Andy's Glasses

A few years ago Mel (dragged me? Forced me??) and I went to Colombia Road in Shoreditch, early on a Sunday morning for the flower market. If you have to get out of bed that early (and apparently I did) it is in fact a wonderful place. Filled with chrysanthemums and… roses… hydrangeas… and… errr… flowers. And they’re cheap. As the stall holders shaaart aaaart at passers-by regarding their floral offerings. They would ‘shout’ but they’re Cockneys, so they’re not allowed to enunciate nicely and are actually banned from using that final ‘t’. Ever!!! There was a ‘Pearly King & Queen’ in attendance that day, presumably to enforce the linguistic laws and ensure that anyone speaking in anything approaching ‘Received Pronunciation’ is arrested. Ok, they were there doing charity stuff, as they always do. Wearing jackets so laden down with buttons I have no idea how they could even get them on. I chatted to them and learned that in fact this defining couple of East London’s proudest, these emblems of true Cockneydom in fact came from Hertfordshire. Weren’t true Cockneys at all. Way less so than me, in fact, who was born at the Southern End of Hackney, just about within the sound of the Bow Bells, if you have really good hearing and there’s no traffic noise. My mum and dad were both born within a mile of those bells, I’m ‘proud’ to say.

And now they want to redefine ‘Cockneys’. Make it more ‘inclusive’. Spread it out a bit. Like, anywhere within the M25. What??? You mean… even… SOUTH London????? Even as far north as Tottenham!! Just so we can make an excuse for Adele to keep strangling her vowels when she speaks. She sings in total beauty yet speaks like Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady, Dick van Dyck in Mary Poppins (pass the bucket, please) or Paul Merson any time. So to re-classify ‘cockney’ as they wish to do as ‘non-posh Londoners’ is just a pathetic way to excuse educators within a 60 mile radius of Trafalgar Square from making children adopt a decent mode of speech. We’re condemned to speaking with people who adopt speech patterns which are lazy, hard to understand and often jarring to hear.

And I’d just like to mention Frank Lampard (Jnr) at this point, as a case in point. He was born in Romford, which is definitely ‘non-posh London’, even though it was formerly just ‘Essex’. But he went to a very good, fee-paying school where they would have smoothed out his vowels, beaten the last glottal stop out of him with wooden canes and forced him to use every ‘H’ available and every final ‘T’ that he spoke. Yet when he went into football, within 3 weeks he’d reverted to ‘total scumbag illiterate-sounding Cockney filth’. It was a ‘lifestyle choice’. One of many very bad ones he made. Like playing for Chelsea.

I’m no snob, nor really do I judge people by their speech (NOT FUCKING MUCH!!!!) but this just encourages loads more people to speak in the horrible way that some of us grew up hearing at school every day.

One must aspire to self-improvement in every way. Or just fuck orf and be praaaaard to be a Cockney!!! From Hampshire. Tossers.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

I love words. And this one is possibly my favourite. Old and almost forgotten, but I chose it yesterday, from the list I keep scribbled across the kitchen walls (as if I’d be allowed!!!) because its funny. ‘Being idle, lying around, dawdling, lazy’. And possibly the only worthwhile addition the Americans ever made to OUR language. The rest of it they ruined but for lollygagging, I’ll give them some credit. I love a word that you simply know what it means when you first hear it because it expresses itself perfectly. And to use it yesterday to refer to my own brother was even more perfect.

Because I first heard it in the movie Blazing Saddles. My ‘ultimate’ film. Hilarious, insulting, offensive and about as politically correct as raping a one-legged Palestinian trans woman whilst in black-face. And as subtle.

The truly wonderful Slim Pickens uses the word on one of his black slave railroad builders who had just hauled himself out of quicksand and was lying exhausted and just about alive. ‘Stop lollygagging around getting a suntan and get back to work’.

