Andy's Glasses

You know that horrible feeling when you can’t find something. Your car keys. Phone. The credit card that you’re SURE you put back in the wallet. And that causes great discomfort, anxiety. The world can’t sit square on its axis until you’ve found that banana which you KNOW you put in your gym bag and now it’s gone! (Though in that last instance the solution is probably ‘Joey ate it’).

Well how do you think my brother feels? When he went into hospital 4 weeks ago with a suspected ‘perforation’. Somewhere in his gut. Address unknown. But they know there’s a leak because he contracted sepsis from it which has nearly killed him and without getting overly dramatic, may yet do so. Yet they can’t find it. Its ‘lost’. Where did I put that wretched perforation?

Last night they found it. Fly a fucking flag and raise a glass in toast; the perforation has been not just found but REMOVED!!! Along with a bit of his colon to which it was attached. The only news which could actually be better than this is that he actually survived the surgery. Because it was very doubtful that he would. And it’s still ‘early days’ with regards to that, before we start thinking about giving him his own tv ‘survival’ series, like Bear Gryllis. Ok, not the best example.

But essentially, now that the actual problem has been rectified, if he does survive this, he can actually start to get better. Lose the ventilator. Speak again (I bet he’ll moan, so typical!). Maybe one day… eat a curry!!! The sky’s the limit. Though really I should come with a severe ‘optimism warning!’, but just because they’ve actually done something positive. All that life support’s great (only if you want to stay alive) but this is affirmative action, and we love that.

I’m going to see him later to tell him about Kier Starmer. Richard needs to know. That ‘the Labour Party is in crisis!!!’, according to the Times. Yet again. Because of antisemitism. And it’s pretty much reached the point where you can’t be a Labour supporter unless you are antisemitic. And then the leader will ban you on grounds of antisemitism. Thus they’ll very soon have no candidates left, except Wes Streeting, and no voters for the next election because they’ll all be supporting the DESTROY ISRAEL AND ALL JEWS party, probably led by George Galloway and Jeremy Corbyn.

This photo was taken in about 1975. That year was all about lapels. Not sayin’ I’m proud of it, we can’t judge history by contemporary standards.

Keep up the praying. Seems to be working. In ways we don’t understand (twilight zone music, per-lease)

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

Sunday night (here) was the Super Bowl (over there). So I obviously needed to keep my brother aware of events of such magnitude. Not just because he hates all football equally; American, English, Women’s, Gaelic, even German!!, but because it’s a story about Taylor Swift. But yet again; he’s no fan of my favourite songstress ever. He doesn’t like ‘pop’ music. Never did. As soon as they invented Black Sabbath, in the late 1960s, he never really looked at ‘the charts’ again. Once metal got heavy, he was lost to the mainstream. Held it in contempt as some sort of merely commercial enterprise cynically exploiting the massed young into buying repetitive, formulaic shit to play on their stereos. ‘Tie a Yellow Ribbon’ kind’a exemplified this rationale. Whereas ‘heavy’ music was the sounds piped directly from Hell. And he loved that. He never bought ‘singles’, only albums. And is probably not aware of Taylor Swift musically. You can’t avoid her altogether but unlike me, he would never listen to a song. Or drool over her videos. Like… some do. Not in an objectifying way, no, but in respect of her strong feminist stance. Obviously. One day the brother came home from Petticoat Lane market wearing a ‘black sabbath’ cross. My grandmother (born in Poland, irreligious but as proudly and superstitiously Jewish as you can ever be without growing a beard) went ape-shit. He tried to explain that it wasn’t a normal ‘cross’ in the Christian sense, it was… well, it was a Satanic thing. Oh, that’s ok then. Oyyyyy, my grandson is joining the Devil! And for this I should be happy??? He put it away and kept if for Black Sabbath concerts exclusively. Possibly Deep Purple.

So they played the season’s defining NFL match. The Kansas City Chiefs played the San Francisco 49ers for the year’s ultimate gridiron glory. And Taylor’s latest ‘beau’? Squeeze? Shtup?? happens to be Travis Kelce, a ‘tight end’ for Kansas. So the queen of pop played a gig in Tokyo on Saturday night then jumped on a private jet which whizzed her over to New Orleans so she could support him. Never mind what Greta Thunberg thinks. But Taylor was born and raised in Pennsylvania. Then moved to Nashville. And now lives in New York, London, California, wherever she wants. Yet she’s now a Chiefs fan? That would never happen with Adele. She’s a Tottenham fan and wouldn’t suddenly support Leeds because she was shagging Joe Root. (If you can actually think of a less likely scenario, please let me know). But Taylor is American and over there you follow the team where you live. Or your boyfriend lives. No fucking loyalty, no history, no pride, just geographic convenience. Although from Tokyo to Louisiana is possibly not that convenient.

