Kgs ‘lost’. We’re obviously not concerned where they went, but perhaps we should be. The diet worked. They all work. On the really complex principle of ‘eating less, and/or eating less shit’. As a Jew I’ve been a devotee of the 364-1 diet since I was 13.

Yet apparently, adherents to the ‘8-hour’ fasting diet are twice as likely to die of strokes and heart attacks than people who don’t choose to follow Kourtney Kardashian’s path to waifiness. Whatttttt!!!! The!!!!! F-!!!!!!??? Surely the whole point of dieting is to prevent illnesses. Not to fucking create them. Or increase them. Therefore all obese people are ‘at risk’, we know that, but now, all thin people are even more ‘at risk’ too, if they’re thin by virtue of the ‘8 hour fasting diet’. Probably best to admit every single in the person in the world to hospital, just in case. Otherwise the NHS might be overwhelmed… hmmm…

And just to lead by example, this photo is of the ‘ingredients’ of my sandwich. To use less would be neglectful. The wine is not included. Though, hang on…

Happy fasting Wednesday

A xxxx

All talk of football has been banned. Officially. There is NOTHING to discuss. It’s a horrible game and why people put so much stock into the outcome of such meaningless competitions played out by overpaid, mercenary morons, representing overseas money-launderers and sports-washers, I have no idea.

And there was almost no talk of tennis this morning either, as the rains descended and kept on fucking descending. But then a miracle! It stopped. Bit later than usual, but WTF, it’s ‘a sign’!!! So out we went. And lasted a good… 28 minutes before the descent renewed. But we must be thankful for what we had, not what we lost. That’s the theory anyway.

So I read the Mail on Sunday instead and learned that 142% of British adults are 82.9% fatter than they were in 1953, even though 76% hadn’t been born then. Oh, please, try to keep up. Statistics are important. According to Dr Someone-or-Other-always-on-the-telly, the reason for this massive poundage pile-on is UHP (ultra-high processed) foods. They are not just evil, but they are ALL the evil in the world, wrapped up in a bleached white, sourdough, over-sweetened wrap filled with calcium this and sodium that and 42 ‘E’ numbers and horrible, probably carcinogenic, preservatives and additives in such numbers (other numbers from the previous) that its incredible how anyone can survive one single bite out of Big Mac without just imploding on the spot. Even thinking about Pringles can make you diabetic.

So I decided, right there and then, that I will never again eat any UHP foods. Unless, of course, they taste really good or will make me more alluring to women.

I’ve just come back from a visit with the brother. And it was, without a doubt, the best visit… ever. Yes, ever. He was totally alert, wide awake, completely responsive ANDDDDD, spoke through his little voice thing, even though it’s difficult and he’d already had an exhausting morning of ‘sitting up’. Yup, if you doubted how ill he was, sitting up for 2 hours represents hard and exhausting ‘work’. He even laughed, in response to (loving) abuse, but then he coughed a bit. Though, quite frankly, if he’s going to get better he needs to man up and get used to things like laughing. And abuse. Dare we get optimistic? Dare we???

Happy Sunday

A xxxx