That movie came out in 1975. A year after the other ‘most perfect movie of all time’, Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

And sometime after that, a year maybe?, they were showing, for one night only, a ‘double bill’ at the ABC Barkingside, of those 2 films. Together. This was ‘an event’. Remember ‘double bills’? The 20th century version of ‘binge-watching’. Life before Netflix. But it was the most irresistible combination. So resist we didn’t. I went with a bunch of mates and Richard went with a bunch of mates. Which was quite a common occurrence in those days. Being the younger brother by 3 years meant that in the period between going out on pushbikes together with him ‘looking after me’ and me becoming ‘an adult’ (something I still aspire to), I was beneath contempt. But at 17 and 20, our interests began to converge once more and our ‘gangs’ kind’a blended together. So for a ‘big event’ like that double billing, we’d be 20/25 strong. Because everyone wanted to see those films again. Even though we pretty much knew every word in both films from previous viewings.

It was therefore ‘the funniest night of my life’. Until that night Arsenal lost 4-nil to Yeovil Town in the League Cup. Which I might have dreamt, but still hilariously funny.

Now I’m going back to doing more lollygagging.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

I’m worried about my mental health. Think I need to be included in that disability group. Then I can get one of those ‘park anywhere you like’ badges for the car and a government grant to pay for… errrr, well, there’s whisky, that’s not cheap and… and more whisky, when the first glass is empty. And why have I ‘hit the bottle’? Well first there’s the brother. And then there’s the whole ‘Israel thing’.

So a recap on the brother. He’s still lying there all day and night as if he’s on holiday and is frightened that if he gets up a family of Germans will steal his bed. So I said to him: ‘enough of this lazing around, lollygagging on life support, as if you’re life depends on it! Time to get moving!’ The problem is that if I make him laugh it’s not a great thing. Although today it became a slightly greater thing as they took that horrible fucking tube out of his throat. And that is a very big deal indeed. The nurse said: ‘that will make him much more comfortable’. I said: ‘it’ll make ME more comfortable, why is it always about HIM???’ Because, trust me, you can’t accessorised a ventilator to make it a ‘good look’. I tried. It’s horrible to see. And now, hopefully, no more. He’s had a tracheotomy instead but that’s relatively small fry. That we can decorate.

And thus begins, we hope, the long haul back to… something better than what we have now. They’ve reduced his sedation, which means he can communicate non-verbally, to a degree. Which means he can’t answer back. Which means I’ve won every argument I’ve had with him for six weeks.

The nursing staff are beyond wonderful. And tonight I spoke to his consultant, Professor something-or-other, head of the ICU. Lovely little man. Who told me ‘it’s going to take time… a long time’. Slowly take him off life support. Like we didn’t know. This evening’s nurse was a super Filipina who last year visited Israel. She’s a Christian (proper one, capital ‘c’), and they all love Israel. They get it.

And there’s Israel. Gaza. The mess. The outrage over here causing ructions everywhere. From Rochdale to Westminster. Democratic outrage. Parliament in fear. The ‘general public’ following the horrible, Hamas-driven rhetoric like moronic sheep, following it… from the river to the sea.

I asked the consultant about my problems, he said I need the psych wing. Plus some strong medication. And whisky. Always whisky.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

The question for many Jews now is not about the current war being raged in Gaza. But about the war being raged here, in Britain. America. France, Belgium, Germany… About our safety on the streets. About our children’s safety at universities or in Jewish schools. About our synagogues, our cemeteries, even our butchers’. Where we buy our chopped liver!!

MPs have had their private residences subject to shouting, baying mobs. Demonstrations justifiably protesting the war, descending into a more radicalised paradigm of anti-Zionism, inevitably descending into full-blown antisemitism, and then to calls for Jewish genocide. Without people seeming to even realise. That when you shout ‘from the river to the sea’, which was actually illuminated onto the side of the Houses of Parliament the other night, you are calling for death of all Jews in Israel. And then, ironically, if there was no ‘Jewish state’, where would we have in our minds as the ultimate refuge? When all around is looking more and more like Berlin in 1936 and there’s nowhere to run?

