Andy's Glasses

The French are such a contentious, divisive and stroppy race of people. They always have been, which is why we’ve always loved them. Well, we love looking at them. Best to leave it there, really, the problem only starts once you ‘engage’.

And now THISl!!!! Short-hair-gate!!!! Coupled with ‘flat-chest-gate!!!!’

First you have to accept that there are people in the world who put some kind of stock into ‘beauty pageants’. Most of the civilised world, and all of the ‘woke’ world, has no time, place or bovver for such a fatally flawed concept as parading women around to see which one looks the nicest. Miss Whatever competitions are basically objectification on steroids. Though as always, the contestants would (have to) say that ‘it empowers them!’, because you have to say that to avoid being burned alive by the feminist army.

So basically: all decent, correct people pretty much have no time whatsoever for these most banal of competitions. So, obviously, the French love them and take them very serious-ment indeed. As does 90% of middle America. Less popular in the Arab world. For… errrr… obvious reasons.

And they’re pissed off with the competition for having a victor(ia) with short hair!!! Who is not, by any definition, as ‘curvaceous’ as they’d like. As we’d all like. Roger Rabbit’s wife, kind’a deal. All waist-length curls and tits like watermelons. And hips. BIG hips.

And in steps Eve Gilles, the most exquisite little elfin, pixie-esque beautiful-of-beauties and…

NON! She ‘as short ‘air!!! She is not, ow you say, ‘curvaceous’!!! No Miss France in a ‘undred years ‘as never ‘ad short ‘air!!! Sacre bleu!!!!

They worry that she’s androgynous. An accusation always made BY those uncertain of their own sexuality and living a partial lie, thus if a woman looks ‘boyish’ in any way, it stirs parts of them which create immense cognitive dissonance. Which is a long way of saying ‘all French blokes are poofs’.

I think Eve is gorgeous beyond gorgeous. In that wonderfully Audrey Hepburn way. There’s a world of women out there who aren’t Dolly Parton. And there’s probably some French people who aren’t tossers, but I’ve yet to find one.

A Scottish couple drove an electric car from the North Pole to the South Pole. 18,000 miles. In order to redefine ‘range anxiety’ to stratospheric levels. I couldn’t make it to Suffolk and back without collapsing in a heap of EV-related mental health issues, and they went half the world’s circumference. I don’t think its the electric acquisition that’s the problem, just keeping your shit together whilst you’re setting up your solar panels and mobile wind farm. I need to consider those as options. God help us all.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

Shakespeare pondered such concepts, in that very… Shakespearian way he had: if music be the food of love, then play on. So opens Twelfth Night. But what about food? Food is the food of love too. With or without the music. Ok, eating your sushi to some oriental plinking in the background, or shovelling your meat madras to the accompaniment of a sitar is very culturally consistent, but to be honest, I’d rather they played Nirvana. Maybe Simon & Garfunkel (not for curry; need something more powerful for that) or Taylor Swift, the world’s most successful… everything. Because you can enhance the atmosphere with music, but it won’t improve the food. That needs to be done by the chef, not the pianist.

And hence today’s sandwich. Or: The Masterpiece, as I humbly consider it. But this isn’t just a ‘sandwich’, it is a complete meal. It is the ultimate stimulation to your taste-buds. Well, my tastebuds, you ain’t getting any. But it just looked so wonderful I wanted to share. The photo. Obviously.

The roll is a challah roll. Nothing is finer in this world. And it is a massive one, making it finer still. On one half I spread hummus, on the other chilli mayo. Then there’s potato salad (why NOT, ffs, I had it there and I made it yesterday so its the best), cheese, coleslaw, sliced gerkin, chopped jalapeno, a sliced boiled egg and… tomato. For ‘elf. Tomato is a ‘superfood’ and thus negates all the carbs, fat, salt, more carbs, more fat, bit’a sugar and makes it almost ‘zero calorie’, in the same way companies become ‘carbon neutral’ whilst spewing out enough clouds of toxic shit to melt Antarctica.