Anyway. They’ve just rushed him back into surgery. Again. Oh my.

Be well Bruvva

xxxxxxx

Amazing result for Arsenal yesterday. They beat West Ham 6 nil away from home. What’s actually incredible is not so much the ‘6’ as the ‘nil’. Because to attack with sufficient potency you would think that you must be compromising on defence. Spurs fans know this, right to their cores. But Arsenal managed to attack the whole game, en masse, whilst keeping a ‘clean sheet’. And without a ‘proper’ striker. In that very ‘Barcelona’ way of winning without Ehrling Haaland but instead just 7 midfielders who can score at will. And even though it was only West Ham, you have to give credit. And just hope they can’t repeat it.

I told my brother all this, but he was asleep. Even without the sedative he’s been on for 9 days, he’d have been asleep. He hates football. But I just thought, let him know.

I also told him about Azhar Ali, the labour bye-election candidate from Rochdale (up north, flat caps, probably kefiyas actually, black pudding, eccy thump, not too bright). Azhar posted online that Israel had allowed, encouraged even, the slaughter of its own civilians, 1200 of them, by Hamas, on October 7th, because then they could go into Gaza and destroy it. It was the ‘excuse’ they needed. Told you ‘not too bright’, particularly during his party leader’s mission statement period of eliminating anti-semitism. So Azhar apologised. Oh, sorry, what was I saying??? Course I didn’t mean it; read a conspiracy theory online (www.jihadis-are-us.com) and got carried away. I’ve always been a friend to Israel, blah, blah, fucking blah.

And Richard, in his fentanyl haze (yes, amazingly, that’s the drug of choice in the ICU these days because, when not abused by drug-dealing scumbags mixing it with heroin, it is apparently quite wonderful at what it was designed to do), I’m sure uttered the word C***!!!, or perhaps that was me ‘projecting’, in honour of Azhar Ali.

Then I just had to tell him that the president of America, Bo Siden, has deemed himself fit to stand for office again, even though he can’t remember how to get to that office, after the scandalous questioning of his mental facilities and memory. People all across Africa are getting anxious about him. Possibly Australia. America, Argentina…

And that was the news in the ICU. Where there’s so little change its imperceptible.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

I’ve come up with a totally brilliant idea. I’ll share, but remember where you heard it first!!! No stealing my ‘rights’!!

You see the problem with football, other than Chelsea, is that it is a game which naturally flows. It has a consistency and continuity which games like rugby or cricket lack. Ok, it stops for injuries, but they’re, fortunately, not many or not serious. Just inevitable bangs and knocks. Otherwise, the beautiful game can flow beautifully for a full 90 minutes, split in two, wonderfully continuous halves. Nice.

So my idea is this. Let’s fuck it up!! Let’s arrange it so that every refereeing decision can be put to debate. Instantly and immediately and, hopefully, really aggressively, by every single player on the pitch for 10 minutes. Then, once that melee/discussion has ended, let’s then send the issue to a bunch of partially-sighted people, watching the match 77 miles away, so they can misinterpret what the ref wants and reignite the confusion and discussion for a while longer. More value for the fans.

Who have now reached the point where they’re scared to celebrate a goal for fear those bastards in VAR will take it away again. So that’s good too.

Yet, I’ve felt for a while that these disruptions and interruption and corresponding additions of 35 minutes of ‘extra time’ on every match simply aren’t enough. We need more.

So let’s add a new layer of stupidity, delays and great annoyance. Let’s add… a ‘blue card’!!!! A card so blue that once deployed it will condemn the recipient to 10 minutes on the side of the pitch in a ‘sin bin’. A naughty chair.

Matches will need to be extended to 3 hours, like the Super Bowl, to compensate for this new measure. Every team currently spends approximately 12.73 minutes every game arguing about team-mates receiving yellow or red cards. And 14.28 minutes making stupid demands of the ref to issue such cards to the other team. Or in claiming that a ‘yellow’ should be a ‘red’. Once the blues arrive, we may possibly need to have on-field legal representation for the ‘alleged’ offender. Just like when they ‘call for the physio’, they’d ’call for the lawyer’. Not sure whether they’d wear sports gear or suits, but that’s details.