The farce in parliament the other night was a case in point. And yet ended up as just a shameful mess. With the only justification being that our ‘Speaker’ was ‘trying to save MPs from ‘assault’, whether that assault be physical, verbal or online. And thus does extremist culture pervade even the very apex of our democratic process, when our MPs need ‘protection’ from speaking their mind for fear of reprisals. How soon before a retired dental nurse from Reigate moves from wearing her kefiyah on march days to actually beheading someone?

There is no Hebrew equivalent of the word ‘jihad’. Its not in our culture. Instead we have 17 words for ‘run and hide!!!’ And our nearest equivalent to ‘holy war’ is ‘broigus’. Which is like a holy war, but normally with your wife. Or cousin. Perhaps your sister-in-laws step-mother’s cousin who sat you at a shitty table at her niece’s wedding. Broigus normally stops short of blowing up buildings, but only just.

The war has factionalised the nation. And moved from Gaza to Golders Green and Greenwich. From Palestinian suffering to sympathy for Hamas. An extremist death cult who sacrifice their own people for ‘the cause’. Thus the ‘free Palestine’ marches start as ‘demonstrations for peace’ but end up supporting murder, rape and torture. With most of the participants either willing to join the crowd, or dimly oblivious to the truth of the sentiments being expressed.

As they said in Marathon Man; is it safe? Is it safe??

Happy Friday

A xxxx

The Post Office Tower was built in 1961. It was the biggest thing in London since… well, forever, because it became the tallest building in London. At that time. Of course we’ve had all manner of gherkins and walkie-talkies and shards and other architectural abominations since then which dwarf our little tower. But I loved it when it was built and I love it now. Everyone went to see it. Obviously in black&white, but they queued round the block in their sports jackets and ties and frocks and slacks, to visit this most fab of buildings. I think I liked it because it looked like Thunderbird 1, but I was 6, so gimme a break.

My dad was a clever man. And a bit of a closet philatelist. That’s not a perversion. Well, not in the normal sense. But his ‘thing’ was that in reading the stampy magazines he learned that what made stamps ‘collectible’ were the differences. Not the fabulous photos on the ‘commemorative’ stamps which came out four or five times a year, but the tiny differences on the ‘definitives’, the boring, everyday stamps with just a Queen’s head and ‘2d’ written in the corner. These stamps were run seemingly unchanged for decades. Seemingly. Because they did change. Invisibly. They changed the ‘gum’ (ya licked stamps in those days), and they changed the phosphor bands. Which were almost invisible bands used by the automated sorting systems. And that was my dad’s ‘niche’.

He worked out that all the stamps from vending machines, little ‘books’ had different phosphor bands than those bought on sheets. So he would go to the post office and buy 100 stamp books. They cost about £1 each, had lots of different stamps in, most of them useless. Except the smallest value one. A ‘halfpenny’ stamp. Which only came with some odd variety of some tiny deviation in those books. And he’d sell them, through ads in the stamp mags, for a fiver. And he couldn’t buy them quick enough for all those grubby little men in Peterborough with their tweezers and magnifying glasses, desperate to add such a thing to their collection. (Peteboro’ may have had grubby little women too, but they didn’t do such things in the 60s).

The Post Office Tower had a vending machine. You bought two lovely, pretty, ‘commemoratives’ in a Post Office Tower envelope for a pound in the machine in the foyer. And the ones bought there were overprinted with extra words which weren’t on all the ones in the nation’s post offices. Oh my. Extra words!!!! Which made them unique. Which caused virtual erections in Peterborough and beyond.

So every Thursday (my dad’s day off) when I wasn’t at school, we’d drive to the Tower, (you could park anywhere in 1962) with a sack of money. Because the machine didn’t take notes and the pound coin didn’t get invented until 1981. And we would, quite literally, empty the vending machine of its entire content. It was the best fun ever, endlessly pumping two shilling pieces into a machine and enhanced further my love of the building.