And I only mention this wonder (and I just ate it: O…M…Geeee…), because apparently in the Uk, we have 3,000 people a day entering hospital wards due to obesity. Three thousand. I wasn’t aware that you could cure obesity. And had to wonder what they do with them all. Put them on diet? Are the beds big enough? But I suppose its actually 3,000 a day with the effects of obesity; diabetes, heart conditions, failing hips and knees, fat bellies.

So you have to wonder if this is the best use of NHS money? And, more importantly, NHS beds? We could send the obese over to Rwanda, obviously not on boats because of the danger of sinking, but fly them over because its a safe haven with not much food. Orrrrrr… we could educate people on quantity and, in particular, quality of food. A take-away pizza is way more expensive than a plate of home made spag bol with vegetables. Any food that is sold by the ‘bucket’ is never going to be good for you. Simple rules. Less time on computer, more chasing real women round the streets. And eat green stuff. Not because you want to, obviously, who does?, but because you should. Good for ya.

Eat well, but in a considered way.

A xxxx

This man is Grzegorz Braun. He’s a Polish MP. And on Tuesday, whilst there was a little celebration of chanukah in the parliament building over there in Warsaw, he took a fire extinguisher and blew out the candles on the menorah, the special Chanukah… candle holder. And really, that’s not very nice. Not very nice at all. But what do we know about Braun?

His great, great grandfather was Adolph Braun. Who lived near the little village where my maternal grandmother’s family had their mud hut. And every Friday night, Adolph and his friends would mount their horses, whilst drunk on the local potato liqueur, ride into the shtetl and beat the living shit out of all the jews they could find. Only stopping when they found someone to rape. Then they’d go back home, sleep off their excesses and do as little as they possibly could until next Friday came around. Which is why, in 1900, my grandmother’s family moved to London. They were potlessly poor, spoke no English, arrived on a boat (big one, probably) and were really pissed off that they weren’t going to invent ‘benefits’ for another 48 years. But anywhere was better than Poland.

Grzegorz’s grandfather, Greg, was living in that same village when the nazis came a’knocking in 1940, looking for local recruits. Greg was illiterate, worthless, had no skills and terrible halitosis. Making him ideally suited for Nazi enrolment. Which he thus did, along with hundreds of thousands of his co-countrymen, helping the Germans with the vital task of rounding up and murdering every Jew in the land which had been Poland until a few months ago but was, at that time, the latest addition to the German empire.

Due to a handling incident at the neo-natal unit of Warsaw General, in 1967, baby Grzegorz was dropped on the floor when being passed from the midwife to his father, Grzeg, and he landed on his head. Emergency room x-rays showed that the damage was so severe that the only way to save the baby was to remove all the useful bits of his brain, leaving just the hate, the evil, the uselessness, the moronic and anything remotely decent or ‘nice’. But it was that or lose him altogether. So his parents decided that he could always have a career in politics and they chose to save him.

Thus the man we all know and love today. He is quite openly anti-American, anti-Ukrainian, anti-Semitic, anti-Protestant and anti-pretty-much-anything-else-you-can-think-of. Hence he runs some far right wing party committed to the sanctity and purity of all things Polish. He IS pro-Russian. Ironic that the far right sides with the far left for purposes of being hateful. But thus we must forgive poor Grzegorz, because he knows no better and banged his head as a child. We must not judge all Polish people by his standards. Some of my absolutely favourite builders are Polish.

And yet, from the pogroms to the eager and willing help they gave towards ‘the final solution’, to their committed participation in concentration camps, right up to extinguishing the lights on a fucking menorah, them Poles live up to my grandmother’s oft-quoted saying: The Germans learned anti-semitism from the Poles.

Good to learn from history.

(All of the above is verified, validated historical fact, other than the bits I made up, but they’re true too. Just in a different way.)