So that’s my idea. Because if increased time-wasting measures are not implemented soon, we might find ourselves in sorry situation of getting rid of (fucking) VAR, having red cards for ALL dissent (managers too), instilling a complete ‘say nothing’ to the ref system, like in rugby and having a game which flows and is a pleasure to watch and celebrate. And no-one wants that.

The other idea would be to arm the players with knives and clubs, get rid of all refs and just let them get on with it. Football-to-die-for.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

They may have overstated things the other day when they said: ‘we’ll be waking your brother up later’. Because ‘later’, when I went in, they said ‘oh no, he needs to be on life support for at least another 4/5 days before we can do that’. Hmmmm. However, they’ve put these on his hands. Presumably in advance of the ‘boxercise’ classes they’ll be having in the ICU. But it also explains why he doesn’t reply to texts.

So I go and tell him the news. And this week I had to tell him about that shameful Rishi Sunak and what he said. In parliament, no less. When Brianna Ghey’s mum was sitting right there in the gallery!!! (Brianna was the trans-girl who was horribly, brutally murdered by a couple of ‘school friends’).

And if you judge by the immense degree of public outrage!!! and disgust!!!, particularly from Labour front benchers, especially Sir Kier himself and no less (though you’d be hard pushed to get ‘less’), what Rishi said was this:

“On behalf of the government of Great Britain I’d like to say how we fucking hate anyone prefaced with a ‘trans-‘! You either have a dick or you don’t. Anything in between simply doesn’t count. Or better still, just FUCK OFF!!!! And stop making ridiculous (possibly ri-dick-less!!!) demands for special fucking treatment you poor, confused barrrrstarrrrdssss!!!”

And you’d think he’d said something like that because he has started an entire and new ‘trans debate’ about how awful and transphobic the Conservative Party are.

Whereas what he actually said was, (again, in my words, which are much better than his), “Kier Starmer is a nonce who u-turns about every single ‘policy’ he suggests for his party, including the one about trans-women’s rights.” I’m sure the poor and extremely lovely Mrs Ghey felt not the slightest twinge at Rishi’s words, spoken in that context.

What we, as a nation, have to suffer, is having the two main party leaders who are completely incapable of thinking on their feet. So you get rubbish like this happening.

And, as if to demonstrate Rishi’s point, quite beautifully, the very next day Starmer performed another illegal u-turn. This time going back on his way overly publicised ‘promise’ to spend £28 billion a year on ‘turning us into the greenest nation since Greenland!!!’, or some such bandwagon-jumping, virtue-signalling bollocks. Which happens to be completely unrealistic economically. When you add it to the 478 billion extra for the NHS, 942 trillion for social care, 72 billion for mental health (mine) and at least 53 million for another striker at Spurs.

I bet Richard’s glad he’s sleeping through all this crap. Well, maybe not glad, but…

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

There’s an old ‘definition’ of the Yiddish word ‘chutspa’, which broadly means ‘cheek’ or ‘liberty’, but much more so. A man is on trial for murdering both his parents and appeals on the grounds that he’s an orphan. That’s chutspa. And is, in fact, the very same plea that Donald Trump is using in his latest (of sooooo many) court case. The one in which he’s accused of plotting to overturn an election result, in which he lost the presidency, and he’s appealing on the grounds that he was the president, and thus immune from prosecution.

Which underlines my point the other week (I’m sure you made notes) that although I greatly admire the man’s wonderful stance in support of Israel (even if its only to keep the support the Bible Belt voters who he needs to regain the presidency), he remains, in all other matters, a vile and despicable piece of shit.

However, there are other matters of greater importance than ‘The Great Orange One’, at the moment. There’s the brother. Now surgically removed.

Yes, they operated and then removed him from surgery, back into the Intensive Care Unit, where, according to his nurse this morning, ‘they’re waking him up slowly’. And as he’s been asleep since Friday morning, it probably will be very slowly. He’s a beast all day if he hasn’t had at least 6 days sleep. But the operation went well. Up to a point.

They did what they had to do in there, sewed him back up and, other than his blood pressure being a bit low, all is looking good. But they couldn’t find a perforation. Oh. But, but, but… that was the problem which started the whole thing? Wasn’t it? And if it wasn’t a perforation, WTF was it??? Obviously a very bad (ie; near fatal) infection, but from what? We need to know.