And having sat empty for decades, it’s going to become a hotel. There’s talk that the once famous ‘revolving restaurant’ up high will return. I hope that the hotel and restaurant don’t take credit cards. Nor paper money. Just coins. That would be perfect.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

Those rotten bastards at Stamford University are nothing better than neurosexists!!! You know, people purporting to conduct scientific research merely to try and justify existing sexism by disguising it as definitive biological fact. ‘It’s because their brains are different’, they say. Which is about as valid as ‘God made ‘em that way’. God wanted women to earn less and have better legs. Iss’inna bible, innit?

They published a paper and claim that just by looking at a brain scan, they can tell if it’s a man’s or a woman’s. Which is useful, if you’re in a pub, and happen to have an MRI scanner parked outside in the car park. You used to be able to just look at someone and observe external clues as to gender. Of course you can’t do that any longer and would get arrested if you tried. If the scientists at Stamford struggle with gender identity so much, the ultimate test is simply to give someone a football to play with. Then their gender is absolutely unquestionable.

This new paper has been accused of merely using biology to confirm their prejudices. Because with all scientific research, it’s not the mere numbers on which the statistics are performed that’s important, but the actual questions asked.

I stated, many years ago, on these pages, that the ultimate difference between men and women was the ability to piss out of a car window. Which remains true today, just dropping in probability from 100% down to 99.2% due to the… errrr… the newer type of ‘man’. And yet is that a measure of ‘gender’ difference? Or merely of behaviour? If women had penises (follow me on this possibly over-stretched hypothesis) would THEY piss out of car windows? Or would some female-only reserve prevent such a thing from being tried? Different questions.

Neurosexism is just like simple sexism but spoken by a PhD undergrad. However, observing gender differences is important. Because we are different. And, glass ceilings and glass slippers (could you re-write Cinderella as a boy??) notwithstanding, those differences must be embraced. Whether they are ‘nature’ or ‘nurture’ differences. I gave Joey a Barbie to play with. Lila’s favourite one when she was a baby. Blonde hair, pink ball gown, tiara, earrings, stilettoes. Joey pulled her head off, bit her leg, head-butted what was left and tried to push her in the paper shredder in our study. Is this an indication of ‘poor nurturing’, or ‘male brain behaviour’? Or just that he is a psychopathic thug intent on destruction??

We’ll never know.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

Had a long conversation with the brother in law the other day. Very long. All the way to Merthyr Tydfil and back whilst we shared the driving. He’s a surgeon. And when we’d solved several world crises and, more importantly, sorted out football and cars, we spoke of the NHS. Where he’s worked for 40 years and where I went once to get a thorn removed from my foot. So we have a wealth of experience between us. And we came to the joint, unanimous and collective decision that: it’s fucked. Totally. Not that we don’t want it, we both do, from opposite sides of the bed. But that you can throw all the money you want at it (you listening, Kier Starmer???) but it still won’t work until its been knocked down and restructured. Not the hospitals, that would be silly, but the corporation. The monster organisation. However, paying KPMG or Deloittes 5 billion quid to work out a restructuring plan which would be efficient, economical and maximise resources, would never be seen as a ‘vote winner’. When Daryl Johnson from Barnsley has been waiting 14 years to get his hernia mended and it keeps getting cancelled because the Up North NHS Trust has run out of money. Thus the institution of National Elf remains in a state of total fuckage.

But when you’re so fucking ill that you’re one computer lead (to your kidneys, maybe) away from dying, the NHS comes into its own and is precisely the only place where you’ll stay alive. As the Bee Gees said. There’s no waiting list within the ICU. Nor consideration for funds. Its a little island of efficiency in a world of chaos.

The care my brother has received at the hospital is simply wonderful. Not the doctors, they’re fine, but other than saving his life twice (possibly three times, you tend to lose count), they’re fleeting actors on the stage of Richard Conway. It’s the nurses. Who are with him 24 hours a day. They tend him, wash him, turn him and upgrade his computer system three times a day. They check that the 73 leads and hoses currently plugged in are clean, safe and secure. They spend a lot of time watching his ‘server’. The main computer which shows how all the other computers attached to him are working. For a man whose life has been computers since 1978 when the Sinclair ZX81 came out, has now ‘become’ part of a computer system. He’d love that.