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

What they should do, wiv dem small boats, is turn ’em round and make ’em faarkin’ sail over to Rwanda demselves, in dem little dinghies, da’s what dey should do. Den dey won’t come back, will dey???

Probably because they’d have run out of petrol half way to Spain or been eaten by sharks or giant Octopus-ninja things off the coast of Portugal. Never ever to reach the wonders and splendour of a barracks in Rwanda.

The problem is that there are actually two conversations going on simultaneously and neither makes much sense anyway.

The government’s conversation is all about stopping the boats because its an illegal and immoral result of the trafficker-bastards putting all those refugee-seekers at great risk. So we must stop THE BOATS. Even though we’re not, kind’a, offering refugee-seekers any alternative route or method to come here to seek asylum. But that’s not the point: the boats must end!

The conversation Johnny Britain hears is: we’ve found a way to stop foreigners of unspecified origin and unspecified colour coming here in boats. Now if only we could work on trains, cars and planes, Britain would be ‘saved’. It’s actually the conversation he has with Nigel Farage.

A cynic (errrrr… that might be me then) might think that the government have found a pretty good vote-winner, as anything reducing immigration is unfortunately a vote-winner, disguised as a humanitarian action of protecting those poor people from exploitation by the dastardly traffickers.

Either way, ‘Rwanda!!!” is both the solution and the problem. Not, necessarily, from an economic standpoint, as we’ve pissed away £400million on this so far and not one refugee has yet set foot on African soil. But from the government perspective it looks like a plan. And from Johnny English’s perspective, Rwanda is definitely ‘anywhere but ‘ere!’

But the devil is in the details. And thereby hangs the issue. And hanged Tuesday’s vote in parliament which almost looked like a vote of confidence in Rishi Sunak but was a vote on whether to pass the ‘Rwanda bill’.

The Tories were completely split!!! Not between those who want the Rwanda thing to happen and those who don’t, but between those who think, like Rishi, that his wishi-washi plan will pass legal muster, and those who think it needs shoring up on various points. Like taking us out of Human Rights conventions and implementing a structure which precludes legal appeal.

Rishi won. But at what cost if, when someone finally does get sent to Rwanda, they’re pulled off the plane and entangled in legal proceedings for the following 3 years with the ‘deportee’ kept at Claridges whilst the trial continues. With Johnny English as his butler.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

Rishi Sunak had a great day yesterday. No hard-hats in Birmingham, no ice creams in Rochdale, pints of real ale in Norfolk, just a Covid Inquiry in hell. And whilst he was there, being grilled by a bunch of silks, his political party was busy in Westminster plotting to de-rail either him or his make-or-break Rwanda bill which gets a vote in parliament today. One way or t’other…

But the Inquiry first. In which our now Prime Minister had to defend his actions three years ago, when he was chancellor, as he and his hapless, hopeless mates in then government steered us, like the blind leading the blind, but drunk, through the minefield of the pandemic. Led by Boris, the man you’d want on your side for the Eton Wall Game, but not necessarily in time of crisis, and certainly not in charge, Rishi and Dominic (God help us) and Matt Hancock (God may not be enough for that one), the ‘dream team’, consulted with scientists and told us every day which guesses would now be followed until the next stab in the dark.

Rishi’s own bete noir is the ‘eat out to help out’ scheme in which the government bought us dinner if we were brave enough to take the pretty high risk of getting covid over our chicken tikka masala. We sat in restaurants which had make shift plastic partitions between the tables and sanitised our hands before stuffing donner kebabs into our unmasked faces. It was, all things considered, from a purely health perspective, stupid.

But the pandemic caused over 10% of the hospitality industry out of business. Pubs, restaurants, bars, clubs, hotels, simply couldn’t be sustained with absolutely no income. Rishi was the chancellor. The man in charge of the economy. Not a fucking doctor of virology. Who he might have consulted, possibly, BEFORE, his little scheme, but apparently didn’t. But what did they know anyway? And there’s no point the nation surviving a pandemic and being totally bankrupt with 97% of people subsequently unemployed or clinically depressed, with a next generation condemned even more to ‘zombie’ status than they’re already going to be from when they get their first phone.