Three weeks is the longest Richard has ever gone without eating a curry. Three days was the previous record. And three hours for a Diet Coke. I shall take him both when I visit him later. In celebration. I’m sure they’ll be ok with that at the hospital.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

That is just so bloody typical of Charles. He’s always been jealous of my brother, always trying to outdo him, engage in one-upmanship, steal the limelight. Typical. So when we were kids and out in the car with mum and dad, Rich waved at someone through the window of our Ford Consul. Charles heard about that and has been waving out of car windows ever since! There was always a fierce rivalry between the two of them. Even though we lived in… Conway Palace in Ilford and he lived in Buckingham Palace. And Windsor Castle. Balmoral. Sandringham. Richard built the first stereo amplifier I ever heard, in 1967, and we listened to Sargeant Peppers (the first album produced in ‘stereo’) through headphones. Charles got the Beatles to come to the Palace and play for him. And now this! He can’t let Richard even be really, horribly sick and on life support without trying to get one over on him.

Sorry. What I meant was: I wish the King a full and speedy recovery.

They bumped my brother’s surgery yesterday. They had an ‘emergency’. A kidney transplant to do. I mean; really? Just put the kidney in the fridge and do it tomorrow. Not like you want to eat it. But they chose to do that ahead of my poor brother, who remains sedated, breathing through a tube and with a gaping hole in his tum. Ok, I get that someone has probably been waiting for 3 years for a ‘suitable organ’ to arrive and when it does, there’s a ‘time window’ which is probably very short, in which to insert said organ into the recipient. But still…

As I write this he has in fact gone into surgery. Which is a good thing.

Whereas I had the misfortune to be ‘stuck’ on my morning tube journey talking to someone I ‘know’. Terrible thing. But worst of all… he’s a Manchester City fan!!! Its like traveling with Hannibal Lector. Who spent half the journey telling me how ‘innocent of all charges’ his football team are, more importantly, how ‘they can’t prove anything beyond reasonable doubt’, and how ethically sound it actually is having an Abu Dhabi bunging suitcases full of cash into the club accounts every year. That’s not the start to a day anyone wants. But I didn’t punch him, so the anger management must be working.

Happy Tuesday; keep prayin’

A xxxx

Well we’re still waiting for my brother’s second op, so thought I might as well catch up on the football because… errrr… well, because I wanted to. Even after the ‘travesty of Goodison’, where mighty Spurs failed yet again to score that vital ‘make it safe’ goal against Everton. Leaving it positively unsafe for all concerned and conceding in the 95th minute, which cost us two points. Vital points (they’re all ‘vital’), much-needed points (who doesn’t need points?), greatly deserved points (they’re always deserved, unless they go to Chelsea, Arsenal, West Ham…). So with my hand on my heart, I have to say: ‘we woz robbed’. But as you can’t blame ghostbusters, you might as well accept it on yourself. And of all teams, I would generally begrudge Everton those points less than anyone else because of the terrible deal they’ve been given by the Premiere League this year.

Those 2 points would still have been insufficient to keep us above Aston Villa after they put 5 past hopeless Sheffield United. And then, in the match we wanted everybody to lose, Arsenal beat the most lacklustre Liverpool team I’ve seen since last time they played shit. The ‘impenetrable’ Allison gave Arsenal two goals, although he was helped in the second one by Virgil Van Dyjk, the team’s other ‘infallible’ star. I thought for a moment they may have both been signed up by Ivan Toney, but I eliminated that when I replayed it and realised that they just fucked it up by sheer incompetence rather than design. You just couldn’t ‘design’ that. A fabulous result for Manchester City.

Then came Chelsea. Oh my, oh my, oh my, poor Chelsea. (Try typing that with a straight face). But I know what the problem is at Stamford Bridge, I’m possibly the only person who has such a profoundly analytical mind which can ascertain the precise cause of their current malaise. As exemplified by losing 4-2 at home to Wolves yesterday. And this is the reason why the world’s most expensive team ever gathered under one over-priced, American-owned hell-hole of a roof, managed by the world’s best coach, can’t win a game. Struggle tying their shoelaces, in fact. Its because of the essential conflict of spirituality. Mauricio Pochettino is a really lovely, charming, super person. And Chelsea are dark, dank, nasty, horrible and evil. Rendering the combination unworkable. That’s sorted, then. I wonder if Todd Boehly will pay me a few mil for that insight?

Ok, can’t sit talking to you all day, I’m busy.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

My brother’s time-table:

1. Survive the first surgery.
And he did. Phew. That was the (first) risky bit. They opened him up, cleaned out all… yeah, cleaned out and then… they left him open!!! It’s what they do. Cover with a bit of cling-film, leave a fucking great chasm open to the world.