And yesterday he seemed ‘awake’. His eyes were open and following me. As I followed his gorgeous Korean nurse around. Like a puppy. And how’s this for care. She’d heard Richard loves birds, so there was birdsong playing on the sound system. I got her to play some music instead. How many fucking chirruping birds can any man stand? She asked what music he liked. I was tempted to get Black Sabbath on just because… but instead opted for Steely Dan. She’d never heard of them (though she had heard of Son Heung-Min and loves him as I do, but for slightly different reasons). But Richard loves them and they’re kind’a perfect in that situation. Calm, soothing, nice.

We’re moving in the right direction. Slowly. And that’s good.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

Today’s pic is the Synagogue in Merthyr Tydfil. Obviously in pre-renovation mode.

There’s a law. Its… talmudic… errr… it came down Mount Sanai with Moses… it was written in the stars. It says that all jews must be buried within sight of the M25. Sorry, dead ones, obviously. If you do otherwise you will be arrested. So you can bury in Bushey, Waltham Cross, Cheshunt, even Rainham in Essex, all within spitting distance of that fabulous roadway. And that law is there to ensure that whenever you attend a funeral, you can be back home in time for the football to start. Unless someone’s making bagels. In which case you’ll miss the first half.

And yet yesterday we went (shlepped?) all the way to Wales (!!!!!) to visit a cemetery so far from the M25 that it simply can’t be kosher. We went all the way to… Merthyr Tydfil!!! Just to visit some dead Jewish people. Because there’s less arguments than with living ones.

We intended to stay overnight. But in that part of Wales hotels are few and (literally) far between. So, along with Mel’s brother and sister, we did it as a day trip. Why?

Because Mel’s grandmother (oddly her brother and sister’s grandmother too) lived in Merthyr. And her dad was the rabbi at Merthyr Tydfil synagogue from 1901 to about 1935. And then, soon after, all the Jews left Merthyr, went for the bright lights and glamour of… Cardiff, and the synagogue went to rack and ruin. Someone opened a gym there in the 90s but then left and its a rather beautiful and gothic old wreck. But now has lottery funding to be renovated as a community centre for allllllll the people of Merthyr. About 347 I reckon. They had an ‘open day’. And it was truly wonderful as half the inhabitants of that lovely little town pitched up, keen, excited, engaged and really interested in the history of the old building and the Jewish community. They were so lovely and friendly it made me reconsider my whole attitude to Wales. Give them a (provisional, obviously, until the next rugby match) upgrade. Note: provisional.

And then we went to the cemetery to visit Mel’s ancestors. And it was beautiful. No M25, just rolling hills and valleys. And the sun shone. Then we shlepped 3 hours back. But it was worth it. Thanks to the really lovely people of Merthyr and a trip down ‘memory lane’. Fortunately not my memory, but someone’s.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

There were a couple of bye-elections the other night. Somewhere near Milton Keynes and… somewhere else, so far outside London as to be of no significance whatsoever. Ok, ‘significant’ in that it effects the constitution of our government, to a very small degree, but its a bye-election. “They mean nothing”. “Just protest votes”. All of which is true. Yet they show intentions. Trends. How big the ‘protests’ might be, when the real deal comes along later this year.

And I blame Nigel Farage. Regardless of what the question is.

The grinning smug-meister is already responsible for the greatest disaster this country has ever endured just by lurking. Because David Cameron was so scared of the beer-swilling Europhobic neo-nazi, lurking with his promises and other lies, that he felt compelled to ‘compete’ by offering a ‘yes/no vote on Europe’. And how did that work out?