The pandemic caused deaths, we know that, it was always going to happen. And we’re always clever in hindsight. Which seems to be the sole purpose of this (and most other) inquiries. To squander public funds achieving nothing whatsoever. The covid ‘balance’ was limiting the number dying; it was never going to be zero, whilst trying to have something left in the national budged when its over, whilst remembering that locking people down is contrary to all of human nature.

Sitting in a courtroom 3 years later, its much easier to be ‘clever’.

Ok, Rwanda another day. Today decides a lot about its future. And Rishi’s.

Happy Tuesday, Rishi,

A xxxx

Ok so cycling is a big sport now. BIG. All those (tossers) people wearing lycra on a Sunday morning feeling the freedom of the open road, with the wind in their testicles, is a sight to behold, if not to just run over. But this is England. And many choose to do their cycling from the comfort of a spin club, or even on their own Peloton, in their own home. And yet… spinning is hard work. A bit like… a bit like cycling, I suppose. So I’ve decided, if not to ‘invent’ exactly, then to merely apply some logic, to the existing status quo.

Electric exercise bikes!

Have it in your lounge, just plug it in and look, to all intents and purposes, like you’re exercising, whilst never breaking into a sweat. You can still spend that hour productively watching Netflix, but will enjoy it a lot more without all the puffing and panting, and you’ll barely need a shower when you’re done. And those who normally ride electric bikes can feel they’re doing their bit too on rainy Sunday mornings.

Like yesterday. Though it did stop long enough for a game of tennis!!! I’m working on ‘electric tennis’, but I’ll have to get back to you on that.

We went to a chanukah party. Chanukah, the Jewish version of Christmas but with more presents and less Jesus. And unfortunately no ‘pigs in blakets’. The holiday celebrates the day when Judah the Maccabee led an army of 14 Jews against the entire forces of the Greek Empire. There was Judah, three chartered accountants, four lawyers, two doctors and 5 bakers. And they won. It was a miracle. But when they looked, there was only enough oil to light the ‘eternal’ light for one day, and more couldn’t be acquired for 8 days, because Judah didn’t have Prime Membership. Thus the real ‘miracle’ of chanukah: they used that oil to make enough donuts for eight days, because who needs an eternal light anyway? Well, something like that.

And yesterday’s miracle of chanukah was Spurs beating Newcastle 4-1. The perfect end to any celebration.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

Houston, we have a problem…

We all love music. It’s… musical. Nice. Singalong. La-di-daaah. But thing is we’re hard wired to love music. It stirs… things inside us over which we have no control. I don’t have much control over anything really, but for music, it’s just a matter of which bit, of which song, pushes particular ‘buttons’ in our brains.

Now don’t laugh, but the first songs which really ‘got to me’, in an emotional sense were sung by Gerry and the Pacemakers. When I first heard Ferry Cross the Mersey, I had no idea where the Mersey was, or I’d have had my audio-sensory system re-wired immediately. I probably didn’t know what a ‘ferry’ was either; we didn’t have them in East London. Only at Woolwich, but no-one ever mentioned South London in those days. Some of us still don’t. But then they released Never Walk Alone. And I would watch Top of the Pops (it was all we had and we were grateful for it, Jimmy Saville and all) holding a tissue to my eyes. It stirred bits of the proto-me that I didn’t know I had.

Since then there are many songs which ‘get me going’. ‘I will always love you’, by Whitney. When she hits ‘that note’, everything else in the world is temporarily suspended. Elvis Costello’s ‘Alison’. ‘Black Sabbath’ by the eponymous band; those 3 notes simply dig inside your kishkas (innards) and shlep (pull). The piano version of ‘Everchanging Moods’ similarly induces a form of deliriously happy melancholy, as long as I don’t have to look at Paul Weller whilst I listen.

Islands in the Stream is magical. Jolene. I know, I hate Country music but this is beyond mere ‘choice’. Virtually anything by Taylor Swift. Someone Like You; when that hit the charts I cried non-stop for 3 weeks. Leather and Lace by Stevie Nicks.

I don’t choose these songs; they choose me. They hit me.

And my latest addition, possibly my most shameful is ‘Let it Go’. The world’s most annoying song ever written, by Walt Disney (and he’s responsible for most of the Top 10 Annoying Songs, for sure), and I heard it on the radio the other day and now… now… it… affects me. I haven’t yet gone to see if I can get an Elsa dress for a 38 inch chest but it’s only a matter of time as karaoke season warms up, I’m already practicing those high notes.

Shoot me now.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

I like football. There. I’ve said it. I’ve ’come out’ as a football… fan-cier. A devotee. A worshipper at the alter of the Premier League. Who, ironically in the light of this metaphor, have shown themselves to be as godless as any organisation can be, as deducting 10 points from Everton was purely the work of the devil. Within the ‘context’ of ‘sins perpetrated’ by both Chelsea and Manchester City. (My choice of putting the word ‘context’ in quotes is because, for a word so previously benign and concise, it has recently become the go-to ally of those wishing to justify all manner of evil thoughts, words and actions. For ‘abuse and reconstruction of words in general’; read ‘the bitch is back’, by… errrr… me).

Like all football fans, I come with ‘baggage’. The older you are, as in all walks of life, the more baggage you carry. And tragically, this tends to affect my appreciation of the game. Reduces the much-advertised ‘beauty’. Because over the many years I have been upset, abused, ridiculed and devastated by the actions of other football teams. And really, it goes beyond ‘they beat us 6-1 in 1927; I’ll never get over it’. And most of it so subtle in its lingering manifestation that I’m barely aware. Other than for Arsenal, obviously and Chelsea, both of which are patently self-evident to every decent person.

My first ever visit to Spurs was in (probably) 1965?, ‘66??, against Man City. 1-all draw and my blue-and-white bobble hat was stolen by a Mancunian thug, probably Liam Gallagher’s father, if he knows who that is, on the way home. Some things can never be forgiven. Then being bought by oil money and hauled up from low-ranking obscurity destined to an eternity in United’s very long shadow, to the ultimate, treble-winning juggernaut (current form notwithstanding), didn’t seem to increase any lurve for the northern bastards. And, if I’m honest, they will remain forever rooted to that hateful place in my footballing heart.

Whereas Everton have never really done anything to upset me at all. They’re just sort of ‘there’ but not in a particularly real or threatening way. But take 10 points off them and suddenly I’m an Everton fan. When they beat Newcastle in the week, a team I almost actually ‘like’!!!, I was thrilled that they may yet survive the most outrageous abuse they received from the Premier League. And for all my fondness for Newcastle, let us hope that they take at least another 7 days before recovering from their loss.

I used to go to West Ham quite a lot as a kid. Leyton Orient too. And to this day I dearly love Leyton Orient. And deeply despise West Ham United.

I’ve never had any issue with Aston Villa. I’ve been to Villa Park numerous times because they always used to play cup semi-finals there. Because it was a ‘lovely ground’. In about 1962. Now it’s a shit-hole. But I do have time for their team and, in particular, for manager Unai Emery, who is performing miracles there. Let’s hope, after their midweek domination of Manchester City, they can repeat against the Gunners tonight. It needs to be done.

So you see, much as no man is an island, thus, no man in football is free from a thousand prejudices.

Hope they have more luck playing today’s football than I had playing tennis.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

What did we ever do before ‘WhatsApp groups’ were invented? What was our meaning in life? And that of our forebears? It was all meaningless. Pointless. But we all had way more time on our hands.

But they can be fun. Well, for me they can be fun. For others probably ‘really annoying’ and ‘stupid’ and ‘a waste of words’. Yet I realised my role in the grand scheme of things. My rightful place. As an ‘agent provocateur’. Not, like, the women’s lingerie version, the other one. That annoying bastard who’s always winding everyone up. Because why should everyone get an easy ride in life?

Because I just had a big ‘row’. On a WhatsApp group. Because… I called a woman a ‘bitch’!!!! Only because she was one. Not a woman on the group but a woman who was the president of the board at Penn State University. Oh, ‘that bitch’. Yup. The one who, before a government inquiry board, refused to say that Penn State would stop students from advocating ‘genocide to all Jews’, following the horrendous antisemitic incidents at her university. She was asked the question 10 times and contorted, obfuscated, evaded, eluded and avoided giving any statement which unequivocally said “Yes, we condemn such actions”. And then, a day later, she issued a grovelling retraction, stating categorically that she does condemn them and she’s not supporting the entire murder of every single jew in the world any longer. She’s done with genocide, she’s over it!!!

So I deployed… ‘the b-bomb’. Used to be the ‘b-word’, but its apparently been promoted whilst I was engaged elsewhere, into ‘the single word guaranteed to upset any post-modern woman more than any other… except… that other word they don’t like very much, the one you can’t print or God, bless Her, will strike you fucking DEAD!

And someone complained. ‘Disgusted’, she was, that such a word was uttered in her presence. So even though we were both in agreement that Ms President of Penn was a total bitch, only one of us was allowed to say it. Or possibly disallowed from saying it. But I refused to retract it. Because I like words. I like their richness, even whilst abusing them. I like the fact that words have different meanings. Another woman piped up because she saw the term as an insult to her dog. Female dog, obviously.

Yet sometimes you need to be gentle and considerate in your terminology but sometimes you can’t. There’s nothing in the world of gentle that can express exactly what you wish to say. And that’s when you upset the feminists. You have no choice.

To do anything else is just bollocks.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

“We must stop obesity!!!”, cried Rishi Sunak, as half the kids in our fine nation waddle to school with a satchel, a separate lunch-wheelbarrow and a BMI of 46. And why does our PM wish to take an interest in this? Particularly as his kids are stick thin? Is it for the health benefits of reducing fattiness? Is it because the kids need to be fitter? And will live longer lives??

No. It’s because obesity costs the NHS 100 billion quid a year. And I’m not even sure if that figure includes the food they’re going to eat whilst they’re in hospital.

But that strikes me as rather cynical. Whilst the younger generations are beefing up, morbidly, no-one cares. As they sit on their fat arses watching endless tv and computer games whilst eating chocolate eclairs provided by the NHS, no-one cares. Yet as soon as the bean counters work out what it costs, then HOLY SHIT!!!! We need to slim everyone down!!!

Even though the 360 million pounds a day that we ‘have saved’ by leaving Europe (Nigel Farage would NOT lie), amounts to well over 100 billion a year! So let’s eat more; the NHS can afford it!!! And it’s just like the French are paying for it!!!

That noted health brand, KFC, love opening… stores (restaurants? Cafes? Diners??) near schools. The councils try to stop them but stop trying when KFC uses its corporate clout to extend appeals and legalities way beyond the budget of any local council.

It’s not just the quantity/quality of food that has made us the fattest nation on the planet. It’s the horrendously sedentary lives we live and our children live. Whereas the kids today play ‘FIFA 23’, we used to go kick footballs in the park. Kids today watch porn all day, we used to go out chasing real women, sometimes miles and miles, if they were fast enough runners. And kids love to play shoot-em-up games, whereas we used to go out and kill real people! Which is… healthy. Well, exerting, at least.

Get them up, get them out, and don’t let them back in the house until they are slim and beautiful. Phones are for phoning people, preferably to ask for a ride home from football/netball/gym/triathlon.

Happy slim Wednesday

A xxxx