2. Do absolutely nothing for 48 hours.
Which they do ‘facilitate’, but keeping him sedated. He’s always been brilliant at sleeping so this bit was always going to be easy.

3. Have more surgery to actually try and repair the ‘leak’.
In the NHS we trust. The fact is though; we don’t. Our GPs have let ‘us’ (speaking on behalf of every single person in the country here; I’m allowed, if not voted) down tragically. Hiding from the patients they’re supposed to see. Offering telephone appointments 6 weeks hence. Frikkin’ useless. But have a near death experience and there is nowhere better than the National ‘Elf.

4. Recouperate.
Please God we should reach that point. And again, Intensive Care Units not only have loads and loads of nurses around, they have all the doctors that no-one else can ever get hold of as well. Plus, they have shit-loads of amazing equipment. All of which my brother appears to be plugged into. He has 2 consultants, one liver, one I.T., a sound engineer, three electricians and a plumber. It takes 13 people and 353,264 quids worth of equipment just to keep one brother alive. Bless em all. Fortunately they don’t use accountants.

Hopefully at some point they’ll seal him up again. Can’t walk around forever with a great big hole above his belt. And then he can go home. But at least, when I saw him last night, I gave him all the days football results (he hates football), and the rugby scores (hates that too; never had any time nor interest in any sport involving balls or people), showed him Joey’s new haircut (he loves Joey), then told him to stop lollygaggin’ around, there’s people needing beds. He would have smiled. But they’d given him extra sedative when they heard I was coming.

If I’m honest, its not the best he’s ever looked, a million miles from how I want to ‘see my brother’, but compared to the alternative, he’s positively blooming.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

Do you know my bruvva? Always been a problem. Oh no. That’s me. Sorry. Wrong bruvva. He’s never been a problem. Until 2 weeks ago. Then he became ‘a big problem’.

He felt ill. Feverish. Bit of a cold. Then, as far as our family’s concerned, ‘the symptom of symptoms!!. The absolute reddest of red warnings. No appetite. Holy shitttttt!!! Call an ambulance. Which my sister-in-law actually did a day later as he looked green (he’s usually purple with yellowy bits at the edges) and felt ill with a painful tum.

They whizzed him to Barnet General Hospital, left him milling around A&E for 2 days, as ya do, then delivered him to the Intensive Care Unit. With, horror-of-horrors, ‘nil by mouth!!!’ What, not even a curry? No, not even one single papadom. Because they reckoned he has a perforation in part of his stomach. And don’t know which part. Which is serious shit. They’d scanned him but couldn’t work out where the ‘leak’ was coming from. But leak there was. I suggested to blow him up and stick him into a bath of water to see where the bubbles came from. And can report that they failed to take this suggestion seriously.

At which point they decided NOT to operate straight away but instead treat ‘conservatively’ with drugs and antibiotics. Whether this was a good decision or the sort that Hugo Lloris was famous for remains to be seen.

As the days turned into two weeks, there was seemingly not much change, except he was getting worse. His kidneys started playing up due to the excessive workload required for the infection, so they put him on a ‘mild’ dialysis. That was Wednesday night.

He’s always had a liver problem, a congenital thing which, fortunately, he chose not to share with me. But now that pretty much ‘benign’ condition then becomes a factor. A big factor. Well it’s a big liver, that’s what the condition does. Because of that they wanted to move him to the Royal Free Hospital because is the nation’s number 1 liver centre. But there was no bed there.

I saw him yesterday and although he hasn’t moved an inch for 2 weeks, was ‘fine’. Joking, bullshitting, usual brotherly rubbish.

This morning he was put on a ventilator and is in multiple organ failure. And they suddenly managed to find him a bed at the Free. This morning. By this afternoon they’d decided to operate. I went again. Richard didn’t say much. But you can’t when you’ve got a fucking great tube down your throat and you’re unconscious on sedatives. But I’m sure he could hear me taking the piss. It’s what brothers do, as well as nurses.

So that’s about the (horrible, dire, terrible) story so far. He’s in surgery. His chances of survival are estimated at 20%, no more. But his chances of not having the operation are, as calculated by me, zero.

And I share this because… because I’m a sharer. And it’s how I cope.

Say a prayer for him. He’s been an atheist since he was 12 so the more Godless people praying for him the better. He would love the irony.

A xxxx