Now The Tweed Jacket Wearer is making all sorts of insinuations about joining the Reform Party in more than the mere executive capacity he now holds. But maybe as… The Leader!!! And his presence on the ballot papers or even just as the nominal figurehead of a hopeless bunch of political misfits, (I treat all parties with respect, even ones that don’t deserve any), may put Rishi into more of an election panic than he already is. Its certainly put the Conservative Party in more of a spin than they already were due to the pre-election forecasts.

Some want Rishi replaced. Preferably with another MP, but they’d consider alternatives. Maybe poor people, circus entertainers, burger-flippers, XL Bullies. But that misses a big point. Which is that one of the things which has most pissed off voters is having had three Prime Ministers in the last 3 years. A fourth would not really help their piss-offedness. “We didn’t vote for Liz Truss ORRRRR Rishi Sunak!!!!”, they cry. Well, here’s a shocker, they didn’t need to. Nor will they be voting ‘for Kier Starmer’ unless they happen to live in Holborn & St Pancras. Kier’s always been popular with hookers and drug addicts. We don’t elect presidents here. We’re too civilised. We vote first past the post. So I’m personally hoping that the next PM will be ‘Johnny Come Lately’, riding in the 3.45 at Haydock Park. He can’t be any worse than the last 3 and I’ll be £42.63 better off.

There is talk of ‘uniting’ the ‘conservatives’. Like, all the right wing parties. Including Farage’s rag-tag bunch of close-the-border-ers.

Makes no difference anyway. It’s Kier’s to lose. His pledge to facilitate striking for Trade Unions lost him my vote. His stance against anti-semitism will lose him the entire left wing of his party, and because of his refusal to call for a ‘CEASEFIRE NOWWWWWW!!!’ in Gaza, his lost the entire Muslim vote too. Even though it would be a potent thing for him to do. America ‘demands’ a ceasefire and Israel ignore it. But I’m sure one word from… errrr… Kier Who???, and Netenyahu would lay down arms in a minute.

Have a super Sunday, I’m off to Merthyr Tydfil. What? You’re not going too??

A xxxx

Britain WAS in recession!!!! Not now, though we won’t know until about 6 months time, definitively, whether we should now be lining our split shoes with newspaper and eating mud and acting really poor and drinking Prosecco instead of champagne, and just putting 50 quid of 4 star in the Bentley, or whether we’re ok and out of the recession. Which we won’t know for the next 2 ‘quarters’. I’ll get back to you. (Interesting question: do people who read newspapers online have to line old shoes with an old iPhone instead? Will it make them waterproof? Will it stop the phone working?)

Yet the recession has been described as ‘shallow’, like most of the politicians talking about it, so we don’t need to worry just yet.

And I don’t think this news will affect Kylian Mbappe much. Not in any significant way. Because the Paris St Germain striker is on his way to Real Madrid. There’s been talk of him leaving for many years, and now it’s going to happen. You’d kind’a think that PSG would be upset about losing the jewel in their very heavily jewelled crown. But in fact it’s not totally unwanted as it means they can divest themselves of the one man who earns from them 25% of their total yearly INCOME. Not of their profit, their fucking income. Which, obviously, doesn’t really bother the Qatari terrorist-harboureres who own the club, they’ll just find a couple of billion Euros in an old suit pocket they were taking to the dry cleaners and shore up the club’s finances for another 3 months, knowing with confidence that the UEFA ‘Fair Play’ group have not yet grown their testicles to any significant degree. And if they have, anyone can be bribed. Any testicle can be bribed.

But best news of all is that, unlike Alexei Navalny, my brother is still alive. I’m so glad that Putin isn’t on the medical staff at the Royal Free. Yet Richard not only lives but, according to a very knowledgeable man in such matters, is coming back in an exceedingly ‘baby steps’ kind’a way. Breathing better, though still on his ventilator, blood pressure stable and good, and although his kidneys need a bit more help, we’re moving in the right direction. In this case, the ‘right direction’ is out of the fucking hospital and out onto Pond Street. But I feel we’re a ‘little’ way off that just now. I’d even take the direction out of Intensive Care, but heh, I can do ‘patient’. If my brother can, so can I.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx